Original Love. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ it happened so long ago, and my baby daddy isn’t worth talking about except to say that he’s been in and out of prison more times than those Hollywood stars go in and out of rehab. I’m not even sure where he is now, and I don’t give a shit. I’m my daughter’s mama and daddy, and that’s all that’s really ever mattered to me or to her.

      Well, you know Pitt didn’t want me after that, which is pure bullshit. They couldn’t wait a few months for me to have the baby and then get back into shape. I wouldn’t have been good for recruiting or something, I don’t know. As big as I got, I might not have fit in the team picture. But the shit doesn’t work the same way for the brothers. Seems like every last one of them has a baby somewhere, but that doesn’t stop them from keeping their scholarships. They all have to be covered with tattoos and have a few chaps to earn high NBA draft choices.

      So I had my baby—a little girl I named Candy—and started taking classes at Allegheny Community College while working as a housekeeper at the Airport Marriott. It wasn’t my house, but I kept it. You wouldn’t believe the shit that I had to clean up in that fancy place, and let me tell you, rich people’s shit stinks, too. Worst four years of my life, but Mama and Daddy made it tolerable by keeping Candy for me, and I finished my associate’s degree in child development in four years. Oh, I had a Jamaican man, Phillip, try to marry me, but he was only a cook at the Marriott. Probably needed me to keep his ass in the country.

      At twenty-two, with the cutest four-year-old being spoiled rotten by my parents, I got it in my head to go to a real college. I got accepted at Clarion, walked on to the basketball team, and I kicked some serious ass for two years. There isn’t a single-season rebounding or scoring record at Clarion that I don’t still own to this day.

      I also picked up my history degree along the way. Why history? I was always good at it, I wanted to know every little thing about every little thing since the day I was born, and I knew I could get a job somewhere teaching in the inner city because I’m black. There aren’t many of us left teaching, much less teaching in the ’hood.

      Now I’m teaching some of the orneriest suburban seventh graders, every last one of them trifling, and I’m also coaching Cherry Grove’s girl’s basketball team. Despite all my knowledge and mad skills, we haven’t won but five games in the last ten years, and all five wins came against some Christian school that looked heavenly but played like hell.

      The girls at Cherry Grove just don’t have a single clue as to how to ball. Oh, they all know how to dress, because all their shit matches, right down to the little balls on their footie socks. But the bitches trip over the damn painted lines on the court half the time, fix their hair before they take a shot, check out little boys when they should be rebounding, and cry because they chipped a nail while dribbling. Trifling. I’ve tried to quit coaching them for the last four years, but no one at Cherry Grove wants to endure the embarrassment I’ve been through.

      Candy? That child is smart, so maybe I created her all by myself. She got her daddy’s sleepy eyes, but that’s it. She’s tall, and she can ball. But she’s at Duquesne University on a partial academic scholarship because I didn’t even let her apply to Pitt, and she is kicking ass in all her classes, but she won’t play on the basketball team.

      “I’m not into that anymore, Mama,” she tells me. “I can’t be a doctor if I’m at practice all the time.”

      That’s right—my little girl is going to one day be a surgeon or a researcher or something medical like that. My baby is going to take care of me.

      It’s lonely in the condo without her, but it’s okay. It’s like I’m starting over or something. I know I still got game, I know I could probably contribute something to those WNBA teams out there even though I’m no model like that Lisa Leslie wench, but…I’m planning on getting a master’s degree in education so I can get out of the classroom and into an office behind a damn desk where I can punish all these trifling, snot-nosed chaps. I’d make a good administrator. I’d be Ms. Joe Clark, and I wouldn’t need a bullhorn or a bat. I have the “stare,” and I know I make at least one crusty-faced boy pee his pants every week with that stare when I’m on hall duty.

      Unfortunately, a master’s degree costs money, and when your daughter only gets a partial scholarship to a private university, you have to rearrange your priorities. So I’m taking one night class at a time for the next, oh, seven years. Instead of jumping right in and getting bored to death with classes like “School Management,” “Curriculum Review,” and “Secondary School Law Mandates,” I take a class in technical writing.

      On the first night, I arrive early at Allegheny Community College and take a seat in the back row in a comfortable burgundy chair in front of a slate gray table. There isn’t a single desk in here, and I already feel more like an adult. Out of habit, I slide my hand under the table. Not one bulging glob of gum. Maybe I should get a master’s and teach somewhere like this. I mean, the room is carpeted, and the walls and ceiling are soundproofed. It’s quiet. I like quiet. Seventh graders aren’t quiet even though I make them be quiet. Shit, sometimes when the chaps aren’t making any sound, I hear their little bodies growing.

      I have to get me a teaching gig like this. The lights work, the clock works, and I bet that computerized thermostat by the door works, too. At Cherry Grove, I have to cuss and fuss at the custodian to get any of that shit working, and most times I have to rub an ice cube on the thermostat in my room to get the heat to come on. And the toys! The teacher has a huge TV/VCR hanging from the ceiling at the front of the room with speakers on each wall, an impressive computer on his desk that is hooked to the TV, and an overhead projector from this century. My overhead at Cherry Grove smokes like a crack addict every time I turn it on. I look with envy at the file cabinets with locks and the garbage can with a plastic liner.

      I would love to teach history in a room like this. But it wouldn’t be all white man’s history. By the time I got through community college and then to Clarion, I was white man’s history-ed out. I’d probably teach world history or one of those upper level courses in African history. I know all of that, and if the state of Pennsylvania would let me, my seventh graders would know all of that, too. But no, I have to teach to the damn statewide test, mainly on the history of Pennsylvania. Oh, I throw in lots of art history because I love the work of Jacob Lawrence to death, but there’s only so much I can squeeze in because of that test.

      A strange assortment of mostly old, married, white, and wrinkled people surround me, including an Italian guy who sits next to me.

      Time to invent Johnny. Hmm. The critics roasted my last two main male characters, saying they were too weak, wimpy, and easily controlled. Johnny can’t be, even if he’ll look a little like me:

      He isn’t bad-looking, maybe in his early forties, gray hair, coal-dark eyes, taller than me, paler than the moon. No wedding band. He smiles at me as he sits, so I cut off all the Italian jokes in my head. He has a nice smile, and it makes his eyes look mysterious. I hope he sits next to me for the next fifteen weeks.

      And since there aren’t any brothers up in here, I might actually learn something about technical writing without getting hit on. I don’t want to be saying, “No, I am not a freshman, and no, you cannot have my phone number, and yes, I am old enough to be your damn mama.”

      Though the attention might be nice.

      Some white dude with a pockmarked face and thick glasses comes in and says he’s Professor Holt. He calls roll, and half of the class is missing. When he gets down the alphabet to where I should be, I don’t hear my name. Probably because I added the class so late. I’m most likely at the bottom of his roll sheet. When he calls out “Johnny Smith,” the Italian man next to me says, “Ciao.”

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