What Kind of Love? (12 page)

You think your mommy and daddy don't understand and are being mean and selfish. But they love you very much and want what is best for you and for your baby. They may not be expressing themselves right because things are hard for them, too. Hear them through. They want to help you. Maybe together you can find the answer.

Don't be mad at me, honey. I love you and I am thinking of your future.

Your Grandpa John

He wrote that! My grandpa who tells me he loves me! I was so sure he was going to say, “Come. Stay with us. You're always welcome here.” He's always telling me how much he loves me. “My Jewel,” he calls me. I feel just like he punched me in the stomach. I can't believe he slammed the door in my face like that. I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to turn.

I read somewhere that you lose a lot of illusions when you grow up. I guess that's what it is. I must be growing up. I used to trust everyone. Like an idiot, I believed what people said. Peter said he wanted to get married, and I believed him. I used to believe that Mom and Daddy were big and strong and would never let anything bad happen to me. But something bad did happen, and when they found out about it, they didn't help. And Grandpa Horvath? He told me he loved me hundreds of times. And I thought he would do anything for me. But he won't even let me and his first great-grandchild stay with them for a little while. I believed them all. I shouldn't have. I was so dumb. I don't know what
I love you
means anymore. They're empty words.

Tuesday, November 19

Last night I had this weird, mixed-up dream about my baby. I was standing all by myself in a valley watching this lark, which was my baby, soaring higher and higher over the hills on wings of sound until I couldn't see anything anymore because I was blinded by the sun.

When I woke up, I felt sad. So sad.

Wednesday, November 20

This girl came to talk to us at school today. She gave her baby up for adoption. Not that I think she was right to give her baby away, but I could understand how she must have felt. She was alone, just like me. Her boyfriend and her parents wouldn't have anything to do with her or her baby. She didn't have a job or any money. And she was really scared. What made me think it wasn't so bad was that she didn't just drop her baby and forget about it. She picked out the people to adopt her baby herself, and she got to know them. They were even with her in the delivery room when the baby was born. She goes to visit them and the baby.

Tiffany told the girl that if she had really loved her baby, she wouldn't have given it up. The girl asked her, “What kind of love is it to keep a baby you can't take care of or give a home to? That's selfish.”

Is it selfish? I don't know anymore. It's your baby. Your responsibility. It's wrong to give your baby away. But is it right to keep it if you can't give it a home or take care of it?

Thursday, November 21

At lunch today, we were all talking about the girl who gave her baby away. Most of the girls said she gave it up because she wanted an easy way out. I ended up taking her side. I was shouting, “What makes you think it's so easy? It's your own flesh and blood. Of course you want to keep it. You've been carrying it for all these months, feeling it grow and kick. You want nothing more than to take it home and watch it grow up. That would be easy. That really would be easy. But maybe it's impossible. Maybe that girl would have been on the street if she kept her baby. What kind of future is that to give a kid you love? If you love your baby, really love it, you can't just think about what you want. You have to think about the baby and what's best for it.” The other girls all disagreed with me.

Sunday, November 24

We were making the cranberry relish for Thanksgiving and Mom asked me if I thought that the baby was going to suffer. I had been telling her what the kids in the program said about the girl who gave her baby up for adoption. Then the telephone rang and I never had a chance to answer her, but I've been thinking about it ever since. I think the answer is yes, the baby will probably suffer either way—if I keep it or if I give it up for adoption. I don't know any way to avoid it. But what I keep asking myself is: Which way will there be less suffering?

Friday, November 29

I told Mom I'm thinking about giving the baby away. She took me in her arms and held me, and I held her and we cried and cried. It felt good not to be fighting anymore.

Dear Peter,

I didn't answer your last letter because I thought there was nothing more I had to say to you. But I was wrong. We are still linked, not by your golden chain, but by the baby we made in your room that day when we thought we loved each other.

I think I'm going to give the baby up for adoption. I believe that together you and I could have raised the baby, but I can't do it alone. I am responsible for the baby's being born, and the least I can do for it is to make sure it has loving parents and a good home.

For the adoption to be legal, you have to sign the papers giving up all claim to the baby.

Good-bye, Peter. I won't be writing to you anymore. I thought I loved you. I thought you loved me. But when you love someone, you want to be with them forever, and you want to make them happy. Neither of us was up to that. Maybe it was because we were too young. All I know is that I'll never feel the way I felt about you about anyone ever again
.

Valerie

Monday, December 2

I have an appointment at an adoption agency on Wednesday. It is the same one the girl who spoke at school went to.

I guess I can always not show up if I change my mind. And I would cancel in a second if I thought I could make it on my own.

I didn't know what to do with myself after I made the appointment, so I picked up my violin and started playing. I played
The Lark Ascending
over and over and over again.

Acknowledgments

In challenging me to understand how a young woman could decide to give her baby up for adoption, Jennifer Cole and Peg Griffin inspired me to write this book.

Although
What Kind of Love?
is a work of fiction, many of the situations described in the story are based on conversations with teenagers who have been pregnant as well as with teachers, social workers, and counselors who work with them. For their help in understanding what it is like to be young and pregnant, I am grateful to Betty Cannon, Ava Torre Bueno, the staff of Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties, Fawn Martinez, Sue Schudson, Dr. Sarah Beth Hufbauer, the young women at the Victoria Summit School in San Ysidro, California, and at Peninsula High School in San Bruno, California, and their teachers Linda Austin and Roberta McHue. Rosa Montes of the San Mateo County Department of Health Services, and Roy Risner, principal of Sunset High School in Encinitas, California, generously gave of their time. Sally Hufbauer was my gracious guide to the world of the young violinist.

Alice Schertle, Jonathan Cobb, Jean Ferris, Edie Gelles, Jill Norgren, Alyssa Cobb, Katie Schertle, and Susan Pearson read this book as it was taking form. Their comments, encouragement, and belief that it would make a good story kept me going through the writing and rewriting and contributed to its final form. Melanie Donovan, my editor, wrestled with my manuscript with insight, patience, and good nature. My husband, Michael Cole gave me the title and much, much more. The words
thank you
hardly seem adequate for all they have done.

Excerpt from “In Me, Past, Present, Future meet” from
Collected Poems of Siegfried Sassoon.
Copyright 1918, 1920 by E.P. Dutton. Copyright 1936, 1946, 1947, 1948 by Siegfried Sassoon. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc., and George Sassoon.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Originally published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books.

Copyright © 1995, 2013 by Sheila Cole

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3300-8

Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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