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July 1997: Another Sunday I don't know what the problem is with black men and church, but I have to fight every Sunday morning to get these two boys of mine dressed and ready to go. It's as if the Bible was only talking about Eve in Genesis, and there was no Adam. The funny thing is, the Muslim brothers don't seem to have that problem at all. You see hundreds of brothers attending Louis Farrakhan's mosque on the South Side.

"I can't find my socks!" Walter hollered from his room.

Every Sunday it was the same thing, either his socks, his tie, his suit jacket, or his dress pants were missing. I guess he thought he could actually get out of going to church by deliberately misplacing his things, but I had news for him.

I pulled out a pair of brand-new dress socks I bought just for the occasion. I had a few extra ties in my closet just in case he misplaced them, too. I was planning on buying a couple of extra suits for him and keeping them in my closet as well.

"Wear these," I told him, tossing the socks on his unmade bed.

Jimmy walked by and laughed. He was dressed and ready to go, with his hair brushed, and he was smelling like cologne. I turned and stared at him as he headed through the hallway toward the stairs.

"Ah, Jimmy, is something going on at church that I don't know about today?" I asked him.

Walter started to laugh. "He thinks this girl likes him," he said, dropping a dime.

Jimmy looked shocked for a minute, then he just shook his head and went on about his business. I immediately thought again about having that conversation concerning sex, responsibility, and condoms with him.

I really didn't want to bother Jimmy about it that morning, nor did I have the time, but I was curious. I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen where my giant of a son was having a quick glass of orange juice. He tried his best to avoid eye contact with me.

"So, ah, which girl is it?" I asked him. The boy was only fifteen, and I had been looking up to talk to him for three years already. I wasn't exactly short myself, especially with heels on.

Jimmy sighed and shook his head again. "Come on, Mom. He don't know what he's talkin' about. Why you listenin' to him?"

I thought about that question for a minute. "Well, first of all, I never remember you being so eager to go to church on Sunday. You got your hair greased and brushed this morning, you're all ready to go, and ah, is that some kind of cologne that you're wearing?" It was obvious that something was going on inside that teenage mind of his.

He set his glass on the counter and said, "I'm just trying to help you out, Mom. Since you want us to go to church every week, I figure I might as well stop fighting it."

I smiled, and that quickly turned into a laugh. "Is that right? You're trying to help me out? Well, I don't know if you know it or not, but the Lord don't ask for you to wear cologne," I told him.

"He don't ask for us to wear suits and ties either," Jimmy countered with his own smile.

He had a point, but I wasn't through with my interrogation yet, so I pressed him for answers. "So, you're telling me that you're absolutely sure there's no girl in this church who you would like to see today?"

His smile got even wider. "It's a lot of girls in there that I would like to see. But that don't mean nothin'. I'm going because you wanted us to go."

"So, in other words, if I said that we're going to a different church today, that wouldn't bother you at all? Is that what you're telling me? Because you're going to church for me, right?"

He hesitated and started to laugh. "But why would you want to go to a different church? All of your friends go to this one."

I grinned. The boy must have thought that I was born yesterday. "Mmm hmm, that's just what I thought," I told him. It was definitely time for our talk. I stepped close to my giant son and asked, "Jimmy, have you, ah, done the do with any girls yet?"

Walter must have snuck up on us and heard my question, because the boy laughed so hard I thought he would break his rib cage.

"What is your problem?" I turned and asked him. He was plenty immature to want to get in trouble in the streets. It was a godsend to have Walter out in the suburbs! The West Side of Chicago would have chewed him up and spit him back out.

"Nothin'," he answered.

I decided I would talk to Jimmy again later on that evening, while Walter was over his father's house. I had agreed that his father could pick him up after church and drop him off at summer camp that Monday. I had Walter pack two extra sets of clothes and underwear with him to take to church.

When we arrived at church that morning, back on Chicago's far West Side on Augusta Boulevard, I watched to see who was watching my oldest son. It looked like every girl over twelve and under nineteen was eying Jimmy, and my mind was not playing tricks on me.

Walter noticed it himself and got to laughing again. I was getting tired of his silliness, so I quickly grabbed his left arm and pinched him through his suit jacket.

"Cut it out."

"Oww, Mom!"

Jimmy looked at his younger brother and grimaced. "Sound like a little girl," he commented.

"What?" Walter protested loudly.

I stopped walking down the aisle and grabbed both of them right there and whispered to them very sternly, "Look, I don't need this from either of you. Okay?"

Jimmy started to smile, but Walter was still pissed at being called a girl. I couldn't argue with it myself. I was used to seeing much more physical and tough-minded boys, but that's not the kind of thing a mother could tell her son. I just hoped that he would pass through his many developmental stages and turn out all right. One thing was for sure, Walter would not last one minute in Chicago. I was almost certain of that. I sheltered him as much as I could and he didn't have the street smarts that most city kids have. Jimmy, on the other hand, knew how to conduct himself in the streets, and since the skill of playing basketball was so well respected in Chicago, so was he.

We sat in our usual seats on the left side of church, next to Camellia, Monica, and Levonne. I wondered if Jimmy ever thought of Monica as a girlfriend. She was only a year older than him, and most young guys considered her attractive. She was already wearing the fancy hats and matching gloves to church, and getting the extra attention that it afforded her. However, I realized that Monica and Jimmy were too close to being cousins to seriously think about dating each other.

Anyway, Jimmy sat down right next to Monica, and they immediately started acting giddy and secretive. I didn't hear a word Reverend Gray said that morning. He was usually pretty loud, but I was busy eavesdropping on Monica and my son.

I was planning to ask Camellia all the details about the chat she had with her daughter. Usually, I stayed out of their business, but after I saw how Jimmy and Monica were carrying on, I was dying to know what they thought they knew. Fortunately, we attended the early, shorter service. Otherwise, we could have been in church for three hours or more.

"You know, you two were really carrying on today," I told them after church.

"Mmm hmm, and the church ain't the place for gossiping," Camellia grunted with a frown.

I gave her a look. She knew better than that. It was more gossiping going on in church than at your average high school. The bigger the church, the more the gossip. But that would never stop us from going.

When we walked out, Walter's father was double parked out in front, and on time as usual.

"What do you think about his wife?" Camellia whispered to me.

I gave the tall, thin sister a nod while she sat in the passenger's side of Walter's silver Lincoln. The car was too big for the man if you asked me, but it was perfect for a Napoleon complex. "I have nothing against her," I answered Camellia. I couldn't lie to myself and say that I wasn't at all jealous of her, because I was. Nevertheless, my jealousy had more to do with the fact that she was married than anything regarding Junior. She would have her hands full with him. I didn't envy that liaison at all.

Then my son started with his usual pouting. "I hate going over his house," he mumbled with his overnight bag in hand. "It's always boring over there."

"Yeah, well, that's just what you need, some quiet time to calm your behind down and think," I told him. "Now give me back my car keys."

"How was church?" his father asked me as he walked over. He and his wife were dressed for church, too. I never bothered to ask, but they probably went to some white Catholic church on the North Side that let out after only an hour of service.

"It was fine," I told him. I'm not saying that it was right, but I rarely had many words for the man. I just didn't know what to say to him half the time.

He spoke to Camellia, her two kids, and then to Jimmy.

"How's basketball coming, Jimmy? I know you can dunk by now, right?"

Jimmy nodded to him and smiled. "Yeah, I can dunk."

Too bad you can't, I was too mature to comment to Walter. I did think it though, and that was bad enough. At only five foot nine, he was easily the shortest brother I ever dated. Everything about him was unusual for me. I had always been attracted to tall, rugged men. Walter Perry Jr. was short, well-groomed, and extremely pretentious. I hated to think it, but his son was following right in his footsteps, no matter how hard he tried to rebel. Maybe Walter III knew that better than anyone, which made his rebelliousness more meaningful to him.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Mom," he said to me as he climbed into the backseat of his father's car. It was his little joke to always let his father know that he would be coming back to me.

I smiled at my son and watched the silver Lincoln as it pulled off, heading east on Augusta.

"You're thinking about the custody thing, aren't you?" Camellia asked me. She knew me too damn well.

I nodded to her and said, "Yeah. I'm just wondering how he would turn out."

"Probably just like his father," Jimmy said with a chuckle. "He already act like him now. Look like him, too."

"Yup. He does," Camellia's son Levonne agreed.

Camellia said, "Yeah, and you don't act or look anything like your father, Jimmy. The only thing you got from him is his height," she responded to my son.

I said, "His father played basketball, too. He almost made it to the state championship during our senior year," I told Camellia. I don't believe I ever mentioned it to her before. It wasn't one of my priorities.

Camellia gave me a devilish grin. "Don't tell me you're reminiscing."

I shook my head and said, "Not hardly." Then I looked to my son. "No offense, Jimmy, but I loved your father a lonnng time ago. It almost seems like another lifetime."

Camellia laughed and rumbled all over. "Erykah Badu," she responded. "That's my girl!"

"Mmm hmm," Monica hummed with an eager nod. "I like her songs, too."

Levonne was ready to go home. He hadn't said much all day. He was thirteen and a frail boy who had been suffering from sickle-cell anemia, so I guess I was always concerned about his health.

"Are you all right, Levonne?" I asked him.

He nodded and said, "Yeah, I'm just tired."

"That's because he was up late last night, watching videos," Camellia snapped. "He knew he had to go to church in the morning. He'll know next time."

Levonne didn't want to go to church in the first place, just like my sons and millions of other sons around the country. Church was no thing to his sister Monica, though. In fact, I think she enjoyed churchgoing more than Camellia and I did.

I thought about Jimmy and Monica growing up so fast. I looked to Camellia and I said, "I'll definitely be calling you tonight, because we have to talk. You know what I mean?"

She looked at her daughter and my son and nodded. "I know exactly what you mean."

Jimmy looked away, embarrassed.

Monica said, "What did I do now?"

Her mother answered, "Whatever you did or ever do, I'm gonna find out."

Monica sighed, shook her head, and walked off.

"And I'm not joking about that either," Camellia said behind her.

I said my good-byes and started walking in the opposite direction, toward my Honda. I couldn't wait to get one-on-one with Jimmy. He sat inside the car and looked out the passenger-side window. Before I even started the engine, I asked him, "Do you have anything to tell me, son? I want you to know that I love you very much."

I didn't want to be too hard on him, I only wanted to know if he needed to begin protecting himself.

He sunk his face into his hands and began to shake his head. "What do you want me to tell you, Mom?"

"I want you to tell me if you've been doing something."

He shook his head inside of his hands again. "Not yet."

"Not yet?" It was the wrong answer! "Look at me when you talk to me, Jimmy. Now you're about to start high school this year, and you need to stop dropping your head so much. You're too damn tall for that! If it's one thing I hate it's big, tall basketball players hanging their heads low and not knowing how to talk to people."

I couldn't help it. I was beginning to get hyper. But I knew that Jimmy could take it. It wasn't right, but I had been very hard on him before I learned how to be a more sensitive mother.

Jimmy's response to my yelling at him as a child was probably why he acted so reserved half the time. He just wasn't going to let anything get to him. I read a book before called Cool Pose that talked about the reserved behavior of young black men, and Jimmy fit the book to a tee.

He raised his head and looked into my face. He had such a delicate face to be so damn tall. And he looked just like my father, chocolate brown and extra handsome. "I mean, I'm not gay, Mom, so of course I'm gonna start being attracted to girls. What do you want me to do?"

I started up my engine and said, "First of all, I want you to respect the rights of women. And just because you think that you're ready to begin having sex, that doesn't mean that you have the right to force yourself on anyone."

"Mom, I wouldn't -- "

"I'm not finished yet," I said, cutting him off. "I want you to protect yourself from these little hot girls out here, running around with no common sense, getting diseases and pregnant and everything else. And I want you to be honest with yourself about whether you really like a girl, or whether you just want to sleep with her because she likes you. I'm not gonna stand for that! You hear me? If you don't like her, then just be friends with her or leave her alone completely.

"That's why so many of these basketball and football players are having so many problems with these women out here now. They think they can just sleep with anybody who says they like them and do whatever they want to with them," I ranted. I was really going overboard. After I gave my oldest son another look, I could see that I was scaring him to death, and that he would probably not tell me anything again in his life. I needed to calm myself down, get a grip, and even apologize for blowing up at him if I needed to. I just didn't go about things the right way.

Jimmy shut his mouth and began to stare out the window again.

After a few long minutes of silence, I decided to pull over and apologize.

I touched my son's left arm, slid my hand down to his, and squeezed it as tightly as I could. "Jimmy, I am so sorry for that, honey. I didn't mean to go off on you like that, it's just that...a lot of things have been on my mind lately, and this conversation just really caught me off guard, so I didn't get a chance to prepare myself for it and control my emotions a little better.

"Actually, we really should have had this talk a long time ago, but it's my fault because I wasn't even thinking about it," I told him. I smiled and said, "I guess that, since you spend so much time playing basketball, I forgot all about the social aspect of your life. Of course, girls would start noticing you. You're handsome with your height. A lot of tall guys are goofy and uncoordinated at your age."

Jimmy immediately lightened up with a smile that turned into an easy laugh. It wasn't fair, but his personality allowed me to get away with a lot more than I should have been able to. That same easygoing nature of his could make a girl believe that he liked her more than he really did. Jimmy was most likely going to be a Chicago "playa" whether I liked it or not. And if I pushed him too hard, he would only learn to ignore me. Even so, I planned to do all that I could to stir him away from using women as scoring boards and as trophies.

"Baby, I just ask you to do me one favor, okay? When you start to go out and date and all, I just want to meet the girl," I said to him. "And I promise not to blow up again. Can we agree on that?"

Jimmy hesitated. "I mean, what are you gonna say to her?"

"Just regular talk. You know, 'How do you do,' 'I like your shoes,' that kind of thing."

He started to laugh again. "What if you don't like her shoes?"

I shook my head and smiled. "That was just an example. Maybe I might like her hairstyle instead," I told him. "Or maybe she may play basketball, or run track, or something, and I can ask her about that. You know, just normal stuff."

He thought about it.

Then I said, "The bottom line is that you really shouldn't go out with a girl who you're going to be afraid to bring home to your mother. That should be one of your rules of selection. And that includes white girls, too," I added with a look.

Jimmy shook his head. "Nah, it won't be no white girls coming home with me."

"Well, you know there's gonna be plenty of them at this high school you're going to in September."

"Yeah, but that don't mean I have to talk to 'em."

"So it's a deal?" I asked him again.

He grinned and slowly nodded. "Yeah, it's a deal."

"And if I make you feel uncomfortable about it, then I want us to be able to talk about that, too. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

I leaned over and kissed my son on the cheek and said, "I love you," like a young girl in love. And I was in love, with both of my boys, and I wanted them to always do the right things.

Copyright © 1998 by Omar Tyree