pro-life

"I dinn think I could get pregnant, all these years...then this little shit comes along!" Whap! she smacked my biological brother on the arm.

They sat at a dining table with a smoked glass top, metal tubing for legs and puffy chairs with wheels. It was from the discount furniture warehouse on State Highway 313; Chuck's Big Bargain Warehouse. Above the table hung a lamp that had a chain entwined with the cord. The chain/cord hung from the wickeresque lampshade in a sweeping fashion toward the corner, down the wall and over to the middle of the adjacent wall where it was plugged in. If you sat in the chair in front of the outlet, you had to be careful not to smack into the wall or get the wheels of the chair tangled up in the chain/cord.

The girl was trailer-hard. She wore a lace trimmed tank top emblazoned with "Ted Nugent" in November in the Midwest. Her jeans were worn Levi's. Her shoes were moccasin style boots that laced up to her knee. Her hands were large and muscled with thick fingers and nails stained yellow from nicotine. She had thick dark hair with "feathered" bangs and the most split ends I had ever seen. The bottom of her hair glowed in the light with millions of frayed filaments. You could tell she used no styling implements on her hair. She combed it into place wet and let it dry. She was quick to smile a big genuine smile that exposed her yellowed, crooked teeth and the one fang that was sideways, lodged between her other teeth. Her nose had been broken more than once, her lip split and her eyes had dark circles beneath them. Despite all of these things, she was attractive. She looked like a beaten up, worn out version of Tawny Kitaen after a lifetime of hard luck.

I was always a little alarmed by the affection my mother showed these girls. My mother hadn't hugged me since I was four. I don't remember her ever kissing me. But she grabbed up these white trash gap toothed chicks like they were her long lost children and kissed them and hugged them tightly and sincerely. This one was number four. The fourth mother of yet another of my brother's children. He had five little girls. One in Arkansas, one in Kentucky, one in Illinois and twins in Indiana. Now this one on the way; another little blonde blue eyed girl who wouldn't know her father and would be better off for it. Another little girl on welfare and food subsidies provided by the state who would never see a penny of financial support from her criminal father. In the coming months her father would beat her mother on a regular basis while she floated in the woman's womb. He would toss her naked mother out the door of the trailer into a twenty degree night to tumble down the makeshift wooden stairs, clutching her swollen belly. Her mother would consume a six pack or more of Budweiser and a pack of cigarettes on a daily basis while she formed.

My mother accompanied this one into the delivery room. When the placenta was delivered my mother swears it smelled like beer and the Vietnamese doctor exclaimed, "Ah! anothel Rittre beel baby!" She bore the physical signs of fetal alcohol syndrome; skin folds at the corners of her wide set eyes, a short nose with a low nasal bridge and a small midface.

Within two months of her birth, her father would kick her and her mother out of the ramshackle trailer to make room for the mother of his seventh and eighth daughters. This woman was employed at the Naughty But Nice Adult Bookstore. She was a booth girl. She sat behind a curtain in a small room seperated from a booth by a pane of glass. A man would enter the booth and insert money into a slot. The curtain would open and depending upon the amount of money, the booth girl would perform different sex acts up to and including penetrating herself with a sex toy.

I saw Number 6 for the first time when she was four months old. I was the youngest of my family and a teenager when I laid eyes upon her. I had never felt a pang of motherhood or obligation toward another person in my life. When her eyes locked with mine, the love I felt for her nearly knocked me over. I thought my heart had literally stopped. She was the most beautiful precious thing I had ever seen and I would stand in the wake of a hurricane, the path of a speeding locamotive, a charging tiger, anything to protect her. I knew I had to a good example for her, because she had no one else in the family who could show her a different way of life.

She is 16. She has a criminal record, is addicted to drugs and had a baby last year. She didn't finish high school and probably never will. Her baby is a boy. He will survive on welfare and state provided food subsidies. It is unlikely he will know his father and will probably be better off for it. His chances of finishing high school are low. His chances of going to jail are high.

Pro-Life.