baby daddy

the first time i saw him he was putting his fist through one of those glass panels embedded with chicken wire, the kind school stairwells had in the fifties. he shattered the glass pretty impressively but the chickenwire kept it from spilling all over the place. he cut his hand and bruised it a bit. he was mad, i heard later, at his girlfriend. i saw her in class a day or so after, tiny, eyes cast down, and she told me he has an anger problem. she smiled when she said it, shyly, like she was in awe of such power, like she was glad he'd expressed his feelings for her so well. high school girls like boys who will hit things for them.

so when i see him a few days later in the same stairwell he starts yelling at me, saying i ratted him out. evidently he got himself suspended for this impressive bit of drama in the stairwell. i tell him i don't even know his name and he continues to yell a little more, maybe to prove to me he has this anger problem i've been hearing more and more about over the weeks. but i was raised by wolves, or at least by people with a stubborn streak, so i let him yell himself out and tell him maybe he ought to go to class instead of wasting so much time standing in a stairwell that smells like broccoli farts. it really does, by the way. he is mad that he thinks this is even the tiniest bit funny and he stomps off so i will not see him smiling.  i see him.

i hear the tiny girl who smiles when she thinks about him is pregnant. she sits in one of the classes i share with another teacher. she never raises her hand. she never talks. she sits quietly and hands in papers and reads short stories and might be focused enough to get into a college if she didn't have any other challenges staring at her. she stares down at her belly a lot lately.

when i walk through the halls and stairwells between classes i sometimes encounter clumps of children, most often boys, huddled together. usually they are doing nothing more than cutting class and when i walk up, especially in the stairwells, they look sheepish and scatter. there are seven in the group i see today, sitting all together in a stairwell, reeking of something that smells like cherry cough syrup. there is much shuffling and muttering and then a few of them shoot up the stairs. one or two just stand there, smiling the sort of dumb-faced grin i hope nobody ever has to see outside a school. and then there is mr. anger management. he stands up and starts to walk away.

i motion for him to stop and mention i hear he's going to be a dad. he looks at me funny because he doesn't have the skills with inferencing to know where i might be going with this. he nods, glares. tries very hard with his glaring to remind me he has anger problems. this is what you're doing? i ask him. this is what you're doing to get ready to be a father? i can see the confusion. i'm not fighting fair. the other boys are gone and i say softly your baby deserves a good dad. this is mean. every baby deserves a good dad and not many get one and it hardly seems fair of me to expect something from a fifteen year old boy most people don't expect of thirty year old men. but it's his baby. his choice. he yells back that he's going to be a good dad. i shake my head, tell him that if the best he can do is sit in a stairwell with a bunch of losers while he ought to be learning something, he will not be a good dad. your baby deserves a better dad than this, i say.

he looks less angry, more tired. he doesn't have even a tiny idea what is happening inside this small girl he might love. he has no way to know what a baby is all about or what it will need from him. he does not know he will need to teach it things. he does not know he can easily kill a baby when he is mad and not even see it happen. but i am not really worried about that. i know his anger is an excuse. it's a way to turn his back on responsibility for things. but it won't work here. he shoves open the stairwell door and stomps through, yelling over his shoulder that he will be a good dad. he will. he knows it.

i think about what i can tell him. what he might listen to. i have to plan ahead because i only see him times like this, when i am on my way somewhere else and he is where he isn't supposed to be. he must be a little scared, even if he doesn't really know how scared to be yet. he isn't the monster he pretends to be, but he tries so hard. maybe i should be asking instead of telling. is the baby a boy or a girl? what will you name it? what color sweater do you want me to knit?