A Rich Man's Baby. Daaimah S. Poole

      I’m thirty-two years young, and Tyrone, my husband, is forty-three years old. I met Tyrone in the market. My daughter Alexis was crying because I said she couldn’t have a Snickers bar. I barely had enough money to pay for our food on the belt. Then, out of nowhere, Tyrone came up to me and paid my entire bill. It was like he was working for God or something really, because I was just praying to God, “Please help me. Please let me have enough,” and all of a sudden, Tyrone appeared.

      I was struggling at the time. I had two babies under two before I graduated from high school. My mother went off when I had my first. She kicked me out when I had my second. She was ultrareligious and thought I let the devil take over my body by having sex out of wedlock. So I left home at seventeen and never looked back. I was doing okay at first. I worked a job at a day care, and my children’s father helped me out. Then we broke up, and the next thing I knew, I had one foot in a shelter.

      That day I was in the market using my electric money to pay for my groceries. After he paid my bill he gave me his number and said if I ever needed anything to call him. I called him when I got put out of my place, and he told me I could live with him.

      I thought I would live there for only a month or two, but after six months he asked me to marry him and then moved us into a new house. He spoiled me so much I almost forgot about the eleven years that separated our ages. He stepped in as Jamil and Alexis’s father, and they always called him “Dad.” We had one daughter together, Kierra, who was four.

      And even with all that, I still wanted to leave him. I loved Tyrone, but I hated his age and the way I lived. I didn’t have any friends my own age. I didn’t even know the last time I just had some fun. I felt like I was missing out on life. He was a truck driver and always came home tired, sweaty, and dirty. He has let his gray hair grow in on his sideburns, and that was a constant reminder to me that I was married to an old fucking man. Half of the time he was saying, “Hey, baby, remember this song or television show?”

      And I’m thinking, Hell no.

      But it was more about him than his age. There are a lot of men in their forties who are well kept, clean, in shape, and attractive. Tyrone wasn’t one of them. He complained about what hurt him, and I wasn’t trying to hear that shit no more. When I saw men my age, I got excited. Their muscular bodies made my cooch do flips. The way I saw it, he was almost fifty and not trying to change and didn’t have a chance of having a good life. I wanted a young man my age who still wanted to be a part of life, not somebody ready to check out.

      I felt like I was wasting my life being with him, and I was tired of it. I knew I wasn’t wrong for wanting fun and excitement. I wanted to go to a club and stay out all night long. I wanted to meet somebody and go out on a date. I wanted to have friends and go out for lunch. There was just so much I was missing. I was getting out of this marriage while I still looked like something. I was pushing thirty-three, and I still had eighteen-year-olds trying to talk to me. Ty didn’t take advantage of me, but he did help me to miss out on a lot of things. Ty never beat me or cheated on me as far as I knew, but I was just tired. I just wanted out.

      Chapter 1

      Tanisha

      It was June, and it was only a quarter to nine and already hot outside. I had just parked my Dodge Stratus and began walking toward my job. I’d worked at the University of Alton Hospital for ten years. We were associated with ten other hospitals in our region. Alton was right in the middle of Center City in West Philadelphia. It was a small hospital that got a lot of traffic. This hospital treated everything from gunshot victims to people who were coming in for heart surgery. I was the billing coordinator and my department made sure insurance companies approved and paid for services the hospital provided. I was a supervisor but only supervised three people. The people in my department were all head cases. Miss Alberta was your nosy aunt who was in everyone’s business, Jeremy was the playboy cousin who dated too much, and Reginald was your gay uncle who wasn’t even trying to hide his lifestyle. And together, they were my work family who kept me entertained.

      I saw Reginald lighting up a cigarette as I entered the building. He had on brown broken glasses with white tape holding the middle together, tan high-water pants, and a tan-and-black-checkered shirt.

      “I thought you quit,” I said as I tried to take his pack of Newports from his hand.

      “Tomorrow,” he gagged while trying to laugh at himself, knowing tomorrow wasn’t ever coming.

      I walked through the hospital and spoke to everyone I knew. I bumped into Jeremy. He was carrying a bunch of bags and coffee. I took one of the bags out of his hands.

      “I brought you a raisin bagel with cream cheese. They didn’t have any croissants. I forgot to get jelly. I’ll be right back.”

      “Thank you. Appreciated. You must have known I didn’t have time to stop this morning,” I said as I took my breakfast from him.

      Jeremy was only twenty-six and had new episodes about another stupid woman he was dating every Monday morning. He consulted me about his failed relationships, but never took my good advice. He had dated one in four women in the hospital and their friends. He wasn’t even that attractive and didn’t make a lot of money either. I just didn’t get it.

      I walked into our small office. There was just enough room for four cubicles. I approached my messy desk and said hello to Miss Alberta. I had pictures of my children from the beach, a clock radio blinking on twelve o’clock, and piles of paperwork from the week before on my desk. Through the clutter, I spotted a blue envelope.

      “What’s this for?” I asked Alberta as I opened the envelope.

      “They giving Jen a baby shower,” Alberta said.

      “Another baby shower? Why are we always taking up a collection for something? Baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, and funerals. I’m tired of this,” I said aloud as I scanned the invitation.

      “So you want to get her a gift on your own, or you want to get her one big gift from all of us?” Alberta asked.

      “I’m not getting her anything. She used to get smart with me. Please, she’s married to a doctor, and now I am supposed to give a portion of my check over to a rich woman,” Reginald said as he entered the office smelling of cigarettes.

      I couldn’t do anything but laugh.

      “You’re right, Reginald, but she is still our friend, right?” Alberta asked.

      Reginald gave Alberta a look like “speak for yourself.” I was on the borderline and couldn’t comment. Jen was a freckle-faced redhead, kind of plump for a white girl, and not that cute, who got real lucky. I say she got lucky because she started in billing less than a year and a half ago, and within a week of working she met Dr. Schmidt. They were engaged in three months, and now she was married and pregnant. If you ask me, I think she had a plan from the very beginning. She came to work always dressed nice and never did any work. She probably only worked at the hospital so she could land herself a doctor husband.

      “We will get one big gift. Everybody give twenty dollars, and I’ll get a bunch of things from the clearance rack and The Children’s Place,” I said.

      “I’ll let you know,” Reginald said as he pushed his broken glasses back on his nose.

      Jeremy entered the office with more bags. He took off his black messenger bag and passed out breakfast. Our day had officially begun.

      “What you do this weekend, Jeremy?” Miss Alberta asked.

      “Argued with this chick’s man. He called my phone on some you-know-my-girl stuff. And I’m sitting there like, ‘Yo, man, check your girl, don’t call my phone.’ But he kept calling my phone back, so I told him everything he wanted to hear.”

      “No, you didn’t,” I said.

      “Yes, I did. I told him his bed is comfortable