Too Soon for Jeff by Marilyn Reynolds

Author:Marilyn Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen parenting; Fatherhood
Publisher: New Wind Publishing
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

13

Fourth period, a student aide comes in and hands a summons to Mrs. Rosenbloom. It’s the third summons already and we’re not even halfway through the class. She sighs. “I swear, we’ll never get finished discussing Herman Melville with all these interruptions.”

She reads the summons, then calls my name.

“Mrs. Gould wants to see you in the nurse’s office.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Go see,” she says. “I don’t know. My specialty is Melville, not mind-reading.”

I jam my stuff in my backpack and leave. I walk past the principal’s office, past the guidance center, to the health center, where I take a seat on a cold metal chair. Across from me, some guy is curled up sleeping on a cot sort of like the one I slept on when I stayed at Steve’s, except I didn’t have to use a paper cover on my pillow. It’s not long before a short, stocky woman opens the door to her private office.

“Jeff Browning?” she asks.

I stand and hand her my summons.

“Come in,” she says.

I follow her into the office. It smells of rubbing alcohol, like the nurse’s office at my old elementary school.

“Have a seat,” she says.

There are posters on every wall—institutional style stuff with broad black letters warning Wash Hands After Using the Toilet, and the classic fried egg This Is Your Brain on Drugs, and one that says No Glove, No Love with a picture of a girl holding a condom at arm’s length.

I remember Mrs. Gould from an AIDS talk she did in our Health and Safety class last year. She was funny and to the point, and she gave us plenty to think about.

“So Jeff, I talked with your girlfriend yesterday,” she says.

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, really?” she says, eyebrows raised, voice going cold. “Then I talked with the girl you got pregnant. Do you like that description better? Christina Calderon? Remember her? Or do you have so many other pregnant non-girlfriends running around that you can’t keep track?”

“It’s not like that,” I say.

“Then tell me. How is it?”

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I liked Mrs. Gould when she talked to our class, but now she seems nosy and grouchy. Why should I talk to her? Do I have to?

“Well?” she says.

“Well . . . Christy used to be my girlfriend.”

“She tells me you’re the father of her unborn baby, and now you don’t want to take any responsibility for it. Is that true?”

“Sort of. But did she tell you that she pretended to be on the pill and she wasn’t? It’s not my fault.”

“Maybe you’ll want to drop your child a line someday and tell him it’s not your fault he, or she, doesn’t have a dad who cares. I’m sure that will make the little tyke feel much better,” Mrs. Gould says, oozing sarcasm.

“Can I go back to class now?” I ask, standing up.

“No,” she says, motioning for me to sit back down. She looks at me intently, appraising me, it seems.

“Maybe we got off to a bad start, Jeff.

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