LITMIR.BIZ

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been focused on my feet since Jordan’s little speech and my words didn’t break the spell. I jetted through the dining room to my bedroom, daring even one tear to fall and hoping reality TV cameramen weren’t waiting behind my drapes.

      Shemika followed and stretched out on my favorite comforter—the key-lime pie set I’d gotten from Austin, our newest member in the Sassy Sistahood, during our Christmas-in-July gift swap. The plump comforter plus my queen-size waterbed brought a smile to Shemika’s face.

      “Nice,” she said, as I changed into a periwinkle sundress. Not my color exactly, but I wasn’t feeling myself.

      I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry for all the commotion this morning. You’re welcome here anytime, you know that. I just had a bad morning. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”

      She fluffed the pillow under her head. “I just don’t feel so good. My back hurts, but it’s not time yet and the doctor says to just come in tomorrow. We even went to the hospital, but they said it’s Brackstum Lips—”

      “Braxton Hicks.” During the months of my son’s relationship with this girl, I had actually started to warm up to her. Her quietness had given the illusion of wisdom. She should have stuck to that plan. I tried to remind myself that she was only sixteen, no matter how old she looked.

      Lord, help this child. And mine, too.

      “Yeah, those. But now it’s really hurting. Every now and then. Grandma doesn’t remember all this stuff and my mother, well, she changed her number when she put me out. Maybe I can rest here for a while and go home—”

      “Stay as long as you want.” I stroked her head to check for fever and thought about what she’d just said. Home. Jericho had brought the mother of his child to my house because she had nowhere to go. And his shacking-up baby’s daddy had done the right thing and taken Shemika in, given her something to call home.

      True enough, my son hadn’t explained the situation to me, but as always, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. And as Jericho loved to remind me, if I’d just have signed the papers to allow him to get married while he was still legally a minor, this wouldn’t be an issue. But I couldn’t. Raising a baby was hard enough. Building a marriage was something else all together. Grown folks with steady jobs struggled at it. How could two teens with a new baby make it work? And what about his basketball? College? No, they needed an education. I’d help with the baby…somehow.

      “Shemika, I’m sorry about what happened in June with the big fight about you being here with Jericho alone. If he’d told me the situation—”

      She tried to sit up, but I shook my head and she eased back down. “I asked him not to tell you. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think bad of my mother. She has her own problems and a baby is more than she can deal with right now.”

      That stunned me for some reason. Sure, Shemika had made a big mistake, but her mother was an adult who should have done better than toss her child into the street. But here Shemika was defending her. More than I could say for myself about my own mother. I tried not to speak against her, but the way she’d abandoned me when I was pregnant with Jericho still hurt all these years later. I hadn’t realized it until now.

      Kids. Who needs therapy with them around?

      “Embarrassed? You didn’t need to worry about what I think. And you told Mr. Rose, right? Why weren’t you embarrassed for Jordan’s dad to know?”

      She shrugged. “He’s different, you know? More like us. You’re like Grandma. All holy and everything.”

      I laid down on the bed beside her and stared at the ceiling. “Shemika, I try to live by God’s Word, but I’m far from perfect. A long way from holy. I don’t know what I’ve done to give you the idea that I couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with your problems, but I’ll do better. Try harder.”

      She smiled and closed her eyes. “It’s okay. Like I said, I just want to go home.”

      My eyes closed, too, with images of Jordan’s glamorous town house scrolling behind them. Sure I was glad that he’d snagged a job as a consultant to the NBA, but sometimes it didn’t seem fair. Though Jordan’s “I’ve been in Mexico in a coma for the last decade” story fell hard on most people’s ears, the NBA had heard stranger tales.

      And so came his new job, a fresh start, a fraction of what Jordan might have had if he’d kept playing, but so much more than he’d hoped for. I tried to be happy for him, even if the way my son had come to depend on him made me feel a little lost.

      Hadn’t that been what I prayed for all those years when it was just me? That one day Jericho would have a dad he could depend on? Believe in? I hadn’t realized then that prayers seldom have an expiration date and sometimes they’re answered when you least expect it. So I went on, working hard and praying hard and trying to embrace this new life alone—no husband, no son, no single friends. The people in BASIC didn’t really count. I couldn’t really talk with any of them. They’d be shocked enough to know that I’d kicked Tad, let alone the things I thought about sometimes.

      And most of them had little sympathy for my up-and-down feelings for Jordan. So what that I’d worked my fingers to the bone building a business? He’d given me the start-up money. Really, there wasn’t much I could say if he hadn’t. He was still my son’s father no matter how I turned the plate.

      Shemika’s chest moved up and down, her round belly rising as if it was breathing, too. Jericho had done that in my stomach, too, even danced when I ate lasagna or Adrian Norrell’s mother played Sting full blast next door. Adrian married Dana, Jordan’s sister—but I digress. Watching Shemika sleep, I prayed for all of us, even for the guys around the league that Jordan was helping. I prayed that he’d keep them from turning out regretful, like us. Well, like him. I’d stuck around, done my duty….

      I covered my eyes. Yuck. There it was, that holier-than-thou thing Shemika was talking about. Why was I like this? Why did I always have to be right? It wasn’t that I didn’t have regrets, too. I had plenty. Jordan was here now and trying to do what was right. I had to find my way out of the past and make peace with that. Somehow.

      With Jordan convinced that a shotgun wedding would solve this new problem, the Jericho-and-Shemika problem, it was difficult to deal with him, especially when Jordan hadn’t married his own live-in girlfriend yet.

      I reached out and touched Shemika’s stomach gently, thinking about the many women from our church I’d helped through labor. Shemika didn’t really have the look of a woman in labor, but with the young ones it was hard to tell. I once had a girl laugh and talk with me all the way to the hospital and deliver as soon as we got her into a room. This time would probably be a typical first baby, hard and long. Just like mine.

      The door creaked open and Jordan entered, taking a few steps and peeking at us. When he leaned over far enough to see my open-eyed stare, he jumped back. “Girl! I thought you were sleeping, too.”

      I wish.

      “Nope. Just thinking.” I squirmed a little as he looked around my room. I could tell he liked it by the way he narrowed his eyes at the picture on the wall. Some things never changed.

      He moved closer to the bed, then settled on a chair in the corner. “Thinking about what?”

      “Nothing.” Frustration whistled through my lips. Why did just the sight of him make me angry? Maybe because hard as I’d worked to get these two kids to finish high school, he’d pressed just as hard for them to get married, something I still wouldn’t agree to. Most likely it was because of Shemika’s words earlier, that Jordan’s place was her home. The other thing that bothered me, the thing I wasn’t ready to deal with, was that the grandchild that I’d refused to deal with might be coming.

      Soon.

      Careful not to wake her, I reached for Shemika’s hand, praying as I touched her fingers. I wasn’t ready for this. I might never be ready. But God was ready. God was here. As I prayed, the soft flesh under her shirt stiffened into a

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