by Unknown
“Who’d like to share?” asks Brianna. Today she wears her clunky sandals and a shapeless maroon sweaterdress that is too heavy for outside, but perfect for the chilly canned air of the Family Foundations building.
Jen raises her hand, tucking her silky mousy hair behind her large white ear, preparing herself for the stage. “An education.” Jen smiles, anticipating Brianna’s praise. A cross dangles from her neck, and in the lobes of those stuck-out ears, diamond studs glint. Even though Angel knows they probably aren’t real, knows she could get a pair herself at the mall, she’s still jealous.
“Right,” drawls Lizette. “Education. I forgot that one.” Angel grins and tries to telegraph her approval to Lizette, but Lizette’s beautiful green eyes are half closed like a lizard’s.
On her left hand, Jen wears a promise ring with a dinky little amethyst. “It’s my birthstone,” she said, as if none of the rest of them were born in months with birthstones. She is going to marry her boyfriend Jared, whom she met at church and who picks her up every afternoon when Smart Starts! lets out. He’s a senior and works after school installing car stereos, and once he’s paused at the curb, he never gets out of the car or even looks up, just attends to his own stereo while Jen climbs in.
Not that Angel’s own child’s father is any better than a car-stereo-installing Christian. Her stomach churns whenever she thinks of Ryan Johnson, the way, in geometry, he always sat in the front row, grimacing up at the board. He always raised his hand to answer questions, but was only correct about fifty percent of the time. It seemed crazy to Angel to keep putting yourself out there like that, but the next time Mrs. Esposito asked a question, there he was, long skinny arm swinging in the air.
“Hey,” he told her breathlessly once in the hall after class. “I thought of a name for you. A math name.” For weeks he called her Angle. Or sometimes, delighting himself still further, Obtuse Angle. He was so persistent she felt embarrassed for him, which, along with the tequila shots, explains why she slept with him. Her embarrassment also explains, perhaps, why she hasn’t told him the baby is his.
Angel’s back aches, her legs ache, she has to pee every four seconds. She’s a manatee. She doesn’t know how she can stand to get any bigger.
Jen sits up straighter in her seat and her frown deepens. Speaking directly to Brianna, she says, “For success, I also need to maintain my relationship with Jesus and make my baby have one, too.”
Angel pictures Jen forcing a recalcitrant toddler into the arms of a horrified Jesus. The Jesus looks exactly like her dad, and she laughs out loud.
Brianna catches Angel’s eye and betrays the tiniest smile, and Angel’s cheeks heat. “Thanks, Jen,” says Brianna, and writes Education on the whiteboard, the felt-tipped marker squeaking.
Jen’s parents are still together and teach at the community college, where Jen, their only child, can go for basically free once she gets her GED. They’ve already started a college fund for Jen’s baby. She’s always bragging about how in the beginning her parents kept trying to buy her an abortion, but she wouldn’t let them because she is a Christian now.
“Could you please put up the part about Jesus?” Jen strokes her tidy belly through her pink-striped maternity shirt. “I’ve been entrusted with this beautiful little life, and if I’m going to be a success, I need to love and care for it as Jesus loves and cares for me.”
Lizette snorts. “Was Jesus loving and caring for you when you were bumping uglies with that dumb boyfriend of yours?”
“Lizette,” warns Brianna, syllables clipped, but a surge of dislike has already been unleashed among the members of the class.
“You’re not special, Jen,” says Christy.
“Yeah,” says Trinity. “We’re all Christians here.”
“Ooh, umbers,” singsongs Lizette. “Jen’s getting taught.”
“No,” says Jen, face flushing. “Like half of you are Catholics, and Catholics aren’t Christian, exactly.”
“Are you joking?” Angel surprises herself with her cry of incredulity, but, after all, she is something of an expert after her father’s Good Friday shenanigans. “Anyone who believes in Christ is a Christian. It’s the main definition.”
Now Lizette looks over her shoulder at Angel and gives a wry half-smile. Angel’s happiness is like a ball popping to the surface of a clean pool. It bobs there, glinting in the sunlight. Jen stares forward, face splotched.
“That is true,” says Brianna. “And anyway, I’m agnostic. But, girls, let’s please stay on task. What’s something else you can do to make your futures better?”
“Sleep,” says Tabitha sadly, aged seventeen and due next month, already possessed of a nineteen-month-old who is known in the baby room for his powerful lungs and disinclination to nap. “I never get no sleep.”
“Good. Yes, sleep is essential. Self-care in general. Other thoughts?”
Ysenia raises her hand.
Brianna nods encouragingly. “Ysenia.”
Ysenia is a pretty girl who, in Angel’s opinion, shouldn’t try so hard. A tiny pimple on her chin is more noticeable for having been spackled over in foundation, and her mascara is clotted so thick that it seems an effort to hoist her eyelids open. Her black hair is streaked in dramatic blond highlights that her sister does for her with an at-home kit Ysenia claims is just as good as a salon. “Marry a rich guy,” she says.
This sounds good to Angel. Her mother once told her that it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich guy as a poor one. Not that Marissa would know—along with the rest of his personality deficiencies, Mike isn’t rich. The problem, her mother conceded with a sigh, is meeting one.
Angel starts to add rich guy to her own list, but catches Brianna’s expression. Instead of that smile of bright approval with which she usually rewards classroom participation, Brianna presses her lips and gives an equivocating waggle of her head. Marry a rich guy is, apparently, the wrong answer.
“Well,” Brianna says, “that’s one thought, Ysenia. I like that you’re thinking of The Practicals, of how to get the resources you need to live day to day. But if you’re dependent on someone else for those things, then you aren’t developing the skills you need to provide for yourself. And if that rich guy, I don’t know, leaves or dies or divorces you, or proves to be a bad partner so that you have to leave him, then you’re right back where you started.”
“But he’d have to give me alimony,” Ysenia points out. “He’d have to pay child support.”
“Sure,” snorts Christy, scratching flakes of neon orange nail polish off her stubby thumbnail. “Because guys pay child support. Guys are super at that.”
“He’d be rich. Of course he’d pay. It would be no big deal if he was rich.”
“If he was rich,” Christy says, “he’d have lawyers and he’d know how to get out of it. You wouldn’t see a cent.” She goes back to denuding her nails. Her desk and thighs are covered in orange flakes.
“True,” chimes Trinity.
Brianna’s head is tilted thoughtfully. Angel presumes she is trying to work out how to validate Ysenia’s point and at the same time crush it and move on. The girls are aware that Brianna handles them with kid gloves, acknowledges points of view that are foolish or plain wrong, lets slip pretty gaping lapses of logic, just to instill in them some sense of self-efficacy. Sometimes they say dumb stuff on purpose, just to watch her perform the intellectual acrobatics necessary to at once validate and correct. It can be very entertaining.
Angel is pretty sure they’re all imagining this man in his slim wool suit and narrow black shoes, looking like a Banana Republic model, and it strikes her as unfair that they’re passing these judgments on him just because he’s square-jawed with soft-focus eyes and a leather wallet filled with platinum cards.
Angel also feels sorry for Ysenia, having to defend what is, objectively, a good idea. Because who’s to say Mr. Banana Republic would definitely be a dick? He might be decent. And they’re all speaking hypothetically an
yway—any discussion of their futures is by definition hypothetical—so why not let Ysenia marry some hypothetical rich guy who happens not to be a dick?
If they’re going to be strictly realistic, then, yes, Mr. Banana Republic probably has other plans for his life than taking care of Ysenia and her not-very-attractive eight-month-old infant, and if by some miracle Ysenia does convince him to marry her, then, yes, it’s probably just a matter of months before he fucks her over. But if they’re going to be strictly realistic, then they might as well acknowledge that number seven on Angel’s list, A job, is unlikely to end up being the kind of job that will cover food, rent, health insurance, child care, utilities, and car payments, and also allow her to sock ten percent away into her savings account. At least not at first.
Angel tries to get up the courage to defend Ysenia—after all, Brianna has told them that It takes a village, and Don’t underestimate the power of community, and Remember, people are resources, too!—but the thought of contradicting Brianna makes her nervous.
Lizette takes a long drink from her water bottle before dropping it hard on the desk. The gesture isn’t aggressive, simply careless, but it’s loud. “You’re the one who said we had to get us a support system, miss,” says Lizette. “I don’t see what’s the matter with getting a rich support system.”
Yes, thinks Angel, vindicated. Her point exactly.
“There’s nothing the matter with it, Lizette. Please raise your hand.” Brianna moves over to the list of rules, which they arrived at collaboratively with quite a bit of directorial input from Brianna, and taps number three: Raise your hand during discussion so we all have a voice. Brianna turns to the class. “I hope you’ll all be fulfilled in your relationships, but today I want us to focus on the things that you, right now, can do to improve your lives and your babies’ lives. We’re going to set our goals and lay out a game plan for how to achieve them.” She smiles expectantly.
Ysenia slouches in her chair, her gold-digging aspirations deflated.
Angel watches Lizette, who gazes out the window, conveying with her posture, her expression, her every cell, that nothing will make her ever care about anything, ever. In the curve of her cheek, the full poutiness of her lips, she looks younger than seventeen. Angel wonders when Lizette was last hugged, when someone last made her dinner.
All this talk of marriage is depressing. Angel is a kid. She doesn’t want to get married, not yet, maybe not ever, not even to a Banana Republic model. She wants to be in her house, her own house, with her mother, wants to make hamburgers in the frying pan and eat them together out on their little concrete patio in the white plastic chairs that warp when you sit. They’d bring the whole jar of pickles, dig them out of the juice with their fingers, the way they used to before Mike moved in and informed them it was disgusting.
9. My mom. I need my mom.
The other girls rustle their backpacks, and Angel looks with disappointment at the clock. Apparently, they’ll have to come up with their game plans another day, because school’s over. These activities always seem to end just before Angel learns exactly how to reach her goals. All around her, the girls are jabbering and slamming their desks, rubbing pregnant bellies and going to fetch babies from the nursery. Angel doesn’t close her journal yet.
Sometimes she imagines grand successes for herself. She’ll take her free five credits at the community college, become a doctor and, from there, a consultant on talk shows. She’ll have beautiful clothes and a stylist. She’ll listen sympathetically to the guests, then offer compassionate and intelligent advice, using her own difficult youth as an example. The faces of the audience will soften in admiration and sympathy as she puts forth her story with matter-of-fact grace.
More often, though, she spins a romantic story around her failure: the tragedy of her wasted gifts and a youth cut short. It’ll be hard, raising a baby. Everyone says it, and Angel believes them. But raising a baby has to be easier than figuring out what her gifts are. She’s pretty good at algebra, for example, and likes solving logic puzzles, but are these enough to build a career? With a baby on the way, a lot, suddenly, is settled. It turns out Angel will not be graduating with her class or moving to Albuquerque or New York. Chances are, Angel will not, as her aunt and cousin have surmised, be attending college.
At the front of the classroom, Brianna arches into a graceful yogic stretch, her thin ponytail tracing down her spine. Then she swings her enormous backpack over her shoulder.
“You okay, Angel?”
Angel is surprised to find her chin trembling, and then her eyes spill over.
“Hey. What’s up?” Brianna moves swiftly toward her and places a hand on her back, peers into her face.
“I don’t have my game plan.” Angel brushes a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. “My mom won’t even call me.” The baby twists in her womb.
Brianna is watching her, holding her in her attention, and the sadness in her expression sends a shock of fear through Angel. “I know.” But then she seems to rouse herself. “Listen,” she says with urgency. Her smile has vanished. She sets her backpack on the carpet. “I need to say something. I know that what you’re doing is fucking terrifying.”
Angel is surprised by the swearword, but more by the vehemence in her tone.
“But you’re doing it, and I know you’ll continue to do it. I know that your living situation has changed, Angel. But you need to make a commitment to yourself that when the people around you let you down, you will not believe you are a person who deserves to be let down, that you will not in turn let yourself down.” Brianna stands with her hand clamped on Angel’s shoulder, and Angel can’t meet her teacher’s eyes. She stares at her journal, her words smeared.
“You’re already making good choices. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re staying away from drugs and alcohol, you’re eating well and getting good sleep for that baby, you’re making plans for a future that’s worthy of you both.”
“But I made bad choices.”
Brianna laughs. “Everyone has. You’re a good kid, Angel. I like you.” She gestures around the classroom. “Your friends like you.”
Brianna’s kindness is like the too-rich chocolate lava cake Angel had once with her mom and Mike in Santa Fe, when things were still good, delicious and too sweet to take in. She nods, her throat clotted with sadness and joy and fear and exhilaration.
Brianna squeezes Angel’s shoulder again. “But now it’s time to go home.”
Angel places a hand at the top of her stomach, right where the baby’s rump is wedged. Seeing her goals listed there, on the notebook in front of her, it all seems manageable. Not easy, of course—Angel is no fool—but manageable. She has her learner’s permit, after all, and just needs to take her test for her license. And she’s well on her way to a GED right this minute. She thinks about the day when she’ll be able to cross each item off her list.
And number nine: my mom. The baby will be born soon, and then her mother will have to come find Angel. She’ll be so happy to see the baby that she will see how wrong she was about Mike. She’ll scoop Angel up and bring her home, bring both of them home. The chasm of silence will close over. Her mother will teach her what she needs to know to raise this baby. Angel just needs to hold out until then.
She shuts her journal and tucks it into her purse. She’s still blinking away tears, but her spirits are high. There were times in this last year when she’d lie in bed at night, rigid with worry because she couldn’t imagine knowing how to do adult things like balance a checkbook or get a lease, much less find a job or go to college in Albuquerque or in some other, bigger city she knows even less. But everything she needs is enumerated in nine points on a piece of ruled paper in her composition book, and the list seems only barely more daunting than a grocery list. In Brianna’s class, the forbidding requirements of adulthood—and not just adulthood, but parenthood—are a matter of incremental, deliberate steps.
Brianna. Brianna will be her baby’s go
dmother. Angel is amazed that this hasn’t occurred to her until now. Brianna is inspiring. She knows everything about babies and about The Practicals, she’s childless, and she likes Angel. And in choosing her, Angel will lay claim to her, make her more hers than any of the other girls’, ensuring that Brianna will stay in her baby’s—and by extension, Angel’s—life forever.
It’s late afternoon when the UPS truck eases down the driveway. Amadeo meets the guy outside and circles to the back with him.
“It’s going to be a big box,” Amadeo says helpfully as the UPS man—Darnell, according to the name tag—raises the back with a clatter and starts inspecting boxes. “It’s my new career.”
Darnell shrugs, probably pissed about having to drive his giant truck all this way on the broken-up old roads.
“My business is called Creative Windshield Solutions. Windshield repair. If you ever need any work done, let me know.”
The UPS man nods agreeably but doesn’t smile. “Got it.” He hands down an unwieldy and suspiciously light carton.
“Hold on, hold on. Let me get you my card.”
Amadeo leaves the carton on the step. By the time he returns with the brand-new box of a thousand business cards, Darnell is backing down the driveway.
“Here! Wait!” cries Amadeo, and runs after him waving his card, but Darnell merely glances at him, shifts into drive and takes off, sending gravel shooting behind him.
Inside, Amadeo drags the box across the living room carpet and slits it open to reveal a large gray plastic toolbox.
As he snaps open the flimsy latches, he’s filled with excitement. The toolbox is divided into compartments, and there’s a sheet of labels to stick on each compartment according to a diagram. Everything is individually wrapped in plastic: the awl, the little bottles of resin, suction cups, and sheets of plastic film. A palm-sized battery-operated drill, a clear box full of razor blades. Amadeo bought the add-on, too, the long-crack repair kit in what looks like a pencil case, for three hundred bucks more.