piped up this time. “Well, coming here was my idea, actually. I’m not feeling so well, Mrs. Rose—”
“That’s Miss—Miss Gardner, same as Jericho.” I didn’t scream this time, but my meaning was clear. What had they been telling this girl? As long as she’d known us, hadn’t somebody clued her in on the whole horrible story.
“She was never my wife, Shemika,” Jordan said. “Though she should have been. I wasn’t as brave as Jericho, but she was as brave as you. And hardworking, too. She worked double shifts in the supermarket and picked up hours at the hospital until the day she went into labor.” He paused and stared at the floor. “Even messed up her feet to do it. I’m sorry about everything, but I’m sorry about that.”
I braced myself against the chair at the sound of Jordan’s voice. For years, I’d thought that marrying Jordan would have saved me, taken the shame of my teen pregnancy away. All these years later, listening to him, looking at him, I realized things could have been worse if he’d stayed. I couldn’t think of anything he could add to my life. Nothing I needed to think about, anyway.
Shemika tugged my son’s sleeve. “I thought they were divorced—”
“Shh.” Jericho squeezed her hand and gave me a look, one that I deflected. Sure it wasn’t the best way to explain, but since my son was so bent on marrying this girl, he should have told her himself. Suddenly wishing there was another croissant, but glad at the same time that there wasn’t, I backed up against the wall. My bare feet squeaked against the floor.
Even Jordan’s cold eggs called to me as images of the morning—kicking Tad, him washing my lumpy toes, opening the door to find everyone in my kitchen—melted across my mind. This had been a crazy year all around, with Tracey and Dana getting married and Jordan coming home, but this was a bit much. A bit too much.
“Shemika, if you don’t feel well, come into my room and lie down. I need to change my clothes anyway.” All eyes in the room had 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,
