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The Dilemma

Kraig Gander

    “What am I going to do?” I ask myself. “I can barely support myself, let alone a child.” Glancing around the room, toys litter the floor. A little, red dog with wheels is sitting on top of the TV, and there is a pillow with a lion stitched on it laying on the floor. In order to lay on the blue, threadbare couch, I have to put my head on the armrest. The taste of the stale nacho cheese Doritos that I ate for supper still lingers in my mouth.
    Nothing is on TV. Click, click, click, I surf through the channels. “If I keep her, I don’t want her to grow up in this place. But, if I give her up for adoption, who knows what’ll happen to her?” Cigarette smoke finds its way into my nose from the apartment below. The smell is putrid, and my head begins to pound. “I definitely can’t let her grow up around that,” I say. Keeping her around is just selfish of me. Adoption could be the best chance for her. Who knows, she may get put into a family that has the means to care for her, unlike me. If I give her up, maybe I could see about getting visitation times or something like that. She’ll have to grow up without a mom if she stays with me. Adoption could give her both the parents that she will need. Click, click, click, the remote goes, my thumb softly pressing the buttons.
    What would happen if she stayed in the system though, and never got adopted? “Surely that wouldn’t happen to her.” It could though, and she’d have to grow up knowing that she was abandoned, because her parents couldn’t keep her. What would that do to her life? Would she become a junkie, and overdose in some alleyway? Tears find their way out of my eye, and run down my face. Click, click, click, the remote mocks me.
    From the next room, a baby rustling in her crib is like a slap to my face. “No I can’t give her up! She’s mine, and right before Molly died, I promised that I would keep her.” That’s what I’m going to do. I will keep my daughter! Tomorrow, I’ll call Mom and Dad, and apologize to them. They’ll take us back in, and everything will be alright. I let lose a contented sigh, and my eyelids, like heavy weights, finally begin to close.

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