by Bobby Love
One night I was working the late shift at the hospital and I was called to the front desk because I had a phone call. Cheryl very rarely called me at work unless it was an emergency. As I trotted over to the phone at the nurses’ station, I said a silent prayer that whatever news Cheryl had to share, it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t Cheryl on the other end of the line. It was Jessica.
“Daddy!” her little voice pierced my ear. “Mommy is going to have two boys! We’re going to have two brothers, Daddy!”
“Oh my God,” I said, laughing and grinning like a child. Finding out the sex of the babies left me elated. All that time I had been telling myself that making sure Cheryl was healthy and that the babies came out healthy was all I cared about. I had given up the idea of having a son years before and had made peace with it. But hearing that I was now going to have two sons filled me with a sudden joy. Unexpectedly, my mind flashed back to a childhood fantasy of having a twin brother, where the two of us would grow up to be professional athletes together. I felt like God was giving me a replay on my own childhood, but from a father’s perspective. I felt so blessed.
“Jessica, you didn’t have to call me at work to tell me that,” I said, still standing there at the nurses’ station with a grin on my face.
“I know, Daddy. But I knew you’d be happy,” she said. “Mommy said I could tell you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, thank you for telling me, then.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “And Daddy,” she added. “Have fun at your work.”
“You go to bed, Jessica,” I said, laughing. “And tell your sister I said good night.”
And then we hung up.
* * *
Cheryl was due at the end of May in 1998. But by the beginning of May, she was done.
“Bobby!” Cheryl cried. “I’m going to tell the doctor that I want these babies out of me. I can’t do this anymore.”
“But your due date isn’t until the end of the month, Cheryl,” I pointed out.
“I don’t care. They have to come out,” she said.
I felt for Cheryl. I knew she was uncomfortable. I knew she couldn’t sleep properly or go to the bathroom, or even eat what, when, or how she wanted to. I was exhausted for her. So when she told the doctor that she wanted the babies out of her body, I didn’t try to argue or convince her that she should wait for them to come out on their own time. The doctor agreed. She told Cheryl to hold on for a week and then she’d schedule an induction.
Our twins, Jordan and Justin, were born on May 18. Jordan came out first. Justin was breech and needed some coaxing. But both boys had all five fingers and all five toes exactly where they were supposed to be.
“You have two healthy boys,” the doctor announced.
I felt such an overwhelming relief and joy. I felt like I had been holding my breath for nine months straight.
“Oh my God, oh my God. Two boys,” I kept repeating like I had lost the power of coherent speech. I was so grateful. I kissed Cheryl on the forehead and thanked her for all the pain and suffering bringing our boys into the world had required.
“You did it, Cheryl,” I said.
“We did it, Bobby,” she corrected me.
The first two years with the twins passed by in a blur. Diaper changes, endless feedings, and lots of walks around the neighborhood. I bought a double stroller for the boys, and Cheryl and the girls would take turns walking them around to keep them happy. The cost of diapers and formula was no joke. I was lucky to find a part-time nurse’s aide job with an organization called IAD—Institute for Adults with Disabilities. But I worked the overnight shift, which meant I often left Cheryl at home with the babies at night. Jasmine was only thirteen, but she helped her mother a lot with the twins during those early years. I fully admit that Cheryl and the girls raised the boys when they were babies. Between my job at the hospital and the part-time work at IAD, I was often a ghost in my own home, but I always told Cheryl that if I didn’t work so much, we wouldn’t be able to eat, have nice clothes, and go on the family trips that we still managed to take. It was a sacrifice in some ways that I worked so much, but it was worth it to be able to provide for my family. I often reminded Cheryl that at least with me working so much, she should feel good knowing that I wasn’t out in the streets like a lot of other cats, messing up, drinking, and on drugs. Not since Jasmine caught me trying to sneak a smoke in the back bedroom at the Pink Houses when she was a toddler, and I’d whacked my head on the windowsill, had I picked up any reefer. And while I might enjoy an occasional beer, my drink of choice now was any caffeinated soda, like Mountain Dew or Pepsi, to keep me awake while I worked all day and night.
* * *
When the boys were three years old, I promised Cheryl a big surprise, because I knew how hard she was working, not just at her new job but also with the children. I knew she understood why I worked so much, but she still deserved a break.
“We’re going to Disney World again,” I announced one Sunday after everyone came home from church. Cheryl and I had taken the girls to the Florida theme park when they were small. I wanted our boys to be able to go too.
“Bobby, what?” Cheryl said, looking at me like I had sprouted a second head. “We can’t afford that.”
“Cheryl,” I said calmly. “If I say we can afford it, we can afford it. I’ve been saving the money, plus my numbers hit.”
“Are you sure?” Cheryl said, still looking dubious.
“I mean, if you want me to throw all these tickets and stuff away . . .” I said.
The kids jumped in then. “No, we want to go! We want to go!” Jessica and Jasmine had been talking about taking the boys to Disney since they’d been born. The girls remembered how wonderful their own experience had been.
“Okay,” Cheryl said, looking at the kids going crazy, dancing around the living room of our apartment. “If you say so, Bobby.”
“I got this, Cheryl,” I said. And I did.
The other reason I wanted to go to Disney World again is that I wanted to take the boys down to meet my family. I knew if we were driving to Florida, we could make a pit stop in Greensboro, just as we’d done with the girls when they were little. Over the years, I’d gone back to Greensboro a few times. I knew it was risky and even reckless, but I couldn’t stand to be away from my people forever. The first time I went back, more than ten years had passed since I’d escaped from prison. I kept a very low profile on those trips at first, and I’d get nervous whenever a police car would pass by me on the road. But as the years went on, it got easier to relax, and I felt bolder about making the trips. I didn’t think anybody was looking for me at that point. And I felt protected by the people around me down there. My brothers and sisters all knew about my past and were aware of the double life I was leading. I knew they’d keep my secret. They loved me as much as I loved them. It was only when I was down in Greensboro, surrounded by my siblings, that I felt like I could fully unwind and be Buddy again.
So Cheryl, the kids, and I drove down to Florida, and on the way, my family gathered at Jean’s house and met the twins. They were polite to Cheryl and loved on the kids, but I could tell some of them felt awkward around Cheryl. They didn’t want to give anything away that might make her suspicious about who I really was. One of my cousins would always pull me aside and tell me I should tell Cheryl the truth, but I wasn’t going to risk what I’d created. I was fine keeping my worlds separate. And for the most part, my sisters and brothers were fine with it too.
After the pit stop, Cheryl, the kids, and I got back on the road and had a wonderful time at Disney World. And when we came back home, life went on.
* * *
When it was time for the boys to start kindergarten, Cheryl and I decided to do the same for them as we’d done for the girls. We found a private Christian school for them to attend. We had moved to a bigger apartment in a different neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I had finally made the decision to quit working at the hospital. I had give
n them fourteen years, but through all of the management changes and getting moved around from cooking in the kitchen to cleaning up the blood and guts in the operating rooms, with my salary going down and my hours going up, I just decided it wasn’t worth it. And the money I could make working full-time plus overtime hours at IAD meant I didn’t have to really worry about a dip in our finances.
By the time the boys were five, I had been working steadily as a counselor for IAD with developmentally delayed adults. I had to learn how to deal with adults who often couldn’t do basic things like talk or eat or even use the bathroom without assistance. Some of my earliest experiences working for the organization had me wrestling with a 250-pound nonverbal man who had to be taken to the bathroom multiple times in the middle of the night or he’d wet the bed. Sometimes I had to break up fights or simply sit with a client—we were told we had to call them clients, not patients—while he ate to make sure he didn’t steal the food off the plate of the person sitting next to him. It took me a while to understand how to do my job, but I soon got really good at it, and IAD assigned me to a new facility in the Bronx where the men were delayed and struggling with substance abuse. These men literally had nothing. Even the clothes they wore were donated. But they now had this group home to live in, and it was our job to help them care for the house and themselves so they could be functioning members of society. I sympathized with them, and even though they didn’t know my story, I felt like I was in a good position to show them how they could survive in the world, even if they were starting with nothing.
So I would help them cook, shop for food, and keep house. Sometimes we would take them on field trips to help stimulate their minds and get them excited about life. There were about eight young men in the house, and they all got to know me and like me—some of them even called me Pops. And in turn, I did my best to share with them the life skills I’d acquired over the years.
One time IAD even arranged for us to take the men on a trip to Florida. One of their board members had a house in Orlando, and she allowed us to take the guys down there. It was great to see the look on their faces, flying in an airplane, walking on the beach. Even when people stared at us or told us they didn’t want our group to come into their restaurants or establishments, I wouldn’t let it bother me. In fact, we took the guys into a pizza restaurant one time for lunch, and when the manager tried to tell us that we couldn’t stay, making up some lame excuse, I told him that the law said he had to seat us. He eventually did, and this woman came up to me afterwards and told me I had done a noble deed. I didn’t think it was a “noble deed.” I was just doing my job. I knew these guys had feelings like anyone else, despite their disabilities, and they deserved to be treated like human beings. This was something I’d learned in prison. You have to treat all people like you want to be treated, not like you think they deserve because of their background or because of something in their past.
Still, working with these men was really difficult and emotionally draining. In addition, the commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx was exhausting. So when my boss asked me if I wanted to transfer to a new group home that was being opened that would shorten my commute time, I said yes.
One of my co-workers at the new house was a younger woman named Shannon. In both looks and temperament, she reminded me of one of my cousins from Greensboro. Shannon had two kids and a boyfriend who was always up to no good, according to her. I always arrived at the house about an hour early so I could eat breakfast and not have to rush. Shannon liked to get there early too, and the two of us would talk. Actually, Shannon would do most of the talking and I’d do most of the listening, and sometimes offer some words of advice. After a while, Shannon got more and more comfortable with me and started sharing more intimate details about her sexual exploits and what she was doing to get back at her cheating boyfriend.
One day I finally just told Shannon that all of her messing around wasn’t going to solve any problems. I told her that her behavior was just going to make things worse. She didn’t like what I had to say and she stopped talking to me in the mornings.
A couple of weeks later my boss, Mr. David, called me and told me I needed to come to his office. “There’s been a complaint about you, Bobby, and we need to get this sorted out,” he said over the phone.
When I got to his office, he informed me that Shannon had made a sexual harassment claim against me. She told my boss that I had said some slanderous things about her character. Mr. David looked down at his paper and said, “She said you said she was ‘promiscuous.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. “Mr. David, she was telling me all these things about her personal life every day,” I explained. “I wasn’t harassing her. I was just responding to what she was telling me. I was trying to give her some advice.”
“I hear you, Bobby,” Mr. David said, “but I have to turn this in to management, and they’ll probably have a hearing and then let you know what’s going to happen. But I just wanted you to hear it from me first.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
By the following week I had been suspended from my job. A few weeks later I was fired. When I heard the news, my emotions ricocheted from anger to disappointment to sadness. I couldn’t believe that after all my years working for IAD, and the dedication I showed to helping our clients, I was being thrown out like a piece of garbage. I felt like a failure and like I’d let my family down. I hadn’t felt this way since I was being hauled off to the Morrison Training School and my mother gave up on me without a fight.
I tried to put on a brave face when I told Cheryl what happened. I didn’t want her to think that I wouldn’t be able to pay my share of the bills. But more importantly, I didn’t want her to think less of me.
“You got fired for what?” Cheryl asked after I gave her every detail. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know, but she said I called her ‘promiscuous,’ ” I said, repeating the word from the official report.
Cheryl shook her head like she couldn’t believe my foolishness. “You don’t talk to women like that, Bobby. That’s none of your business.”
I tried to explain more, but Cheryl didn’t want to talk about it. She said I should have known better than to get into other people’s personal business on the job. Especially when it’s of a sexual nature. She didn’t understand what I was thinking. What Cheryl did want to talk about was what I was going to do for money.
“I’ll go down to the unemployment office and apply for unemployment, and I’ll start looking for a new job right away,” I said, trying to assure my wife.
But when I went down to the unemployment office, they told me I couldn’t collect unemployment because I had been fired with cause. That surprised me and scared me a little bit. We didn’t have any savings, and Cheryl’s salary as a nutrition coordinator would cover the rent, but not much more.
I took my job search seriously, but my usual sense that everything would be all right wasn’t there. I couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm to find the next hustle. Being fired from a job where I had given my all wasn’t something I’d experienced before. I’d been let go from jobs for reasons that had nothing to do with my performance, but this was different. This firing hit like a sucker punch. I wasn’t expecting it at all, and for some reason, I couldn’t mentally recover from the blow.
I applied for a position as a janitor at a restaurant but was turned away because I wore a suit to the interview. The lady interviewing me thought I was too uppity for the job. Then a friend of Cheryl’s told me about another job opening at an organization similar to IAD. I’d be doing the same kinds of tasks, working with developmentally delayed adults. She told me I was a shoo-in for the position. The company headquarters were up in the Bronx, so I slid into my suit again and headed out early in the morning on the day of my interview. But when I got to the front of the building, I couldn’t make myself even walk through the door. Something in me was just too tired to start over again. I was fifty
-eight years old, and the weight of all that I was carrying just couldn’t be managed anymore.
I very rarely thought about prison during that time, but I had trained myself to keep my emotions hidden, lest I reveal something that might give me away. I didn’t have friends I could share my burdens with, and even Cheryl wasn’t privy to my deepest thoughts and fears. I only had myself. I had organized my life that way on purpose. I was in charge, so I would be the only one to blame if things went wrong. Well, things had now gone very wrong, and I could only blame myself.
I went home and told Cheryl that I didn’t go to the interview.
“Why not, Bobby?” she asked with concern.
“Because I’m tired, Cheryl,” I said, sitting down on the couch. “I’m just tired.”
CHERYL
The dream woke me up again. In the dream I was begging Bobby to talk to me. “Just tell me the truth, Bobby!” I kept crying. But when Bobby opened his mouth to speak, a long, thick white rope, like the kind you would use to anchor a ship, came pouring out of his mouth. And he just stood there trying to talk, but all he could do was pull that rope out of his body. And as he pulled, I just watched as the rope piled up on the ground at his feet, waiting for him to say something.
I shook my body under the covers and tried to clear my head. That dream had been invading my sleep for years, and I knew it meant something because I always had it after Bobby and I argued. The arguments were always the same. I’d beg Bobby to open up to me and share what was on his heart and he’d tell me there was nothing wrong. I’d walk away in a huff, then at night I’d have the dream.
Knowing I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep, I slipped out of bed and made my way to the kitchen. I figured I might as well enjoy a small bit of quiet and calm before the kids got up and everyone started getting ready for the day. I got my tea, but instead of turning on the radio like I usually did, I sat down at the little table and prayed. Dear God, please help our family. Help us get closer. Help us get the knowledge and understanding to better understand each other. Please, God, open up my husband’s heart so that he will understand that I am here to be his wife and his friend. Please protect us all, God, and bless us with your mighty favor. Amen.
