Authors note: I must apologize for my space key and/or the editor on this site. It seems that a lot of my words are ending up together without the space in between them. As a reader as well as a writer I know this must be extremely annoying and I am working on triple checking my work. I'm sorry for this inconvenience. Thank you for all your support and reviews they mean the world to me!
Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, Jonathon does.
Joanne Jefferson
"Hank! Hank! It's a girl, we're having a girl, oh gosh, I knew it. She's going to be so beautiful when she gets older, oh Hank aren't you happy?"
3 months later...
Joanne Jefferson was born on a cold winter evening. Her mother was extremely excited to be having a child considering the doctor said that she would never be able to get pregnant or give birth. After months of careful planning and a lot of faith, 38 year old Carol Jefferson was finally pregnant; she was going to be a mother.
Carol was probably the most excited pregnant woman to ever live in New York. She would put on her jazz music and dance around the house just holding her tummy. She had even gone so far as to decorate Joanne's room in pink everything, even before she and her husband had found out what the sex of the baby was going to be. Carol had just known that the baby was going to be a girl; she just wished Hank was more excited.
Hank was trying as hard as he could to be excited for the new baby. It wasn't that he didn't want a baby, he did. He just wished it wasn't a girl. He wanted a boy that would be able to carry on the Jefferson name and the tradition of becoming something prestigious. He prayed to God that his daughter didn't turn into one of those hippies that he was seeing on TV lately, or even worse: a lesbian. If he was going to have a daughter he was going to make sure she turned out normal. He was going to teach her from day 1 that she wasn't going to be a singer or an actress, she was going to do something practical. A doctor or a laywer seemed like a good profession to him.
After nine months of his wife being pregnant, Hank was finally able to fully appreciate how much Carol actually did for him. Now that she couldn't climb the stairs of their two story colonial, he had to do almost everything. Cooking and cleaning wasn't that bad but he hated doing the laundry. Carol had already chastised him for ruining two of her favorite shirts. The last thing he wanted was a pregnant, hormonal, estrogen-filled woman bossing him around, but he loved his wife so he put up with it.
"Aren't you excited for the baby, Hun?" Carol asked one day as she was lying on the couch reading East of Eden
"I guess so" Hank sighed.
"Well, you better be excited, because my water just broke."
"WHAT?"
"I think we should probably go to the hospital now."
"Do you have everything you need?"
"Yes, I already told you I packed the suitcase two nights ago incase anything like this happened." Carol replied as she put her suitcase in the car. "Hank, would you please stop shaking?"
"Sorry, it's just I've never done this before!"
"You've never driven?" Carol asked, smiling, hoping her joke would lighten the mood, however, one look from her irritable husband told her she had failed.
"Let's just get this over with." Hank mumbled.
"What was that, sweetie?"
"Nothing."
The Jefferson's lived about 20 minutes away from the nearest hospital. On the way there Carol kept turning the knobs on the radio, much to Hank's dismay.
"It's those protestors again. They keepyelling about that damn war."
"The one in Vietnam?" Carol asked serenely from the passenger's seat, reading a book, deciding nothing was good on the radio.
"Yeah…say, you don't look like you're going into labor. Aren't you supposed to be screaming your brains out?" Hank asked suspiciously.
"Hank, I'm not going to make a fool of myself like that woman on the news did last year. Do you remember that? Her baby was born in a jail. How disgusting."
"Oh yeah, I remember that! Didn't the husband get locked up for possession of marijuana or something?"
"Yes, now that you mention it, I think he did. Oh, look, we're here. Please drop me off at the door and then you can park the car, I don't want to do more walking than I have to." Carol was squirming with excitement at the thought of finally being able to give birth. After nine long months of waiting, it was finally time.
The birth of little Joanne was pretty quiet. Carol only screamed at the very end and even then she hardly broke a sweat. Hank thought Carol was showing a lot of grace under pressure which was what he had always loved about his wife. He couldn't help but be resentful of Joanne. She was going to come in between the love that him and his wife had shared for the past 12 years.
"Do you want to hold her?" Carol asked, beaming.
"I'm not really good with kids." Hank sputtered.
"Come on, sweetie, she's not just my baby you know." Carol said, handing Hank the tiny 7 pound bundle of joy.
"Oh, alright." Hank said as he took the baby. Joanne yawned wide and smiled a big toothless smile. Hank felt his heart melt a littlefor the first time in awhile. He realized that out of all the things he had created in his life, this may be the best one. He wasn't going to make any mistakes with his daughter; she was going to grow up with the best education, the best parents, just the best of everything. Because if he was the best, then his daughter had to be the best.
"I can see it right now, in 30 years she's going to be a rich lawyer, married to a nice man and have plenty of kids. Our daughter isn't going to be some hippie freak. She's going to be the best."
"Hank, isn't it a little early to be planning out her future?"
"Nope, I can see it now, she's going to be a winner, my winner, my Joanne."
a/n: sorry, i suck with doing things that involve Joanne. I found this chapter quite boring, but I hope you like it. Review and tell me what you would like to see next or if you have any good ideas, or just want to tell me you liked this chapter. haha.
