A tall, young blonde stood up, an infant strapped to her chest and a two-year-old girl by the hand. She capped a bottle of milk and stuck it in a pocket in her demin overalls.
There was a short discussion at the window. The clerk shook her head.
“Sorry? What do you mean you can only send him another letter?” Samantha’s voice was beyond loud, but the other women didn’t seem to notice, bouncing tots on knees. Another day in paradise at the office of child-support enforcement.
“I waited two hours for you to tell me you can only send another letter? He’s ignored all the others!”
The clerk told Sam that if she would have a seat, a supervisor would get to her when he was free.
“In another two hours?”
Samantha went back to her chair and sat down and got out the milk bottle.
“Mommy…” said the two-year-old at her side.
“What is it, dear?”
“Mommy…” Her mouth was still open, but she had stopped talking.
Samantha patted the infant on her chest, trying to get a burp. “What? What is it, dear? Are you okay?”
The girl threw up in Samantha’s lap. Samantha looked down, and the infant regurgitated on her shoulder. A dozen children wailed all around. Her checking account was empty.
Samantha raised her eyes to a blank spot on the concrete wall and tried to imagine an afternoon at the beach.
The other women in the waiting room had all been there. Each had that hardened, dazed, lack-of-sleep look usually only seen on men at the end of extended military campaigns. One of the women had once dated a Navy SEAL, who told her about going through some kind of grueling test called Hell Week. One week, she thought. Big deal. If you really want to toughen them up, have ’em trade places with single moms.
Samantha returned to her apartment on the campus of the University of Florida, where she lived in a wing of married student housing nicknamed “divorced student housing.” There were day classes and night waitress shifts and midnight feedings and more trips to the support office. Summer became fall. Samantha began recognizing some of the regulars from the support office at her apartment building. They became a group. Teresa Wellcraft, Rebecca Shoals, Maria Conchita, Paige Turner. And Samantha — everyone called her Sam. She was the tallest, a full six feet, blond hair in a semishort soccer-mom cut. She had also
Paige was the smallest, and she let everything pass, and Sam was always stepping in and defending her, which only embarrassed Paige all the more.
“Please, let’s just go,” said Paige. “It’s no big deal.”
“No! Not until this fucker honors his competitor’s coupons!”
Paige had grown up inland, and her Okeechobee twang was mistaken for southern. She was the classic girl next door, big brown eyes and no hint of guile. Her hair was always in a ponytail. She would have been more comfortable never saying a word and not joining the group, except Sam pressured her, and she felt more comfortable acquiescing. She wanted to be a veterinarian.
Maria filled the conversation voids left by Paige and then some. She cared about people and wanted to let every one of them know it. At length. Before the pregnancy, she had volunteered at hospices for the terminally ill, where lonely residents pretended they were asleep when they saw her coming. Her personal passion was clothes, and her fashion sense was that unfortunate combination of wrong and bold. She also had trouble with makeup, rooted in her philosophy that
Rebecca had the artistic side that so tragically eluded Maria. She excelled at painting and could pick up a musical instrument for the first time and become competent in an hour. She was the reluctant beauty, the one in the group the men hit on the most. Medium height but curvy, with nice cheekbones, bedroom eyes and the kind of exquisite auburn hair with natural body that caused other women to make up things about her behind her back. It didn’t bother Rebecca. Nothing did. She was the flower child of the group, barefoot, daisies in the hair, undeclared major.
