There was a girl from the health clinic, tall and black, doe-eyed and silent, that I kept seeing around town. She was seventeen and pregnant again. Twins. Sometimes she would appear at my hangout, the Wilmington Public Library, supporting her belly in both hands as she lumbered to the ladies room, staring at the carpet in front of her.

I was not going to be that girl. I was not that girl, marked by pregnancy, announcing my mistake and stupidity to everyone. Most of my friends didn’t know about it. Even my new boyfriend was clueless, in more ways than one: all that direct contact with my ever-rounding form and he never asked a question. I was going to spend my last trimester in hiding, living with my father and stepmother. Everyone swallowed the story, my need for a little time away.

It seemed to be working, the baggy clothes campaign, the stony denial, but one incident brought doubt. A friend, Lynne, and I were out skipping school at the usual place, a shopping mall near school. We stopped in a boutique where Lynne bought a pair of earrings. As she was ringing up the sale, the salesclerk gave me a friendly glance.

“When are you due?” she asked.

I blushed. She blushed. We were both briefly, awkwardly silent, before the clerk quickly covered for me. “Oh, no! You’re too young! I’m so sorry!”

Thank you, lady.

Later, at the food court, I asked Lynne “Am I getting fat? Do I look pregnant to you?” gently patting my belly, camouflaged by loose-fitting clothing. Lynne dipped a French fry in ketchup, gave me a quick once over. “You look fine,” she said, and shoved the fry in her mouth. That was that.

Tags: teen pregnancy, school, secrets, the stillbirth

Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster

I had a nickname name for him, a code word really, so that I could write it in my notebooks without fear of discovery. Bertie Wooster. It’s embarrassing, but 100% true: I was a 12-year-old P.G. Wodehouse fan, with a huge crush on my ash-blond, hazel-eyed classmate. Even in high school, after the thrill was gone, after Bertie had metamorphosized into a six-foot tall pothead, after I fell hard for a senior basketball player (another unrequited love), I would blush when we passed in the hall.

Crushes, I’ve had a few. They have ranged from the silly (the hot dog stand guy, summer of 1984) to intense (first husband, early days). These infatuations have been distracting, fun even. Nothing, however, has persisted like my 14-year obsession with Mr. H.

We met at work, my first week at my first real job. Mr. H. was cute and asked a coworker if I was attached. And so the internal churning began. I was attached – soon to be married, actually – but I couldn’t shake the butterflies, the deep blushes, whenever Mr. H would show up in the library. There he’d stand, feet away, hovering over the fax machine (the only one in the office); or he’d actually stop by to (gasp) ask me a question. My heart would race: it races now, as I remember those chance moments. Knowing he spent time in our neighborhood, I would survey the sidewalks evenings and weekends, on the lookout. The soundtrack for that year was a strange mix of Morphine (Buena)and Holly Cole. Her version of On the Street Where You Live, with its stalkeresque undertones stirred up the ironic obsessive in me.



Today I am a happily married woman. Over the years, the crush has been mainly dormant, with a few volcanic moments. At this point, it’s academic – what meaning does this person hold for me? why do I continue to have those frustrating dreams? – but I am tired of it. And so, today, needing a new writing project to fixate on, I thought: why don’t I write a letter to Mr. H? You know, lay out my feelings in a literary sort of way, show them the harsh light of reality; get them out of my system. Maybe I send it, maybe I don’t. If I don’t, maybe I get it published. Everyone’s into reading about other peoples’ sick love obsessions! I can take this useless, ridiculous feeling and parlay it into art.

Yeah. I’ve been working on it for much of the morning, and I find that the writing process doesn’t purge the feelings: it makes them more intense.

My crush has morphed into a middle-aged thing, a yearning for escape from quotidian existence. I am ensconced in my (relatively) safe life, a housewife wannabe writer, parent to one tiring preschooler. Not much excitement here, though things are quite comfortable and loving at home. Maybe I need to take up bungee jumping or fencing, something to liven up the system.

So: Jennifer, let sleeping crushes lie. Oh, and Mr. H, if you are reading this (do you read this blog? I doubt it.), write me back, OK?

Only joking.

Tags: crushes, Columbus, school, Morphine, dreams, Bertie Wooster, Holly cole, P.G. Wodehouse

Fall, 1978, Newark, Delaware: Desegregation of the Wilmington city schools! Teachers’ strikes! Afternoons spent at the Deadhead-run Malt Shoppe on Main Street! I read books and ate toasted onion bagels with butter, while I waited for my mother (emphatically not a Deadhead) to finish her shift at the Shoppe. It was a little slice of the sixties in the late seventies, but Delaware has always been a little slow on the uptake.


Elk River, Winter of 1977-78

The year before, my mother had decided to go back to college. In order to save money, she moved in with Jim, her future former husband, while I went to my grandparents’ house in Maryland. It was a year scented by cigarette smoke and coffee fumes. Mornings were my favorite time of day, sitting in the warm kitchen, a tray of food prepared for me by my grandmother, usually Eggo waffles dabbed with Parkay squeezable margarine and dripping with Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, cartoon-character shot glass of orange juice on the side. That winter the snow kept coming. It piled up and formed five-foot drifts in the driveway, places to dig out forts and make snowmen. Snuggling in my grandmother’s bed as we listened to the radio school closing announcements became an almost-regular ritual.

Mom scored a one-bedroom apartment in student family housing in the summer of ’78 and I moved back in with her. She took the couch in the living room while I slept on a full-size mattress on the floor in the bedroom, a wooden orange crate for a bedside table topped with a flowery ceramic lamp, a clock radio, and an “I Love You This Much” figurine -- a robed, potbellied man, arms outstretched – that she had given to me in first grade.

1978-79 was the first year of court-mandated school desegregation for the Wilmington city schools. We were bused 34 miles roundtrip from suburban Newark, a predominantly white, middle class community at the time, to an elementary school in the middle of the inner city. It was the fourth school I had attended since kindergarten.

The dark, institutional halls smelled of ancient gymnasium mats and cafeteria pizza. Because I didn’t like sandwiches, Mom would pack things like crackers and cheese or the occasional hard-boiled egg, cooked until it was sulfurous and the exterior of the yolk was green. I’d display the egg to my friends and toss in the trash can to a chorus of ewwwws.

After lunch, students were herded over crumbling asphalt to play outside on ancient metal jungle gyms and rusty swings. Murals with selected scenes of black history covered the exterior walls. At night the surrounding neighborhood leaked into the schoolyard; people left behind their bottle caps and broken glass, empty lighters and plastic bags. The atmosphere became more unwelcoming when I acquired the nickname “Kermit,” a name given after I came to school in a kelly green, polyester, three-piece suit (worn with white turtleneck!). Think Saturday Night Fever meets Annie Hall meets the Muppets, a well-meaning gift from my grandmother, who had become accustomed to choosing my clothes.

The teachers weren’t happy either and went on strike from mid-October through most of November. Much of that time is lost to me. My third grade teacher brought me back to Chesapeake City Elementary for a day or two; I read a lot of books from the small children’s section at the University of Delaware library, spent many hours staring at the ceiling of the Malt Shoppe. The ending of the strike coincides in my mind with reports of the Jonestown massacre, images of children lying on the ground beside their parents, as still and peaceful as if they were asleep.


April 1979

By early March, 1979, my grandmother was dead and Mom, Jim, and I had moved back to Maryland to watch over my grandfather.

Our grand experiment was over.

Tags: grandfather, Delaware, grandmother, Muppets, Kermit the frog, step-father, school, desegregation, Mom