Chapter 14

June 1999

As soon as Angela left that night, I called Maren. She was back in Durham for the summer and we’d made plans for her to come visit me in Chicago before going back to Florida for her junior year. I was afraid of her reaction, but I couldn’t wait to tell her. I wasn’t focused on all the very real reasons why Angela and I could be disasters as parents. I was determined to be positive, to try to will the situation to work as best I could.

“Angela is pregnant.” I had meant to lead up to the news, but as soon as we got through our initial greetings, I just blurted out the news.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m having a baby. I mean, we’re having a baby. Angela and I.”

The silence was so long that the only way I knew she was still on the line is that I could hear her breathing.

“Okay, I must have missed something. Didn’t you and Angela break up last Thanksgiving?”

“Yes.”

“And you haven’t seen her since then.”

“Not until tonight.”

Maren slowed her words as if she was talking to a toddler. “So how can you two be having a baby?”

I told her the full story of the breakup, this time including the essential part about the pregnancy, Jason and the abortion. When I got to the part about how Angela pretended not to know whose baby it was, Maren stopped me.

“Wait, she knew it was your baby all along, but she didn’t tell you? Ellison, that’s horrible.”

I knew she was right. Somehow I had diminished the enormity of that little tidbit because I was so focused on the actual, living, moving baby.

“I just don’t think it matters anymore. There’s a child now. That has to be my focus.”

“But Ellison, how can you ever trust her? How do you even know it’s yours? Does this mean you and Angela are back together?”

She was voicing all the doubts I hadn’t let myself think about. She was approaching it logically, rationally. But if anyone should know that families don’t work according to logic or rationality, it was us.

“It’s mine. He’s mine. The baby is a boy. We’re not back together. I don’t even know if we should be together. And I know everything you’re saying is true, but what can I do about the past now? I’ve got to focus on my son, who will be here in just three weeks. That’s all I know—I’m about to be a father, and Angela is my son’s mother.”

“It’s a boy?” she said hesitantly. “Well, I always wanted to be an auntie. I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.”

This was Maren’s way of telling me that she was going to put aside her doubts about Angela, for now. I loved her for it.

“Thanks, Auntie Maren.”

She laughed. “That makes me sound like I’m eighty years old.” She paused. “Hey, El, Dad’s in the next room. Want to talk to him? You should tell him, too.”

My stomach clenched at the thought of talking to Calvin at that moment. I didn’t really want to deal with him and his doubts when facing my sister’s had already been exhausting. I knew I should tell him myself, but I chickened out.

“Maren, I can’t do it, not now.”

“At some point, you and Dad are going to have to settle things, you know. This can’t go on forever.”

“I know, Mare. But please, I can’t face it now. My head is spinning in a million different directions.”

She sighed. “Come on, Ellison.”

“I just can’t. I’ve got too many other things to worry about right now, with Angela and the baby. I don’t have it in me to deal with him, too.”

“Okay. But don’t forget to take care of yourself, too. Your son needs his father to be in good shape, too.”

“I’ll take of myself, Maren. Don’t worry.”

“I always worry about you, big brother.”

* * *

Angela’s parents hated me. They would never say so, of course. They were far too Midwestern and circumspect to expose their raw emotions. Angela never had too many good things to say about her family. When we were close last summer, she’d painted a picture of them as staunchly middle-class and classist, dismissive of people they deemed below their station in life. During her early childhood, her parents didn’t have much money and they all lived in a duplex on the south side. Then her father’s business took off and they moved to a high rise near the Loop. Her father frowned a lot but said little, and Angela once said her mother’s main occupation was trying to act like a white society maven.

It had reminded me of high school in Durham, when my skin color didn’t stop my classmates from saying I acted white. I wanted to tell Angela that there were many ways of being a black person in America, but at the time I was too smitten to disagree with anything she said.

The first time I met them, I stood nervously in the lobby while the doorman called their number and stood watching me with a blank expression on his face as we waited for an answer. He was a middle-aged white man, his hair already grayed, his uniform spotless and pressed. I wondered what he thought about black people living here. Chicago, like most other places in the Midwest, was still very segregated, and there weren’t many places where whites and blacks lived in harmony. Those harmonious, multi-racial utopias did not include Evanston, where I grew up with mostly all white neighbors, nor did it include this high rise, from what I could see from standing in the lobby for just a few minutes.

After the doorman hung up, he looked at me for a long moment, just long enough to let me know I didn’t belong here, but not long enough to be confrontational. He directed me to the elevators and the twenty-first floor.

Angela’s father was a large, gruff man who was born and raised in Chicago, the kind of self-made success who couldn’t understand why every black man didn’t just pull himself up, work hard and fight his way to the top.

“I can’t wait until next year when we can finally get that bastard Clinton out of office,” he told me the first time we met. He glared at me, ignoring his wife’s reprimand.

“Language, John.”

I tried not to grimace. My mother had raised us to be staunch Democrats, and I couldn’t see how a black man could be a Republican. But I knew better than to argue the point, especially since I was the man who impregnated his daughter. Johnny Michaels outweighed me by at least fifty pounds, and although he wore pressed slacks, a dress shirt and gleaming loafers on almost all occasions, he seemed as if he wouldn’t hesitate to pummel me if needed.

Angela’s mother, Winifred, was a classic, upwardly mobile member of the black middle class. She wore her hair in a shoulder-length weave and kept it bone straight, never daring to let any hint of kink come through. Her face was a mask of expensive makeup, and her clothes, though expensive, were matronly and brightly-colored. She smiled often, but it was a false expression, a mere curve of the lips. Her nose was always just a bit crinkled when I was around, as if she smelled something putrid but couldn’t quite place the source.

She reminded me of Jason Davis’s mother, except without the sense of humor, and without the genuine beauty. Angela’s mother was making the most of her natural assets, but she couldn’t compete with someone like Mrs. Davis. Winifred was the seventh of twelve children born to her single mother in Macon, Georgia, and she had spent her entire adult life trying to escape her past. Angela told me never to mention her aunts and uncles, most of whom still lived in Macon in the same ramshackle house where they’d all been born.

“My mother hates to talk about all that,” she told me one day soon after I found out she was still pregnant. I couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to talk about family, but it didn’t make me like Winifred any more.

“She feels like this is all your fault.” She gestured toward her swollen belly.

“I know it’s not ideal, but we’re adults. She’s can’t spend the rest of our lives blaming me.”

Angela looked away.

“Can she?”

She cleared her throat. “My mother is still mad at me for not going to prom with her best friend’s son. Ask her about my eighth grade graduation, and she’ll complain that my cap was crooked, ruining all of the pictures. In fifth grade I hurt my knee playing soccer, and—”

I held up a hand and laughed. “Okay, I get it. Your mother can hold a grudge. She can hate me. But she won’t be able to resist the baby.”

But her parents were certainly able to resist my charms. They interrogated me the first time we met, asking for details about my family, my degree from Duke, my plans for the future. Mrs. Michaels did most of the questioning while Mr. Michaels frowned at me.

“So how are you going to take care of your responsibilities?”

It was an old-fashioned way of demanding information about my finances. I didn’t have much to offer.

“I have a fellowship that pays for tuition and offers some money for living expenses. That will hold me over for a while, and I planned to get a part-time job in January to supplement.” I glanced at Angela for support. She smiled at me and nodded. I risked a look at her father, whose frown had become a glare.

“You can’t support a family with a part-time job,” he growled. “You need to get a job now.”

“Well, I thought of that, sir, but my fellowship and a part-time job will give me more money than any job I could get right now. It makes the most sense for me to stay in school, especially for the future.”

He harrumphed but left his wife to continue.

“Mr. Michaels and I have agreed to support Angela and the baby as long as necessary,” she said primly. Meaning forever, since I didn’t seem to be bringing much to the table.

“It’s very generous of you, Mrs. Michaels,” I said, trying my best to be respectful, more for my own benefit than theirs. I didn’t think they would ever believe I was anything except some lout who had taken advantage of their daughter, but I knew I was more than that.

“We were raised to take care of our own,” she said, glancing at her husband, who nodded his approval.

I could take offense at the implication that I wasn’t raised right. I could protest, make a snide comment to match hers. I would have been within my rights to tell them off, to point out that a good upbringing didn’t include putting down other people, no matter how much you disapproved of them. But I didn’t. My mother raised me better than that.

* * *

I thought I would be calm watching the birth of my son. I wasn’t afraid of the biology of it all, the blood, the pain, the miraculous turning and stretching it took to be born. I had read all about it in textbooks. I knew the parts of the female reproductive system better than Angela. I even calmed her when the obstetrician told us, at Angela’s last checkup, that she’d need a C-section because the baby was breech. A scheduled C-section, on average, offers the same recovery time as a normal birth without complication, I told Angela. This will be fine.

Angela and I arrived at the hospital at seven o’clock in the morning. We were both quiet. I had only been back in Chicago three weeks, not enough time to figure out how to be together or what our future was. Our impending parenthood crowded out all other considerations. We spent those three weeks in a flurry of preparation, discussing names, buying diapers, putting together cribs and packing bags for the hospital stay. Angela would stay with her parents for the time being, and they had agreed to support her and the baby until we figured things out for the long-term.

At no time did we discuss what was really important, like how we would raise our son together, and whether we would be parents together or apart. The baby allowed us to ignore the past and the future. So we rode to the hospital in silence. The practical plans for the baby were made, and the only things left to talk about were the other things, the big things.

Once we arrived, Angela was monitored for a while, then her epidural was placed and she lost the feeling in her legs at the same time her mood was considerably brightened by morphine. She became chatty and a little goofy, which was fine with me. My stomach was roiling and I felt disconnected from my movements, as if I were watching someone else bring ice to Angela, check the baby’s monitor and develop a slow panic that he was desperate to hide.

I was great at parroting textbooks and studies. What I did not take time to consider was the raw emotion of becoming a father. A C-section is surgery, and when people think of surgery, they think of long, complicated procedures ending in with a perspiring doctor wiping his brow and declaring success. But once things get going, if there are no complications, a C-section baby is born within minutes. I stood next to Angela’s head, a pristine sheet shielding us from the gore. I told myself I could have watched, no problem, but I was choosing to hold Angela’s hand instead. Five minutes passed, and I wondered how things were going. Then, the doctor looked up and I could see her eyes smiling above her surgical mask.

“It’s a boy!”

“Already?” The panic had taken over and my breathing quickened. I wasn’t ready yet. I needed more time, more minutes to think about my son’s arrival.

There was a screech, a moment of silence, and then the unmistakable cry of a baby. My baby. My son.

The nurse wiped him off, wrapped him a blanket like a tiny burrito, and handed him to Angela. Her hands shook, and I moved closer.

“He is perfect,” she said, tears running down her face. Our eyes met and held. I looked down at our child. He was still crying, angry at the lights, the cold, these unfamiliar faces.

I took him from Angela and held him close to my face. He stopped crying and furrowed his brow, as if he was trying to figure me out. I grinned and kissed his pug nose.

My son.

James Morrison Emory. We called him Jamie.

* * *

The Michaels came to see Jamie on our last day in the hospital. We dressed him in his going-home outfit, a blue sailor suit that was just a little too big, and probably too hot for that July day. While we waited for their arrival, I walked down to the Au Bon Pain to get a sandwich for Angela, who was ravenous and recovering well from the surgery. When I returned to the room, they were all there. Johnny stood with his arms folded, watching as Winifred rocked Jamie and sang softly to him. Angela was still in bed, beaming at her parents.

In fact, everyone was smiling until I entered the room. Winifred looked up at me, her smile shifting from genuine to forced. The look of peace on Johnny’s face morphed into a frown, and Angela looked worried.

“So you met the little guy,” I said, trying for levity. The words hung in the air, leaden. I leaned over and smiled down into Jamie’s face. I knew he was too young, but I could swear he smiled back.

“He’s beautiful,” Winifred said. She turned her body away from me, a slight move that was barely noticeable. “He has my grandfather’s eyes and Mother’s hair, don’t you think, John?”

Johnny grunted in reply.

“I had hair like that when I was born, too,” I offered. “In fact, if I let mine grow, we’ll be like twins.”

Winifred looked at my head. “Oh, I think yours is coarser than James’s hair. He clearly has a fine grade of hair, just like Mother.”

I noted the insult. I hadn’t grown up with ideas about good hair and bad, but when I was in high school in Durham, that was one of the things my classmates made fun of. They said I thought I was better than them because I had good hair. Not good enough for Winifred, apparently.

After pronouncing my hair deficient, she turned back to Jamie and continued cooing at him. I looked at Johnny.

“So, Johnny, how does it feel to be a grandfather?”

I glanced at Angela to see her shaking her head. I had said the wrong thing—again.

“Well, Ellison, I wasn’t quite ready to be a grandfather so soon, and I’d have preferred to wait a long while. But what’s done is done, I suppose, and Jamie is a fine-looking boy. Hope he takes after me,” he said, his voice stern. “And, I prefer to be called Mr. Michaels, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Mr. Michaels.” I handed Angela her sub without meeting her eyes, and I took a chair near the window. Jamie had won them over, but it wasn’t going to be that easy for me. I didn’t care, except for my son’s sake. No matter how rude they were, I would endure it if it meant that Jamie would get to know his grandparents. I wanted him to grow up with a strong sense of family, something I’d always wished I had.

At the end of the day, Angela’s doctor signed her release papers and we loaded Jamie into his car seat. My BMW was aging but sturdy, and as I tested and retested the car seat straps to make sure they were tight enough to protect my son, I remembered the day my mother bought it for me. Back then, I would never have imagined that just six years later, I would be loading a baby into its backseat.

I drove slowly through the streets, taking turns at a glacial pace. At this rate, it would take forty-five minutes to reach my apartment, but I was in no hurry. Precious cargo required extreme measures.

Angela was silent for much of the ride, but as we passed the turn-off to her parents’ house, she turned to me.

“Where are you going?”

I glanced at her. “Home.”

“You missed the turn to my parents’ house.”

“That’s because I’m not going to your parents’ house. I’m going to my apartment,” I said, frowning.

This was just the first of many practical details we had not taken time to consider. In the three weeks since I returned to Chicago, my days had been filled with shopping for inexpensive furniture for my apartment, finding a crib for Jamie, buying books for my medical school classes, and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was going to be a father. In fact, Angela and I hadn’t spent too much time together after that night at my apartment—she was tired and the doctor recommended bed rest, and I was afraid to break the connection we had made. I saw the pregnancy as a second chance, and it seemed as if too much talking might jinx things. I had assumed there would be plenty of time to talk about the baby after he was born.

“Well, Jamie can’t stay at your place,” she said. I didn’t care for her tone—proprietary, condescending.

“Why not? It’s a one-bedroom, but there’s plenty of room for a baby.”

Angela sighed. “He needs his mother. I’m nursing, remember?”

How could I forget? She seemed to have no qualms about extracting her breast from her shirt anywhere, at any time. I thought she could have at least covered up with a blanket or a towel.

I spoke slowly, since she didn’t seem to get it. “I thought you would come, too.”

Angela squinted at me. “Just because we have a baby together, that doesn’t mean we’re getting back together.”

Her words hit me like a punch in the stomach. She still saw me as a pushover and believed that everything between us was her choice, not mine.

I kept my eyes trained on the road but I was seething.

“What makes you think I want to be with you?” I said it to hurt her, but I realized it was also true. Angela had already devastated me once, then simply reappeared in my life and turned it upside down once again. I wasn’t sorry we had Jamie, but I couldn’t quite get past all the things she had said and done.

When I glanced at her, there were tears in her eyes. Good—let her be the one who cries for once.

“You always assume that you’re the one who gets to choose whether to be with me. I’m a person, too, and you didn’t exactly handle things well last summer.”

“I didn’t get pregnant by myself,” she said, crying quietly.

“But you lied about it.”

Her sobs grew more urgent, and I regretted being mean to her. She’d just had a baby, and even though what I said was true, I could have been nicer about it.

“Angela—”

“Never mind. You made your point.”

“Just let me say this. My offer has nothing to do with us. It’s about Jamie. He needs to be near both his parents.”

As if to underscore my point, Jamie let out a wail, which turned into desperate crying.

“Oh, God, he’s hungry.”

We were just a block from my house. I said nothing, letting Angela make the decision. Jamie’s crying became more insistent, pushing her to speak.

“Okay, for tonight we’ll go to your place. But we need to talk more about this.”

I nodded. Having Jamie stay with me at least one night was a small victory. But I feared the war had just begun.