Free Baby Brother's Blues by Pearl Cleage Page B

arms as new lovers often do in the rush of those first few perfect days and endless nights. Then they got pregnant and the world turned upside down.
    He’d hoped things would get better once Joyce Ann was in preschool, but they got worse. Aretha spent every possible minute at her studio while everything else in their lives, in his opinion, was going straight to hell. He had bent over backward to accommodate her for months, but not tonight! Tonight he had a dinner engagement and he wasn’t going to miss it while Aretha continued to play the tormented artiste. He had picked up Joyce Ann at day care, as agreed, and arrived home with plenty of time to shower and change before seven o’clock. The only problem was, Aretha wasn’t there. The house was dark and empty. He flipped on the kitchen light switch. Beside him, his daughter struggled to unzip her jacket.
    “Need help, Daddy,” she said, tugging gently on his shirtsleeve.
    His mind racing, he helped her take off her coat, gave her some apple juice, turned the television to the Disney Channel, and dialed Aretha’s studio phone. It rang six times before she answered.
    “Hello?” Her voice sounded distant and distracted.
    “You okay?” he said, wanting to eliminate the possibility of an unexpected mishap like a flat tire or a broken leg before inquiring as to why the hell she had taken it upon herself to change the plan she had agreed to three weeks before. He was still trying to understand how a woman with no paying job and a kid in day care from nine to five could even
have
an evening schedule that required clearing. After all, it was his salary that paid the bills.
    But he knew better than to bring that up. They were both well aware of the fact that her godfather’s money had paid for the comprehensive inventory of West End land and housing stock that was Kwame’s only project. When completed, it would not only give Blue a plan for the future growth and development of the area, it would make Kwame’s reputation as an innovative voice in his highly competitive field. Blue was paying him top dollar, so he couldn’t complain, but in the quiet moments when his wife and daughter were asleep, he would sit in the house his mother had given them for a wedding gift and know at the center of his soul that this was not the life he wanted. At those moments, he felt a helplessness and despair unlike any he had known before and he seriously doubted that he would ever be happy again.
    “I’m fine.” Aretha sounded annoyed. “Well, I’m not really fine, but I’m not physically hurt or anything, if that’s what you mean.”
    He took a deep breath and watched his daughter staring at a video of a little girl who used to be Denise Huxtable’s daughter on the old
Cosby Show
and was now a very grown-up eighteen and a Disney Channel favorite. Sipping her apple juice contentedly, Joyce Ann watched the screen. She was standing too close, but Kwame didn’t have the energy to tell her to move back. When she noticed her father looking in her direction, she smiled and pointed at the screen.
    “Beyoncé,” she said, clear as a bell. “See Beyoncé, Daddy?”
    He nodded and tried to focus through his rising anger. “What I mean is, I have an appointment at seven, remember?”
    “What time is it?”
    The question infuriated him, but he was determined to keep the anger out of his voice. “It’s ten to six.”
    “I’ll be home by six-thirty.”
    “I have to take a shower, Aretha. Joyce Ann has to eat.”
    His wife was silent on the other end of the phone. He didn’t have time for this nonsense.
    “You didn’t ask me why I wasn’t fine,” she said in a strange little voice somewhere between a whisper and a whine.
    “Look, Ree.” He didn’t care how exasperated she sounded. That was nothing compared to how
he
felt. “If you’re having some kind of artistic epiphany and can’t get here, I’ll have to get a sitter, so cut to the chase, okay? What’s up?”
    There was a