Baby Under The Mistletoe

garden afterward.

For teenagers who were otherwise usually not salt-of-the-earth nature lovers, this was a huge commitment.

“In your application essay, you said you wanted to be the change you hoped to see. You said you wanted your neighborhood free of guns and full of healthy kids playing in the street.”

Angelique blinked and rolled her eyes, unable to conceal the dampness there all of a sudden. Beneath her tough facade, she was a soft, sensitive girl, full of wide-eyed idealism the likes of which Soleil hadn’t seen since she herself had been that young.

“I just made all that crap up,” she said weakly.

“I know you and Lexie have some differences. She grew up in a wealthy family and never had to worry about money, while you grew up never knowing if your mom would come home, let alone whether there’d be anything to eat for dinner.”

Angelique’s face hardened when she looked at Soleil again. “Yeah, so?”

“It can be hard to understand each other when you come from such different upbringings.”

“No kidding, Einstein.”

“You two will work separately for the rest of the day, and later tonight, once you’ve both calmed down, I want both of you to talk and work through your disagreement.”

Soleil was afraid the girl would stick with the idea of going home, but she was relieved when Angelique simply crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged.

“After you’ve cleaned up the milk on the floor, you’ll go out and help Tonio with the chickens. I think he could use the company.”

“Whatever,” she answered, then got up and grabbed a towel from the counter to wipe up the mess.

Soleil went in search of Lexie, whom she found lying on her bed upstairs, staring at the ceiling.

“You and Angelique are going to work separately for the rest of the day,” she said as she sat on the bed opposite Lexie’s.

In response, the girl sighed but said nothing.

“Do you want to tell me your side of what happened?”

“I got sick of her bragging about her rough life and how hard she has it and all that crap.”

“You think she was bragging?”

“Yeah, ’cause I’m not street enough since I grew up in a nice house and my family has money. She said I might as well be white, for all I know about being black.”

Soleil had seen this dynamic of clashing cultures played out before here at the farm, and there wasn’t always an easy way to engender respect between kids with vastly different life experiences. But sometimes, with patience, she succeeded.

“I know how it feels to be told I’m not black enough. It hurts.”

“Just because I speak using proper English, I’m white? We’re never going to have equality when we’re racist and judgmental.”

Soleil was more intimately familiar with this issue than most people. She’d felt the same pain as a kid. Having a mother who was a famous poet and a Berkeley professor hadn’t done a damn thing for her street cred.

“You know,” Soleil said, “my mother is white and my father is black, but we never lived together as a family after I was six years old. So here I was, this girl with black skin being raised by a white woman in Berkeley, living in a white neighborhood. When I went to school, I felt like I had more in common with the white kids, but I so wanted to be accepted by my black peers.”

“So what did you do?”

“I tried to be true to myself. I am who I am. I’m not a race, and I’m not a racial identity. I’m an individual. I hung out with the kids who accepted me-and I tried not to get beaten up by the kids who didn’t,” she said wryly.

Lexie finally smiled. “I bet you got your butt kicked.”

“A few times, but I won a few fights of my own.”

“I’ve never been in a fight. Today was the closest I’ve ever come.”

“What made you apply to come here?” Soleil asked.

She remembered what Lexie had written in her application essay, but she wanted to hear the girl’s own words. Lexie was her least likely applicant, a resident of the wealthy Oakland hills who attended a prestigious private school. Her life was far removed economically, if not geographically, from the communities where Urban Garden worked to transform empty lots into organic gardens for communities that didn’t have easy access to fresh, local produce.

“I don’t like driving through bad neighborhoods on the way home and feeling like I’m not a part of the solution to the problems around me. It’s like, I’m the opposite of the solution, you know?”

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way.”

Lexie wasn’t interested in being soothed. “It’s stupid, because people like Angelique don’t even want my help.”

“Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t. That doesn’t change the fact that we need you as much as we need her.”

The girl said nothing as she stared at the ceiling. Stretched out on the bed, her curly black hair was almost dry, and she wore a pink T-shirt in place of the one that had been soaked with milk. Her faded jeans still bore a few milk splatters, and in spite of her simple attire, there was no way for her to disguise the fact that her jeans were expensive, and her T-shirt was designer. She had an elegant polish that made it clear she was an upper-middle- class kid.

Soleil felt her pain, but she couldn’t help but sympathize with Angelique, too. It was hard for such an idealistic kid to understand how the world could dole out disparities in life to people who’d done no more than be born to unlucky circumstances.

“Look,” Soleil finally said, “I have to go make lunch. You’re back on garden duty until lunchtime.”

Lexie shrugged as she sat up. “Okay. So long as I’m working alone.”

Soleil didn’t see any point in arguing now that being at the farm meant working together, whether Lexie wanted to or not. She already knew that, which was why she was so upset in the first place. When she came here, she hadn’t bargained on being the only kid from a privileged background, or on being rejected by her peers for that very fact.

As Soleil went back to the kitchen, she allowed her thoughts to stray to West and the impending discussion she’d have to have with him. Her stomach knotted with anxiety.

It was only half past noon, and already she was exhausted. Being pregnant made her want to take a nap every day, and yet her work didn’t allow that luxury. So she dealt. But, God, what she wouldn’t have given to curl up in bed and shut out the world.

As she passed the rear kitchen window, she could see West walking in from the field, headed right in her direction. Yep, definitely the part of the world she wanted to shut out right now.

PREGNANT, PREGNANT, pregnant, pregnant…

The word would not leave West’s head. It loomed there, bigger than any other thought, refusing to get out of the way. Soleil. Pregnant. With his baby.

No, he shouldn’t have been getting ahead of himself. He needed to wait and hear her story, and trust that if she was really pregnant with his child, she’d have had the decency to tell him right away.

But as soon as that thought formed in his head, he hated the idea of it because it implied that she really was pregnant with someone else’s child.

Which was a stupid way to feel since she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in a relationship with him anyway.

Dammit.

Round and round his thoughts went as he strode across the field. The day had remained gray and misty, though no rain was falling. Not too far away, he could see the teenagers overseeing the goats, and for the briefest moment he experienced a surge of misplaced pride in the work Soleil did. Sure, she was a pie-eyed idealist, but she lived by her ideals every waking moment, and she did good work with the kids.