“Who’d like to share?” asks Brianna. Today she wears her clunky sandals and a shapeless maroon sweaterdress that is too heavy for outside, but perfect for the chilly canned air of the Family Foundations building.
Jen raises her hand, tucking her silky mousy hair behind her large white ear, preparing herself for the stage. “An education.” Jen smiles, anticipating Brianna’s praise. A cross dangles from her neck, and in the lobes of those stuck-out ears, diamond studs glint. Even though Angel knows they probably aren’t real, knows she could get a pair herself at the mall, she’s still jealous.
“Right,” drawls Lizette. “Education. I forgot that one.” Angel grins and tries to telegraph her approval to Lizette, but Lizette’s beautiful green eyes are half closed like a lizard’s.
On her left hand, Jen wears a promise ring with a dinky little amethyst. “It’s my birthstone,” she said, as if none of the rest of them were born in months with birthstones. She is going to marry her boyfriend Jared, whom she met at church and who picks her up every afternoon when Smart Starts! lets out. He’s a senior and works after school installing car stereos, and once he’s paused at the curb, he never gets out of the car or even looks up, just attends to his own stereo while Jen climbs in.
Not that Angel’s own child’s father is any better than a car-stereo-installing Christian. Her stomach churns whenever she thinks of Ryan Johnson, the way, in geometry, he always sat in the front row, grimacing up at the board. He always raised his hand to answer questions, but was only correct about fifty percent of the time. It seemed crazy to Angel to keep putting yourself out there like that, but the next time Mrs. Esposito asked a question, there he was, long skinny arm swinging in the air.
“Hey,” he told her breathlessly once in the hall after class. “I thought of a name for you. A math name.” For weeks he called her Angle. Or sometimes, delighting himself still further, Obtuse Angle. He was so persistent she felt embarrassed for him, which, along with the tequila shots, explains why she slept with him. Her embarrassment also explains, perhaps, why she hasn’t told him the baby is his.
Angel’s back aches, her legs ache, she has to pee every four seconds. She’s a manatee. She doesn’t know how she can stand to get any bigger.
Jen sits up straighter in her seat and her frown deepens. Speaking directly to Brianna, she says, “For success, I also need to maintain my relationship with Jesus and make my baby have one, too.”
Angel pictures Jen forcing a recalcitrant toddler into the arms of a horrified Jesus. The Jesus looks exactly like her dad, and she laughs out loud.
Brianna catches Angel’s eye and betrays the tiniest smile, and Angel’s cheeks heat. “Thanks, Jen,” says Brianna, and writes Education on the whiteboard, the felt-tipped marker squeaking.
Jen’s parents are still together and teach at the community college, where Jen, their only child, can go for basically free once she gets her GED. They’ve already started a college fund for Jen’s baby. She’s always bragging about how in the beginning her parents kept trying to buy her an abortion, but she wouldn’t let them because she is a Christian now.
“Could you please put up the part about Jesus?” Jen strokes her tidy belly through her pink-striped maternity shirt. “I’ve been entrusted with this beautiful little life, and if I’m going to be a success, I need to love and care for it as Jesus loves and cares for me.”
Lizette snorts. “Was Jesus loving and caring for you when you were bumping uglies with that dumb boyfriend of yours?”
“Lizette,” warns Brianna, syllables clipped, but a surge of dislike has already been unleashed among the members of the class.
“You’re not special, Jen,” says Christy.
“Yeah,” says Trinity. “We’re all Christians here.”
“Ooh, umbers,” singsongs Lizette. “Jen’s getting taught.”