Pam was 18 and her baby's father was 38 when they became involved. Until then she had known him in passing as a father figure to her friends at school. They became friends, then lovers and had 10 months together before she became pregnant. When her baby was 2 weeks old, he was stabbed to death trying to get some junkies out of a hallway. It was two days before Christmas.

Pam has always been mature for her age, taking her grief, taking her time, moving on. But now when she recalls her lover, one sees she has begun to open up a bit, to take more risks, to be more playful. For example, she recollects the night when she and her friend Alee went over to his house, where he was still living with his other girlfriend. Pam wanted a ride home:

It was a night to remember. I was 3 months pregnant. She let me in the house but she said, "He's asleep.” But I know he wasn't asleep 'cause I seen him drive up. He would not wake up for beans. I said, "I know you're not asleep and I'm not playing." So he got up.

But as they were parading downstairs, the mother of the woman he was living with was coming up the stairs. A scene ensues:

"It's either you or the truck,” I said, and I went down stairs to bust his car. I went around the building and I found this log. I went back to the car and started to bust in his windshield. And I was laughing while I was doing it.

He looked out the window and he was pissed. I just did it to let him know that I wasn't playing. Don't really mean anything, just something I'd always wanted to do. Let them know I did it.

He came downstairs and my friend Alee said, "You'd better run."

"I ain't going to run from him." I started running, backing up, then I'd talk to him, then I'd run some more. Last time I turned around he was running behind so I yelled, "Go Alee, go!" I never knew in all my days I could run so fast. I couldn't do it now if had to. When I turned around, he ain't behind me no more. I know he's there, in the bushes, to grab me. I walked out on the street and I saw him and my friend fighting. He's trying to hit her. I don't know why. By the time I got there it had stopped.

"Why you jump on Alee?"

"She needs to mind her business. You're going to need to pay for this windshield."

"I ain't paying for nothing."

And we left it at that. Took him a long time to pay it, too. Wasn't even his truck.

And all the while Pam is laughing and there is light in her eyes. It was only a truck, a piece of property, replaceable, and nothing compared to the spunk and freedom that was growing in her.

Pam loves being the mother of his child, feels that she has a part of him, even if she does not have him. She thinks about him every day, thinks of their time together, sees him in her daughter, in her fighting spirit and her old soul.

When we filter the requirements stated in the Pregnant and Parenting proposal through our participants, the requirements of relevant education" and "social competence" assume new meaning. Do we bump the women from the support services if their attendance is sporadic? Do we respond to their needs when their needs are not to be in class, but to be out looking for work or for an apartment? When the morning comes, and the grief hangs heavy on the heart, do we say, "Skip class and come over. Let's talk." Do we become less demanding in the classroom when they are distracted because of complications in their own lives? Finally, when is competency achieved? By whose standards?

It has been three weeks since the interviews took place, and three weeks remain till the end of the vocational training program. Lucia is the only one currently attending classes. "I'm getting a job soon," she says, as she moves away from the life patterns of her friends and into her own. She shows that perfect attendance is possible, whether or not she understands the teacher, falls asleep in class, or hates the material. She comes, she tries to find something she can understand, use, take with her, even if it is only how to shake hands, use the proper pronoun, or ask questions in an interview.

As a teacher, it is not always easy to make physics or metaphors relevant when a student is concerned with housing, or chicken pox. How will the denominators of fractions help them kick welfare in the back, or pay for the clothes that vocational training requires? They won't do the laundry, or feed the baby, not yet, anyway, not this week. And if the teacher moves too far to relevancy, does she presume to rob students of the pleasure derived from thinking about matters totally outside their immediate concerns? Physics can help make thunderstorms and electricity less frightening; metaphors can provide a way to express what is difficult to say; math can help to put the concepts of money and numbers into our hands. Every test they pass means they will never have to go back to the same place in the same way again. Education does help people to negotiate the world gracefully, forcefully, and confidently.

¹"Pregnancy and Parenting Teens," Proposal to the Department of Public Welfare of Massachusetts. Written by John Jay Grymes and Neela P. Joshey, MD, MPHDCH, Boston Mass., 1986, p. 3.

² In transcribing the material from the interview 6/9/88, I edited slightly for coherence and punctuated where necessary. Otherwise I have retained the women's own words.