It was called lousy luck. Mia shook her head, brushed Isabella's soft, baby-fine hair. 17 years old and a single teenaged mother. Isabella's father was a royal fuck up. J.T. had been great, sweet and kind and funny and he loved kids, was good with kids. But now J.T. was dead. And here she still was in this shit hole apartment with her own mother and her daughter, sandwiched between the generations.
She put a little bow in her daughter's hair, smiled, her eyes crinkling. Her own thick hair was pulled into two French braids. It just had to be out of her way. The guys at school seemed to be divided into two unpleasant groups. The first group thought she was easy and would put out since she had a kid at 15. The first group thought she was a slut. The second group shied away from commitment and didn't want to even date her because of all the responsibility she carried on her slender shoulders.
She kissed Isabella's soft chubby cheek and felt the happiness at having such a beautiful daughter. She loved her more than anything. No one seemed to understand, though. She was still a teenager, still basically a kid in a way. She wanted to do cheerleading and go on dates and study for tests and flirt in the halls and lean against lockers. But she was also a mother. She was responsible for Isabella and Isabella came first. She would miss tests and oral talks and whatever if her daughter needed her. She would forgo dates and cheerleading practice for doctor appointments and trips to the park. She spent her nights chopping up food into bite size pieces and watching teletubbies and reading bedtime stories instead of hanging out at the Dot or in cars making out or at the movies, her hand touching some boy's hand in the popcorn tub.
She frowned, thinking of Darcy. How Darcy had judged her and didn't want her on the cheerleading squad because of Isabella. Darcy was emblematic of that entire group of people who judged her, who looked down their noses at her with pity and disdain. That group who thought they knew the right way to do everything. Get married and have sex and then have a kid, and be sure you have plenty of money. Mia shook her head again, watching Isabella toddle off and pick up a toy. It would be nice to be married, it would be nice to have someone to help her. That person was not Isabella's father or any of the boys at school. They were immature. She was alone in this and so fuck Darcy and her judgmental bullshit.
She thought about Liberty. Liberty gave her baby away. Mia didn't understand how someone could do that. You feel that baby grow inside of you and move, and it became a part of your rhythms, part of your soul. And then when Isabella was born she was so tiny and perfect and Mia had never felt love like that, just a surge of it along with a surge of worry about protecting and guiding this little life. Hadn't Liberty felt the same things? How could she relinquish all of that? It was too big. It was too big to just let it go.
So she had made her choice, the only choice she could have made. Isabella was hers and yet not. She was her own. She was a gift. Mia understood this and smiled her sad smile at her daughter. Who cared about these immature high school boys? One day she'd meet a man, a man who could be all that she and Isabella needed and until then she would be all that they needed. Who cared about Darcy and her legions of brain washed automatons? Her life wasn't theirs to judge.
Maybe it wasn't lousy luck after all, just because her father didn't work out and J.T. died. She still had Isabella and herself, and they'd go on. They'd survive. Doors shut so other doors could open. She tried hard to believe this, tried hard to stay positive even though some days it was hard.
Isabella came back to her, handing her a little toy Elmo and smiling. Mia took it, turned it over in her hands, heard her mother stirring in her bedroom. She'd made hot cereal for Isabella's breakfast, a pot of coffee for her mother. Sandwiched between the generations, wishing someone would make something for her. She went out on the little porch, felt the cool yellow bricks with the palm of her hand.