“So,” asked Gail. “Have you been able to make any arrangements for when the baby comes?”
Sasha shook her head. “No. I don’t make enough money to save up the security deposit. Welfare won’t help. They say an apartment is not affordable on what I make. Plus, after I have the baby, I can’t work for a while. I would just end up homeless again.”
“What are you going to do?” Gail looked worried. “You cannot live on the street. It’s the dead of winter already and this is Michigan. It’s only going to get worse. And if you are homeless at delivery, the baby goes into foster care.”
“They would take my baby away?” asked Sasha in alarm. She didn’t want a baby but she didn’t want anyone else to take the baby from her.
“Until you have a home to take the baby to, it is in the best interest of the child to go into foster care. If you were both minors you could go into the same foster home, but since you are already eighteen, that’s a no go,” said Gail.
“What a stupid rule,” said Sasha, rolling her eyes. “They should be glad I didn’t have a baby when I was sixteen.”
“Yes, well, we are all gratified that you waited until technical adulthood to get pregnant,” said Gail, dryly. “But since you are already eighteen, and have finished high school, you don’t fit the criteria of most programs. You cannot continue to ignore this, honey. Time is getting short and your options are few. You are not the only pregnant woman out there and funds for programs for young women like you are not abundant.”
“Young women like me?” Sasha was weary. “Girls gone bad, huh?”
“Young but adult, healthy, pregnant,” corrected Gail. “The system does not consider you to be special, dear.”
“Okay,” said Sasha. They pulled into the parking lot and walked into the shelter in silence.
“Come to my office,” said Gail. “We need to talk.”
“You said your mama only hit you the once,” said Gail, sitting down with Sasha in her office. She took her thick glasses off and polished them with the corner of her shirt. She put them back on. “That was when she found out that you were pregnant?”
“Yes,” said Sasha. She missed her mother sometimes so much that she ached with it.
“So, she is not usually violent?”
“No,” said Sasha, shaking her head. “I mean I got a couple of spankings growing up and mama is really churchy, which is a pain but she’s not that bad. I had my own room and my own cell phone. She said she was trying to get me a car my second year of college if I got really good grades.”
“Would you be afraid to go back home?”
“No.”
“So, she is like - a nice lady?”
“She was okay,” said Sasha, sadly. “Until I messed up.”
“So,” said Gail. “Have you talked to her since you left home?”
“No,” said Sasha, tears stinging her eyes. “She hates me.”
“Most moms don’t hate their children,” said Gail. “It’s in the mom’s rule book.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Sasha looked down at her hands.
“From what you tell me, your mom sounds like a real horror,” said Gail.
Her head snapped up and she glared at Gail.
“She’s not,” said Sasha defensively. “She used to buy me stuff all the time. She told me she loved me. She prayed over me all the time. She loves me.”
“Really?” asked Gail. Sasha said nothing.
“Do you think she’d go to counseling?”
“We went before,” said Sasha, with another shrug. “A long time ago.”
“Did it help?”
“Some,” admitted Sasha. “What do you think?”
Gail pointed to the phone on her desk.
“I think you need to call your mother.”
“I’m scared,” Sasha said.
“You need to call your mother,” repeated Gail. “You are going to be a mother in a few weeks. You need to at least try. If she won’t let you come back, we’ll try to figure something out.”
“Why can’t I just live with you?” asked Sasha.
“It’s against the rules, honey,” said Gail.
“The rules are stupid!” said Sasha, fiercely.
“You want some cheese with that whine?”
Sasha and Gail both laughed.
“Remember, make decisions. Own your own future. You have to do it for your baby, if not for yourself.”
“Okay,” said Sasha. “But I want somebody else to do my life for a while.”
Gail laughed. “We all do honey.” She patted Sasha on the shoulder, then walked to the door of the office.
“I’m going to stand outside in the hall while you make the call,” said Gail.
“Wait!”
“What is it honey?”
“Can you hold my hand?” asked Sasha, eyes pleading but dry for a change. She rocked back and forth in her chair. “I can do it if you hold my hand.”
Gail looked at her for a long moment. Then she smiled gently and came back into the office.
“Sure honey,” she said. “Whatever you need.”
Gail sat down next to Sasha. Sasha took her hand, looked at the phone and took a deep breath. She exhaled. She sat for a few minutes, just holding Gail’s hand.
“Miss Gail?”
“Yes, Sasha,” said Gail.
“Some stuff I gotta do by myself, right,” asked Sasha. She met Gail’s eyes.
“Yes,” said Gail. She squeezed Sasha’s hand.
“I gotta have this baby?” Sasha asked. “Nobody else can do it, right?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s going to be harder than calling mama.”
“Yes.”
Gail met her eyes. Sasha read no judgment in them, just
