|
View this writing in the free John T. Hitchner chapbook 
Not Far From Here.
|
 |
you can also get this writing as a 6" x 9" perfect bound book! click on the image or follow the link below to order Not Far From Here |
|
| ||
|
Order this writing in the book (bound) cc&d poetry edition |
 |
order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 8.5" x 11" ISBN# book |
| ||
They meet in front of coffee shops or convenience stores. They stand beside their baby carriages and push them back and forth, back and forth, and talk about who’s still together, who’s split; who got in trouble with the cops, who’s getting out next week, and, “When’s she due?”
I recognize some of them. I remember their names, even their final grades in my classes the years they dropped out.
Bonnie dropped out the week before Thanksgiving her junior year. The day before Christmas vacation began, she brought her baby to class. The boys slumped in their seats and watched; the girls gathered around Bonnie and her baby. “She’s so cu-u-ute,” they smiled. Bonnie glowed in their attention.
“Wanna hold her?” she asked me. “Her name’s Holly. I wanted to name her something to do with Christmas. She’s the best present I ever got.”
I held Bonnie’s baby, soft and light as blankets in my arms, and I wondered about the future of this young mother and her child. I had no answers.
One morning last spring I saw Bonnie again. She sat smoking a cigarette and talking with a friend on the brick wall in front of Mac’s Gas Mart. The friend pushed a baby carriage back and forth, back and forth. The infant sucked a pacifier.
“This’s Taryn,” Bonnie said to me, nodding toward her friend.
I said hello to Taryn and then asked Bonnie, “How’s Holly?”
“She’s somethin’ else. You oughta see her, she’s growin’ like a weed. My boyfriend’s watchin’ her right now. It’s her nap time.”
“How are things with you?” I asked her.
Taryn nodded to me and asked, “J’you know she’s gonna have another kid?”
Later, I wondered if Bonnie had seen surprise and sadness in my eyes and heart as I said, “Well congratulations!”
But now her eyes shifted from customers at Mac’s front door. She turned back to me. “Yeah, my boyfriend and I, we weren’t planning on it, but that’s the way it goes. Anyway,” she shrugged, “I’m gonna try an’ start night school if he can work first shift. If he can’t, guess I’ll have to wait. You know how it is.”
I did know. I had seen other Bonnies and Taryns bring their infant sons and daughters to school, to bask in attention and affections and then say goodbye and leave for the street and for homes, where maybe another mother and maybe another father waited for them. They wanted to be good mothers, these Bonnies and Taryns, but I wondered if their eyes and faces would soon show fatigue and lines and answers to problems they did not want to admit to themselves; the same fatigue and lines and answers they had seen in their own mothers and fathers.
When I came out of Mac’s Gas Mart that spring day, I saw Bonnie and Taryn walk toward the street. Taryn pushed the baby carriage. Bonnie walked beside her, her hand a protective guide on the carriage.
