Dear J***
Ok, so we haven’t seen each other in maybe 12 years. We grew up together, though. We both started drinking way too young. I guess you were 15 and I was 16 when we got our fake ID’s. I can’t believe that anyone really thought we were 21. I remember that we used to come home from school on Thursdays (the day no one would be home for awhile) and buy wine coolers in 2 liter bottles. We would drink them in the back yard and smoke cigarettes until Mom was due to come home. Then we would fumble through dinner and pass out early. The alcohol took many forms on many occasions, but that has stayed with us both for as long as I can remember.
I didn’t smoke my first joint with you, but I remember that when you found out I got high, you got me high with some of your friends. So by high school the Thursday wine cooler parties had become Friday smoke sessions. That was when it was all in fun. A Pink Floyd album on the record player, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, and lots of time for talking.
One of the things we talked about was sex. We talked about how I always used birth control, but you never did. You really never thought you would get pregnant. Either way, I remember a lot of nights that you tapped on my bedroom window in the middle of the night because you had snuck out and locked yourself out of the house. The times you snuck out to have sex with some boy. Maybe that is why it happened. Maybe it was because the summer before I went off to college I had to work a lot and didn’t have as much time to spend with you. Maybe is was you still had high school, and I was thinking I was grown.
So the day you called me at school and said you were pregnant was a shock to me. That you told me you were being thrown out of our parent’s house also was hard for me to take. You found friends who would take you in. You found high school was a lot harder for a 17 year old pregnant girl. But you did graduate.
The baby was born. Samantha you called her. I moved home and got to see her. You were living with the semipro football player at the time who had the coke habit. You lost a lot of friends at the time because he was 15 years older than you and black. I remember Grandpa saying that “Claude” only let you stay there for one thing. He also asked me if you cared at all about what people thought when they saw a white girl with a black guy. I mean this is only 1987 and a small town in Virginia as well. This wasn’t New York City for Christ’s Sake. But you didn’t care.
Claude got arrested, you got evicted and you lived with the crack dealing car thief for awhile. I think he got arrested, but you moved on. At times you lived with guys, sometimes with girls, sometimes by yourself, but never for very long. You worked in bars, you danced on poles, you even worked a jackhammer for awhile. I guess Sammy always ate and had a place to sleep, I don’t know. I didn’t hear from you all that often then. I don’t know how you would have made it if Mom hadn’t let you move back in. You did stay there until Dan took you away and married you. The marriage didn’t last forever, but it gave you a few years to grow up. It gave you and Sammy a place to call home, and it gave you the time to have some fun.
When I found out about the party you were having and that Sammy was going to be there, I was willing to drive the 3 ½ hours to see you again. It was going to be good to see you and Sam after all those years. Not really anybody’s fault, we just drifted apart.
I know you told me Sammy had had some problems and been in some trouble. I also remember the night you called me in drunken tears a couple of years ago to tell me that Sammy was pregnant at 17 and would graduate high school pregnant. I was in Korea at the time and could come to help out. I know you said the baby’s father was a trouble maker and not really motivated to do anything, but remember the guy that knocked you up? All he did was smoke pot. You thought he was so cool. Then last year when you told me the baby’s father was going to jail. I remember you told me that the only reason that Sammy wasn’t also in jail was because your friend the DEA agent gave you a tip witch could have cost him his job, and you drove around all night to make sure Sam was no where near where the arrest was to happen. (After all the nights she had skipped, what a miracle it was that night she was at work.)
None of that mattered when I saw Samantha again. She was the most beautiful girl at the party. We didn’t talk much as I wanted because she had her friends and I didn’t know the words that would make up for over a decade lost.
The next morning when you, I, and your SO had a chance to talk, I guess I got to catch up on all the details. The baby’s father wants to be a rapper. The baby’s father wants to be a gangster. His mom smokes a lot of pot and steals it from him. Sammy buys drugs for this kid. She has to because his mom won’t let him work (or so he says). Sammy snuck out in the middle of the night to have sex with him. You found out from reading her diary that she wants to be a professional drug dealer because the lifestyle is cool. You told me that the black guy she is hanging out with is only after one thing. You said that this is a small town in Virginia. Your racist friends don’t understand a wanna be gansta, wanna be rapper, and why a beautiful white girl would be seen with a black guy.
You know me and my wife can’t have children of our own, so you called social services (because you were worried about the baby you can’t even call your grandson) and told us you wanted us to try to take the baby.
I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but 2006 has to be one of the ten best Christmas’ in World History.
SGT Schwartz