With all theacting out and calls home, maybe homeschooling would be better for Cameron. It wasn’t like I had a job to occupy my time. I could easily teach my son from home. I needed money though, and Cam had always loved school up until recently.
I knew that he would push back if I tried to pull him out. It wasn’t fair for me to put my shit on him. I had done that enough in the past. I needed time to think and formulate some kind of plan. Since I wasn’t technically back in my hometown, I thought I would have more time before I had any kind of blast from the past. There was no way this was happening.
What was I saying? With my luck, running into someone I had no desire to see was right on track. At the same time, ifI knew that Jordy St. John was anywhere near that freaking school, I would have never sent my son there in the first place.
JoJo was one of the last people I wanted to see. What the hell was he doing there anyway? The last thing I knew, he was following his parents’ dream of him being a doctor. What was he doing at an elementary school aside from trying to give me a heart attack?
“Ma, I’m done with my homework. Can I go shoot hoops with my cousins?”
“Boy, you better be glad you aren’t in your room right now. What makes you think you’re going anywhere when I had to be called to pick you up from school yesterday?”
“Those kids keep trying to clown me, Ma. You don’t get it.”
“Clown you how? Are they bullying you?”
“They tried at my old school, but Dad already told me not to ever let anybody punk me. You know he taught me how to fight. So, when they pick on me for being smart or they talk trash, I show them I’m not the one to mess with, just like he told me.”
“I understand what Kendrick was trying to teach you, but you can’t solve your problems by putting your hands on people. Your dad and I used to fight for a living. It wasn’t right for him to tell you to solve your problems that way. If no one is hurting you, there is no reason for you to resort to violence. You’re smart enough to resolve your problems with words. Do you feel OK to go to school? Are the other kids hurting you by saying things like at your old school?”
My son somberly shook his head, but I wasn’t sure that I was buying what he had to say. Right now, I wouldn’t push him, but his ass was not going out to play with his cousins when he still had another day of detention.
“Be careful that you’re not turning into a bully, Cameron. It’s one thing to defend yourself and another to pick fights.”
“I know, Ma.”
“Good.”
“Can I go to Grandma’s?” he asked.
“We’ll go this weekend. Go find a book to read until dinner is finished.”
Cameron mentioning my mom made me think of calling her. I had been meaning to all day yesterday. After having to pick Cam up from school, I was so preoccupied with trying to understand why my son was fighting again that I didn’t find the time.
I didn’t know why it never occurred that Kendrick’s influence would have a negative impact on Cam. I understood what he was trying to do when he told him to stand up for himself, but a seven-year-old didn’t have the cognitive skills to know how to pick his battles. Kendrick’s grown ass barely had self-control when it came to that, so I had no idea why he wouldn’t have been more cautious when dealing with a child.
No matter how busy being a newly single mom kept me, thoughts of JoJo ran through my mind rampantly. It was the real reason I hadn’t reached out to my mom. I didn’t want to hear her questions, but I had a few for her.
I picked my phone up from the counter and dialed my mom’s number as I stepped out of the back door. It was cool that there was still a swing on my grandma’s back porch. She loved to swing. The love of being near her made me love it too. There was even a tire swing in the big tree in her backyard that I wasn’t completely sure was still safe.
“Hey, I’m just walking out of the bank.”
“You still at work? What time is it?”
“You know I’m one of the last one’s out the door these days.”
“I see that. Hey, I had a question for you. You got time to talk?” I asked.
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have answered the phone, Harper. What’s going on? Cam isn’t getting in trouble again, is he?”
I hadn’t told my mom about my son’s most recent fight because she just knew that relocating would be the solution to whatever had gotten into him. I admit, I was hopeful too. I didn’t have the heart to break the news that, so far, things weren’t going as planned.
“You remember Doctor St. John’s sons that I was friends with?” I asked just to buy time. How could she forget them?
“Yeah, I never could figure out which one of them you were messing around with. You kept insisting that they were just your friends, but I knew there was more to the story than that. Those boys were too handsome and too damn fresh to be spending all that time studying and playing games with a girl they didn’t like.”
“Well, they both went to med school, so apparently, theywerestudying,” I countered.
“And so was my baby. How’s the job hunt going anyway?”
