Better Off Without Him

“Tell your mom to shut the fuck up.”  I glanced back at my son, who looked back at me, wide-eyed and quiet. Confused as to why his father would tell him to say a bad word to me.  “Tell her! Say, ‘Shut the fuck up, Mommie.’” 

“Tell your father goodbye,” I told my son as I reached for the phone.

“Bye,” my son mumbled, clearly saddened as he pressed the button to end the call.

“Are you okay, honey?” I asked him.

“He told me to say a bad word.”

“I know, baby. But we don’t say bad words to each other, right?”

“It’s not nice,” he said, shaking his little curly head, still confused.

After my son’s father and I had fallen out, I still felt it was important that he and my son maintain a relationship.  He, however, made it clear that he didn’t share that same sentiment.  He would call at times and never even ask to speak to my son, choosing to pick arguments about whom I was dating or how I “betrayed” him instead. 

Initially, he communicated mostly through emails. But after continued threats of how he couldn’t wait to “beat ur ass again so u remember who the fuck I am,” I blocked his emails.  He then had other men he was incarcerated with email me with the same threats - “u know he itchin to beat ur ass” - and one he sent himself from someone else’s account that ended, “Fuck you and that lil nigga.” in reference to my son and that shut the emails down altogether.

Phone calls quickly became his new avenue for harassment.  He’d call months apart in spurts that would last a few days and then stop calling again.  When he did call, he’d call back-to-back dozens of times until I’d answer, “Why the fuck you ain’t answering the phone?! You wit’ a nigga?! You got my son around anotha’ nigga, bitch?!”  “My son is in school,” I responded, completely ignoring his invitation to argue.  “You can call back around 2:30 if you’d like to speak to him.” And I hung up.  He called back several more times and would finally stop, only to call back again at 2:30PM, on the dot.  I passed the phone directly to my son to avoid the yelling and name-calling, but not even two minutes would pass and he’d be getting off the phone with my son, asking to speak to me. 

I once tried to establish some boundaries for the calls.  “You and I don’t have to speak to each other.  If I don’t answer, that means I’m not with my son.”  I explained to him my work schedule and my son’s school schedule but he still continued to call at times he knew I wasn’t with my son and I’d literally have to turn my phone off to stop him from calling a million miles an hour.

He’d comply with the calling schedule we had set after he got tired of being ignored, I guess.  But he’d still take advantage of the time he was supposed to be speaking to my son to tell me how I “went against the grain” and that he never would’ve thought I’d “betray” him by leaving him.  I owed him, he’d say.  The times he did speak to my son, he’d complain about how “lame” my son was/sounded. “I can’t wait to get my fuckin son, man.  Got him talkin like you, all proper and shit.  Lil’ nigga sound like he ain’t seen shit.  I want my kids to know the streets.  They can go to school but if they want to be dope boys then I’mma teach ‘em how to be the fuckin’ man then.” 

Eventually, I just became exhausted by the conversations.  We couldn’t even have a decent conversation, let alone come to an agreement on appropriate parenting – what was and wasn’t okay to teach/say to my child.  Tired of the reckless threats, I explained to my son’s father that if he continued to call and threaten me, his calls would be blocked, just as the emails were.  “How the fuck I’m ‘posed to talk to my son?!” he snapped at me. “You should think about that when you call,” I told him.  “We don’t have to speak to each other.  He’s old enough that you can ask him what’s going on.  This is a privilege and if you continue to abuse it, you’ll have to write him letters.  He’s learning to read, maybe that’ll be good for him.”  “I don’t have time to write no fucking letters,” he’d say. 

My son’s father felt like it was my responsibility to maintain the relationship between him and my son.  “If you need me to call my son, then write me and tell me to fuckin call.”  I have always felt and stated that my only obligation is to provide access for him to contact my son if he feels he would like to be a part of his life.  In accordance, he has an address and a phone number, the latter of which he abused.

I always think back to when I was in prison and I couldn’t wait to be able to call my sister to speak to my son.  He was just an infant but I’d still sit on the phone and just listen to him breathe and I’d cry and wonder if he still smelled the same.  I remember how painful it was being away from him. I try to be empathetic toward a lot of things but I will never understand a parent lacking the desire or willingness to know their child.

I pray for my son’s father constantly.  Many people have told me that he changed for the better and with hopes that he had, I continued to try to work with him, answer calls and communicate with him but was unsuccessful.  I blocked the phone calls after the continued threats and disrespect.  I am a single mother, raising a young black male in America.  My son doesn’t have a large group of male role models.  I refuse to raise him with a man that finds it okay to verbally and physically abuse me.  “What’s going to happen if he listens to what you say to me and raises his hand at me?” I asked him once.  “You probably gon say some smart shit to deserve it,” he said and that reminded me of the way I had hear him speak to his own mother at times he had been angry.  No filter.  Zero respect. Like a dog in the street.

At whatever point my son’s father does have a change of heart, he has an address that he can write my son, when he feels mending that relationship is worth his time. 

“Mommie, who’s my real Daddy? Where is he?” Brian asked me the other day.  He asks questions like these ever so often and it always catches me off guard, always makes me cry.  “He’s away becoming better,” I said.  “Sometimes, people need time to themselves to be a better person.  But your father loves you, baby. I know that much. Sometimes people don’t know how to show love but maybe one day you can show him how.”

“By kissing and hugging and spending time, right?” he asked crawling under me.

“Right.”

When People Show You Who They Are The First Time, Believe Them

My son’s father was still in federal holding when our relationship began to end.  It was stressful and scary because I had already distanced myself from my own family and choosing to leave him meant also losing any kind of support or connection to his family, which was all I had at that time.   The thought of having no one was scary but I had probably already become included in those “if I don’t fuck with them, you don’t either” conversations I had overheard him having before about the other children and their mothers when they pissed him off.

Not supporting my son’s father while he was going through his indictment was a form of betrayal in his eyes and his mother quickly became hostile with me as well.  Especially when rumors that I was dating again began spreading.  Small disrespectful comments would be made during conversations and then things just turned outright ugly.  “I heard you talking to what’s-his-name.  Is he helping you pay the bills? I know you ain’t over there getting a wet ass for nothin’!”  She later accused me of allowing another man to wear her son’s clothes.  Saying she heard that I had given them away.   No man I dated would ever take another man’s belongings nor would I give them away.  His clothes were still hanging in the closet and folded away in drawers.  But she became upset anyway, yelling and cursing at me that she would be over to pick up her son’s clothes.  I advised her that she should calm down first because she wouldn’t be allowed to enter my home so upset and then offered that I bring the clothes to her house myself when I was able but she came anyway.

My son’s older sister, who had to be around 11 years old at the time, came to my door.  Her grandmother was waiting downstairs and sent the child up for her father’s clothes.  I could tell by her body language that she was uncomfortable and I apologized to her for being put in the middle of such an unfortunate situation.  I asked her to tell her grandmother that I would bring the clothes to her home myself when I had time.  Shortly after she left, my friend who lived in the building across from me called asking if I was okay.  She said she could see several of the county’s sheriff trucks in my parking lot.  I looked outside my patio door and saw the lights flashing against the trees, then heard a knock at the door.  “Ma’am, this lady is saying that you stole her son’s clothes, kicked her granddaughter in the leg and slammed the door in her face when she came to retrieve them,” the officer told me, waiting for an explanation.  I apologized to the officer for the misuse of her time and explained to her what had actually happened and that my son’s father had lived there, therefore the clothes were not stolen.  She asked to enter my apartment to see the clothes and I led her to the bedroom closet.   The officer, clearly annoyed at that point, said she would ask my son’s grandmother to leave and allow me to pack the clothes and deliver them myself. 

A few days later, I dropped the clothes off, folded neatly in large plastic bags, carrying them from the car to my son’s grandmother’s doorstep as she and her husband pulled them inside the house.  My son’s father called me afterward, cursing at me for “throwing my shit at my Mama door, you little disrespectful bitch!”  Apparently a lie his mother had told, but one of many more to come. 

She had also been calling my parole officer, leaving messages that I needed to be put back in prison for selling drugs and associating with other drug dealers. I couldn’t believe my own child’s grandmother would even think to behave in such a way, let alone present lies to have her grandchild’s only parent able to provide taken away.  “Leave those people alone, Ms. Evans.  You have so much potential,” my parole officer told me.  “This is why character is so important,” he said.  “People are gonna take advantage of your situation and create lies, tell stories to shame you, but consistence and integrity build other people’s confidence in who are you and what you stand for and they will believe in you regardless.”  My parole officer didn’t violate me or talk to me about police contact or any of the accusations my son’s grandmother and the other women left on his voicemail.  He didn’t question anything I told him. “You’re making a wise decision disassociating yourself from these people,” he said.  Realizing how hateful they had become, and so easily, made me agree with him.

Through all of the disrespect I received from my son’s grandmother (being called a bitch, her trying to get me sent back to prison and threatening to have people hurt me), I never, not once disrespected that woman.  My mother taught me better than that…

The Beginning of the End

“Babe! You hear this shit?!!” My son’s father’s voice was shaking over the phone and I could hear a Drug Enforcement Agent talking to him.  “We’ve got you selling to an agent and people in your circle are making statements against you.   I’d advise you to leave town now or we’ll be to pick you up in two weeks with an indictment.”  As much fear as that put into my son’s father at that moment, he didn’t leave, even despite me trying to convince him he should.  And sure enough, two weeks later, they came and got him.

He had left home to go to the store and get something to drink for dinner.  While he was gone my best friend called.  “Someone just told me that your son’s father was arrested at Harding’s.”  “What?” I said in disbelief.  “Who told you that?”  She said that a friend of hers had seen my son’s father get arrested in the checkout lane.  I grabbed my son and raced to the grocery store.  When I got there, I didn’t see anyone.  I was running around in a panic.  “Did someone just get arrested here?”  I asked the cashier, out of breath.  He told me two men dressed in plain clothes had arrested a black male a few minutes prior.  I knew it had to have been federal agents.   I went back home to meet several more agents at my door.  “We’ll need to search your apartment,” one said.  I asked for a search warrant, which they didn’t have.  “It’ll take a couple hours, but we can get one and in that case, we’ll kick the door the down.  So you can let us in now, or get your door kicked in.”  I refused to let them in.  I knew no drugs were in my apartment but I refused to go through that again.  “We know about you, but we’re not here for you,” they tried to assure me.  I still asked them to present the warrant before I let them enter and while we waited, I was told I couldn’t enter my apartment either.  I left to drop my son off and when I returned, they had already kicked my door in.  

My apartment was ransacked.  They had flipped over my sofas, dumped clothes all over the floor from the closet and the drawers only to leave with one thing; a letter an old friend of my son’s father had written to him from prison.

At the time my son’s father was indicted, I was working in a hotel as a housekeeper.  That was the only job I could get with my felony.  Burger King wouldn’t even hire me.  My paychecks averaged $110 a week.  I couldn’t afford to pay rent, let alone feed my child.  I thought my son’s father had been paying the rent, only to receive an eviction notice from my landlord stating that the rent hadn’t been paid in three months.  I could barely afford a $10 pack of diapers. I had no idea how I was going to find the money to pay back rent.  And to this day, I can’t tell you how I made it through that time. I found a job doing home care two months later that paid under the table and made an arrangement with my landlord for the owed rent. God’s grace is amazing, that’s all I can say.  

My son’s father was being held in a prison a few hours north and I would visit him every weekend.  Our relationship got rocky quickly as I began to discover a new freedom of having and managing my own money and what it was like to live without the stress or drama of other women harassing me or him abusing me.  A part of me felt guilty that I was so peaceful at home without him and a greater part of me just felt free.  I felt obligated to be there for him, again, and I tried, but as the pressure of being inside and going through his case began to break him down, I couldn't stomach who he was becoming... or rather, finally realizing who he always was.

I won’t go into any further detail as to why my son’s father and I fell out.  What I will say is, despite my involvement with him, I was never from the streets.  I didn’t know anything about selling drugs, street violence, etc., until I had met him.  I couldn’t have cared less about whether a person chose to testify against another person in the streets or not.  It wouldn’t have affected me in any way.  However, I CANNOT respect a man that will allow a woman to sacrifice her life to spare him from his own consequences, but when he finally has to face the consequences himself would choose to break the very “code” he praised her for keeping to save his own ass.