Free Single Mom by Omar Tyree

responsibility, and condoms with him.
    I really didn’t want to bother Jimmy about it that morning, nor did I have the time, but I was curious. I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen where my giant of a son was having a quick glass of orange juice. He tried his best to avoid eye contact with me.
    “So, ah, which girl is it?” I asked him. The boy was only fifteen, and I had been looking up to talk to him for three years already. I wasn’t exactly short myself, especially with heels on.
    Jimmy sighed and shook his head again. “Come on, Mom. He don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. Why you listenin’ to him?”
    I thought about that question for a minute. “Well, first of all, I never remember you being so
eager
to go to church on Sunday. You got your hair greased and brushed this morning, you’re all ready to go, and ah, is that some kind of cologne that you’re wearing?” It was obvious that
something
was going on inside that teenage mind of his.
    He set his glass on the counter and said, “I’m just trying to help you out, Mom. Since you want us to go to church every week, I figure I might as well stop fighting it.”
    I smiled, and that quickly turned into a laugh. “Is that right? You’re trying to help
me
out? Well, I don’t know if you know it or not, but the Lord don’t ask for you to wear cologne,” I told him.
    “He don’t ask for us to wear suits and ties either,” Jimmy countered with his own smile.
    He had a point, but I wasn’t through with my interrogation yet, so I pressed him for answers. “So, you’re telling me that you’re absolutely sure there’s no girl in this church who you would like to see today?”
    His smile got even wider. “It’s a lot of girls in there that I would like to see. But that don’t mean nothin’. I’m going because you
wanted
us to go.”
    “So, in other words, if I said that we’re going to a different church today, that wouldn’t bother you at all? Is that what you’re telling me? Because you’re going to church
for me
, right?”
    He hesitated and started to laugh. “But why would you want to go to a different church? All of your friends go to this one.”
    I grinned. The boy must have thought that I was born yesterday. “Mmm hmm, that’s just what I thought,” I told him. It was
definitely
time for our talk. I stepped close to my giant son and asked, “Jimmy, have you, ah,
done the do
with any girls yet?”
    Walter must have snuck up on us and heard my question, because the boy laughed so hard I thought he would break his rib cage.
    “What is your problem?” I turned and asked him. He was plenty immature to want to get in trouble in the streets. It was a godsend to have
Walter
out in the suburbs! The West Side of Chicago would have chewed him up and spit him back out.
    “Nothin’,” he answered.
    I decided I would talk to Jimmy again later on that evening, while Walter was over his father’s house. I had agreed that his father could pick him up after church and drop him off at summer camp that Monday. I had Walter pack two extra sets of clothes and underwear with him to take to church.
    When we arrived at church that morning, back on Chicago’s far West Side on Augusta Boulevard, I watched to see who was watching my oldest son. It looked like every girl over twelve and under nineteen was eying Jimmy, and my mind was
not
playing tricks on me.
    Walter noticed it himself and got to laughing again. I was getting tired of his silliness, so I quickly grabbed his left arm and pinched him through his suit jacket.
    “Cut it out.”
    “Oww, Mom!”
    Jimmy looked at his younger brother and grimaced. “Sound like a little girl,” he commented.
    “What?” Walter protested loudly.
    I stopped walking down the aisle and grabbed both of them right there and whispered to them very sternly, “Look, I don’t need this from
either
of you. Okay?”
    Jimmy started to smile, but Walter was still pissed at being called a girl. I couldn’t