“Thank you, Mama.”
“Don't thank your mother,” my father said. “You thank God by using your gift. You can't do that if you don't singâwon't sing in the choir no more? You going to stop coming to church next?”
“I never said that. I'm just ... busy with the school.”
“Please,” Jr said. “Those kids don't need more singing. They need some old-fashioned whipping. There's no parenting happening at home. Spare the rodâ”
“âspoil the child,” my father finished his sentence.
“Now, if the parents did more at home,” Jr went on, “they wouldn't be in such bad shape. They got the Bloods and Crips and I heard they even got some gay sex parties there, too.”
“Really?” May clutched her chest.
“Well ... they're dealing with a lot,” Evan said, his coolness lifted. With the new job, he became defensive whenever someone brought up something bad about Black Warrior.
“My Lord!” May bowed her head and began to pray silently. I rested my elbows on the table and shook my head. All this in thirty minutes.
“I remember when children acted like children,” Nana Jessie said. “Down here in the South, they listened to grown folks. Called them ma'am and sir and there wasn't none of this fighting going on.”
“And that was because they got a whupping if they did,” my father added. “Now they just let the kids run wild.”
“It's not all bad,” Billie said. “We have some success stories. Like that rapper Dame. I saw him on the cover of
Rolling Stone
at the grocery store the other day. He had on boxers and LOST painted on top of a cross on his chest. It was hot.” She fanned herself playfully.
“The one with all the tattoos?” my mother asked.
“What you know about that, Mama?” Jr jumped in and we all looked at my mother surprised.
“I'm a Christianânot blind,” she said. “No woman I know could've missed that cover in line at the grocery store. You can hardly ever get out of the store without seeing him on the cover of some magazine. And he never has a shirt on.”
The men looked to the rest of us, but we just diverted our eyes. My mother was right. Dame was the big buzz. While I didn't listen to much hip-hop, I couldn't check out at the grocery store or even watch the news without seeing his face. He was bigmouthed and always in the news, shirtless and sweaty, his wild dreadlocks hanging over his shoulders like a lion's mane as he invaded the covers of magazines with headlines like “Crush the World” or “Take Over.” In the tabloids, he was making love to married Hollywood stars and bed-hopping in London and Dublin. He had a clothing line, a beverage company and, as I'd heard one of my students mention, a sneaker deal. All of the kids at the school wanted to emulate him because he was from Tuscaloosa. In fact, he'd gone to Black Warrior and was one of my former students. But still I wasn't so sure he was the best role model. The one song of his I'd listened to was about sex and drugs. Nothing unique. The kids needed much more than that.
“So you women all crazy about some rapper?” my father asked in the silence.
“He's not just some rapper. He's sold millions of albums and he got six Grammys last year,” Billie insisted. “And he's from here.”
“Tuscaloosa?”
“Yes, Dad,” I said.
“Who are his people?” he quizzed.
“The girls at the clinic say he's one of those Simpsons from Hay Court,” my mother said.
“Oh, he's from out there? I should've known,” my father said, going into one of his speeches about how rap was ruining the black community and the world at the same time. He detested any form of rap music and refused to allow the kids to listen to even gospel rap at the church.
“Journey had him in her class,” Billie said when he was done.
“You did?” My father looked at me as if I'd done something wrong.
“That was seven years ago when I first started teaching. He just sat in the back. He dropped out halfway through the year.” Dame, whose real name was Damien Mitchell, joined the choir with two of his friends, but instead of singing, they mostly sat in the back of the classroom acting up and Dame would often write in a notebook. Because he was clearly the leader of the pack, I'd approach him sometimes, telling him that he was going to fail and that just sitting in the room didn't mean he was present. He'd promise to do better, but I knew he wouldn't change. He was a charmerânice to look at, cocky, but very kind. The sort of boy the girls couldn't stop looking at and the boys wanted to follow. Those kinds seldom changed.
“So, y'all at my table bragging about some high school dropout, who's poisoning our kids with trashtalking set to music?” my father said. “He isn't doing anything but bringing down the community. Probably the reason the school is in such bad shape now.”
“Well, not exactly, Dad,” Evan said. “He's actually trying to give back.”
“What?” I asked.
“He's been talking about coming to Black Warrior and donating some money to the school. We're trying to get a date together right now. Could be as soon as the week after next.”
“You didn't tell me about that.”
“It could still fall through,” Evan said. “He's coming off of his promo tour and getting ready for a world tour later this year. I didn't want to speak before anything was confirmed. He's trying to get BET on board.”
“Well, you can pump blood money into that school if you want,” my father said. “It won't make things better.”
“Oh, Jethro,” my mother tried correcting him, “what do you want the boy to do? Give back or not? If the school needs money, they should take it. Just imagine if all these basketball players and football players and rappers all went back to their hometowns and gave away money. Look, let's not ruin Journey's birthday dinner talking about this. We should just discuss positive things.”
“Thank you, Mama,” I said, not knowing I'd want her to take that back in ten short seconds.
“Fine with me,” my father said, turning to focus on me. “When are you and Evan going to give me a grandbaby?” he asked. “You're thirty-three. You don't want to wait until your eggs dry up.”
“Dadâhow could you even say something like that? Look, my
eggs
aren't going anywhere,” I said, avoiding looking in May's direction. I hated it when he said things like that in front of her. “I'm fine.”
“Well, what's the holdup?” he continued. “You got a husband, a good job, a home.... Do you need something else?”
Everyone at the table stopped eating and looked at me. Even Evan. He'd been working on me about this for a while now. It had turned into a regular argument and once it was clear that I hadn't made a decision and wouldn't stop taking the birth control pill until I did, he simply stopped having sex with me. He'd been claiming he was tired, but I suspected he was just trying to punish me by controlling me in some other way.
“It's not about what I need. I just want to do some other things in my life before I have a baby. I mean, I want to travel. I'm thirty-three and I've never used my passport.”
“Well, you should've thought about that when you were younger,” my father said.
“Where you want to go? Spring break in Cancun or something?” Jr laughed.
“You two back off,” my mother said. “Journey, if this is about travel, why can't you and Evan just take a trip together. You can go somewhere special before you have the baby.”
“That's not whatâ” I tried, but Evan cut me off.
“We've actually been talking about having a baby.” Evan slid his hand on top of mine on the table. Everyone got quiet. “Maybe this summer.”
“Wonderful!” my mother shouted as if she hadn't heard anything I'd said and only Evan's words counted.
“Really?” May looked at me glumly.
“That's not what I said,” I murmured to Evan. “I said we'd
talk
about it this summer.”
“Oh, I'll have to start collecting squares for a quilt,” Nana Jessie said. “I can cut some of my mama's old dresses.”
“That'll be good luck for her,” my mother cheered. “Oh ... a girl, a baby girl. Finally another girl in the family.”
“Who said it's going to be a girl? I never even said I was going toâ” I tried, but this time my father cut me off.
“Ain't gonna be no girl. It's bad luck for the first baby to be a girl. Got to be a boy to pass on that blood line.” He nodded to a smiling Evan and then glanced disapprovingly at Jr.
“Yes, sir,” Evan said proudly, poking out his chest like my father.
“Now, after the boy, then you two can go right on and have a girl quickly,” my father went on. “Don't wait like me and your mother did with you. Had you and Jr too far apart. That's why you don't get along. Have them back to back.”
I kicked Billie beneath the table. Along with my father's long prayers, she'd seen this too many times at the dinner tableâme entangled in the vector of my family's trajectory planning. Usually, Jr just went along with the plan; I took the approach of holding out until they changed the subject; Justin just ran away. As everyone else continued to eat and sip on their iced tea merrily with the thought of my two children, I looked to the tenth chair in the dining room set, empty and tucked away beside the china cabinet, and thought of Justin. Sometimes it seemed like he was the lucky one.
Â
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“So, I guess my baby sister's going to beat me,” Jr said, walking me and Evan to the door after May and I'd helped my mother clean the kitchen. Billie and Mustafa left early to give Nana Jessie a ride home and my father departed with a plate he was taking to Mother Oliver, who'd been on our shut-in list at the church for years.
“I'll go get the car,” Evan said, rushing out ahead of me.
“Beat you at what?” I asked Jr.
“Having a baby.”
“That's still to be decided.”
“Children are great. A blessing to any family.”
“What do you know about it?” I asked. “You sound like you have one.”
“Journey,” he said, looking off, “just do it. Stop being so stubborn.”
“Stubborn? You make it sound like I'm buying a car.”
“You never could commit to anything.”
“I can commit to not listening to you.”
Jr had a way of twisting what seemed like human concern into the platform for an insult. I had to fight back or be slaughtered.
“Journey, I'm not trying to argue with you,” he said, opening the front door and gesturing for me to step outside. Evan was already sitting in the car at the head of the oval driveway that parted before the front door. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“What's up?” I asked, already knowing what he was about to bring up. Whenever Jr did take time to talk to meâand it was rareâit was either to say something bad about Justin or bring up my taking over the entertainment ministry at the church. Besides the children's ministry, which Jack ran, the entertainment ministry was the biggest department at the church. Newly formed, it included dance, our visual arts direction, theater, the orchestra, the marching band, all of the choirs, and the biggest deal at the church since my father announced he was considering a move to televisionâaudio and visual production. When all of the smaller ministries were organized under the umbrella of entertainment, my father instructed Jr to appoint a salaried director. The sixfigure position would be the seventh of its kind at the church. Included were Jr's leadership of all of the ministerial directors, my mother's position as the executive officer of the women's clinic, the church's executive director who presided over all financial matters, and Jack, who doubled as assistant pastor and director of the children's ministry.
“I think it's time for you to come be with us,” Jr said. “You know I still have that position open and waiting for you.”
“We talked about this before.” I stepped down to the bottom step. “I'm at the school ... I love what I do.”
“Would you stop being selfish and think about your family ... our legacy? This is your father's church. We can't entrust such a big role at the House to an outsider. Someone not in the family. There's too much at stake for us to do that again.”
“Outsiders? Are you still angry about Jack? Is this about him?”
Jack had been a pebble in Jr's shoe for some time. Our father appointed him as assistant pastor and when he put him in a fully salaried position over the children's ministryâwith equal pay to Jrâmy brother took it as a personal attack. Suddenly, Jack couldn't be trusted and Jr was waiting for him to mess up.