27. Lee
Lee
Ididn’t remember gender reveals being a big thing before I went to prison, but apparently sometime during those five years, everybody decided finding out what you were having needed balloons, cake, matching outfits, and a whole production. JB was hell-bent on having one. I told him no.
All I wanted to do was go to my anatomy scan, lay my ass on that table, and let the sonographer tell me what I was having like they did when I was pregnant with Junior. Simple. No balloons. No cake. No everybody standing around with their phones out waiting on me to have some big reaction.
Then Anika got involved and between her and JB getting on my nerves, I finally gave in. That was my first mistake.
JB told Anika she could plan whatever she wanted and not to worry about a budget. My sister took that shit personally and made that nigga put his money where his mouth was.
The theme was Tee Time or Tea Time, and somehow that turned into us renting out the entire second floor of Topgolf for a couple hours.
When I stepped off the elevator, Anika was standing there in a yellow golf dress grinning like she had personally built the place.
“You like it?”
I didn’t even know where to look first. Every bay on the floor belonged to us.
Pink and blue balloons were everywhere, little golf balls with question marks sat on the tables, and somebody had even found pink and blue golf tees to stick into the flower arrangements.
There was a whole dessert table, food already coming out, a bar set up, and way more people than I expected. Mostly JB’s people, of course.
His cousins were there, his friends, people from his trucking company, and folks I hadn’t seen since before I went away.
I looked at Anika. “How much did this cost?”
“Why you care?”
“I don’t. I’m nosy.”
“Then ask JB.”
“I’m not asking that man nothing.”
She shrugged. “Then enjoy your party.”
I laughed and followed her farther inside. Mama and Wren had already claimed one of the bays. Mama was dressed in pink, Wren was in blue, and neither one of them looked like they had any business holding a golf club.
Mama took one look at me and smiled. “See? My grandbaby a girl.”
Wren snorted. “You don’t know that.”
“I know my child.”
“That ain’t how gender work, Ms. Maisie.”
Mama turned and looked at her. “Didn’t ask you.”
I laughed and left them to argue. Everybody had been told to wear pink or blue depending on what they thought I was having, and I wasn’t playing about my vote.
I had on a fitted pink-and-white polo, a matching pink pleated skirt, white socks, pink-and-white sneakers, and a white visor trimmed in pink. Team Girl from head to toe.
Anika caught back up with me and looked me over. “You doing too much.”
I looked her up and down. “Says the woman dressed like a damn highlighter.”
“I’m the gender keeper. Yellow is neutral.”
“You could’ve wore white.”
“And have somebody spill something on me? No.”
Fair.
Across the room, JB was talking to some of his boys in a blue shirt, of course. The second he caught me looking, he pointed at his chest and then at my stomach like he already knew something I didn’t. I pointed down at all my pink, and he just shook his head.
I wanted a girl so bad. In my head, I could already picture a little girl stuck up under me all the time.
I could do her hair, teach her things, take her to the shop when she got old enough.
Maybe she’d want to learn nails one day, maybe she wouldn’t.
Either way, when I thought about having a daughter, I could see it.
A boy scared me for a completely different reason. Not because I didn’t want one, because I did. But eventually boys looked to their fathers for things their mamas couldn’t teach them. How to move as a man. How to treat women. What kind of man they were supposed to become.
And out of every man in Mobile, I had somehow picked JB to be the example. That part sat heavy with me.
Wren must’ve caught me staring off because she bumped my arm with hers. “Stop frowning.”
“I’m not frowning.”
“You are.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s usually when you frown.”
Mama laughed from behind us. “She been doing that since she was little.”
I rolled my eyes. “Both of y’all get on my nerves.”
I left them and went looking for something to drink.
Even with most of the crowd belonging to JB, enough of my people were there that I didn’t feel completely swallowed up by it.
Nina was running late, but she had already texted me three times asking when we were cutting the cake.
Wren stayed close, and Mama had apparently decided she was a professional golfer after hitting one decent ball.
She had spent the last ten minutes telling anybody who would listen about it.
Even JB’s mama came, which surprised me. I had barely finished speaking to one of his cousins when she walked over and wrapped her arms around me.
“I missed you at my annual New Year’s ball,” she said. “I thought with you being out now, you’d make your debut.”
I smiled a little. “I wasn’t ready for all that.”
She held onto me a little longer than I expected before stepping back. Her eyes dropped toward my stomach, then came back to my face.
“You look good.”
“Thank you.”
Her smile faded some. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
I already knew I probably wasn’t going to like whatever came next, but I followed her a few steps away from everybody else. She looked uncomfortable, which wasn’t something I was used to seeing from her.
“I owe you an apology.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“For my son.”
My eyes went across the room to JB. He was standing there laughing with his friends, completely unaware his mama was over here trying to clean up behind a grown-ass man.
I looked back at her. “You ain’t gotta apologize for him.”
“I know. But I should’ve said something a long time ago.” She rubbed her hands together before continuing. “I knew things wasn’t right. Maybe not everything, but enough.”
I didn’t really know what to do with that. There had been a time when I probably would’ve had plenty to say, but I wasn’t finna spend my gender reveal digging through five years’ worth of shit with JB’s mama.
“I appreciate you saying it.”
She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.”
As soon as she walked away, Wren appeared beside me holding my water.
“You good?”
“Yeah.”
She studied my face for a second, probably trying to decide whether I was lying, then handed me the bottle and left it alone. That was why I loved Wren.
I looked around the room and noticed Hannah wasn’t there.
Neither were the kids. Their daughter had come a few weeks early on Christmas Eve and had only recently gotten out of the NICU, so I wasn’t expecting Hannah to drag a newborn out to Topgolf for my gender reveal.
JJ was home with them too, which was probably for the best. This whole thing was already complicated enough.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and for half a second I hoped it was Van. It wasn’t, just Nina asking if she had enough time to stop somewhere before she came. I answered her and slid my phone back into my purse.
I had wanted to invite Van. I thought about it more than once, but every time I did, I pictured him walking into a room full of JB’s people while JB stood there watching me smile at him.
Yeah, no. I liked Van too much to get that man jumped at Topgolf.
JB would’ve acted stupid, and half the niggas standing around him would’ve acted stupid right along with him just because they could.
Van didn’t need that, and I damn sure didn’t need my gender reveal turning into a crime scene.
So I left him off the guest list, even though I still wished he was there.
JB eventually wandered over in his blue shirt with that little smug look on his face. His eyes moved over all my pink before he shook his head.
“All that for nothing.”
I looked at him. “You real confident for somebody who don’t know shit.”
“I know it’s a boy.”
“What make you so damn sure?”
He looked down at my stomach. “The way you carrying.”
I stared at him for a second. “You sound like somebody grandma.”
JB laughed. “I’m serious. Watch.”
“I hope it’s a girl now just because you getting on my nerves.”
“You been hoping it’s a girl.”
“And?”
“And you gon’ be wrong.”
I waved him off. “Go bother somebody else.”
He smiled like irritating me had been his whole reason for coming over, then walked back toward his boys.
By the time Anika announced it was time to cut the cake, everybody started crowding around with their phones out.
The cake came rolling toward us on a cart, shaped like one big white golf ball sitting on green icing.
It was cute as hell, and Anika stood behind it smiling like she knew something the rest of us didn’t.
Which she did.
I pointed at her. “You can still tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Anika.”
“Cut the cake, Lee.”
“You irritating.”
She laughed. “Come on.”
JB walked over while somebody handed us the knife. I expected him to stand beside me, but instead he stepped behind me, pressed his chest against my back, and reached around to put his hand over mine.
I stiffened.
“JB, back up.”
He looked at me like he didn’t understand the problem. “We cutting the cake.”
“We can cut it standing beside each other.”
Somebody behind us yelled, “Man, quit arguing and cut the damn cake!”
Everybody started laughing, and JB finally loosened his arm around me, even though he still didn’t move as far back as I wanted him to.
I let it go because I wasn’t about to turn the gender reveal into another argument before we even found out what I was having.
A few seconds later, Anika raised her voice over everybody and started the countdown.
“Okay! Three!”
People started counting with her.
“Two!”
My heart started beating harder than it had any reason to.
“One!”
Me and JB pushed the knife through the white icing, and for a second all I could see was cake. Then the slice tipped over.
Blue.
The whole floor erupted at once. Mama screamed louder than half the room, Wren grabbed my arm laughing, and somebody behind us set off blue confetti while JB damn near knocked me over celebrating.
“I fucking knew it!”
His boys started yelling like he had personally done something impressive. His mama was crying, Anika was laughing, and phones were everywhere catching every second of it.
I smiled too, mostly because everybody was looking at me and I wasn’t about to stand there looking disappointed over my own baby when none of this was his fault. I put my hand over my stomach and looked down at the blue inside the cake.
A boy.
I was having a son, and I already loved him. That had never been the problem.
When I looked back up, JB was still grinning like this was the best news he had gotten all year. One day, my little boy was going to look at that man and call him Daddy, and that was the part that scared me.