Daddy's Baby

by Landis Lain

  “Whatever,” said Charlene. She turned and stalked off, slamming out of the locker room door. The entourage hurried after her.

  “I can’t stand that girl,” said Kyzie, under her breath. “And that dumb boy is causing all kinds of problems.”

  “He can’t help being good looking,” said Brielle, watching Charlene and her girls walk off. She turned to her sister.

  “Yeah, but he can help throwing your name out there, like you’re perfect or something,” said Kyzie, with a snort.

  “You think he really told her she should act more like me?” asked Brielle, thrilled.

  “Yeah,” said Kyzie, rolling her eyes. “She’s too stupid to have thought it up by herself and he’s too stupid to have kept his opinion to himself.”

  “He’s not stupid,” said Brielle, offended.

  “Humph.”

  “You didn’t have to step in. I can take care of myself,” said Brielle, sullenly.

  “I know,” said Kyzie. “But you’re a lot bigger than she is. It would have looked like you were picking on her.”

  “True,” said Brielle, deflating. “Although, you’re bigger than she is, too.”

  “I’m cuter than you,” said Kyzie with a sidelong smile. “It wouldn’t have looked as bad.”

  “No, you are not,” said Brielle, smacking her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Besides,” said Kyzie, still looking at the door, “if she messes with you, she messes with me. It would be a gang beat down instead of a fight when Charlene got through telling it. Her little flunkies would probably be too scared to move. And we’d both get expelled.”

  “Thanks,” said Brielle, giving her sister a pat on the shoulder. Kyzie turned to face her. “It’s a good thing Charlene has no idea that you can’t fight.” Kyzie flashed an impish grin at her sister. Then, just as abruptly as it came, her amusement faded.

  “You watch yourself with that boy,” said Kyzie, flatly. She looked Brielle full in the face. “I’ve been hearing stuff about Damon all over school. Trouble follows him everywhere he goes.”

  Sasha

  “There is nothing here for a pregnant girl,” said the woman behind the counter. “We can’t take the chance. Too much liability, I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” said Sasha. She turned and walked out of yet another fast food restaurant. Here she was, five months pregnant, schlepping around Grand Rapids, searching for a job. The shelter required that everyone leave during the day, so even though Sasha was exhausted, she dragged her body up every day and went out looking for work. It was the same story over and over again. No one wanted to hire somebody who was short term, who might slip and fall or go into labor on the job.

  Sasha walked the two blocks to the bus stop. Her next ride would take her to the public library. At least there, she could read and escape her problems. Maybe she could go on the Internet and search for a job.

  The bus lurched and stank.

  Sasha got to the library and spent twenty minutes in the bathroom throwing up. Once finished, she rinsed her mouth by cupping water from the sink. She reached into her pocket and pulled out some peppermint gum. It was the only thing that kept her from being constantly queasy. She pulled her shrinking sweater down over her burgeoning belly. In a few days, this shirt was going to be too small, and she’d have to beg the shelter for some more clothes. She refused to contact her father again, even though the money that he’d given her had long since run out.

  Sasha headed down to the basement, where they kept the old books. Once there she picked a book from the shelves and went and sat in a corner. No one would bother her here. She would stay until five and then make her way back to the shelter in time for dinner. She opened the book and began to read.

  October

  Damon and Brielle

  “Why the big sigh?” asked Damon.

  “Just wondering,” said Brielle, leaning against Damon’s shoulder. She’d been thinking about how to approach Damon with the question for days. She finally decided to go with full frontal assault.

  “Why, all of a sudden, do you like me, when before, you would hardly speak to me?”

  “You’ve been the one acting all shy around me,” protested Damon.

  “Not acting,” said Brielle. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “You’re kind of fly,” said Damon, flashing a quick grin. “And you’re so beautiful.”

  They were sitting next to one another on the bench just outside the locker room. Brielle had just finished morning swim practice. Damon got to school a half hour early so that he could spend quiet time with Brielle. Since he worked most evenings and Brielle was in active swim competition, they rarely got to see each other and when they did see each other they were never alone. They talked on the phone every night until Brielle’s father threatened to take her cell phone away.

  “I’ve always been a beautiful young lady,” said Brielle, with a coy smile. “I mean I’m a little bigger and taller, but still the same. You’ve known me for years. What has changed?”

  “I don’t know,” said Damon. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker on the tile floor. “You were just one of my little sister’s friends. I didn’t really look at you like a real girl. Then you grew up.”

  “Oh,” said Brielle, sounding disappointed. “So now that I have grown a little more body you like me?”

  “That’s part of it,” admitted Damon. “But, you’ve grown up as a person. I’ve always talked to you. You never spoke back. Now, you’re talking back. You’ve matured.”

  “You’re only like a year older than me,” scoffed Brielle. “Less than that, ten months really. You probably learned to walk and spit raspberries before me, but that’s about it.”

  “I grew up a lot over this past year,” said Damon. “A year can make a big difference in experience.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Damon could say some of the deepest things. Sometimes it freaked Brielle out. Damon didn’t say anything, just stared across the hall at nothing. He sighed.

  “What’s going on?” asked Brielle.

  “Let me ask you a question,” said Damon. He hesitated, and then squared his shoulders. “Are you a virgin?”

  “Of course,” said Brielle. She pulled her sweat jacket closer around her slim shoulders and hugged herself. “I’m only sixteen. Aren’t you?”

  “No,” said Damon, looking her straight in the eyes.

  Brielle was disappointed. She wanted to be the first and only girl in Damon’s life. Even though people had been telling her about his prior girlfriend, Brielle had blocked out any information that wasn’t to Damon’s credit. She had already decided that Sasha was probably sleazy and deserved whatever treatment he’d dished out to her. Even Jada had told her about Damon’s crazy girlfriend last summer, but Brielle knew that Jada thought that Damon was a jerky older brother so she hadn’t really wanted to believe that he would dog any girl.

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked Brielle.

  She shrugged philosophically. A boy as fine as Damon must get girls sending him extraneous invitations over text message to get together for a little something every minute in the day. It was too much to hope for that he wouldn’t accept a few. Not from Brielle, of course. She was too scared.

  “Because,” said Damon. He moved closer and put his arm around Brielle’s rigid shoulders. She stiffened. “Relax, okay? I’m not going to rape you, girl.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You being a virgin is part of what I like about you,” said Damon. “You’re still pure and good. Sex makes stuff so complicated.”

  He looked across the hall at the cream colored cinder block walls, concentrating on a hanging sign, as though the answer to the world’s problems was printed there instead of a locker room use schedule.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I met this girl last year and she was all into me. She was a senior and at first I thought she was all that. When we had sex it was nice, you know. I lik
ed it. But, she kept telling me that she was in love with me and how we were going to be together forever. And I wasn’t into her like that. After a while, it made me feel like dirt.”

  “Oh,” said Brielle, nonplussed. Then she got indignant and frowned. “But if you weren’t in love with her, why did you have sex with her?”

  “The first time, it just happened,” he said, on a sigh. “She kept offering and it felt so good, I just kept going back for more. I never thought about it, about how she must be feeling. She was older than me and knew what she was doing. I just thought she was having a good time, too.”

  “So why didn’t you keep doing it?” asked Brielle, now more interested than upset.

  “Sasha started acting all crazy, like we were supposed to get married or something,” said Damon. “I’m sixteen. I kept trying to tell her that I wasn’t into her like that. But she kept leading me and giving it up and I just kept taking advantage of the situation, like I was doing her a favor or something. She’d start crying if I said no. It was like a drug that I just couldn’t let go of.”

  “Really?”

  “And then, one day, I woke up in a nightmare,” said Damon. “She kept calling me and writing me these notes. She’d go through my locker and tear up my pictures. You know, I had pictures of Jada and all her friends in there. She actually got bolt cutters and cut the lock.”

  “For real?”

  He nodded.

  “She fronted me off in the hall if I spoke to another girl. It was crazy. Sasha even got in Jada’s face before she figured out that she was my sister. I thought Jada was going to wreck on her.”

  “She sounds like a major stalker,” said Brielle.

  “She was,” said Damon. “I finally had to tell my parents. My father said the girl was unstable and to leave her alone.”

  “Did you?” asked Brielle.

  “I did,” said Damon, with a firm nod. “I was really mean to her and finally she left me alone. She cried every time I saw her. I felt like I destroyed her whole hook up. I felt like such a dog, even though she started everything.”

  “If you were sorry, did you apologize to her?”

  “No,” he said, and hung his head. “She would have thought that I wanted to be with her, and that wasn’t true. I didn’t think I should say I was sorry. I didn’t want to be with her like that, you know what I’m saying? If we weren’t kicking it, I didn’t want to be with her.”

  “Don’t touch me, anymore,” said Brielle, blinking back tears. Brielle slid out from under his arm. “That’s the worst thing anybody ever told me.”

  “I know,” mumbled Damon. He leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees and buried his face into his hands. “Later, I found out she was just using me to get back at her old boyfriend anyway.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me,” he said. “After I told her that I wasn’t feeling her like that. Then, later, her ex pulled a knife on me in school.”

  “Why’d you tell me this?” Brielle was angrier than she’d ever been in her whole life. She wanted to smack Sasha.

  He lifted his head and turned to look at her. She almost recoiled physically from the suffering in his eyes.

  “I know what’s going around school. I see the way you look at me, like you’re wondering. I really care about you,” he said. His voice broke and then he cleared his throat and started again. “I really care about you. I’ve known you a long time and I respect you, because you’re different. And I didn’t want to start with you without you knowing the truth.”

  “So, now I know,” said Brielle.

  “Now you know,” said Damon. “I was stupid. It’s been messing with my head ever since. I didn’t start out trying to dog her, but I did.”

  Brielle wasn’t given to making snap decisions. Especially when it came to people she loved. She hated to hurt anyone’s feelings and she’d been in love with Damon Hamilton for a long time. She needed time to think about what he’d told her.

  “I’ll understand if you don’t want to be my girl,” said Damon. “I won’t be mad or anything. Just don’t hate me.”

  Brielle sighed.

  “I could never hate you,” she said, a little sadly. “But, I need a little while to think about this.”

  “That’s straight,” said Damon, but he didn’t look like it was. He looked like he’d lost his last friend. Students were starting to file into the school building. The halls were getting to get noisy. Damon stood up.

  “I gotta go,” he said and sighed. “I’ll call you. You can tell me then if you want to be my girl or no. If your answer is no, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Brielle was silent, looking down at her lap. Damon Hamilton had just said that he wanted her to be his girl, didn’t he? She should be glowing inside, but all she felt was confusion.

  He reached out and tilted her chin up with one finger.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said with a slight nod.

  Sasha

  ‘Note to self: Next time I run away, have someplace to run to.’

  It was her second week in the shelter. Sasha kept to herself and rarely looked at the other residents. They mostly returned the favor but smiled at her or spoke in quiet soothing voices whenever they passed her in the hall. There were six other women and two children, a tiny boy and girl who sat in the room with their mother and never came out if there was anyone else in the common room.

  A few of the women were married. All were hiding from some knuckle dragger. Everyone one of them had bruises and pain filled eyes. Sasha looked into the mirror and stared back at those same eyes; eyes that had been dry for a week but still felt swollen from weeks of crying. Sasha wished that she had her make up. Red lips and smoky eyes would make her feel more real and less like she was about to disappear into despair. She washed her face and combed her hair and put it into a ponytail. She headed to the kitchen for breakfast and group therapy.

  “Good morning,” she said to the women standing at the stove, cooking eggs.

  “Hey Chica, you feeling a little better, today, eh,” said a short Latina women who had the biggest chest that Sasha had ever seen. She was pregnant, too and sported bruises on her arms and legs. Sasha wondered why she didn’t keep the bruises hidden under her clothes, yet the woman was always wearing some variation of a sleeveless house dress.

  “My name is Theresa.” She smiled shyly.

  “Sasha.”

  “It’s nice to finally meet you, eh?”

  “Yes, hi.”

  “Let me introduce you to everybody, officially, yes?” said Theresa.

  Breakfast consisted of fried eggs, bacon, toast and milk, which Sasha hated but forced herself to drink. The circle of women spoke to Sasha gently as though afraid that she would break if they spoke harshly. They didn’t act curious, as though they had already heard her story. After breakfast they walked as a group to the big shabby meeting room, where everybody took a chair and dragged it into a circle.

  When they were settled in the circle, Gail started off the meeting.

  “Today,” she said. “We are going to talk about choices.”

  “What kind of choices we got?” asked a tall white woman, who said her name was Heather. She was missing the teeth on the right side of her mouth so her words sounded slurred. “We in the shelter hiding from maniacs who want to kill us.”

  Every one of the other women murmured in agreement. Sasha listened but couldn’t really relate. She wasn’t a battered woman, was she? She wasn’t really that afraid of her mother. After hearing some of horrific stories the women shared, Sasha felt like a fraud to even be in the shelter. She tuned back in to the conversation wafting around her.

  “I feel like, you know,” said Theresa. “Like it was my fault. If I hadn’t made him so mad, he wouldn’t hit me. I could go back home.”

  The other women hooted her down.

  “Yeah, keep believing that,” said Heather. “You end up with a grill like mine.”

>   “Or worse,” said the black woman, pointing to her scarred face. “He got mad because I talked back. He got mad if I didn’t answer quickly enough when he asked me a question. You didn’t do nothing to make him mad, y’ all.”

  Sasha eyed the scar with revulsion. It ran from one eyebrow all the way to her lip and pulled at Avery’s face so that one side drooped.

  “Sasha,” said Gail. “You haven’t shared anything with us all week. Do you feel comfortable telling your story, today?”

  Everyone leaned forward eagerly, supportive and gentle.

  “It’s okay,” said the chubby white lady with dimples. She was Suzie. “We all have a story to tell.”

  “Mine is not like yours,” blurted Sasha. “I’m not running from anyone. My story is different. My boyfriend didn’t beat me up.”

  “Of course not,” said Suzie, dryly. “We’ve all ran into doors and fell down stairs.”

  Heather and Avery high fived.

  “I had a fight with my mother and she kicked me out.”

  “A fistfight?” asked Gail.

  “No,” said Sasha. “Mostly, she hit me and I ducked a lot.”

  “But not fast enough,” said Heather, with a grin. “We resemble that remark.”

  “That is not so funny, chica,” said Theresa. She glanced at her bruised arm.

  “Then, I went to my daddy’s, but he wouldn’t let me stay, either,” said Sasha, voice shaky with remembered agony. “His wife doesn’t like me. Daddy snuck me some money. He wasn’t even mad at mama for hitting me.”

  “Does your mama beat you up all the time?” asked Avery.

  “No, just that once.”

  “Got anything to do with that bun you got in the oven?” Avery nodded towards her stomach.

  “Everything,” said Sasha.

  “We’re sorry, honey,” said Avery, reaching over to pat her hand. “That happened to me, too. It’s how I ended up with Monster man. Didn’t have no place else to go, after my mom said I had to go.”