Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager

by Beatrice Sparks

  I’ve always dreamed of getting married. Now, I don’t know?

  August 15, Thursday

  6:59 p.m.

  Mary Ann and I started real school again today. It was sooooooooo wonderful! Tammy’s baby and mine were in the nursery, just off our school room, and I guess it is about as good as things can get under the circumstances. It’s weird though how Tammy and I both used to like to practice on other babies, but we don’t want anyone to touch ours! It’s okay for them to watch us bathe our babies and things like that, but…I guess we’re overly protective. If so, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s going to stay!

  Tammy and I are both working hard at acceleration, and Mrs. Milton is helping us. She thinks I can graduate high school when I’m seventeen if I go to summer school, and Tammy can pass her high school equivalency early, then she can go on to beauty school, and I can go to college. I’m still not sure if I want to be a teacher or a counselor, but I guess I’ve got lots of time to figure that one out. I’d still love to be a pediatrician if it didn’t take so dang long.

  …or a writer…I don’t know.

  9:46 p.m.

  It’s pretty exhausting getting up and feeding and getting L’il Annie and myself ready for school, then toting her stroller and stuff and my books and stuff onto the bus, then to the corner closest to our school and walking four blocks.

  After school, traipsing all the junk home, straightening the house, and helping with dinner and washing and…it never ends…It never, never ends, and there is never, never, ever any time for me! It’s like I’m in a time warp in cyber space or something…so tired, so all the time, every pore of my body tired, tired, worn out and tired to the bone-weary.

  Whatever made me think that me…just a dumb, dumb, dumber-than-dumb kid myself could…FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF EVERY! EVERY! EVERY! EVERY NANO-SECOND AND MINUTE OF EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY KID LIFE HANDLE ALL THE PUKING AND POOPING AND SCOPING AND WETTING AND SCREAMING AND BAWLING AND BATHING AND WASHING AND CLEANING AND FEEDING AND HOLDING AND ROCKING AND WALKING…I’m not me anymore, I’m just…it’s like she grew inside of me like a cancer or something that was a part of me—now…It’s like science fiction, I’m a part of it…her…the thing…I’m not me!!!!! I’m…I don’t know what I am, BUT I WANT TO BE JUST ME AGAIN.

  I wish with all my heart, I truly do, that I’d never met Danny, and most of all I wish…

  I wish I had never gotten pregnant…

  I

  wish

  both me and Danny

  were

  dead. DEAD! DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

  DEAD!!!!

  ACTUALLY, ALL THREE OF US—

  DEAD

  DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.

  MORE THAN DEAD!

  August 16, Friday

  5:10 a.m.

  I can’t believe what I wrote last night, but sometimes I feel so blue and beat that maybe it’s good to get rid of it any way I can.

  BUT I don’t really wish that Baby Mary Ann and I were both dead…. Danny?…maybe…maybe not. I still hope that…but maybe I shouldn’t do that either. Wishful thinking doesn’t make things so!

  11:21 p.m.

  I’d really like to be young again! Playing stickball on Carter’s dead-end street; boys and girls just being kids instead of…I don’t know…boys and girls…life was so much easier when we were all sort of nonsexed: climbing trees, riding bikes, skating, playing soccer. I wish I could go back to that happy never-never land, that maybe never-never was.

  August 17, Saturday

  1:17 a.m.

  I can’t get out of this nightmarish, horrible existence I’ve been in the last week or so. There is absolutely no color in my life, no color, no music, no light, no joy. I’ve been trying to figure out how those words can just be words with no meaning…no anything…anymore.

  I don’t want to be like this. I want to get out of my black funk, but it’s like I’m trapped inside an oil barrel, and it’s too slippery to make any headway out even if I tried, which actually doesn’t seem worth the effort.

  I do all, well most, well, maybe just the things I absolutely have to do to get by. Mom nags, and the kid cries, but neither one of them can possibly imagine what I’m going through, the energy it’s taking just to exist.

  School is a bore, and I have absolutely no appetite; in fact, food tastes like cardboard. I thought maybe I should go to the doctor, but what would he say? Probably that I have a bad attitude, and I need to pull myself together and start MAKING myself happy, and all the other trash words that don’t compute in my thinking anymore.

  I think I’ll ask Mrs. Abbot if she can take L’il Annie for a while tomorrow, so I can maybe go to a movie or something to get away…mainly get away from myself! That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? But I guess that’s the mode I’m in right now.

  Each day I feel more depressed, confused, and overwhelmed. I feel that each nano-second, I’m becoming more and more sucked under by the black what-ever-it-is that is taking over my world.

  Mom has a new second/extra job in charge of conventions and large parties. She’s never home on weekends. Mrs. Abbot has gone to her daughter’s for two weeks. Tammy and Marie live too far away for me to go see them. So! I’m being literally suffocated and strangled by my own (probably self-induced) depression.

  I’ve missed school a lot, and Mom isn’t even aware of it. I told my teacher L’il Annie is sick.

  Thank goodness she’s a good baby because I feed her and bathe her and change her and that’s all!

  I’ve become a rotten, inattentive, uncaring, unfeeling person. THAT’S IT! THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ME! I can’t feel anything anymore! I can’t care one smidge about any other smidge!

  I’ve got to do something! But what? Maybe if we just went to the mall. It used to be exciting.

  3:21 a.m.

  Oh dear, dear, dear Daisy:

  I am sooooooooooooo scared. I know I must be some sort of crazy, multipersonalities person or schizophrenic or…or…I don’t know what, but something…maybe just evil and selfish, but anyway I’m certainly not the nice good-judgement person I used to be I…I…I must tell you about it. But please, please don’t hate me, unless you absolutely have to!

  I’m soooooo mortally self-wounded and humiliated and degraded, I don’t know if throughout my life I can ever live it down. But…it seemed so rational at the time. I know this won’t make one iota of sense to you, but I’m honestly going to tell it to you like it actually happened.

  About 4:30 I knew I had to get out of the apartment or explode in one wimpy little whimpering mess. I remember my hands shaking as I dressed L’il Annie in the new pink dress Mom had bought her and put the little pink ribbon around her head. I wanted her to look nice, even though I was perfectly satisfied with myself looking like a laundry bag full of wet wash.

  When we got to the mall I saw Deanna and Kathy and Meg ooing and awwing in the Gap window and pushing each other around like happy, babyish, no-problem, no-pressure, no-cares kids.

  I haven’t any idea what happened to me at that point; I only know some compelling sort of inner energy wanted like everything to go push their silly, scatterbrained, empty heads right through the glass. It was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo morbid and so scary! I wondered what had happened to me to change me from a happy earthling like them to the desperate, degenerate…whatever I was.

  Mary Ann chose that very moment to “pooh” in her diaper with a loud rumbling and a stench that permeated the whole mall. She must have had some gas too because she started bawling like I was physically abusing her in some horrible way.

  I could feel everybody staring at us in disgust, so I quickly started pushing her toward the ladies’ room as fast as I could.

  I got some wet towels and started to change her, then realized I hadn’t brought any extra diapers. It was a nightmare. Two girls came in, looking at us like they were going to throw up, and immediately turned and dashed out. I wanted to
slump down in the corner with my arms over my head, and I probably would have done that if I’d been home. But in the mall, I had to try to just wrap Baby Annie’s bare bottom in her blanket.

  She screamed and kicked and turned red and “poohed” some more. It was all over, and I begged her to be still so I could semi-clean her up, but she wouldn’t! She just kept yelling louder and harder and redder and “poohing” more and kicking more, until I TOTALLY LOST IT.

  I AM SOOOOO ASHAMED, DAISY! WILL SHE EVER BE ABLE TO FORGIVE ME? WILL YOU? WILL I BE ABLE TO FORGIVE MYSELF? WOULD MOM IF SHE EVER FOUND OUT ABOUT IT? OH, I HOPE SHE DOESN’T! I’M SURE SHE COULDN’T FORGIVE ME, WORLDS WITHOUT ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!

  How could I ever have had even a fleeting desire to put Baby Annie’s blanket over her head and suffocate her? Would I actually have done it if the elderly woman hadn’t hobbled in? I remember after she left, I took a deep, frightened breath, looked at myself in the mirror and…you know what?…I could NOT IN ANY WAY RECOGNIZE THE WHITE, BLANK-FACED GHOUL THAT STARED BACK AT ME.

  I need help bad, Daisy!! I really truly do!!! But back to the mall…as I was coming out of the ladies’ room, I felt a soft, filmy, comfortable whiteness encompassingly float over me, and immediately suspected that I was starting to faint, so I hurried for the nearest bench.

  I sat on it in the middle of the mall by the fountain for I have no idea how long. People passed, some stopped and looked at my now sleeping baby and said how pretty she was; one or two asked if I was her big sister or a sitter. That hurt. It hurt a lot, for me and for Baby Annie too! Every child deserves to be raised by a MOM, not a dumb, stupid kid that doesn’t know from up.

  That experience was so overwhelming that later, when I saw a young married couple come out of a store, arm in arm, and looking like they owned the world, I wanted them to have L’il Annie.

  The idea passed as quickly as it came, but in a few minutes, a scared and lost little child came out of one of the stores and immediately the lady was there to kneel beside him and take his hand in hers. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I knew in my heart it was about them maturely taking good care of him until they found his mature mother.

  Each day I’m going more crazy. I can’t understand why Mom can’t see it! I can see it when I look in the mirror, and it’s horrifying. My eyes are stoned and glassy-looking, and I haven’t washed my hair in I-don’t-know-when, and I don’t care about it, or anything else. Even the baby is suffering. Often I can’t remember to even feed or change her till she cries.

  When Dr. Milshaw called last week, I told her I was having home school. She bought it! WHY didn’t she understand and come to my rescue? Why doesn’t somebody? Anybody? Why don’t they care?

  That’s not fair. I know Mom cares, but she shows me the stacked up hospital bills for me and for the baby (that her insurance doesn’t cover) and diapers and baby food and stuff. I can’t believe how much they cost! No wonder so many of the kids at UWMS (Unwed Mothers School) try so hard to get on welfare. I wish we could because now I feel that neither me nor Baby Annie has a mother. But my mom wouldn’t do that; she’s too proud and honorable. I guess I am too, rather, I used to be. Now I want, I need, I’ve got to have a mom, even if it’s a “stay-at-home welfare mom.” Or do I? I don’t know what I want, except maybe just to go to sleep and never, never, ever wake up.

  August 18, Sunday

  11:42 p.m.

  Last night Mom got in after I’d gone to bed. As she kissed me good night and tucked me in, she told me she thought I looked pale, that maybe I should get out in the sunshine more and take better care of my body. If she only knew what was happening in my head!

  Well, I took her advice, and this morning I fixed myself a lunch and a jar of baby food and a couple of bottles. I could only nurse L’il Annie for a week or so (and then naturally something went wrong in that area too). BUT this time I remembered diapers, lots and lots of diapers because I thought we’d probably be gone for most of the day.

  I’d read in the paper that a big gourmet grocery store and strip mall were opening up on the other side of town. The superexpensive side.

  There was a miniature park thing by the side of a precious baby store, and I peeked in at some of the things as I passed, but I knew they’d be far, far more expensive than we could afford. In fact the one little white dress with bitty seed pearls on it and one tiny, teeny pink rosebud by the waist had a ticket that hadn’t been completely turned over. Its price was $89.50. Imagine over $90 with tax, for a baby dress that L’il Annie would wear maybe half a dozen times.

  Still, I couldn’t get my eyes off the dress. Annie would look adorable in it. She needed it. She deserved it! Why shouldn’t she have it?

  As I began to almost obsess on the dress, guess what? The same beautifully dressed, gorgeous lady who had found the little lost boy in the mall stopped to look in the toy window next to the baby shop. I thought I saw longing and baby-hunger in her eyes, and before I really knew what I was doing, I pushed Mary Ann’s stroller where she couldn’t miss it and ran to hide behind a bush and wait and watch. When she got close, and I saw the delighted smile on her face, mixed with one of caring alarm, I took off around the corner and ran down the street as fast as I could.

  After sprinting three blocks, I was stopped by my own blood sloshing up in my ears AND the horrifying thought…What if the loving young couple didn’t want to take Annie? What if a pedophile found her first? What if he used her for baby kiddy-porn movies?

  By the time I got back to the place where I’d left L’il Annie, I was completely red-faced and out of breath. In fact, when I couldn’t see her stroller around, I literally became sick to my stomach. Hysterically, I started calling, “Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Who took my baby? Who’s kidnaped my baby?”

  People started coming out of stores all around the area. Most of them pulled away from me almost in fear, but I couldn’t stop yelling. It was like an automatic reflex or something.

  Finally, after a forever of forevers, two uniformed policemen came. Each took me by one arm and led me away. “Shhh, girl, you’re causing a commotion, so just settle down.” One of them said as he grabbed a tighter hold on my arm, “We’re taking you up to security where we’ll get this thing straightened out if you’ll cooperate.”

  It wasn’t till then that I realized I’d been struggling and continuing to yell.

  “I just want my baby. I just want to know she’s all right,” I blubbered, tears splashing down my face until I could hardly see.

  They took me up some dark stairs and down a long, dingy hall. “Sorry we couldn’t take you on the elevator, but you were making too much fuss,” one of them said almost in a fatherly manner, as he tried to guide me and talk on his cell phone at the same time: just a bunch of garbled words and numbers.

  They led me into a room so small that the five of us there were almost sitting on each other’s laps. Slowly, as though they had all the time in the world, and Baby Mary Ann had no importance at all, they began interrogating me endlessly: What was my name? Address? Phone number? Mother’s name? Where did she work? How could they contact her? Where was my father? Where did he live? How could they contact him?

  They went on and on, often talking to each other as though I weren’t even there, until at last I couldn’t stand it another second, and I stood up and screamed, “None of the stupid crap you stupid cops are asking is important at all! Where’s my baby?”

  I realized what a horrible, terrible, stupid, miserable, low-class mistake I’d made. Now they’d think, probably know, that I wasn’t fit to have my baby, any baby around me. For a few seconds my heart felt like it had stopped beating as I tried to explain how shatteringly worried I was.

  “Then why did you abandon your baby in a strange place?” one of the men asked coldly.

  “I didn’t abandon her,” I whimpered. “I…”

  “You what?” His words had icicles dangling from them.

  “I…I…” I was so upset, I vomit
ed all over his shoes and up one of his pant legs. As I continued to try to explain, I threw up again, but by this time everybody had backed away.

  Between blowing my nose and wiping the tears off my face and the puke off my mouth, I tried to make up a story that might help get Mary Ann back. “I was just sitting there when I got so sick, I tried to run behind the little hedge thing to throw up.”

  They looked at me suspiciously, which made my shaking and twitching become so totally uncontrolled that I knew I was going to have a seizure-fit of some sort—until a big, old, black lie started creeping disgustingly out of my mouth. “I…I, well, after I’d thrown up until I felt I had absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing left in me: no partially digested, soured baloney sandwich or green, pukey apple or fermented, curdled milk or acid…”

  The biggest policeman started turning green. “Okay, okay…”

  I hesitated for a second, then forced myself to continue, knowing this might be the moment when I’d either lose or keep Mary Ann. “Then my diarrhea started, and I simply had to make a dash for the ladies’ room. I thought it would just take a minute, but it didn’t….”

  The five vultures were still staring down at me, repelled, but I could tell, not quite sold.

  So I continued, “I dumped and I dumped and I dumped…sometimes throwing up…sometimes the other…in one way, it seemed like I wasn’t in there very long; in another way, it seemed like forever. I wanted to leave. Honest, I really wanted to leave. But just imagine yourself in my position.”

  I could see the looks on their faces turn from revulsion to compassion. One even put out his hand and touched my shoulder.

  I hated like everything that I had had to lie to them…but I wanted Mary Ann back at any cost, and I knew she was close because I could hear her sometimes making her special noises down some distant, hollow hall.