by Bobby Love
“Yeah, Buddy, you look good,” Jean echoed. “I can’t believe we’re actually here at your wedding. I never thought I’d see the day.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m so glad you guys made it. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”
I showed my family to their seats on the groom’s side of the room. I knew it was going to look awkward with all of Cheryl’s friends and family crowded on one side, while my side was mostly empty. The only other people I invited to the wedding were two friends I’d made when I was working at Hertz—a cat named Carlton and another guy named Randy. Cheryl knew that most of my people were in North Carolina, so I simply told her that the rest of them couldn’t afford to come up. She was so excited about all the wedding preparations and the baby, she hardly paid attention to the fact that most of my family wasn’t there.
We had the ceremony first, and the minister from Cheryl’s church officiated. Then we had a catered dinner afterwards. The ceremony went off without a hitch. And Cheryl looked beautiful in her white dress that her godmother made for her. There was so much material on her body, you could barely tell she was pregnant. Of course, everybody knew she was expecting, so it wasn’t like we were trying to keep the baby a secret. Even Reverend Cooper seemed joyful after he performed the ceremony and didn’t try to shame us for putting the cart before the horse. He just shook my hand and hugged Cheryl and wished us both good luck and good health.
It wasn’t until the ceremony was over that I could finally introduce Cheryl to Jean and Raymond. Since the room was full of Cheryl’s friends and family, Jean and Raymond stood close together in a corner, looking mildly uncomfortable. I didn’t blame them. I grabbed Cheryl and took her over to meet my family.
“Jean and Raymond, this is Cheryl,” I announced proudly.
Cheryl flashed those dimples and hugged the two of them. “It’s so nice to meet you both. Bobby has told me so much about you. I’m so glad you were able to come for the wedding.”
Jean looked Cheryl up and down and said, “Buddy, she’s not that young. You had me worried.”
“Jean!” I cringed. “Why you gotta say things like that?”
“I’m not saying anything’s wrong. You guys seem like a perfect couple,” she said. “It was a real nice ceremony, Cheryl. Real nice.”
“Thank you,” Cheryl said. Then she turned those dimples on me. “I can’t believe we’re married, Bobby.”
Raymond raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, Buddy, I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Are you all going to stay for dinner?” Cheryl asked. “The food is really good and there’s plenty of it.”
“Yeah, we can stay,” Raymond said.
“But we can’t stay too long,” Jean interrupted. “Because I want to be heading back south before it gets dark.”
Jean never held her tongue, but Cheryl was too giddy to take offense. I could tell she wanted to get back to her friends, who were still squealing about Cheryl’s ring and her dress.
Cheryl excused herself. “I gotta go back over there and take more pictures.” Before she turned to go, though, she said to Jean and Raymond, “It was so nice meeting y’all.”
Once Cheryl was out of earshot, Jean remarked, “She seems nice.” And I could tell she meant it. And that meant a lot to me, because since Mama died, Jean had become the de facto head of our family, even though she wasn’t the oldest. If she gave Cheryl her stamp of approval, then I was satisfied.
* * *
Our wedding was in March, and our daughter Jasmine was born in July. She had all five fingers and all five toes, exactly where they were supposed to be. When the nurse handed me my daughter to hold for the very first time, I just looked at her and whispered with tears in my eyes, “I am going to be the best dad you could ever have. I will always be there for you, and that’s a promise.”
That same day she was born, I called my family and some friends and announced, “We have a baby girl and she is perfect and beautiful.” I was so proud, I even called my supervisor at the hospital and told her that Jasmine had made her arrival.
And just as I had suspected, Cheryl was an excellent mother as soon as that baby came out. As a couple, we decided that Cheryl would stop working so she could stay home and take care of the baby. I worked as many hours as possible to support our new little family, but I couldn’t wait to get home to be with my little girl. Someone gave us a baby carrier at our shower, so after work, I would put Jasmine on my chest and go walking with her all around Brooklyn. I always got smiles from the ladies in the neighborhood when they saw me with Jasmine, but I only had eyes for one girl and that was my daughter.
I wanted to move our new family of three into our own apartment, but Cheryl convinced me that we should stay in her father’s apartment in the Pink Houses so we wouldn’t have to worry so much about money.
“My father sleeps at Estelle’s house every night, so we can stay here and share the rent,” she argued. Cheryl also liked the fact that her godmother lived on the fourth floor, her godfather and Mrs. Thompson lived on the second floor, and her godsisters lived on the fifth floor. In other words, she was surrounded by people who loved her and could help her with whatever she might need. I still bristled at the idea of living in the projects, and the Pink Houses were getting more and more dangerous as the crack epidemic made its way through the city. But Cheryl had grown up there, and she saw the glass half-full. She still saw familiar faces, families, and good people all around her. If she had to avoid the elevator or the front of the building at certain times of the day because of drug activity, she said she didn’t mind. The occasional sound of gunshots just meant to keep away from the windows.
I begrudgingly agreed to stay put because the arrangement gave us time to focus on our family without stressing about money. All told, we ended up living in the Pink Houses for almost seven years. We decided to have another child along the way. Our daughter Jessica was born two years after Jasmine. Whereas Jasmine had been the most easygoing child, Jessica was the type of baby who would cry if she wasn’t in Cheryl’s or my arms. So in the end, I was happy that we’d decided to stay with Cheryl’s family because we received a lot of help and support with the girls, and with my salary, I could buy all the diapers, formula, medicine, and clothing that we needed. I even saved enough money to take our little family on vacations, including a weeklong trip to Disney World in Florida. We weren’t flush with cash or anything, but I knew how to make things happen. I dibbled and dabbled in playing the numbers. I bought lottery tickets, and sometimes I’d run my own sports pools that folks could bet on at work. I wanted to give my girls and my wife everything I didn’t have growing up, most importantly a loving and caring husband and father.
But then it happened. I came home from work one day and Cheryl told me with tears in her eyes that they had found a young woman from the fourth floor of our building, murdered, chopped up in pieces, and thrown down the incinerator. Cheryl was devastated, and now she was finally ready to admit, the Pink Houses couldn’t be home anymore.
chapter eight
Real Life
* * *
BOBBY
In 1992, when we finally left the Pink Houses to move into our own apartment as a little family of four, everything was good. The Baptist Medical Center had been shut down after years of mismanagement and dogged by rumors about the mafia. I had found a new job cooking in the kitchen at a hospital in the Bronx. It was smaller than Baptist Medical had been, but I was still turning out massive quantities of food for both the patients and the entire staff. It didn’t take long for my reputation as a good cook to grow there, to the point where people would come to the cafeteria specifically asking if Bobby was on duty. My signature dish was fried chicken. On the days I made fried chicken, we’d usually run out before the day was over.
Once I was comfortable working up there, I found out about a nurse’s aide position at a nursing home in the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx. After taking and passing the nurse’s aide test, I was offer
ed a part-time job there. So I worked both jobs, starting my day at 4:00 a.m. because I had to take the subway from Brooklyn all the way up to the Bronx and my shift at the hospital started at 6:00 a.m. When I was done at the hospital at 2:00 p.m., I would then hurry over to the nursing home for my 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. shift.
I didn’t mind working hard for my family. I wanted to take good care of them. And if that meant working two jobs to pay for clothes, food, vacations, and dinner out, then I was happy to do so. I’d work three jobs if I had to, just like my mother used to do for us. I wasn’t the type of guy who defined himself by his job title or the company he worked for. I looked at all work the same: How much would I get paid for doing it, how could I excel once I was there, and was I being respected by my co-workers and superiors? I left Hertz because I didn’t believe they were paying me fairly for the work I was doing, but I found another job soon after, doing the same type of work and getting better compensation. When that company went bankrupt, I didn’t panic, and eventually I ended up at Baptist Medical working in another kitchen. I became a union rep at Baptist Medical, too, and learned about workers’ rights and how to argue for fair pay. I used that knowledge at every subsequent job I ever had. My commitment to doing honest work was sincere, but it was still all a hustle in my mind. The difference was it was a legal one now. And that was all for the better, because I needed to keep the money flowing for my family. I was ready, willing, and able to exhaust all my skills to make that happen.
One of our biggest expenses was Jasmine and Jessica’s school tuition. After seeing those rowdy kids on the playground at the public school in our neighborhood, Cheryl and I decided we weren’t sending our girls to a place like that. So when we walked by a small Catholic school not too far from where we were living and saw the kids at recess, playing games, being orderly, and not shouting, we decided we wanted our girls to go there. Tuition for both girls to attend was nearly five hundred dollars a month, but I thought it was worth it.
By now Cheryl was working too, but my salary was the one that paid most of the bills. And even though I was gone for most of the day and night, on my two days off, usually Mondays and Tuesdays, I would spend as much time as I could with the girls. I’d take them to the park, or shopping for clothes and things. Sometimes we’d go to the movies, too. I admit I wasn’t as hands-on as I would have liked with the girls, not with my work schedule, so Cheryl took up a lot of the slack. She was an excellent, attentive mother. I knew she was raising them right, including taking them to church every Sunday, just like her mother had done with her. Cheryl took them to the same church she had been attending her whole life. Because I had to work most Sundays, I hardly ever went to church with them, which provided a convenient excuse for me. Deep down, despite my belief in God and my thankfulness for His guidance and mercy, I didn’t feel comfortable carrying my secret into His house, especially in front of Cheryl’s family. It felt hypocritical, and I wasn’t ready to deal with those feelings. So when Cheryl would ask me to go to church with the family, if I wasn’t working, I’d make up an excuse not to go. She always looked disappointed, but she didn’t press the issue, and I convinced myself that everything else I was doing for our family made up for my shortcomings in this one area.
Otherwise, life was really good. The only thing I couldn’t give my girls, which they asked me for, was a little brother. “Daddy, we want a little brother,” Jessica would tell me when she was around five years old and Jasmine was seven. The two of them would pester Cheryl and me for a baby brother, and we would just smile and tell them that that train had left the station.
Even though Cheryl and I weren’t opposed to having another child, we soon realized that two children were enough for us to handle. As the years passed, the girls stopped asking for a new sibling and instead started asking for a puppy. I had no interest in adding a dog to our family, but I was happy that the question of more children had been laid to rest. I was perfectly content with my two girls.
Then came one night in the fall of 1997. Cheryl and I were getting ready for bed.
“Bobby, I feel funny,” Cheryl said to me.
I had to get up early for work the next day, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what she was saying or how she was saying it. Instead, I started pulling the covers up over me in the bed and was about to turn out the light on my nightstand.
“Bobby,” Cheryl said again, this time tapping me on the shoulder and forcing me to turn around to look at her. “Listen. I’m feeling funny in my stomach like I did when I was pregnant with Jessica and Jasmine.”
Now she had my full attention, but only because I thought she was crazy. “Cheryl, you’re not pregnant,” I said. “It’s been ten years since Jess was born. We’ve been doing the same thing all these years and now you think you’re pregnant?”
Cheryl rolled her eyes and then reminded me of the night a few weeks before when we hadn’t been so careful.
Still, I shrugged it off. To make Cheryl feel better I said, “If you think you might be pregnant, go to the clinic and take a test.”
“Okay,” Cheryl said, and I turned out the light.
“But I know my body,” she whispered in the dark. “You’ll see.”
Cheryl made an appointment for the following week. The appointment was for the early evening so she could go in after work. I wasn’t really thinking about it, but I did want to make sure she wasn’t sick or anything. When I got home that night, Cheryl was waiting for me practically at the front door.
I hadn’t even taken off my coat when she said, “I’m pregnant, Bobby.”
“Really?” I said.
Cheryl nodded. “And they also think it might be twins.”
I dropped my keys on the floor. “What do you mean they think it might be twins?”
“They think they saw two heartbeats,” Cheryl said.
“Well if they weren’t sure, have them do it again.”
“You want me to take the test again?” Cheryl said. “The nurse was pretty sure she saw two babies.”
“I have insurance,” I said. “I don’t care how much it costs. We can’t have a maybe. Please take the test again.”
The next day when I came home, Cheryl was grinning and holding out a sonogram picture with two big red circles around two beating hearts.
“That’s Baby A and Baby B,” Cheryl showed me.
I’m not the type of person who gets real showy with his feelings. I like to keep things cool. So when Cheryl told me she was having twins, I’m sure I said all the right things a father should say. But I have to admit, I felt a mixture of emotions. Even though we were hanging in there, money was tight. I had lost my job at the nursing home, so I was only working at the hospital in the Bronx. Just the thought of starting over with two new babies when the girls were almost teenagers felt daunting. Cheryl was only thirty-four years old, but I was almost fifty—and I was going to be a dad again? That night I didn’t wait until I was in bed to say my usual prayers of thanks. I had a real conversation with God because I didn’t know how this was going to work out. I opened my mouth and said, “God, you got to help me with this. I don’t know what to do.”
When I woke up the next morning, I just decided I had to take it one day at a time. It was my job to make sure that Cheryl stayed healthy and that the babies were born healthy. As a husband and father, I knew that’s what I was supposed to do. And so I focused on that and waited to see what the future had in store for us.
* * *
“Bobby, you’re taking too many days off. It’s like every week you got to have a day off,” my boss Linda said to me one day after calling me into her office. It was early January and Cheryl was five months pregnant, but I hadn’t told anybody. Not even my boss. I had been taking days off from work so I could go with Cheryl to all of her doctor’s appointments. I hadn’t told anyone because it wasn’t any of their business, but also, I guess I was still in a state of disbelief about it myself. Now I had to say something.
�
�Linda, my wife is pregnant,” I said.
“Oh,” Linda said with a look of surprise.
“Yeah, and she’s pregnant with twins.”
“Oh, wow!” she said. “That’s really something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn’t exactly planned, but I really need to go with my wife because she’s at risk for some complications with her blood pressure.”
“Well,” Linda said, “I feel for you and your situation with your wife, but just be aware that you can’t keep taking days off.”
I rubbed my hand over my now bald head and sighed. “Linda, I really don’t want to lose my job. I need this job, especially with two more babies on the way. But I have to be there for my wife. What if something happened to her on the subway or walking up a bunch of steps? What if the doctor has to do some test and she needs help getting home? I would never forgive myself if I wasn’t there. So you do what you have to do, but I’m going to do what I have to do for my wife and our children.”
Now it was Linda’s turn to sigh. “I understand,” she said tersely. And then she dismissed me from her office.
After that conversation, Linda didn’t comment on how often I was taking days off, even though I continued to do so at a regular pace. It seemed like every week Cheryl’s doctor needed to check something else. Her blood pressure. Her sugar levels. Even though I held no love for the job I was doing, now that I had been transferred out of the kitchen to the housekeeping staff because the hospital had changed ownership and the kitchen was shuttered, I was still grateful that I had a job that came with decent insurance, because Cheryl wasn’t going to be able to work much longer at her medical billing job. The thought of how much money we were going to need to care for two more kids weighed heavily on my mind. I knew I would have to find another part-time job, but for now there really wasn’t time to look, so keeping my job was critical.
