Childhood - Barbara Jordan

Esme, being the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Half Moon Bay on a farm run by migrant workers. She shared two bathrooms with thirty others; and she hung a towel as a makeshift curtain around the toilet when she grew into adolescence and got her first period. Her uncle molested her from age five on, and when she began to menstruate, she was sure it was some kind of punishment; the bleeding mortified her. She believed that if she could just have a baby, she would be safe. The pregnancy would be a shroud and the baby her ticket to another life.

At age twelve, she wore thick mascara and heavy makeup. When she was thirteen, she could easily pass for twenty. Against her parents wishes she left high school at fourteen, married a local boy and moved to the valley. By then, she was three months pregnant, and at seven months, she went into labor prematurely and delivered a baby boy who breathed on his own for several minutes before dying in her arms.

Esme told me this story in the exam room one day as if she were recounting a movie that she had seen last week. He big eyes met mine without shame, and her turquoise eye shadow matched her blouse. She was twenty- four years old and pregnant with her second daughter, by the same man that she had married as a child. They both had jobs. I asked her if she thought she had missed out on youth, had she grown up too fast, did she have regrets. Was she sad?

She thought about it before answering as she played with a button on her blouse. Her legs were swinging back and forth from the exam table. "White people make a big deal about things sometimes. I know it was wrong what my uncle did. What was almost worse than that was the sound my father made when he would come home drunk and puke in the driveway. I was afraid he would retch up his insides and die. I do wish I had gone to college. I wish my son hadn’t died. But I'm lucky. My life is so much better than my parents. I have my own bathroom