*************
*************
“So you don’t think he noticed anything?” Yancey’s mother Ada asked. Ada stood at the sink, a knife in one hand, and a ripe tomato in the other. She sliced swiftly while waiting for her daughter’s response. “Any toys laying around?”
Yancey leaned in close to her son’s face, retreating when he put up his small hands to capture her face. They grinned at each other, both mother and son’s dimples flashing. “No, I don’t think so. You know EJ and I don’t keep toys out. We put them up, don’t we baby? Ma, why did he come to my place? How did he know where I lived? Did you tell him?”
“No!” Ada answered in disbelief. “Why would I do that? I have no idea how he found out where you lived. I most certainly did not tell him, and I resent that you even thought that I would.”
“I’m sorry, Ma. I’m still reeling from seeing him at my door. You want to know what he started talking about? He wanted to talk about us, Ma, as in a ‘me and him’ us. I told him that there was no way.”
“Why not? He’s a good kid. He cares about you; everybody knows that. I don’t know how many times I had to turn him away from that front door in the first few weeks after you left. That boy almost went crazy. I talked to his mama about it back then. She had to threaten him so he’d go back to work.”
“But you just said--“
“I said that I wouldn’t tell him where you lived, meaning without your permission. I’d call him right now and tell him to come over here if I thought you were all right with that. You need to get over whatever hang-ups broke you two up in the first place.” Ada placed the tomato slices onto two sandwiches, one for herself and the other for Yancey.
Yancey blinked rapidly, not liking what she was hearing. EJ expressed his desire to get down by writhing in his mother’s arms and she set him on the floor. He scampered off into the living room to watch television.
Ada wrapped Yancey’s sandwich in a paper towel and set it before her on the round wood table. She took a seat across from her youngest child.
“Thank you. Ma, I don’t know what to do about this. I can’t have him just showing up at my place unannounced like he did today.”
“I don’t know, either. I do know that you need to make some type of decision. Your luck with avoiding that boy is running out. I’m surprised you got this far----ooh, I need to get going! My committee meeting starts in about twenty minutes, at Mrs. Anderson's house down the street. I told her I'd help her get the refreshments ready. Let yourself out, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. EJ, go get your shoes on!” Yancey called. She should have known better than that. When she finished her sandwich five minutes later, her son was still sitting in front of the television, his feet bare. “EJ, what did I tell you? We’ve got to go, now, come on. I'm not playing.”
EJ did not respond, but kept his eyes on the Rugrats. “I don’t believe this disobedient child,” she mumbled. Her eyes scanned the room, searching for his shoes. After grabbing them, she turned off the television and put them in front of his face. “Put your shoes on.”
They rode out of the neighborhood in which Yancey’s parents lived. She and her siblings had grown up in a smaller house than the one she had just left in Forest Hill. They waited until we all left to buy a new house, she grinned to herself.
Yancey Kiana Jacobs had been born to Raymond Jacobs, a physician, and Ada Jacobs, who had been a nurse at the time. She was the youngest in the four-children family, which consisted of two daughters, Angela Jacobs Johnson, aged twenty-six, and Yancey, and two sons, Raymond Jacobs the Second, who was thirty-four, and Fredrick Jacobs, thirty. She shared some sort of bond with all of them, but out of all of her siblings, Yancey would say that she was closest to Fredrick. This rapport came after she discovered that she was pregnant with EJ. Fredrick understood what she was going through; he had gotten a girl pregnant when he was sixteen-years-old. He and the girl had gotten married when Fredrick turned eighteen (she had been twenty) and his son, Fredrick, Jr. was now thirteen.
“What you wanna do, Little Man? Huh?” She used the rearview mirror to glance into the backseat, where EJ was otherwise occupied, playing with his hands. “Wanna go home? Yeah, let’s go home.”
*************
Justin roamed around his spacious house in the dark, using the shadows and his memory to keep from bumping into anything. He was counting the hours until he thought it was acceptable for him to appear at Yancey’s apartment again. It was eight o’clock now. Should he go at nine, ten, or wait until the next morning? It would be Sunday. Would she be going to church? He’d turned the ringer off both his house and cell phones so he could think in peace.
Why did she have this hold over him? He’d had plenty of women before, but none of them permeated his thoughts like Yancey. Justin had taken a nap immediately after returning from her place. The look of her hair bouncing against her back as she walked away from him that afternoon was the last thought he had before he drifted into sleep. The way her hair had felt in his hands all those times years ago when they had been together was the first thought he had when he woke up hours later. He had been walking around his house for a while now, thinking of her. He didn’t understand why she was all he could think of now. He had gone three years with a spare thought of her here, another there. Seeing her today had brought back a lot of memories and feelings he thought he had left behind. All of a sudden, he didn’t want to spend another day without her.
“Fuck this. I’m going over there now.”
*************
Just before nine, Yancey sat on her couch reading a novel. EJ was in his bedroom, supposedly asleep. Yancey lifted her head and squinted her eyes when she heard heavy footsteps come to rest just outside her door. “Lord, who is this? Whoever it is better not wake up my baby.” She threw her book to the side and rushed to the door. She flung it open right as Justin’s finger was reaching the doorbell. “Man... What do you want?” she hissed.
“I told you I’d be back. Can I come in?”
“No!” she cried out, and then she remembered where she was. Yancey whispered, “Why are you doing this?”
“Tell me what I’m doing,” he whispered back. He reached out a hand to touch her face. “Tell me.”
She couldn’t ask him to not touch her. She didn’t care that he was slowly moving his hand down, tracing the outline of her lips, rubbing the pad of his thumb across them, across her cheek. She didn’t care that he now had both hands cupping her face and was using them to bring their faces closer together; she wanted it. Yancey wanted Justin to kiss her, even though she knew getting this close to him now would be like being with a stranger.
“Let me come in,” he said before touching his lips to hers. He gently bit her bottom lip, wrapping his arms tightly around her when her knees buckled. Justin half-walked, half-carried Yancey into the small foyer of her apartment. His foot kicked the door closed. Yancey moaned.
“Oh, no, Justin. Don’t slam the door,” she uttered just before a back room’s door opened. “EJ.” She fought for release and escaped Justin’s grasp right as EJ came into view. “EJ, what are you doing up? You were supposed to be asleep an hour ago, baby.”
“Not...sleepy,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. Yancey rushed to him and picked him up.
“Aw, not sleepy, huh? Well, I think you need to go into that room back there and try to get to sleep.” She spoke in hushed tones, holding EJ close. She took him over to the couch because it was difficult for her to hold him up for long; she pretended not to notice Justin standing near the door as she rocked her son.
Finally she dared to look up at his face. Justin’s eyes were wider than usual, his mouth slightly agape. Yancey could see the shock igniting the blue in his eyes. She had not planned on telling him anytime soon about EJ, but if she had, this certainly was not the right way. Could she explain her way out of this?
Justin’s heart slammed frantically against his chest. He did not want to see what was in front of him. Yancey had a son? If there was a child, then there had to be a boyfriend not far behind. What man in his right mind would leave a girl like her, especially when she had borne his child? The thoughts he’d had about them getting back together were slowly beginning to dissipate. Yancey had already hinted that there was no ‘them’; maybe that was because she had someone else.
“No,” he lamented suddenly. “No.”
“Justin, I can explain,” she started, misunderstanding. “Wait a minute, let me put him back in the room. I--we need to talk.”
He clasped his hands together and remained next to the door until she came to him. She pulled him towards the couch.
“I don’t, uh, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about him. I wouldn’t have judged you.” Justin absently rubbed his hands together while he talked.
She realized at that moment that he still had no idea. Should she play along? Should she tell him the truth? As much as she hated to admit it, the correct solution would be the latter, and it was long overdue. “Justin, this is going to come as a shock to you. This is very hard for me to say. It’ll be even harder for you to take, I can assure you. I don’t want you to be upset with me.”
Justin searched her eyes for any clue as to what she was about to tell him. He saw tears forming in her brown orbs for the second time that day, but behind those tears he thought he glimpsed regret and a hint of fear. Fear of what? Of him? She knew that he would never intentionally hurt her. She should know that that was one thing that would never change between them. He would always protect her, if he could, no matter what the situation. Hadn't he promised her that years ago? Why was she afraid?
“I don’t like that look in your eyes, Yance. Tell me what’s wrong. Is there anything I can do?”
“Justin, listen to me. EJ--“
“Is that his name?” he interrupted. “Is he named after his father?”
Was he making this task difficult on purpose? Yancey sighed. “No, Justin, he is not named after his father.”
“EJ,” Justin mused. “Does he look like his father?”
Yancey almost rolled her eyes. Did he really not see the resemblance she thought was so evident? “I think so, yes. I don’t believe his father does, though.”
“What does EJ stand for?”
“Do you want to hear my news or what? And EJ is short for Edward James. Edward was too heavy for a baby, so I shortened it.” She grinned in spite of herself. As corny as it seemed, Edward James Jacobs was named for one of her all-time favorite singers, Eddie Kendrick. She had met Kendrick when she was a young child and had never forgotten his warm and friendly personality or the way his eyes twinkled when he laughed at one of her eight-year-old kid jokes. Coincidentally, her son and the singer also shared the same birthday, December 17. “I think it’s rather distinguished, actually.”
“Edward James,” he pondered. “Like the Temptation, right? Your favorite one.”
“You remember that? Oh, God, I must have sounded like an idiot going on and on about those guys.”
“Of course I remember, and I remember how much you love their music. That’s not idiotic. Musicians dream of fans like you. I don't know about the naming kids after them stuff, though,” he said, smiling back. “Anyway, about your...son. EJ. Tell me about his father. Does he know? Is he around? If he is, is he good to you and your son? If he’s not around, why?”
She was really close to cursing him. Why was he so concerned about everything other than what she said she had to tell him? “EJ’s father is a good man. I’ve gone through a lot as far as debating whether or not I should tell him, and when. So much was happening when I got pregnant, and I didn’t want to mess up his life or mine. I kept my child because God put him in my path to care for, and--as serious as this sounds--to have something to live for when my relationship with his father didn’t work out.”
Justin nodded, trying to digest all of her information. It hurt him incredibly to think that she had given someone else as much, or even more love than she claimed she had given during her relationship with him. Justin didn’t care that the man was her son’s father, not at all. “So you’re telling me that his father doesn’t know he exists? That’s kind of selfish of you, isn’t it Yance?”
“Justin, when you see someone you love doing well, you don’t want anything to come between him and his happiness. I got caught up in wanting him to be happy and believing that we couldn’t be happy together at the time because our lives were going in two different directions.”
“Still, you’re going to deny a man’s right to see his child grow up because of what you think he might want? Answer this one question for me, Yancey. Why haven’t you told him, in all this time? How old is EJ, anyway?”
She inhaled and blew out her breath slowly. “That’s two questions. But, my son, Justin, is almost three-years-old. I haven’t told his father because his father keeps asking stupid questions to throw me off every time I get near the subject!
“I didn’t want to tell you like this, Justin. Always believe that. But EJ is your son-our son.”
Justin’s face could have been made of stone for all the expression it showed. It was an unreadable mask, and Yancey wished that he would say something, anything. He stood up quickly, walked straight to the door, opened it, and strode out without closing it behind him. Yancey felt like she could do nothing but cry.
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