[Janeytwo]

Told with no excuses and/or fear-based apologies. Neither would be acceptable anyhow.....


Summer. I am 17. I’m standing on a porch with a six-month old baby girl on my hip and I’m two months pregnant. I’m living in one room of this box-sized, rundown house off 8 Mile with busted plumbing under it (there’s raw sewage seeping into the backyard) and this ratty-haired little dog that does its business in the underwear drawer of one of the seven other people who lives there. I’ve got formula and diapers through the State for my daughter but I myself am starving. There’s a can of Wolf’s Chili and a box of Ho-Ho’s in the cupboard and a half-full jar of dill pickles in the fridge. Yum! None of that food is mine but the pickles seem like a safe bet to eat because they’re already opened so who would care? I scarf them down juice and all.

I’m trying to make a decision. See, I’ve got 3 options.

1. I can take up the offer of the 16 year old 9th grade drop-out guy who says he’ll marry me and we can live in the basement of this drunk’s house over on 9 Mile and he’ll work pumping gas and I’ll work at the White Castles and it’ll be bliss! I can see the end of that road stretching out before me. Shoot, four years later at most, I’m a divorced 21 year old burned out welfare mom with at least 3 more kids, no diploma (I’m a high school drop out myself at this time)and no future that doesn’t include scrounging for food, money and self-respect. Still, for a while if I take thsi way out...for a while I could say I’m somebody....one step up from gutter trash...I’d be just your garden variety white trash with a quote/unquote “limited education” and a hand-full of food stamps. It’s a tempting offer though because it means I could maybe keep the baby I’m expecting but I know that's illusion. I know that, down deep somewhere.

2. I can continue to live hand-to-mouth until I’m so far gone the State steps in and takes my 6 month old daughter.

3. I can accept the fact that it’s time to make a hard decision. It’s time to go home because soon winter will come and if I lose this place to live which is a very real possibility seeing as how I’m dirt poor, then my baby and I face the prospect of life in the bitter cold with me moving us from rundown place to rundown place while I try to figure out how to work with no help. Do I leave my baby alone all night while I sling hash right up till I delivery my next child? Do I work during the day and try to find some other girl my age to watch my daughter at night and then go on the welfare train after I give birth to my next baby? Yeah right.

The problem is that “home” isn’t a good prospect either. Home is where stepdad rules. Stepdad has two daughters (my half-sisters). And when one of my half-sisters (his beloved daughters) is in the living room and accidentally trips, stepdad comes barreling in and slams one of our heads into the wall for causing it even though we were five rooms away at the time. I left home because I couldn’t stand to watch him beat my baby brother into the dust any more just because the poor kid picked up one my half-sisters toys to look at it. Half-sisters were untouchable goddesses. The rest of us were expendable nothings.

Me? I used to stand up to Stepdad and take what came. That’s why stepdad hates me like he hates no other...well....except for my six month old baby daughter. I think he hates her more. He hates her so much that her teeth will chatter and she’ll learn to hide in corners and the only thing that’ll stand between him and his desire to pound on her is me raging at him while he threatens to beat me into the floorboards. And my mother, standing between us, screaming while all the other kids hide in their bedrooms. Mom will say wicked hateful things to me because she knows that she’s selling out her children’s safety in order to have a roof over all their heads. I don’t hate her. I understand. She’s just surviving. She doesn’t want to be in the midst of all that violence anymore than I do. She’s beaten down in her own way too and she doesn’t know how to get out.

But winter is coming and I’m pregnant again and I need to face the fact that there is no glory in the street-life and that no dark-horse of a knight is coming to rescue me from this dismal existence of endless poverty that I’m currently living in. The knight’s just going to hit me with a chair and call me trash. Better to be home with the screwed up people I know rather than my daughter, unborn baby and I facing the crazies we don’t.

And there’s one more thing I have to do. I have to make the really hard decision. I step off the porch, my daughter in my arms and head to a restaurant to use their payphone. I need to call CSS. It’s time to face the fact that I cannot keep my baby that’s coming. I’m in no shape financially, mentally or any other way to be a mom again. I’m barely in shape to be the mom I am to my 6 month old.

2 years later will find me making the same phone call yet again. By then I will be beaten down, humiliated, used, spit on, abused and completely demoralized.