I've known her for years. I met her daughter first. A beautiful little girl named India with huge hair and bright eyes. "Can I come to Sunday School, too?" I was out visiting and India had found me on my rounds.
"Sure! I'll have to talk to your mom first, though." So she brought me to her mom. Mom welcomed me in and talked to me about the Sunday School. She thought it was important if kids went to church, even if, like her, they one day realized they didn't need it any more. "We don't just outgrow Jesus," I told her. "No, no, of course not," she agreed, "I know God is important. I just don't really think it's for me."
But her daughter came to Sunday School anyhow. That wild hair and those bright eyes that were so intelligent. When India's two little siblings--a girl and a boy--got a little older she'd bring them too, though she wasn't that excited about it. "My mom said they have to come," she'd huff after taking forever to round herself and them up.
Not everything was smooth sailing in the home, of course. "Me and their dad? We never got married," mom told me, "there just wasn't a good time, and he's away now, of course."
Of course. He'd stolen a car (call me jaded, but at this point in my life stealing a car is hardly the worst offense, as far as I'm concerned) and been locked up for a while. The little boy hardly even knew his daddy, but that didn't stop him from talking about dad for weeks after their sporadic visits to the prison. Father's day came and went, more than once, but at least they
had a dad. They were pretty stable, as far as families go. "And we'll be getting married when he gets out," I would hear.
And then one day it happened. I had gone to their house, just to see if the kids were coming to Sunday School the following morning. "Miss Joanne?" It wasn't surprising to hear a strange man know my name--this happens all the time, though "Miss Church Lady" is the common moniker. "Yes, that's me!" I brightly introduced myself to this strange man, only to have him introduce himself right back at me as the kids' dad. "I've heard a lot about you, and I'm so glad you take my kids to church. They really need it, you know?"
He'd heard about me from jail. I think that was a scrapbookable first in my life.
I was happy to meet him, though. I'd heard about him a lot, too.
He and she and the kids were so happy. He was still on parole and couldn't live with them--the projects are not a place you're allowed to live right away, apparently. They knew they'd have hiccups, of course, but they'd stayed together a long time and they'd be fine. Their little family of five finally had a chance at a life together.
But they weren't. They weren't really together, and they definitely weren't fine. There were rifts that I didn't see for a while, but she confided in me one day that they weren't sure they could make it work. "What if we can't do it? I wanted my kids to have us both. And he's out now. They
should have us both. But we both changed so much when he was on the inside. Neither of us realized how different things were going to be."
After that, it was really just a matter of time, a matter of all the pieces finally falling down. His parole allowed him to move into a little place a little more towards the respectable side of town. Sometimes they would all go to stay with him. I'd go on a Saturday afternoon and she'd be alone in her little apartment. "I'm sorry, Miss Joanne. They're at they're dad's and I was going to go. But we fought, so I came home. I didn't want them to have to leave their dad's, though, so I let them stay over there. I hate for the kids to know we're having troubles. Try again next week."
She still had no use for God. She put herself into this unraveling mess, she told me. She'd take responsibility. This didn't have to do with God. This was just life.
"Maybe I shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place," she said, as if it might have fixed her issues. "But we were going to get married!"
Time passed and things formally ended. Now instead of working on the relationship, they worked on a schedule.
"You'll have the kids on weekends, and we'll do every other school holiday." That sort of thing.
"We'll start seeing other people." That sort of thing.
After all that time--and the beautiful, crazy-haired girl who'd wormed her way into my heart at age 6 was now a responsible young lady of 10--after all those years of promises to each other, things were changing. All the commitment they had felt was easily dissolved, because all those promises had been inked only in words, so easily spoken, so conveniently put aside.
She spent a lot of weekends away, after that. India and the two younger ones were at dad's, and she'd go to stay with her
own mother, looking for stability and an understanding heart. But then the time came when I noticed that she was around more, and I kept hearing from others in the neighborhood "Did you hear that she's together with Anton?"
I knew Anton, of course. I know a lot of them. Spend lazy Saturday afternoons anywhere and you become as much of a fixture as the next person, even if they mostly think your name is "Miss Church Lady."
Anton was solid. He was kind. All the neighborhood kids loved him, and he (respectfully and in a trustworthy manner, because it's 2016 and you have to specify) loved them back. He was friendly and when the kids begged him to show off his standing backflip to me, he would. I was impressed by him, because he had a job, because of his standing backflip, because he knew how to keep his language clean, because of his way with kids, because everyone thought highly of him. We weren't friends, but we knew each other.
He's the one who told me. "You knew I was with her, yeah?"
"Yeah,"
"We're having a baby, did you hear?"
No. No, I hadn't heard.
She was in the process of moving. A different life, a different place. We'd talked about it before and she was trying hard to make things better for her little brood of three. I'd see the kids, they'd come to Sunday School from time to time still (India was finally old enough to be in my class, but missed so many Sundays because of her dad's schedule that she never felt like she was fully a part of the goings-on, so her enthusiasm waned considerably), or I'd run into them at the park. "Yeah, she's having a baby," they confirmed.
"I was so mad that I cried when she told me," the biggest-sister-to-be confided. "I liked Anton, but not as my mom's boyfriend."
But still, I never talked to her. I'd go to their place and ask to see her, but she'd be napping, or in the shower, or in the basement, or anywhere else but there at the front door. The first time I met her I'd been invited in. Not now, though. Now she was like a ghost.
And finally they moved, and I had no forwarding address.
Then one day, by chance (except that I'm a Christian and I know it wasn't chance), I met them at the library. The two younger (now middle-to-be) siblings came flying up to me, smothering me in hugs. She was turned toward the counter and didn't angle her body towards me. At all. "Congratulations," I told her sincerely, understanding at once that after all this time she thought I didn't know.
"New life is always exciting, and wonderful!" I went on to tell her that I knew she'd be such a great mom to this one, too.
"Oh, you've heard?" She now turned fully towards me. She was about seven months along, and there's no way I wouldn't have noticed, even if I hadn't been looking, even if she'd tried to use a counter and a stack of books to cover her belly.
"Of course! Anton told me, and the kids have talked to me about it, too."
At that point she opened up a little bit. "It's going to be a boy," she said. "India--who's at her dad's today, I'm sure she'll be sorry she missed you--was so upset when she heard it was a boy. She just thought I'd still be together with her dad, you know? And if she had to have another sibling, she wanted a girl to make up for it."
She kept squirming, like she wanted to tell me something. Something to make her feel better, or possibly make
me feel better. Finally, it came out. "Maybe I shouldn't have gotten pregnant, Miss Joanne, but I really think it's going to work. I can feel it. Did I tell you? It's not the right time for us now, but we're going to get married!"
One of my other Sunday School kids still goes to school with her daughter India. I heard that she delivered a healthy baby boy at the end of October, though nobody has been able to tell me his name. I don't tell this story for any reason--moral, social, spiritual, or otherwise. I was just praying for her today, and her little brood of four.
