Is Someone Accusing You of Being the Father of Their Child?
by Bonnie ZoBell
Terren spills Colt 45 all over the carpet as he leans forward in his Barcalounger. “Yeah!” he says, raising his fist in the direction of the court drama being played out on the TV. DNA has proven the smiling young man on the screen isn’t responsible after all.
One-thirty in the afternoon, it’s almost time for lunch, and Terren’s perspiring in his sleeping sweats, the ones his girlfriend Trish bought him last week when she was clothes shopping for the baby.
“Now, you know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?” Judge Hatchett asks the young man as he stands before her in court. She smiles at the kid, her eyebrows raised in mock seriousness on her mahogany-colored face. She likes him, though she doesn’t like the situation, and she wants to be sure he hears her. Her eyelashes are long and sweet, but she can deliver a punch.
“Yes, I do,” the young guy says. He squelches an earlier smirk.
“So she didn’t get pregnant this time, but is this the kind of life you want? Being dragged into court?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you want to be a father at nineteen?”
“No, ma’am.” He’s earnest. He doesn’t. But there’s still that smile.
“And what about birth control?”
“I’ll be using it from now on, ma’am.” The guy sounds slightly ashamed, though Terren knows he probably thinks his girl should have had the protection. The kid hardly looks old enough for any of this, like Terren himself.
The camera shifts to Judge Hatchett’s chambers backstage, or at least a set that looks like chambers. Law books line the shelves, but they could be fake books, as Terren once saw in a model home his mother dragged him through. He wonders whether the judge has the kind of space for such big chambers behind the stage. Or time to drag all the TV cameras to her real chambers downtown. The desk looks expensive. The judge’s black robes drape over her body.
The young woman, the kid’s girlfriend, is crying profusely in Judge Hatchett’s office. She is a white girl, not terribly attractive, but your heart goes out to her. Hatchett probably wishes she could say something to get the girl to stop, but it is good TV after all. Terren wonders whether his girlfriend Trish would cry like that in the same situation.
“There, there, now,” says Hatchett quietly, every sympathetic muscle in her face working overtime. “What we need here is a plan. Right?”
The young woman can barely nod her head she’s so distraught, but she does.
“Now, what are you going to do?” Judge Hatchett is trying to play this right. She can’t put the girl out on the street after the big DNA discovery. The girl can’t simply be labeled a skank or a ho. She’s a person, too, no matter how many different guys she’s been screwing around with.
She’s crying so hard there’s mucus streaming down her chin. Terren figures she’s signed papers to be on the TV show. She’s been flown there and paid. She needs the money, now more than ever since she has a baby. But her boyfriend isn’t the father. What will she do?
Thrilled for the young guy’s victory just a few minutes ago—there has to be some solidarity, after all—Terren’s not sure he’d let Trish on the show if she felt that bad about it.
“I think what’s going to happen is the show’s going to get you some good counseling,” Hatchett tells her, her elbows perched on the plush leather arm rests, her hands clasped in front of her, the camera coming in to get them both in the frame.
The young woman nods wildly, can hardly catch her breath.
“Come here, girlfriend. You need a hug?” That’s when Hatchett stands and leans over. The girl rises, nods, but she probably can’t help thinking about how the whole country is watching her on TV. She takes the hug, her world now crushed, over.
Terren’s not exactly on the girl’s side, but he does feel for her.
Still watching, he pads over to the kitchen and places his cereal bowl and beer can in the sink where his mom will find them when she gets home from work. A question in bold print streams over the screen: “Is Someone Accusing You of Being the Father of Their Child? Call this number: 1-800-HATCHETT.”
He could get Trish to say he’s her baby’s dad. She’s accused him of it anyway. They’d get on TV. They’d get airplane tickets and a hotel with a pool. Think of all the money. He’d have the paternity test. He doubts he’s the dad, but who knows? Maybe he’d make a good one. And even if the test comes back negative, he could hang out with Trish a while longer. Wouldn’t it be better for Trish to have him around, a father for her baby, than no one at all?
He moves into the other room to get dressed thinking maybe he’ll call Trish at work to see if she needs anything before he heads on over to the pool hall.
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Bonnie ZoBell has received an NEA and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in such print magazines as American Fiction, The Bellingham Review, and The Greensboro Review, and online at juked, Salome, and Word Riot. She received an MFA from Columbia. Contact Bonnie.
