Authors: Malorie Blackman
‘How could you be so damned stupid?’
Ah, here it came. The temperature in his voice was rising.
‘I never worried about you the way I worry about Adam because I thought you had common sense. Your mum always said you were the sensible one. She said Adam was the idealist, the dreamer, and that you were the one with your head screwed on straight.’ Dad’s contemptuous glare had me bleeding internally. ‘D’you want to know something? For the first time ever, I’m glad your mum isn’t around to see this.’
The last barb found its target more than any of Dad’s other criticisms. That one cut deep.
Dad’s voice was unnaturally quiet again. ‘Dante, I don’t know what to say to you. I am so disappointed in you. You’ve let me down, but far worse, you’ve let yourself down.’
Like I didn’t already know that.
Dad shook his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? I wanted you to aspire to something higher than having a kid at seventeen, for God’s sake. I thought I’d brought you up to be more than just a cliché.’
Is this really what Dad thought I wanted for myself? I wanted to do something with my life, be someone. I didn’t want any of this. Didn’t he understand that?
Dad looked down at the squirming bundle in his arms. ‘So her mother has run off and left you holding the baby?’
I nodded.
Dad smiled grimly. ‘How ironic.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Doing a runner is usually the man’s province, not the woman’s,’ said Dad. He walked over to me. ‘Go on. Take her.’
‘What?’
‘Have you held your daughter yet?’
I shook my head. Only at arm’s length, when Mel had gone into the kitchen. ‘Not really,’ I said. Nor did I want to. Couldn’t he see that?
‘Take her from me, Dante.’
‘Suppose I drop her?’
‘You won’t,’ said Dad. ‘Just hold her like you mean it.’
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to hold that thing. But one of us had to budge and I knew it wasn’t going to be Dad. I took the thing, holding it awkwardly. It wriggled in my hands, on the verge of crying again.
‘Hold her properly,’ said Dad.
How the hell did that work? Terrified I was going to drop it, I brought it closer to my chest and readjusted my grip until its cheek was against my shoulder. Luckily it settled and was still. It brought up one tiny hand clenched in a fist to rest against my T-shirt. It was giving off a baby smell, like baby lotion and milk. Its body was warm against mine. Its hair was soft and silky under my chin.
And I hated it.
Dad sat down on the sofa. ‘Tell me everything that happened this morning,’ he said, his voice steely.
So I told him – the edited lowlights, but even those sounded damning.
When I finished, he shook his head again, his eyes narrowing as he contemplated me. He was beyond angry, but unlike most normal human beings, the more angry he became, the quieter he got.
‘You and Melanie were regularly sleeping together?’
My face began to burn. This was not the sort of thing I wanted to be discussing with my father.
‘It was once, Dad. Just once. At Rick’s party. And we’d both been drinking.’
‘Not too drunk to have sex but too drunk to use a condom?’ said Dad scathingly.
‘It was just once . . .’ I muttered.
‘Once is enough, Dante. You’re holding the proof of that in your arms,’ said Dad. ‘Or is Collette or some other girl going to turn up on my doorstep holding another kid of yours in their arms?’
‘No, Dad. I’ve only . . . done it with Melanie, and it was only the once.’ My voice was somewhere below a whisper. Dad only just managed to hear me. But damn it, my face was so hot I could’ve provided central heating for the whole city. Dad scrutinized me. He obviously decided that I was telling the truth – which I was – because his expression relaxed, but only slightly. ‘I can’t believe you and Melanie had a child and I’m only hearing about it now.’
‘I only heard about it for the first time today too.’ I tried to defend myself.
‘You didn’t know Mel was pregnant?’ Dad asked, his voice sharp.
I shook my head.
‘Did you ever take the trouble to find out?’
My face burned even more at that. My silence was answer enough for both of us.
‘Dante, I thought I’d brought you up, not dragged you up. We had the talk about taking precautions and being
responsible when you’re in a relationship. Why the hell didn’t you listen?’ To be honest, the disillusionment in his voice cut far deeper than any loud, angry words could’ve done. I’d have to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the status of lowlife.
‘It never occurred to me that she might be pregnant,’ I protested.
‘Don’t you know how babies are made then?’ asked Dad. ‘You kept insisting that
we
didn’t need to talk about the birds and the bees because it was being covered at school. Did you lie?’
My whole body was so burning hot now, at any moment I might spontaneously combust.
‘It was covered at school,’ I replied.
‘Did you skip those lessons?’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Then why didn’t it occur to you?’
‘I thought . . . I thought Mel must be on the pill or something.’ Which sounded totally pathetic, even to my ears. ‘She never told me she was pregnant. She never even mentioned the possibility. And then she left school and that was that.’
‘It takes two to make a baby, Dante. It doesn’t matter what you thought or assumed, you should’ve damn well made sure she couldn’t get pregnant by using a condom.’
The baby in my arms was stirring. I pulled my face away from its head, wanting to make as little contact as possible.
‘Dante, hold your daughter properly. She’s not a smelly bag of rubbish.’
I took a deep breath and stopped pulling away. The
room was quiet as Dad and I both tried to grasp what was happening.
‘Dad, what am I going to do?’ The words wobbled as they left my mouth. But I was stuck and struck and stuffed and couldn’t for the life of me think of a way out. Inside, I was trembling and I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. ‘I’m off to uni in a few weeks. How can I look after a baby if I’m off to uni?’
He stared straight through me.
‘Dad?’ I whispered after a long pause.
I had his attention once more.
He shook his head. ‘Dante, you have a child now, a daughter. Take a good look at her. Her name is Emma.’
I glanced at it, then looked away. I could hardly breathe. My throat was hurting so badly, like I’d been punched in it. And my head was pounding. I was holding a
baby
. A real, live, living, breathing person. That realization terrified me more than anything before.
‘I can’t look after it, Dad.’
‘You’ve got no choice, son.’
‘Maybe I could put it up for adoption or to be fostered?’
The words had barely left my mouth before I realized I’d made a mistake – by saying them out loud.
‘You’d give up your own flesh and blood because she’s . . . inconvenient?’ asked Dad. ‘And adoption means giving up your own daughter for good. Is that what you really want?’
Yes
. I’m seventeen, for God’s sake.
Of course I didn’t want to be saddled with a kid at seventeen. An acid wave of guilt swept through me, but I
couldn’t help it. I didn’t want or need Dad’s opinion of me to sink any lower. Though God knows, my opinion of myself was somewhere at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But the kid in my arms was like a brick wall between me and the rest of my life. I wanted it removed. I wasn’t going to let this thing in my arms ruin all my plans, ruin my whole future, ruin my entire
life
.
‘Besides, there’s no way you can put your daughter up for adoption without her mother’s consent. And you said you don’t know where Melanie is.’ Dad scowled. ‘And as for fostering, I doubt if you can even do that without Melanie’s say-so. So what’s your plan? To leave your own daughter on some doorstep somewhere?’
‘Of course not,’ I denied, shocked.
Did Dad really think me capable of such a thing? Just when I thought his opinion of me couldn’t sink any lower.
‘Dante, if your daughter wasn’t in this room right here, right now . . .’ Dad’s lips compressed into a bloodless line. ‘I don’t know what I would do. I still can’t believe you could be so stupid. You think this only affects you? It doesn’t. We’re all going to have to live with the consequences of your actions.’
‘I’m not sitting here congratulating myself, Dad,’ I told him.
Silence.
‘I really don’t see that you have many choices here, Dante,’ said Dad slowly.
I instantly knew what he was driving at. ‘Dad, I have no money, no job, no way of looking after it. I’ve only just got my A level results, for God’s sake.’
‘Dante, stop and take a deep breath and listen very carefully. You have a child. Whether you give her up or keep her, your world has now changed and it’s going to stay that way. Nothing you do or say is going to alter the fact that you have a daughter. You need to wrap your mind around that fact and accept it, just like I’m having to.’
‘What on earth can I give a baby?’
‘The same thing I gave you – and your brother. A roof over your head, food on the table and . . . and being there. That counts for one hell of a lot.’
But I hardly heard him. Why wasn’t he listening to me? I had to sort out my own life first. Until I’d done that, how could I be responsible for anyone else’s?
‘So will you look after the baby whilst I go to uni then?’ I asked.
Dad started to laugh, a harsh parody of the real thing. ‘I have a full-time job, Dante. How exactly am I supposed to work and look after
your
daughter at the same time?’
‘How am I supposed to go to uni and look after a baby at the same time?’ I protested, throwing his words back at him.
‘You can’t . . .’ said Dad. His brown eyes darkened as they regarded me.
‘I . . . I . . . ’ I looked at the child in my arms, now sleeping peacefully. The words Dad had left unsaid clanged in my head like a giant bell. ‘If someone can’t cope, I’m sure it’s OK for the kid to be taken away and placed with foster parents – just for a little while.’ I still wasn’t ready to give up on that option.
Dad regarded me. ‘So you want to do the same as Mel and dump your daughter? On strangers?’
‘I’m a stranger to her,’ I pointed out.
‘But you don’t have to be, Dante. You’ve got a decision to make – probably the most important decision of your life.’
‘But what about uni?’
‘What about Emma?’ Dad replied.
‘But I don’t have a clue how to look after it.’ Dad still wasn’t listening.
‘You’ll just have to learn,’ said Dad. ‘You want to play grown-up games? Well, this right here is what comes along with it.’
Oh God . . .
Dad contemplated me and the baby in my arms. ‘Dan, d’you remember when you were eight and kept asking me and your mum for a dog?’
Here it came. The life lesson. The analogy. The ‘this case is the same as that one’ – when it so obviously wasn’t.
‘Yes, Dad. I remember,’ I sighed.
And I did remember – unfortunately. I’d begged and begged Mum and Dad for a dog. Any kind of dog, I wasn’t fussed.
Yes, I would look after it.
Yes, I would walk it every day.
Yes, I would feed it and brush it and take care of it.
No, I wouldn’t ever neglect it. Never ever.
So Dad made a decision. He didn’t ask for my opinion. He didn’t talk to me about it first. He came home with a goldfish. A goldfish! How was a goldfish even close to
being anything like a dog? How was I supposed to bond with a fish?
‘You kept on and on at us till our heads were ringing,’ Dad continued. ‘And what deal did we finally reach?’
‘
We
didn’t reach a deal,’ I muttered.
‘Yes, we did,’ Dad argued. ‘I told you that if you could look after the goldfish for three months, just three months, then we’d get you a dog for your next birthday.’
‘How has that got anything to do with this?’ I asked. The petulance in my voice made me sound like Adam, but I couldn’t help it.
‘How long did the goldfish live, Dante?’
‘I don’t see—’
‘How long?’ Dad interrupted.
‘Two weeks,’ I replied reluctantly.
‘Eight days,’ Dad corrected.
Getting a dog was never mentioned again.
‘Dan, you have a daughter now. Her name is Emma. And you need to get to grips with that fact – fast. She’s not a goldfish that you can neglect and then flush down the loo when it doesn’t work out. She’s not a dog you can take back to a pet shop or to a dog shelter when you’ve had enough. She’s a human being that you made. You don’t get to walk away, not this time, not without even trying to make it work first. Life doesn’t work that way – not even at seventeen.’
‘Plenty of other guys walk away in similar circumstances,’ I pointed out.
‘You’re not “other guys”,’ said Dad. ‘You’re my son and I know I’ve brought you up better than that. You don’t run
away like some kind of coward when you’re faced with a problem, especially one of your own making.’
‘So what am I supposed to do?’
‘You take a deep breath, you grow up and you man up. You have a daughter now . . .’
Dad and I regarded each other. Not a word was spoken. But I knew what he was saying. In a contest between going to university and looking after some baby that was supposed to be mine, as far as Dad was concerned, there was no contest. I closed my eyes. It didn’t help.
‘Dante?’
‘Dad, I know what you want me to do,’ I snapped. ‘But then what? Serve burgers or sweep the streets for the rest of my life?’ Or sit behind a desk all day juggling insurance claims and bored out of my skull like my dad?
‘If that’s what it takes, yes,’ Dad replied. ‘You do whatever is legal and necessary to make money. Even if Melanie came back right this minute and took Emma away, you’d still be financially responsible for your daughter for the next eighteen years. You think about that. And there’s no shame in taking any job you can get to support your family.’
Family? Dad and Adam were my family. I didn’t want or need anyone else. This baby would never belong, would never be wanted by me.
If Dad wasn’t here I would’ve put the thing in my arms down on the ground and punched the walls until my hands bled.