Count It All Joy, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
(The following chapter was taken from "Part III: Two Roads, 1987-1988.)
I learned a lot that day, the fifteenth of May in 1987. It was a Friday, warm just like the day exactly a year before that when I first saw Quiana. I don't remember what I did in school that morning, or have any conscious memory of it before lunchtime.
I learned to be anxious. We sped through the traffic easily, although it was the middle of the day. Whether or not it was God's doing, Red Sea-like, or whether luck was on our side, we made it to the hospital in a very few minutes.
I learned how to wait. By the time we got there, Quiana was in full, hard labor, and everybody talked about us. A bunch of bourgeois black teenagers, dressed in private school uniforms, one very pregnant and hollering like she was about to die? I know everybody talked about us at the dinner table that night.
I couldn't even talk. I was so damn worried about Quiana and the baby that afterwards I was glad Angelo, Gary, Wendy, and Cherie had come along. They took care of as much of the paperwork as they could while one of the nurses called the Rose. The only thing I said was, "She's seven months... her water broke..." and immediately a stretcher was whisked into the hallway and she was propped up onto it.
"Are you the father?" they asked me.
"Ye..."
I couldn't even finish the word. "Come with me," one of the medical assistants said, and took me into another room.
When I saw the green hospital crap she thrust into my hands, I grimaced. "Can't I just wait outside or something?"
"You are the father, right?" she snapped.
"I would have told you that if you hadn'tve cut me off," I said just as sharply.
She started to make another smart remark, but instead pretended to understand. "This must be your first child."
"I would think so. We're only seventeen."
"I wondered! You didn't look that old. So being in the delivery room would be that nerve racking for you?"
I nodded.
"So she's not going to have any one there? No parents?"
"No."
"Not a friend?"
We went back out into the waiting room. They were all perched on the edge of their seats. I said, "Do one of y'all want to go in there? They're getting ready to deliver the baby."
"That's your call, man," Angelo said, shaking his head.
"Really," Gary added.
Wendy agreed. "I faint whenever I see blood. If I saw a bloody baby, you'd probably have to carry me out in a straitjacket."
Cherie looked at me. "You really don't want to go in?"
"I can't." I didn't know why I couldn't. It was just something I knew I couldn't do.
"I'll go," she said suddenly.
The medical assistant looked skeptically at her. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen," she lied. "I'm just small for my age. Is that too young?"
She sighed. "As long as that girl has someone to hold her hand when she has that baby, it doesn't matter. Young lady, I certainly understand you being queasy. Some people are. And young man, you're very right." She referred to Angelo, then shook a finger in my face. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come with me, honey."
It wasn't until years later that I could look back on that day and learn that I was a coward. I missed hearing my son's first cry, seeing his newborn body appear in the world for the first time, seeing Quiana's look of relief and kissing her and telling her how much I loved her for bringing this beautiful little boy in the world.
The MA didn't come back around to get me until Quiana was in her own room. Probably out of spite. So I didn't see the delivery room at all. She came back with my cousin. What was so strange about Cherie? I didn't figure it out until I saw her take off her glasses and wipe her wet face. She was crying! In almost two years, I had never seen her shed a single tear.
"He's beautiful, Peach," she said in a choked voice as she sat down next to Angelo. I was going to learn eventually that I had given a part of my son to Cherie, something that I wouldn't have until years later, something that Quiana would miss forever.
"Is he in an incubator or something?" I asked. After all, he was a preemie.
"No. He's very healthy. A little jaundiced, and he may be that way for a little while, but he can go home day after tomorrow," the MA assured me.
She was sitting up in the room when I got there, holding the baby. She wasn't talking to him or looking down at him, just holding him and staring out the window. I sat down in a chair by the door.
"Where were you?" she said flatly.
"Outside waiting."
Quiana didn't say anything. Then, "Well? Don't you want to see him? He looks just like you."
I knew he would. Unfortunately, Aaron Mathis had a lot to do with me being here. Every single man on that side of the family favors each other.
And this baby looked just like him, looked just like me and all the Mathises. Very light brown skin, downy soft black hair that would curl up. His eyes were open, and they were the same light brown color as mine. I took him from her and stared at him, in a kind of shock. This was my son? Mine? Man. This was deep.
Then he smiled at me. It was my smile. A toothless, baby version of it. But hell, seventeen and a half years ago, I smiled that smile.
Something swelled up inside me like a fountain, a strange feeling that I had never had, and didn't want anybody to know I had. It made me get warm all over and caused my eyes to cloud over. My son. My son!
I kissed him, and told Quiana, "I got a first name picked out, and a nickname."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you. But first, I want you to give me a middle name."
"Any name?"
"Yeah. I don't care."
She looked at me like she wanted to spit in my face. "Bartholomew."
"Your daddy? Who told you he ain't never want to see you again?"
"Bartholomew," she nodded, saying it like it was a cuss word. I decided to detach the name away from the a--hole and use it. "I want him to have your last name, too."
"Don't it got to be Minter, since we ain't married?"
"Nowadays, they don't care what the last name is. I want him to have Rice. After all, I'm going to be Rice soon... supposedly."
I whispered the name in my son's ear. Then I told Quiana, "His name is Malcolm Bartholomew Rice. I'm naming him after my oldest brother Malcolm, who was the first black highway police officer in the state of Mississippi. We called my brother Mack. We're going to call my son Mack."
A nurse walked in. "You've got some visitors."
Aynie and Unc came in, still dressed in power suits. "Oh, praise the Lord! My great-nephew!" She took Mack from Quiana. "She looks just like you, Peach... you would think Qui ain't have nothing to do with him. And they told me that you weren't in the room when he was born." She used her free hand to pop me. "What you calling him?"
"Malcolm," Quiana said, suddenly happy again. "Malcolm Bartholomew Rice, Mack for short."
"Bless your heart, Peach," she said, kissing me on the cheek. "Remembering your big brother like that. We were in the middle of a meeting when we got the page. We couldn't leave right away, but Leon made the advertisers give him a lightening presentation and then told him he would call them to let them know if they can take our account. We took a cab because we didn't want to wait on the valet, but we were in the middle of rush hour traffic... here, Leon, take him."
Unc shook his head. "No!"
"Leon, if you don't get this here baby! This ain't Tyler! He can't hurt you."
This went way over my head, but I watched as Unc got hold of the baby awkwardly. "Hold his head, Mr. Petion," Quiana cautioned.
"I know how to hold him." He did. I watched as he held and rocked him. Unc? Who would have thought?
Cherie and Angelo came into the room as the nurse opened the door again. "Wendy and Gary went home," she said. "They said they'll see the baby when he gets home."
"I'm gonna get them back," Aynie said. "Sneaking out of here before I could get a chance to thank them."
Angelo’s eyes and mine met.
"What's his name?" he wanted to know.
I told him.
"Oh, I like that name. It’s nice and strong… it fits him," Cherie approved.
Angelo nodded. "Long middle name, but it's nice."
"Can I hold him now?" Cherie wanted to know.
"In a minute," Unc said. "We're having fun over here, aren't we?"
His answer was a long, drawn-out holler. The nurse headed to the door. "What little Malcolm needs," she said, "is something to eat after all this excitement. If you all will excuse me, I need to talk to Miss Minter alone."
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