Casting Down Imaginations by LaShanda Michelle Page A

basketball team with Terrance. He tried to get with me but I was smart
enough to tell that it was only to get under Terrance’s skin, especially after
he got his scholarship, so I never gave him any attention.
    “No,
Terrance. I never messed with Darius, and I told you that. I had no reason to
lie to you then, and I have no reason to lie to you now.”
    He
sighed. “I guess I believe you,” he said.
    “Well
you should, because I ain’t lying.”
    We sat
there in silence for a minute. I was still thinking about Nicole Greensboro
when he spoke again.
    “What do
you think it was?” he asked.
    “Think
what was?”
    “You
know… it.”
    “The
baby?”
    “Our
baby,” he corrected me.
    I felt
myself blushing. “He was a boy.”
    “How do
you know?”
    “I just
do.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t
know. I just do?”
    He
pondered over everything I just said. “So it was a boy, huh?” he finally asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Awh,
man, I had a little boy,” he beamed.
    I felt
myself smiling. It was more like cheesing. “Yes you did.”
    “But
wait a minute. I thought it takes months before the sex of a baby is known? How
do you know it was a boy if you were only pregnant for a few weeks?”
    “It
takes the doctors months before they know what the sex of a baby
is. God knows us before we are even conceived. It says so in the bible. So I
guess God told me what it was, because I woke up one morning and I just knew
that my baby boy was in heaven with God.”
    “That’s
deep,” he finally said after a few moments of thought. “Sounds like you’re
pretty close to God now.”
    “Maybe.
But ain’t nobody perfect. I could always come up a step or two.”
    “I heard
that,” he said. “I wonder what we would have named him? Would you have named
him Junior?”
    “After
you? H to the hell nawh,” I said.
    He
laughed. “Oh, that’s cold girl. Why not?”
    “Because,
you didn’t even want him, remember?”
    “Oh
yeah… about that. Karen, I’m sorry I did that to you. I was tripping on that
scholarship and everything, and I—”
    “It’s
cool, don’t worry about it.” I fought the memories of the humiliation that were
trying to come to me. No use in going all the way back to that day. It was done
and over with.
    “No, no,
I need to get this right,” he insisted. “I’m a man and I should have never ever
put my hands on you.”
    I
listened to his apology. I felt that he was genuinely sincere.
    “All is
forgiven, Terrance. I forgave and released you a long time ago.”
    He
exhaled. That must have been hard for him to say.
    “I call
him Jeremiah,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Why’d
you give him that name?”
    I took
another swig from my hot cocoa. “Do you have a bible with you?”
    “No,” he
said. “No actually, I don’t.”
    “Well,
when you get time, find one and look up Jeremiah 1:5.”
    “Okay. I
definitely will do that.”
    “You
will?”
    “Yeah,”
he answered. “I want to see where the mother of my child got the inspiration
for my son’s name.”
    A warm
feeling came over me. I never would have imagined him saying our son’s name, or
him referring to me as the mother of his child. Shoot, I never thought I would
speak to him again. But I guess I really was the mother of his child. It almost
made me feel like he and I were… family. And for some reason that meant a lot
to me.
    “I’m
going to go on ahead and go now Terrance, okay?” I said to him.
    “Yeah,
that’s cool. I really need to get some stuff done anyway. When I called I
really didn’t think you were going to talk to me.”
    I felt
so bad. This whole time I was avoiding his phone calls, thinking everything was
about me, when the boy was just trying to get some peace about the death of his
baby. Our baby. How could I have been so stupid?
    “I’m
sorry for the way I been acting,” I apologized to him. “You know, it’s just
that I haven’t talked to you in so long, and the last time we spoke it