Choose Me (7 page)

“Go home to your wife,” I told him disgustedly, and rolled up the window.

He pretended to look dejected, holding his hands together in a begging gesture, the grin never leaving his face. I started
the car and backed out of the parking space, glancing in the rearview mirror as he ran toward a waiting van.

There were some days when I felt I could wait for a man of God as long as He wanted me to wait. I would remember my mother’s
favorite proverb:
Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it,
and back off in fear of what might come my way. I would tell myself I didn’t necessarily need a man to complete my life,
just to complement it. Because marriage wasn’t something I was ready to commit to again, and because I had no intentions of
becoming intimate without marriage, my predicament was even more complicated. I had yet to date a man who hadn’t eventually
expected sex as part of the package.

There were other days when I could keep my craving at bay by imagining the worst that marriage had to offer—the never-ending
housework, the disproportionate compromising, usually on the part of the woman, the whole patriarchal institution of it all.
In the end, I would resolve that I was better off single.

But then, there were the days when the emptiness in me was so intense, the pain so acute, it cut like a razor blade and all
I wanted to do was cry. I would feel the need to pray continuously and intensely, attending every service at TCCC until I
felt rejuvenated by His awesome presence. I would think,
Okay, Lord, if you command me to wait some more, then Thy will be done.
I would be invigorated for the next few days, enough to get me through the nights, a week. But then, my spirit, which was
very willing, was overwhelmed by my weakened and fervent flesh.

And I could feel myself growing weaker every day.

IT WAS FRIDAY
and I had been thanking God literally from the moment I woke up that morning. Most days I loved my job, but
sometimes when I saw kid after kid coming in and out of my office, day after day, week after week, year after year, I wondered
how much difference I was really making.

Ronnie was fifteen years old in a six-foot-one-inch, two-hundred-pound body full of misplaced hate. He wouldn’t even look
at me when I spoke to him, just stared out the window like he couldn’t wait to brag to his partners that he had beaten the
rap—no juvey, just probation. I was used to being yelled at, cursed at, even attacked, so being ignored didn’t bother me much.
I had read somewhere that even though teenagers appeared not to be listening, they always were.

“Ronnie, are you hearing me?” I asked the boy sternly.

He turned up his lip, still staring out the window. He was just one of many and although they all basically had the same history—products
of single mothers-absent fathers, poor schools-rough neighborhoods—I saw them as individuals. The critics would say that thousands
of kids were brought up under similar conditions but didn’t end up in trouble. But those kids didn’t concern me; I wanted
to help the ones that slipped through the cracks. I didn’t dwell on the fact that the parents were partly responsible for
the way their children turned out. Out there somewhere were fathers who, for whatever reasons, had no contact with their sons,
forcing the boys to choose between the street and the rest of the world. I couldn’t do anything about that. I had long since
given up assigning blame. I was more about finding solutions.

Like them, I was still angry at my father, so I could relate. I knew what it was like to be dismissed and abandoned, to be
an afterthought in a parent’s selfish life. I didn’t want to be their fathers, or a father figure, but I wanted them to see
that there were good men in the world, that it was possible for them to be worthy men despite their circumstances.

“Three years’ probation ain’t no joke. You got to keep your nose and your urine clean, stay away from your crew, those so-called
knot-head friends of yours, finish school, get a part-time job, and report to me once a week,” I ran down the list of rules.

When I met with my clients, I usually took off my suit jacket so I didn’t come off as too authoritarian, but as soon as I
got acquainted with them, I rolled up my sleeves to show them I meant business. With Ronnie, I knew I had to bring out the
big guns. I unbuttoned my shirt and stripped down to my T-shirt. I could see him turning his head slightly, watching me. He
had a couple of inches on me, but I had muscles and years on him and if necessary, I would show him I wasn’t about to take
any mess from him. Inside, I was harder than he was.

Walking around my desk, I came around and sat on the edge. I scratched my upper arm, pushing my short sleeve up just far enough
so he could see my barbed-wire tattoo. I kept the tattoo of the Star of David on my other arm hidden.

“I know you think you got an easy sentence but let me tell you something. Staying straight is harder than serving time, man.
Probation is worse than juvey. You know why? ’Cause you got to report to me.”

Through all the pretense, I could see he was just a scared kid trapped inside the body of a man. He had probably cried himself
to sleep upon hearing his sentence, probably wet himself. Knowing that made my heart soften for him.

“Look, man, I ain’t trying to be yo’ buddy,” I said taking it down a notch, but regressing to street talk. “I ain’t trying
to be yo’ daddy. You just do what you got to do, and I’ll do what I go to do. It’s as simple as that.” I crossed my arms so
that my chest expanded. “You understand?”

Ronnie finally turned away from the window slowly and cocked his head at me, his lip still curled. “We thu?”

“Yeah, man, we’re through. Get outta here.”

He jumped up, the first proof of life. I held out my arm to stop him. “You need anything, you call me, you hear?”

In his eyes, I saw the slightest hint of docility as he barely nodded his head, before the hard look returned almost as quickly.

“See you next week, man.”

As he rushed out, he bumped into Derek Cote, a fellow probation officer, in the hallway. Ronnie tried to walk around him,
but Derek was built like a fullback, not to mention he was bald, Black, and intimidating. It didn’t help that his wife had
recently died of breast cancer and he was still angry at the world. He reached out a huge beefy arm and blocked Ronnie’s way.

“Hey, young man, the word is ‘excuse me.’ Use it,” Derek said in his baritone voice.

I couldn’t hear Ronnie’s voice but I knew he had complied.

“Knucklehead,” Derek muttered as he walked into my office. “We still on for lunch?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said putting my shirt back on and sitting at my desk. “How you doing? You doing okay?”

“I’m alright, I’m cool,” he said dismissing me with a wave of his hand, ready to talk about business.

Derek and I had known each other for five years, ever since I started working at the agency. He took over most of my cases
when I was out on medical leave, and I in turn, covered his when he took a family leave to deal with his wife’s death. I hadn’t
seen too many men cry in my lifetime, and the first time Derek broke down in my office, I was stunned. Before his wife died,
he would talk about her like she was someone special, made out of rare diamonds. The way he used to romance her, even after
twenty years of marriage, amazed me. Sometimes he’d talk about her like she was still alive, in the present tense.
Teresa likes it when I wear this shirt,
he’d say. It made me wonder if loving a woman with that much intensity was possible.

After work I drove toward home with thoughts of relaxation and working on my screenplay, listening to the soulful sounds of
Floetry, Common, or Abdullah Ibrahim in the background; then I remembered I had something to do. As part of the Big Brothers
Big Sisters program, I mentored two brothers and I had promised the mother, Nikki Miller, that I would stop by and talk to
the eldest, Justin. Since his high school graduation a couple of months ago, she didn’t like the changes he was undergoing
in his quest for independence. She didn’t like that he had started locking his hair, even if he
was
emulating me, or that he wasn’t coming straight home after his part-time job, or that he was dating a girl she didn’t particularly
like. Lately, his attitude was getting worse, so she had called earlier to tell me that she couldn’t be held responsible for
whatever she might do to him if he continued. Reluctantly, but resolutely, I made a U-turn and drove to the West Side.

Ms. Miller came to the door with a scowl on her face, but it quickly disappeared when she saw me through the glass security
door. Grinning, she fixed her hair with her hands and promptly unlocked the door. Dressed in her office work clothes—a form-fitting
skirt and a low-cut blouse—she looked way too young to have a seventeen-year-old son, and I had to remind myself of her displaced
attraction to me because of my relationship with her sons. I had promised myself I would avoid going into the house if possible,
careful what I said to her, or the way I looked at her, at all times.

“How you doin’, Ms. Miller?” I asked civilly.

“I told you, you can call me Nikki, Mr. Black.”

I ignored her reprimand politely by changing the subject. “Where’s Justin?”

“Justin!” she yelled irritably over her shoulder, then smiled back at me. “Come in. Sit down, sit down. I just finished cooking.
Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, corn. I know you must be hungry after working all day.”

“No thanks. I’m supposed to have dinner at my sister’s.” I wasn’t going but it was the truth, and I could tell from the look
on her face that she didn’t believe me. Ever since my sister, Jade, had moved out to the suburb of Carol Stream, I visited
her less and less. I sat on the edge of the sofa and waited.

Ricky, the nine-year-old, came charging down the hall. He plopped down next to me and leaned against my arm. I palmed his
close-shaven head.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop running through my house?” Ms. Miller scolded.

“How you doin’? You been doing okay?” I asked him.

He nodded in a frenzied manner.

“Stop lying,” Ms. Miller interjected. “You know you were almost suspended this week. Tell Mr. Black what you did.”

Ricky shook his head.

“He spit on the floor in the middle of class,” she answered for him.

“’Cause teacher wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom,” Ricky cried out in his defense. “I told her I had to spit, but she wouldn’t
let me go.” Ricky had been diagnosed with what a lot of boys were being labeled with recently: ADD—attention deficit disorder.
He was an intelligent boy, but the lack of resources at his neighborhood school and the impatience of school officials dictated
the quickest solution: transferring him to a different school, into Special Ed, then putting him on the newest antistimulant
medication.

Justin came sauntering down the carpeted stairs, a sullen look on his face. He leaned against the wall, running his hand over
the baby locks on his head. Unlike the semi-hard-core young men I saw at work, he was a good kid who missed his deceased father
and resented the fact that his mother was still trying to run his life. He had come a long way from when I first met him,
graduating with honors while juggling a part-time job and volunteering as a tutor for grade school kids. I liked to think
that I had something to do with his success, that my influence had so far kept him from becoming a statistic.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” I asked.

“’Sup.”

“Speak coherently, boy,” his mother scolded, glaring at him. Justin cut his eyes at her. “You see how he looks at me. You
better talk to him.”

“You want to go for a ride?” I asked Justin.

“You can talk here,” Ms. Miller said, getting up. “I’ll leave the room.”

I stood up. “That’s okay. I have some errands to run. C’mon, man.” Justin’s face brightened up as he dashed out the door like
a pet who had been chained up all day.

“You sure you don’t want to eat? I made enough for you. For all of us,” Ms. Miller said eagerly.

“Thanks. Maybe some other time.”

As she smiled, I realized I made a mistake implying there would be a future dinner.

“I swear I’ma explode if I don’t move out,” Justin told me, as we drove down the street. “She’s gettin’ on my nerves!”

“Where you gonna go, huh? You’re seventeen, you got a high school education and a part-time job at Old Navy,” I reminded him
calmly.

“I’ll be eighteen in two months. I’ll go to the army, the Job Corps, anywhere.”

“I thought you wanted to go to college. I thought you were going to work for six months to save some money and then you were
going to college.”

He shrugged. “My counselor said I wasn’t college material. He said my SAT scores weren’t high enough.”

“But your GPA is good. You had a three-point-three, didn’t you? Do you want to go to college?”

“Yeah, I want to go.”

“Then you’re going. There are some schools that’ll take your scores. They’ll accept you as a ‘special admissions’ student
for the first year. You got to take advantage of this opportunity now. The government’s trying to get rid of affirmative action.
I can’t believe that counselor said that.”

“They don’t care about us at that school. They try to push us into the trades and food service, or community college.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “If you want to go to college, away to a university, you can do it. As long as you’re willing
to work hard, you can do it. I’ll see what I can do.”

Justin looked out the window quietly. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what I had said or just ignoring me.

“In the meantime, you got to stop giving your mama a hard time,” I told him, getting to the matter at hand. “You know she
loves you and she only wants what’s best for you. It’s not easy raising two boys by herself.”

“I know, but she’s always in my business.”

“That’s what mamas do. If you go away to college, at least she’ll be out of your business for most of the year.”