fifteen

by: poppyseed

Tue Jun 09, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

girl #2 was in her first foster home and very, very worried about her mom. her grades were in freefall and she'd just had sex for the first time. she came in for birth control and told me she wanted to be a lawyer. there was a book in her hand from the book fair outside. her eyes had hazel-colored contacts in them with "demonstration model" written along the bottom. they had a clever, feral look to them, like a fox or a cat, like something that could handle itself. but she was skinny and kicked her feet nervously and never did tell me why she was scooped up out of her home.

i met #3 in a continuation school for pregnant girls. they're a vanishing breed, these schools; pregnancy isn't quite enough reason to disappear for a year anymore.  i was supposed to talk about breastfeeding but we got sidetracked fairly early on. they'd been through it before and were as patient as any roomfull of teenage girls.  but the thing that sidetracked them was health insurance. they were too young to apply for state insurance by themselves, their families were (slightly) too well-off for assistance. how were they going to get their babies vaccinated? some of them were post-partum and had been turned away from a clinic or two. knowing what is supposed to happen doesn't help much when you are confronted by what actually did happen.  knowing what is supposed to happen doesn't help at all when you are confronted by a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl whose biggest concern is whether or not she will be able to get her baby vaccinated.