Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan

life. She yearned to do something involving the theater: set or costume design, lighting, or even stage makeup. After she graduated and had Tarik, Gloria couldn't find a theater job anywhere in the Bay Area that would support her and a child, and by the time Tarik was three, he was severely asthmatic and had so many allergies he could hardly play outside.
    They were at their church's Fourth of July picnic in 1975 when Gloria's mother reached for a bowl of potato salad, dropped it on the grass, and said she felt dizzy. Like she was choking. Pearl suffered from high blood pressure and couldn't seem to keep it under control. Before the ambulance made it to the site, she was dead. Gloria's daddy was so distraught that a week after the funeral, he couldn't stand being in that house alone and decided to drive down to Alabama, where his people were. Gloria told him she didn't think it was a good idea, but he insisted the drive would do him good. On the way there, he fell asleep behind the wheel. His car overturned and crushed him. Shortly afterward, Gloria decided to leave California. She didn't have any reason to stay there now. She picked Phoenix, not knowing anybody there and not caring. At least Tarik would be able to breathe.
    She sold her parents' house, donated some of the money to their church, put the rest in the bank, and enrolled in cosmetology school. Gloria had always cut and styled and dyed the hair of half the women in her neighborhood anyway. It seemed as though doing hair was as dramatic as she was going to get.
    Over the next few years, David sent money and came to see Tarik a few times. Tarik's asthma got less severe, and the allergy shots he had to get once a week helped, but he still couldn't play in the grass, and his first furry pet, which was a rabbit, had to be his last. By the time he was five, Tarik had no memory of his daddy. David had suffered some kind of knee injury that prevented him from becoming a professional athlete; he had gone back to school, gotten his master's degree, and become a physical therapist for other injured athletes. He lived in Seattle and was still single. He traveled year round and only managed to see Tarik every couple of years.
    At six, Tarik started asking for a daddy. He had memorized how to say his prayers, and Gloria had always told him that if he wanted something special but reasonable, he should ask God for it; if God felt he deserved it-or he had earned it-He would answer the boy's prayers. So Tarik started praying for a daddy-every single night. It broke Gloria's heart just to listen to him. "Don't worry," she'd say. "One day, Mommy'll get a husband, and you'll have a daddy that lives with us."
    "How come he's not here yet?" he kept asking.
    "You have to give God time," she'd say.
    By the time Tarik was seven, he had already lost some of his faith in God, since God hadn't delivered. And that's when he started asking Gloria for a baby sister or brother. She explained that she needed a husband first. "But you don't got one now and you got me," he said.
    She told him that it would be too hard having two kids and no husband, and then she'd look over at his bookshelf and pick out a book, he'd get excited, and that was the end of it, till the next time.
    Gloria had no idea how much her life revolved around her son, until he reached that age where he preferred playing with his friends instead of spending his free time with her. Which was when she learned that food was good company. Back then, it was Bernadine who told her she needed to get out of the house and branch out socially. But Gloria had lost her social skills, especially when it came to men. She didn't know how to respond to them, so she treated them as if they were children; made herself indispensable and saw that their every need was taken care of. Gloria didn't know a thing about protocol.
    She started with the phone calls. She didn't wait for them to call or ask her out a second or third time; she solicited them.