Five
FIVE
Trinidad
R ush hour in Brooklyn meant what should have been a ten-minute drive ended up being a half hour. At this point, I didn’t even know why I’d moved the car instead of making the twins take the subway, but getting some quality time with them was always a good idea.
“…Orlando also told us about his years in college and how, even though he partied, he focused on getting good grades and graduated at the top of his class…”
Not today, though. Not when I yearned to relegate Orlando to the back of my brain, where I placed all the items I needed to compartmentalize. Not when they had chosen Orlando as one of their favorite topics of conversation and decided to give me a dissertation on all things Orlando.
There was no need for me to see that man-child without a shirt. That was knowledge I didn’t require, and on top of that, I didn’t need the reminder of how kind he could be and how he actually loved spending time with my sons. Unlike many a high-vibration man, or whatever they called them now, who felt an unmarried woman with children meant a woman that had failed at life. Especially at love. Immediately we are deemed broken.
“Yeah, he’s asked to work on our math grades, so I’m gonna ask Ms. Solis,” Brian continued.
“Man, more homework? We already do too much,” Brandon interjected.
Orlando had my two sports-driven, nonacademic children talking about math and homework— willingly talking about it. He had this way of pinpointing what they needed to be improving, either at home or at school, that worked every damn time.
I remember the first Saturday I woke up to the smell of Pine-Sol and the sounds of deep murmurs debating which room to clean next. My mouth opened in quiet awe; I stayed still in my bed, enjoying the sound of the two young men I birthed being responsible and helpful.
The twins were maturing—whatever maturity looks like on a fifteen-year-old child—but some of those gestures came from beyond their evolving brains. Orlando was doing a great job guiding them during their sessions.
Beyond anything physical, that was the most attractive to me. Their father lacked in imparting any type of wisdom to them on how to prepare for life. Anytime they were with him, he would find ways to spend the least amount of time with them and fill their weekends with so many activities that quiet, quality conversations were few and far between.
Hearing that Orlando had referred to me as older was a good reminder. Talk about a splash of water over my overactive libido. I hadn’t checked my period app, but without pulling my phone, I knew what moment of the month it was. Hopefully, I would be out of the thick of things and back to my stressed normal self until next month if I was lucky.
“And he is gonna go on a trip with his friends soon! I think one of those historical towns you’re always telling us about,” Brian said, gifting me with so many words. I planned to write this in my journal as a moment to remember when we got home.
“Yeah, he was telling us that when we’re older, he’ll take us to carnival. And maybe we can come out with him for Labor Day and whine with the ladies,” Brandon interjected.
“Excuse me, you’re gonna what?” I exclaimed. My babies, talking about whining with women? At least Brandon said ladie s instead of something else. Thank God for small mercies.
“Well, yeah, you know how Dad doesn’t take us to anything Caribbean even though it’s his heritage. He ain’t never including us when he travels to Barbados to see Grandpa and Grandma, so we’ve never seen Crop Over, but Orlando said…”
And so it went until we arrived at the house and settled in for the day.
My pantry was running low. The few boxes of pasta sat there waving at me, whispering that they’d be the quickest thing to make for dinner. I had already cooked today, but a brief glance at the pot on my way out told me the twins had eaten their weight in gold again. This would be the third trip to the grocer’s in five days.
Their father’s contributions barely covered the food for the month at this point.
Feeling overstimulated, exhausted, and ready for bed, I fixed up a quick dinner of chicken, pasta, and spinach with a creamy sauce I whipped up and hoped the twins would enjoy.
By the look of the empty plates an hour later, I could audition for Top Chef ’s next season.
“I guess basketball was a lot today, huh?” I smiled as Brandon and Brian finally pushed back from the table, hovering over the plates as if they had been hanging out on a deserted island with no food for three months. Satisfied grins on two lean, smooth, brown, handsome faces nodded in unison, their locs bobbing with their nods. They rarely gave me such open praise anymore, but whenever they did, my heart filled with light and joy, a rush of pure warmth filling me at seeing them growing so well.
“Yeah, and our cheerleading practice.”
“That’s right!” I completely forgot about their practice. This current client I was working with for their upcoming event was truly driving me wild. I needed to sit down this weekend and straighten up my calendar and the boys’ to keep track of it all. This weekend was their father’s, which meant cleaning, organizing, and, hopefully, a few glasses of wine with my girls. Oh, and maybe another date with Milton.
Suddenly, the pasta hardened in my stomach, becoming a ton of granite.
I’d been postponing speaking with the boys about possibly going to the Poconos with Milton in two weeks. I’d never taken a weekend away from them like this. The few vacations I had in the past were with them. The only time I’d gone on a girls’ trip was in August of 2019 while the boys were visiting my parents in San Pedro de Macoris. I had a time with a gentleman I met in Trinidad during a night out, one of the best nights of my life.
If only I could have sex like that again … Trinidad, focus !
Milton was great. He was…a communicative partner with very specific and particular ways he liked to perform in bed, which I respected. He liked cleanliness, no sweat, a leisurely pace, calm, and peace. I understood peace. I craved peace. But once in a while, I craved chaos, passion, and ecstasy. But I very much understood the price I’d pay for that type of burning chemistry.
I bet Orlando was the opposite of Milton. Wild, energetic, acrobatic—
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
Oh my. My brain needed to take a chill pill. Pausing for a second, I took in the comforting air of our living room, a mixture of my cooking, my sandalwood candles, my own lemongrass scent, and male teenager-raging hormones.
Home.
“So…if I were to have a…trip with Milton soon, how would you both feel about that?”
Their downturned eyebrows were not a good sign. The subsequent silence wasn’t either. My heart plummeted to the depths of my body, wondering if the boys truly didn’t like Milton. I’d attempted a few outings with the four of us, for them to connect on a deeper level. Still, any of those times, the twins stayed resolutely by my side, polite and kind to Milton but never saying much more than monosyllabic responses or audible nods, the most Caribbean thing they ever had done since I birthed them.
Their Bajan grandparents would have been proud of their grandsons’ quiet but clear disapproval masked by quiet, polite but clear disapproval. It was an art many couldn’t master. By the end of the third time we hung out together, I could sense Milton’s desire to spend time with the boys decreasing by the second. Not that the levels were ever high to begin with.
“So what do you think?”
“I mean, not like you asking for our permission, right?” Brandon’s deeper timber resonated in the dining room. That deeper voice was something I was still trying to get used to; one day, he woke up and had no falsetto, just a baritone exactly like his father’s. Brian’s voice had dropped, too, but he still had moments where his old little boy’s voice would try to creep in at the funniest times, to his overwhelming embarrassment.
My instinct was to ask Brandon to remove the bass from his voice, but raising Black young men meant understanding that people around them would attempt to remove their power on a daily basis. It was a fine line between allowing Brandon and Brian to assert themselves confidently while understanding and abiding by the rules of my home.
“I understand you might not be thrilled about my potential relationship with Milton but…”
“So you planning to claim him now? I mean, y’all were dating, but we…we thought it wasn’t super serious,” Brian asked, a thread of panic underneath his self-assuredness. His face scrunched up, just as it did when he couldn’t play with his favorite toy as a toddler, and my heart squeezed, wanting to reassure him. Another lesson I was imparting to them, wishing I didn’t have to—we do not always get what we want, and we have to live with the uncertainty and unfairness of it all. I wished they weren’t learning that lesson this way.
“We are discussing potentially becoming serious, yes. And let me remind the two of you that I am a grown-up, and I make my own decisions. I will always take your needs into consideration, but I need you both to remember, I am the adult here.” The more resolute and decisive I sounded, the better for the boys.
“Yes, Ma, sorry. I’m sure we can hang with Dad or…maybe Orlando would be down to letting us stay.”
My insides vibrated and warmed. Their dad had them this weekend; I doubted he’d volunteer another one so soon, but Orlando? He’d probably jump at the opportunity to spend more time with the boys; he’d offered to watch them on occasions when I was extra busy at work. Of all the three men currently in my life, the two that I needed to be attentive to my boys didn’t cut it, but Orlando…
“How about you start your evening chores? We can discuss more in a couple of days. There is no rush. I only wanted you both to know what was coming.”
“Can we do the chores a little later please? I needed to do some quick homework, and Brian wanted to shower. You know how he is,” Brandon said with uncharacteristic calmness. His jaw was rigid, and I could see a vein throbbing on his neck.
Brian stared at his twin as if he’d put on a clown suit, got on the table, and started dancing. Brandon’s eyebrow twitched, but he kept his eyes resolutely on mine.
A gathering tension rose in the kitchen; the boys rarely asserted themselves as the “men of the house.” I understood gender constructs and society enough to try a balanced approach at home: this all-gender shit is bullshit, but you gotta understand it well in order to be able to smash it. So watching him apply some of the things I had tried to explain was disconcerting, at least. As the pack leader, I sat calm, not letting Brandon’s temper activate mine.
“I what? Oh, oh yeah, that homework.” Brian broke the impasse with a burst of movement, standing up and drawing my attention away from Brandon.
“We’ll take care of the kitchen, Mama; we’ll be right back,” Brian assured me with his sweet smile.
The diplomat of the family.
A rush of air left my chest cavity as soon as the twins went to their rooms. Their empty plates and my half-eaten one lay there. Ignoring the pull to clear everything myself, I navigated my way to the living room where my laptop sat with several emails and deliverables waiting to be answered. The magic of working for myself meant I set my own schedule. The sucky part of working for myself was that I seldom set boundaries around when not to work.
Getting lost in emails, I barely reacted when my boys returned, both showered and clearly in a different state of mind. The china and stainless steel clanking against the sink soothed me while I typed away answer after answer for my upcoming event.
“So, Mom, Coach told us she signed us up for an additional competition.”
“Really?” This vendor should have already sent me a full quote to present to my client. I had been chasing this particular transportation company for days. I hated when I worked with unprofessional partners because, in turn, they made me seem to be unprofessional.
“Yeah, so I wanted to see if you went with us. It’s a weekend, so that’s pretty dope,” Brian said.
“But it’s the same weekend as your thing, with that old man… Milton,” Brandon said, disdain dripping from every word.
“Excuse me? Milton is not old. He’s about ten years older than me, and for my age, that is not old…” The clank of dishes and the water faucet stopped, and we all stared at each other.
“Ma, for real? With all due respect.” No sentence that started with all due respect ended well. “That dude is lame; he ain’t for you. He doesn’t have the same vibes as you. Yes, you work hard and shit, but you don’t make your entire personality your job,” Brandon explained.
I was gifted with many, many words by my boys. Just not the words I wanted to hear from them.
“He’s not for you, Ma; he don’t show appreciation for you the way he should. Men should shower their women with love, affection, and gifts and always make her feel like number one. At least that is what Orlando says, and I can see he is a stand-up dude, so it must be correct. Real men don’t play games about what we want; we make what we want to happen. Milton ain’t try to call you his girlfriend all this time; we can hear your convos with Auntie Miranda,” Brian said.
Words dissolved from my lips. Every response I wanted to give faded to nothing as I gaped at my two boys who came for me and my life choices. When you give birth to Black children, you hope you gave them strength and audacity to live in a world that is so against us, but when that audacity is used against you…you start reflecting on your life choices. Running my nails over my keyboard, I hoped the ASMR could calm me enough not to end up in the evening news: my mug shot with the caption “Mother of two snaps.”
“Orlando is a child; he doesn’t know how things change as you continue to grow up.” Why in the world would I decide to say that first? I’d never know. But the fact that the twins felt Orlando was a better example than Milton didn’t sit right with me. Not if I was trying to make Milton a fixture in my life.
“Ma, Orlando is a grown-ass man. He is ten years older than us, not our contemporary; stop calling him a child. He supports his entire family and has been teaching us a lot of things.” Brian turned around, drying the last plate and placing it on the correct shelf. The boys never put things in their right place, but they had started paying more attention—since Orlando.
My chest caved like an empty helium balloon; the boys very rarely asked for me to go on their cheerleading trips with them. They never bothered asking their dad because, well, homophobia. When their father and I realized Brandon might be gay when he was about ten years old, we did the best thing we could have done as parents. We took it in stride and never required him to come out of the closet. One day, I asked him if the boy he kept mentioning over and over was his crush, and Brandon froze; then I remember my little boy nodding, and when I smiled at him, he smiled right back.
And that was that.
Their father, taking in all the good things he’d learned in his life in New York and not the unfortunate homophobia from our Caribbean heritage, decided not to ostracize his ten-year-old.
Instead, he made sure his gay son would be the most manly gay man in the world. Cheerleading did not fit in that definition. So, their father didn’t bother supporting any of the related activities.
I really wanted to go with Milton, but the boys seldom asked for my company. They were too grown for their mom to tag along. This invitation was a big opportunity to spend some quality time with them. Milton would understand. And who knew? Maybe instead of going to the Poconos, Milton could come with me. He’d said the trip was optional, so missing it wouldn’t hurt him. This would be a perfect opportunity to show the boys that Milton cared, that he was about them and me…and maybe Milton could convince me too.
“Alright, boys, I will go with you.”