He took a long pull of his cigar, never taking his eyes off me as I parked in his gravel driveway. His knowing gaze stayed on me, both as I exited my truck and as I approached the porch.
My father was my best friend. Growing up, it had been me and him against the world. My mom was there. She was present, loving, and nurturing. And I loved her. She taught me about the softness of love, the strength of a woman, and the importance of prioritizing your own mental health. Still, there was something about my relationship with my father that was rooted in being kind of kindred spirits. That ended up being a blessing, because right after I graduated from high school, my mother decided that life as a homemaker in a rural Southern town wasn’t all God had for her. She moved to Londynville and enrolled in college. After earning a bachelor’s degree in communications, she decided to earn her real estate license as well. Now she was one of the top-selling agents in her brokerage firm. She smiled more, laughed more, and generally seemed happier whenever I saw or spoke to her.
My father and I leaned on each other when she first left. I’d been blindsided as a teenager that she was unhappy, when all I knew was them together. As an adult, I understood that she had probably told my father a thousand times that she needed something different. He’d just been unable to give it to her, because he couldn’t imagine a life outside of Sweet Jackson. She had to pursue it for herself, and he had to let her.
“You got an eye problem, old man?” I asked when I got close enough to the porch for him to hear me. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that starin’ is rude?”
He chuckled. “Maybe. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that showing up unannounced is rude?”
“Nah. My daddy ain’t teach me that. But what can you expect? He’s an uncouth rascal.”
He let out a belly laugh, and I joined him. I walked over to the rocking chair where he sat and gave him a hug, followed by a handshake. “Dad.”
He returned the love. “Son.”
“You sittin’ out here like you were expecting me.”
“Kinda was. You know Janey goes to Sweet Jackson Church of Holiness. She ’bout went into a tizzy today. She could barely wait ’til church was over to call me and tell me you showed up with a woman she didn’t recognize.”
Janey Majors was my father’s “special lady friend.” According to my mother, she’d been after Quincy since high school and had been madder than a rattlesnake when he chose my mother over her. It wasn’t long after their breakup that Janey started showing up at the house with casseroles for us to eat and homemade sweet tea for us to drink. Next thing I knew, I started to catch her sneaking out of our front door in the early morning hours. A little while after that, she stopped sneaking.
“Janey ain’t keeping nobody’s business to herself,” I joked.
He snickered. “Never could. Back in the day, they called hereyewitness news. Anyway, I figured if you were seeing somebody new, you were probably gonna need to talk about it.”
One thing I appreciated about my dad was that he wasn’t like the stereotype of men of his generation. He wasn’t the strong and silent type. He believed in talking things out, especially after my mother left. He told me that he felt like if he had been more communicative back then, he and my mother could’ve probablyworked things out. But back then, men talked, and women listened. In retrospect, he could see the error of his ways.
“I’m not seeing her.” I explained to him the living situation with Eastley.
“Sleeping in your bed, you say?” he joked.
“Notsleeping in my bed, man.Sleptin my bed. One night. Because I was worried about her and wanted to keep an eye on her.”
“Was an eye all you kept on her? You didn’t keep any hands on her, right?”
“Nah.”
He watched me carefully. “You’re a man. As I remember little Eastley Davenport, she was a cute little thing. Her mother, Dana, wasn’t no slouch in the looks department, either. Beautiful woman. Pretty and popular in high school. Eastley probably grew up to look a lot like her.”
“E’s beautiful. Gorgeous, really.”
“Gorgeous woman in your bed. You didn’t feel any . . . stirrings?” Apparently, I didn’t respond quickly enough, because he kept talking. “I’m presuming she’s single. You’re single?—”
“That’s the thing.” I cut him off. “Am I single? Because I can’t say that I feel single. I’m thinking about Teagan all day, every day, . . . except for when I’m thinking about Eastley. She asked to go to church with me, and I took her. But I felt so damn guilty, Pops. Sundays are my day with Teagan.
“I mean, I don’t spend all day at the cemetery, but I stop through there. I clean up her headstone. I lay fresh flowers. I tell her that I love her and miss her. That’s my time with her. It kinda annoyed me that Eastley asked to infringe on that time. But at the same time, I wanna be with her, so I’m willing to let her step on Tea’s time. I don’t feel good about that. I also don’t feel good about the fact that she gave me space to be with Teagan with no pushback. She had her friend pick her up from church so I couldhave my time at the cemetery. Part of me feels like she should’ve been more, I don’t know . . . bothered by me needing time with Teagan.” I took a deep breath. “Tell me that I’m fucked up in the head.”
“Nah.” He took a deep pull from his cigar, then put it out. “Nah. You’re not fucked up in the head, Son. You’re grieving. And it sounds to me like you’re getting to the place where you’re realizing that there’s life after loss.”
I rubbed my hands down my face. “I’ve got so much stuff, man. And she, she’s got stuff of her own. I just don’t want to pull her into my world if I can’t do right by her. My heart still belongs to Teagan.”
He looked off into the distance. “Teagan’s not here to claim ownership of your heart anymore, Son. Saying your heart belongs to her is kinda like saying the struggle of black people belongs to Dr. King. He’s not here to do that work anymore. We can’t give him a job he’s not here to do. We can keep the essence of his spirit with us, though. Teagan can live in your heart, but she can’t actively participate in keeping your heart safe, filled, or fulfilled. Only somebody on this side of glory can do that.”
JULY
It was a few weeks after the Juneteenth/Father’s Day event, and The Braveheart Brotherhood was back on their community service grind. July was National Minority Mental Health Month. And that was definitely a cause that the brothers supported. My brother, in particular, felt it was important to fight the stigma that black people, and black men in general, didn’t believe in acknowledging or addressing mental health issues. Three weeks into the month, the club sponsored a weekend long event with medical professionals, advocates, resources, vendors, and activities for the public.
It was held in Downtown Londynville and always drew a large crowd. It was my first time attending. I would’ve stayed home, because I didn’t need the stress of an event that might throw me into another crisis. But Quentin offered to teach three sessions of self-defense. Two were open to the public, the other was just for the wives and girlfriends of club members. I wasn’t a wife or girlfriend, so I really didn’t feel that I should attend, but Asia was adamant that if I didn’t go, she wouldn’t have anybody to talk to.
