Children of Hope

by Michael Fine

Checking his watch, Diamond realized the approaching Taliban forces were probably only a few minutes out. He didn’t hesitate, and after hoisting Patel over his left shoulder and helping Lancaster to his feet, he had Lancaster lay over his right shoulder. He made his way south toward the Pakistan border.

  Twenty-three days later, the men made their way into India and to the town of Jaisalmer. Nicknamed “the Golden City,” Jaisalmer was a city in the northwest corner of the Indian state of Rajasthan. The city, in the heart of the Thar Desert, with summer temperatures regularly over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, stands on a ridge of yellow sandstone and is home of the impressive, ancient Jaisalmer Fort. To get there, they’d traveled over 1,400 klicks, or almost 900 miles, mostly on foot.

  The men would never speak of the twenty miles Diamond carried his mates through the Afghan desert and away from the Taliban threat, but a bond was formed that day. Lancaster and Patel would forever be indebted to their lieutenant and friend, and the three men would forever hold a grudge against the United States government.

  Chapter Four

  Friday, February 14

  East Louisiana State Hospital

  Jackson, Louisiana

  Thirty-two weeks later

  Three men in their mid-twenties stood with their faces pressed to the glass window of the nursery, where their newborn children—two sons and a daughter—were swaddled tightly in baby blankets. Each baby had a tiny little knit cap on its head. Two were dozing quietly. One, with a headful of hair peeking out from his cap, was twitching and moving about. The strangers shook hands and introduced themselves; today was a day full of peace and love and joy, to be shared even with complete strangers. They were all fathers now, the most important and most fulfilling role a man can play.

  Down the hall, a husband gently lowered himself into his wife’s bed, lying on his side and kissing her forehead and temple and gently rubbing her now-deflated belly. Their daughter lay sleeping nearby after two hours breastfeeding atop her mother’s stomach.

  Another woman slept after having a Cesarean. Her son was healthy; she would be again soon. Her husband sat on the floor of the bathroom in the birthing suite and wept from happiness and the release of the worry he’d been feeling for weeks.

  Hope Hunter

  Angel found out she was pregnant six weeks after the fair, on Friday, August sixteenth. I’ll never forget that date. Her period was late, but she insisted on waiting two full weeks, hoping it would come. It didn’t. She didn’t even want to trust the at-home pregnancy test, so I drove her to the health clinic in Baton Rouge, where the doctor confirmed Angel’s predicament. Angel was so distraught she stayed curled up in bed the entire weekend, her shades drawn, her lights out, her room dark and gloomy. She didn’t eat or bathe until I finally shoved her into the shower Monday morning and forced her to eat a bowl of Cream of Wheat.

  I spent that weekend researching Angel’s options. Before those jackasses overturned Roe, she could have gotten an abortion, despite our horribly restrictive state laws. But Louisiana’s trigger law fired when Roe was overturned and so now state law completely prohibits abortions, period. Even in the case of rape. Even when the rape victim is just fourteen years old.

  Barbaric.

  I looked online and saw that Mississippi also had a trigger law, like Louisiana, so even if I could afford the gas, which I couldn’t, we couldn’t get her one there. Ditto for Arkansas. Texas was a possibility, but it’s even farther away—it’s over one hundred and fifty miles to Beaumont— and, oh so conveniently, Texas law insists on two trips to an abortion provider. I was barely able to put food on our table and pay for enough gas to get us to school and back during the school year. And after I’d read some horrific articles about how badly botched many illegal abortions are, I simply refused to let Angel get an illegal abortion in some back alley somewhere.

  After Angel was at least human-looking and out of her cave, I drove to the high school and withdrew. I got information on how to arrange to get my G.E.D. since I knew Angel would need me around over the coming months and especially for today, whenever today came. I enrolled in the local community college last fall. Luckily, I don’t have any classes on Fridays this semester, so I won’t have to miss class to help her through this abomination. I am so angry that a small group of old men took away her ability to decide for herself, to control her own reproductive choices.

  I sat by Angel’s hospital bed all day. We’d checked in around 8:00 a.m. when she first said her contractions were getting stronger and it was now just before midnight. The room was nice, with a couch and oversized faux-leather chair in the corner and bright flowers painted on the walls. Most of the time, we just talked about everything and nothing. Sometimes she dozed off.

  When we first got situated in the room, Angel was in a talkative mood. I think she felt the need to talk about things now that her ordeal was about to be over.

  “Did I ever tell you what happened at the winter dance at school?” Angel asked. The high school insists on holding this schoolwide rite of passage every December, despite the discomfort it causes to ninety-eight percent of students, whose attendance is mandatory and who stand—embarrassed, bored, or both—along the walls of the gymnasium until they’re allowed to go home.

  “No. What happened?” My blood pressure rose and my mind flashed to an image of me storming the high school and kicking the asses of whomever hurt my sister.

  “Well, you know how those dances are. I was just hanging out in the bleachers and having a cup of punch, talking with Cindy and Tina, when a bunch of guys came over to where we were sitting.” Her eyes started to well up, but she pushed through. “I was showing quite a bit by then. Some senior leered at me and said something about how, since I clearly put out, maybe he’d break his rule and date me even though I’m just a freshman. Then all his buddies piled on. Did I want to go out back? Or behind the bleachers? A couple of guys showed me that they had condoms. It was gross.”

  “Oh, Angel, I am so sorry.”

  “They were so mean. They called me ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ and made lewd gestures.”

  “Did they… touch you? Who was it? I can go to the school and get them suspended or expelled. Or—”

  “No, luckily one of the teachers came over and broke things up. She could see I was upset, so she sat with me for a bit. I think she teaches A.P. Gov.”

  “Mrs. Miller?” I asked, pretty sure it was her. She was a great teacher and a really nice lady.

  “Yeah, that’s right. She was so kind to me. I made her a friendship bracelet, remember?”

  “I do,” I said. Angel had put so much work into it.

  “Listen, Hope, I need you to promise me that you’ll become a doctor or a researcher or something. You have to promise me that you’ll try to help other girls like me. It’s been so horrible. You have no idea. It’s so unfair that I’ve had to live through this. I didn’t do anything wrong! You’ve always been the smart one. I need you to promise me that you’ll figure out a way so other girls don’t have to go through what I went through, what I’m going through.”

  I had no idea what Angel expected of me and no idea what anyone could do, let alone me, but I promised. And I meant it.

  Over lunch—a small piece of poached salmon for Angel and a tuna fish sandwich from the cafeteria for me—we talked about Mom, something we rarely did.

  “Do you forgive her for leaving?” Angel asked at one point. Angel, who wasn’t even twelve years old at the time, was furious with our mother when she left, but she says that she’s forgiven her.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not very good at forgiveness.” I took a sip of my Diet Coke. “But I understand why she left, I think.”

  She was about to get angry with me just for saying that, so I said, “You know, Mom didn’t date at all after Dad left. I mean, I don’t think she did. She certainly never had anyone over, at least when we were around. I think she was really, really lonely. So when she met Norberto, it changed her life. She was ha
ppy for the first time in a really long time.”

  Angel took a bit of her salmon. For hospital food, it looked pretty good. “Do you think they would have gotten married?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. They loved each other, that’s for sure, but Dad leaving kinda turned her off from marriage. We’ll never know because President Spencer started his so-called ‘Move to National Greatness’ nonsense. I was only thirteen, I think, and I didn’t watch the news then like I do now, but Spencer talked openly about ethnically cleansing the United States. Of course, he didn’t use those words, but his intentions were clear. He constantly repeated his campaign promise to purge every illegal alien from the country if he got elected.”

  “And then he got elected,” Angel said, heartache and resignation evident in her voice.

  “Norberto was deported six months later, remember?” I finished off my sandwich and took another swig of my soda. “Mom loved him and she loved us, but she felt so strongly about how wrong Spencer was that she decided she had to do something about it, that she had to fight him and his hateful policies.”

  “So when Spencer was elected—”

  “She left the very next day,” I said. She’d always been into politics and I guess this was the straw that led her camel to Washington. “I was angry and sad back then, too, just like you, but Mom said something to me the day she left that I’ll never forget. She said, ‘Anyone not outraged is not paying attention. You need to start paying attention.’ So I started watching the news every night, like she used to. Then I started reading news blogs and stuff like that. I don’t understand everything, but I think I understand what she meant, and I think she was right. She got her job in Washington just three days after arriving there, did you know that? She wants to make a difference, and I’ve come to respect that.”

  “But why isn’t she here, now? I mean, I’m only fourteen years old!” Angel was raising her voice now.

  I gently smoothed her hair with my hand. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But when she came last summer, she made it pretty clear she wasn’t going to be able to come back out, that she could only take a limited amount of time away from work.” I hated my mother for not being here to help us through this. Angel sure could use the help. Hell, so could I.

  We paused our conversation when the nurse came in to take Angel’s vital signs and another woman came in to clear her lunch dishes. I think we were both happy for the interruption.

  At one point, the conversation turned to Derek.

  “I can’t believe they didn’t believe me,” Angel said, her voice quivering. “I said ‘no.’ So many times.”

  It was a classic “he said, she said” case; her word against his. He claimed that she flirted with him, kissed him, and let him touch her. That she wanted it to happen. His lawyer made a big deal out of the fact that her dress was so revealing. The jury, mostly antediluvian fossils, mostly men, didn’t seem to understand that Angel’s protestations needn’t have started from the very beginning, that she was allowed to decide to say “no” at any point. Derek had walked, the fucker. Thankfully, Todd’s family moved out of the area; I think they realized Angel and I would not be able to take seeing Todd around school. Todd’s dad apologized, tears and snot flowing freely down his face, before getting in his car and driving his family and packed Ford F-250 truck out of town. Todd sat crying in the back seat, his fingertips pressed to the window.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget his hand over my mouth,” Angel whispered. Tears slid down her cheeks. “He was so strong. Then… It hurt so much. And then it was over, just like that. He just zipped up his pants and walked away, leaving me there. The whole thing took less than a minute and now here I am, forced to give birth to a baby that’s part monster.”

  I smoothed her hair with my hand again to calm her. “Shh,” I whispered repeatedly until she finally drifted off to sleep.

  At midnight, the overnight labor and delivery nurse, a sweet heavyset woman with oversized scarlet glasses, declared that Angel wasn’t producing enough oxytocin, perhaps because she was so young. She administered Pitocin and Angel went into labor almost immediately. Angel was in so much pain, but the nurse assured me that everything was fine. She paged the doctor so he could deliver the baby.

  Angel crushed my hand in hers every time she had a contraction. Less than forty-five minutes later, she gave birth to a baby girl, Isabelle, who was technically Angel’s daughter and my niece despite the fact that Angel was immediately giving the baby up for adoption. I recommended that she not give the baby a name, but she’d insisted. “She needs a beautiful name,” she’d said.

  As my hand recovered, the nurse administered the Apgar test to the baby. Within just a minute or two, I could tell something was wrong by the way the nurse and doctor whispered with seriousness in their tones.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Isabelle’s Apgar score is low,” the nurse said. “We’re going to need to monitor—”

  The doctor cut in, “Her skin is too pale and she’s not breathing regularly. Her pulse rate is way too low.” Before I could say anything, she added, “Stay here with your sister. We have to resuscitate the baby and get her into surgery.” The doctor and nurse rushed out of the room with the baby.

  “What? What’s happening, Hope?” Angel said, barely coherent.

  “I don’t know, Angel. There’s something wrong with the baby and they’re going to help her. Right now, all you need to do is rest.”

  I ran my hand over Angel’s forehead and the top of her head to soothe her. It took a while, but she eventually dozed off. I must have too because the next thing I knew I opened my eyes and Angel was shaking uncontrollably.

  “Angel! Angel!” I screamed. Her eyes were wide open but she seemed to be staring out into nothingness; I couldn’t get her attention. She started to shriek.

  “Help! Doctor!” I yelled toward the door. “Something’s wrong! Somebody help my sister!”

  Angel was holding the right side of her stomach and screaming. Her hair was matted down from sweat and she looked so uncomfortable. Then she leaned away from me and vomited over the side of the bed. Finally a different nurse came in. A moment later a different doctor followed her into the room.

  “Her blood pressure is through the roof,” the doctor said after glancing at Angel’s vitals. “Administer a quarter of a mic of sodium nitroprusside.”

  I sat and watched as the doctor and nurses tried to save Angel. I was terrified, but also mesmerized by their competence and composure. Less than an hour later I heard her heart monitor emit a constant high-pitched tone. My little sister was dead.

  Later, the doctor came back and told me that Angel died from a particularly bad case of eclampsia, something that was extraordinarily rare. My diagnosis was simpler: My sister died because she was raped and then forced to give birth to a child while still just a child herself. Tears streamed from my cheeks. I wanted to scream but somehow I was unable.

  As if to cheer me up, the doctor told me that despite complications from some kind of congenital malformation, baby Isabelle would survive.

  I’m not sure how or when I got there, but I sat on the floor in the corner of the hospital room. I had my hands on the top of my head and my head between my knees, rocking. Tears dripped freely from my cheeks.

  “Poor girls,” I heard one nurse say to another. They looked to be cleaning up the table where the doctor first tried to help Isabelle.

  “That horrible court ruling last summer is ruining so many young girl’s lives. Children should be born of hope, not despair.”

  “These men don’t seem to care at all,” the first nurse replied. “Can you imagine how different it would be if men could get pregnant?”

  “Ha! Either mankind would end because men are pussies and wouldn’t be able to take it, or every anti-birth control and anti-abortion law would be overturned in a heartbeat.”

  “Amen, sister.”

  I rocked in the corner, in my own litt
le world, a world that had just shrunk considerably. I looked over and saw Angel’s overnight bag under a new, empty bed that had been wheeled into the room at some point after they transported Angel’s body to the morgue. Peeking out the top of the bag was Xander, Angel’s kitten. It looked like I was going to have to take care of him after all.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday, September 8

  Hope’s Apartment

  Redwood City, California

  Two years, seven months later

  Just a block off busy El Camino Real, a boulevard that ran along the eastern side of the San Francisco peninsula, Hope’s five-hundred square foot, one-bedroom apartment in a sketchy part of Redwood City was walking distance to a neighborhood grocery store, a Mexican food restaurant that reeked of lard, and an adult book store. She’d found the place on her very first full day in the Bay Area, motivated by a restless night in an awful motel up the street, and while she wished the run-down, three-story building was in a better part of town, she knew she needed to pinch her pennies. Now, after just two weeks and having to buy mountains of textbooks and supplies for her first year at Stanford Medical School, Hope realized that even with her scholarship and the research grant money she received from working at the neonatal research lab at the hospital, she’d need extra income.

  While Hope finished getting dressed, her phone buzzed, and she saw that it was a message from the private detective she’d hired the day she received her scholarship. She’d made a promise to herself that she’d eat tuna fish for dinner every day if necessary in order to afford the man’s services. The detective told her that his first order of business would be to figure out Derek’s last name—Hope didn’t know it—and that after that he could go about trying to find him. She wasn’t even sure what she would do once she found Derek, but she felt compelled to confront him.