Inkwork
Even the stupidest people you know can become parents. I reminded myself of this when I accidentally
got pregnant at 23. I was unmarried and
scared. I would have been more scared
except I worked with someone who was a good example of how stupid you can be
and still give birth to and raise great kids.
This woman and I worked at a magazine. Once in a while, I’d go help with typesetting
when there was a crunch. All the stupid
woman did was typesetting. That was her
only job. Even so, it didn’t stop her
from asking me how to do things. She
asked me the same things every time. I
was only filling in. Typesetting was all
she did.
If she could go through labor, twice, and not lose her kids
while shopping for groceries, then so could I.
People have been doing it for years.
You don’t need degrees or anything.
You get up to nine months of advance notice; plenty of time to
straighten your life out if necessary.
It worked for me, so it’s what I told Charlie’s daughter
when she found herself in the same situation.
She’d been told all her life she couldn’t have kids. Charlie’s sister can’t have kids,
either. Girl problems run in the family,
in more ways than one.
When Jennifer, Charlie’s daughter, kept throwing up everyone
wondered why she had the flu for so long.
She said, “What kind of flu makes your boobs bigger?” She took a pregnancy test and wrote her
boyfriend a note. She was surprised he
stuck around. They didn’t know each
other that well.
Every decision she has made since then has been better than
mine in the same situation. She didn’t
call everyone and cry, begging for sympathy.
She didn’t coerce everyone into helping her out. She didn’t tell anyone at all, really. She figured it was her responsibility. That’s not the conclusion I made.
Charlie left her Mom when she was very young. When she’d visit he says she was, “Kind of
whiny, kind of messy, didn’t really listen to you about things, just like any
other kid.”
Her Mom got transferred to a dead city in another state
right when Jennifer turned 16. “Moving
like that, being uprooted, she did what anyone would do: she rebelled,” Charlie
says. “She joined a skinhead group and
lived on the streets. When we’d talk on
the phone, she wouldn’t say much except, ‘You represent the government and I
don’t like the government.’ We didn’t
talk for years.”
Charlie decided he’s the adult and she’s the kid, so he made
another effort to get her back into his life.
She responded this time. She was
still a bit cold and talked too much about drinking and drugging, but at least
she talked.
She’d kept in touch with Charlie’s Mom who told us her arms
were coated with tattoos. When I got to
meet her during our road trip last Fall, I’m glad I had a warning or I’d have
been too busy looking at her arms to get to know her. With that much inkwork, it’s hard not to
stare. She’s so pretty and she has so
many tattoos, she gets noticed wherever she is.
She didn’t call for a while, so Charlie wondered what was
going on. When he did call, she said, “Boy
do I have news for you.” He said only
that he was proud of her for making good choices in a tough situation. It’s hard enough to have a baby when you plan
for it; it’s scary when you didn’t think you had this option.
She started to take vitamins and take care of herself. She did a lot of thinking about what would be
best for the miracle baby. She made lots
of plans.
Because we were receptive, and because her Mom took the news
in a different way, she decided to move closer to Eugene.
That was last week.
We picked her up at the airport and drove her down to Eugene, where her
boyfriend was staying with friends. She
lost a lot of weight and even though she sounded tough and confident, there
were moments when you could see the fear in her eyes.
Even though I’d only met her once before, it was hard to
miss. She told me, “I think you’re the
only person who’s excited about this baby besides me.” That’s when I told her even stupid people can
be good parents.
We drove down again on Sunday. She wanted to go swimming, but we don’t know Eugene well enough to
find somewhere to get wet. We told her
we’d take her out to lunch instead.
We got there late, being us and getting lost, and we sat
around and talked until she said, “Hey, I’m hungry.” Her boyfriend was too sick to join us. Cancer runs in his family and he’s pretty
sure he has stage three testicular cancer.
He took a nap while we drove around Eugene trying to find a place to eat.
How hard can it be to find somewhere to have lunch in a
University town? Late in the afternoon
on a Sunday it can be pretty near impossible.
We drove around and around and stopped at places which would be open
anywhere else but not here. We found one
place after about an hour, got inside and looked at the menu. Jennifer said, “Do we really have to eat
sandwiches? I’ve been eating nothing but
sandwiches in the motel all week.” We
got up and walked out.
We looked at maps and city guides and asked around. Nothing was open. We walked up and down hopeful streets
without saying much. There was no one on
the streets except for one guy sitting on the sidewalk. When he saw Jennifer, he stood up and said,
“Can I check out your inkwork?”
She isn’t used to our Oregon
friendliness. She stood there with her
arms out like she was at the airport being screened. After a minute or two he said, “Thank you,”
and sat back down on the sidewalk. We
kept walking.
By this time restaurants were opening up again for dinner so
we found a fancy place. She seemed to
like all the retirees there eating meat, even though she’s a moderate vegan
herself. She told us about a
conversation she had with an older lady in the bathroom and sounded
upbeat. She said, “I think I’ll get an
application on the way out. This would
be a nice place to work.”
Since the servers had to wear long sleeves, I figured she
could blend in pretty well. That is, if
she kept her hair down so they didn’t see the stars tattooed in front of her
ears. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.
Every now and then she got quiet and you could see the fear
coming back in her eyes. When I went off
to the bathroom, Charlie asked her, “How are you, really?”
“Scared.”
“Everything’s on your shoulders if your boyfriend can’t
work.”
“I know.”
She changed the subject back to relatives. She talked about visiting her cousin who
wanted to make caramel apples. The
cousin is a bit of an airhead and forgot to open the caramel before heating it
up. The whole thing blew up and caramel
exploded everywhere in her kitchen.
“Isn’t that just like her?” Jennifer said.
We bought her groceries and left. She promised to call when her boyfriend’s
test results came back but it’s been four days.
We worried and called her motel. The
clerk at the motel desk said, “She checked out this morning.”
If there's one thing worse than living in this dump, it's not living anywhere at all.
When she told us her plans, she said she didn’t want to stay
in this motel too long. “I want to get a
real place to live,” she said. “First I’ll find a job. I can do it.”
She's not stupid so we’re praying that’s exactly what happened. What else can we do?
11:39:49 PM 
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Thursday, July 22, 2004
