The Fate of Jackie
She stared into the darkness. She didn’t need to have any light to know what was around her. The dolls that were so worn they barely had hair left, her favorite records , the Beatles and the Rolling Stones , the large, tattered teddy bear in the corner all the things that were left from her childhood, things that she once hated and ran away from. Now she lay on that small twin bed under the worn pink comforter with faded daisies scatter all over it remembering every detail of everything in that room. A long time ago she had walked out of that room closing the door behind her promising herself that she would never return. Now it felt strangely comforting to be there. The sunlight was slowly appearing out of the darkness. She wanted to stay in the darkness. She wanted to stop the light from coming into the room. She instinctively reached down to her belly as if she felt she needed to protect her baby from the light. But her belly was flat now. Empty. Now the room was full of morning sunlight, no darkness left. She heard someone at the door. It creaked as it was being opened slowly. She closed her eyes pretending to still be asleep. She knew it was her sister coming into the room. Her older sister that had been more of a mother to her then her own mother was, slipping into the room they had shared as children.She wondered why her sister was there so early in the morning. She thought she most have slept on the couch that night, she most have been too worried to leave her and go to her own home. Her sister crawled into bed next to her and whispered in her ear, “October will never be the same.”
It had been almost 2 years since Jackie had packed her bag. She only had enough things to fill one bag. It was full of old clothes all her sister’s hand me downs. They had been to poor for Jackie to have new clothes. Jackie was a very petite girl but she was athletic and strong so the idea of hitchhiking her way out of the small town she grew up in didn’t scare her. She had no particular destination in mind. Jackie just wanted to be anywhere but there. She had decided to wear her long wavy auburn hair slicked back into a ponytail because she felt it would give her usually soft face a more angular and harsh look as if to tell everyone that saw her not to mess with this girl. Eventually, a truck driver had picked her up and taken her as far as Tempe, Arizona where Jackie decided to stay.
On the first night she was gone she had seen her reflection in a mirror and had marveled at how her green eyes had seemed to change colors. They no longer were the dull muted green she was use to staring back at her but more vibrant. Her eyes now reminded her of springtime which Jackie felt was very appropriate for marking this new beginning.
It was in Tempe while she was working as a waitress in restaurant next to a motel on the highway that she first saw him. No one could miss his dark blue 67 El Camino. The first time she saw his El Camino pulling into a parking space outside the restaurant it was in the morning. The sun was only half way up and the glare off of his car hurt her eyes but she couldn’t turn away. When he got out of his car the sun was shining so bright on him she thought if he hadn’t been so skinny he would have looked like a Greek god at that moment. It was his eyes that she first fell in love with. They were stunning sapphire eyes that drooped a little bit giving him a sad puppy dog expression. Sonny looked older than he really was. He was a loner and she liked that.
After that first time she met Sonny, Jackie never left him. He would pick her up after work and they would go to his mom’s house. His mom didn't like her because she was a California girl whatever that was supposed to mean. But she had a wonderful time in that house with his family and Sonny was a great man. He had the type of family that Jackie had always dreamed about being a part of. They sat down together for dinner every night. His family would sit at dinner and talk to each other. Jackie would think about her own family and how her parents had only yelled at each other. Never kind words like at Sonny’s house. His mom made things like pot roast with potatoes and fried chicken with German potato salad. Not like when she was a kid eating her mom’s bologna sandwich dinners as fast as she could so she could escape from the house again. Jackie would eat as slow as she could trying to make each meal last. Sonny’s mom never liked the way Jackie dragged out the family dinners by dawdling over her plate. His mom thought it was rude. But Jackie didn’t care she wanted this to last forever.
But there was a war going on and boys were being drafted. When Sonny got his draft notice Jackie tried to put on a brave face for him. Jackie thought letting him know how scared she was wouldn’t help him. She wanted to be strong for him. And Sonny left. He went into the army and was going to be a helicopter gunner. He went o Alabama for basic training. Jackie had flown down to Fort Rucker, Alabama and stayed with him for about a week after he finished basic training. The two of them had driven back to Arizona together before he was to ship out to Vietnam. They had tried to have fun but the tension from him getting ready to leave was overwhelming on that trip. As much as Jackie wanted to hold onto everything they had before it had all changed.
On the way back to Arizona they sat in silence in that dark blue 67 El Camino watching the highway disappear behind them bringing them closer to Sonny leaving. After he left Jackie found out she was pregnant. She was in a town that was still new to her and no family. Jackie had to handle the pregnancy all by herself. At night she would watch the news. See the horrors of the war they would show rows and rows of soldiers in body bags.
She would cry herself to sleep every night. In the morning she would get out of bed and stare at her eyes in the mirror now they were always blood shot from crying red and green she would think like Christmas. Every morning she would go to the mailbox almost running to see if she had a letter from Sonny at first she got a letter almost every day pages and pages describing everything Sonny was doing. She knew all the details of his life in Vietnam from who he was with him to what he had for breakfast. But the letters started getting shorter and farther apart.
Now it had been months since she had heard from him. She did not tell Sonny about being pregnant. She would think about how he didn't know unless someone else had told him. Tempe wasn't where she wanted to be anymore. Jackie couldn't see any other way out of the mess she felt that her life had become but to go back home. Jackie had returned home just before the baby was born. It was a dark cold day in October when her father had to drive her to the hospital to have the baby.
She had been given drugs at the hospital that had knocked her out. She was pregnant she went to sleep she woke up and she wasn’t pregnant anymore. After all the months of watching her belly grow. After all the months of feeling a baby moving inside her after all the months she had spent talking to her baby it was over just as simple as going to sleep. She felt that it had been too easy that she had been robbed of something. She felt empty and alone. A girl. She had decided to give the baby up for adoption.
Although she never saw the baby she would picture her in her mind every day. She imagined her baby with fair pink skin and big blue eyes like her daddy. She could almost smell the sweet scent of a baby when she thought about her little girl. She had named her Jessica and wondered what her new parents were going to call her. She had crawled out from under the worn pink comforter. The bed was now too crowded for her to sleep in now besides she really couldn’t sleep anyways.
She left her sister there sleeping comfortably and went into the bathroom. She saw her eyes in the mirror dull muted green and she wondered if they would ever be the vibrant green of spring again.
