Hope…and Faith (re-write)

Hope held the baby in her hands…her baby. It seemed like a moment out of a movie, set in slow motion: everyone was moving around her, she heard voices but didn’t understand the words as she sat motionless and took in everything about this 8 lb, 8 oz. bundle of flesh that had just entered her world. She didn’t feel like a mother, yet she instantly became one in this very moment. “How is my life going to change?” she wondered. “Where do I go from here?”

The baby released a small cooing sound and she shifted her so that now she was holding her new daughter close to her heart. She should be tired, after going through 14 hours of labor, alone…miraculously, she felt this strange sense of peace and energy coming from an unknown place. Hope heard a sound coming from the doorway and looked up. Seeing Darren standing there, she let out a slow breath that prepared her for what he would bring to this time and place. She had not talked to Darren since she told him she was keeping the baby 7 ½ months ago. He told her she was being selfish and wasn’t thinking about what the baby would do to their lives, and had asked her to leave his home. Hope left that night the same way she had left the abortion clinic—with no regrets, with no afterthoughts, and with no looking back.

Yet here he stood. He still looked good. Darren was always sexy to her, with his smooth skin and bald head. He was never less than impeccably dressed; he told her once that you could tell a lot about a man by the way he dressed. The thing that attracted Hope to Darren was his mind; he was smart and ambitious and ran his own IT company that he started right out of college. Darren was one of those men who set goals and achieved them and Hope fell in love with him hard. They had dated for 3 years and were happy. They had talked about marriage and building a house down south. Children never entered the discussion, so Hope didn’t know how Darren felt about children until she told him she was pregnant.

Hope and Darren stared at each other across the room. The silence between them spoke of the uneasiness and tension that had developed. Hope had many questions to ask, not the least being how he knew that the baby was born. More importantly, she wanted to know why he was here. Darren had put her out of his life. After leaving his house that night, she refused to pursue him, call him, or involve him where he didn’t want to be involved. And he didn’t call or visit her either. Hope was willing to raise this child on her own, although she didn’t want to, and wanted her daughter to have both a mother and a father. But how do you make a man love a child that he doesn’t want?

“How are you doing?” Darren asked to break the silence.

“I’m doing just fine…” Hope answered. She didn’t know what to say to him. This was just hard.

“Your mother called and told me that you had the baby,” he said, softly. “Can I see her?”

“Yes,” she answered. Darren walked over to the side of the bed and peered at the baby lying in Hope’s arms. He smiled and looked up at Hope’s face. “You look tired,” he said.

“Well, I did just go through 14 hours of labor, so I probably do look like hell,” Hope said.

“You still look beautiful to me,” he said. Hope looked at him with a look of absolute surprise. She wasn’t prepared for him to say these things to her. She wasn’t prepared for him at all. She decided to just go ahead and get this over with so she could move on.

“What are you doing here, Darren?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” he replied. Darren walked over to the front of the bed and put his hands in his pants pockets. He stood there, looking out of place and uncomfortable, staring down at the floor.

“You don’t know? If you don’t know, then you can leave.”

“Hope…” Darren walked over and pulled a chair close to Hope’s bed. He sat down and put his head in his hands and began to cry softly.

She was at a loss. What the hell did all of this mean? Hope didn’t have time to go through all of these emotions again. She had done all the crying, all the laying in the valley, all the depressed days…now all she wanted was resolution and closure.

“Darren?” Hope spoke his name cautiously.

“I don’t know why I came here,” Darren said through his hands. “I got that call from your mother and before I knew it, I was here.” He paused for a second to lift up his head and lean back in the chair, and then, “I never wanted any children, Hope. I watched my dad go around and sleep with all these different women and I have 4 half-brothers from 4 different ladies and my dad isn’t a father to any of us. Oh, he’s around for a loan every now and then, but being a father? He’s not that.” Darren closed his eyes and looked as if he was in pain at the memory of growing up with his father around but not really.

“My mother raised me pretty much by herself. And I turned out alright. Over the last 7 months, I’ve thought about you and the baby and how if my mother could do it, then so could you.” He looked at her then, and saw on Hope’s face a look of anger, then added quickly, “but you shouldn’t have to. I wanted to call you; I wanted to be there for you so much during your pregnancy. My only excuse is I didn’t know how.”

“You didn’t know how!?” Hope exclaimed. “By just showing up, Darren, is how! If you loved me like you said you did, then it would have been easy to just be there.”

“It wasn’t that easy, Hope. And you will never understand why, so I am not going to try to explain it to you now.” Darren reached over and tried to take Hope’s hand. She snatched it away. “Please Hope; I’m trying to apologize here.”

“I don’t want, or need, your apology. What I want is for you to go,” Hope said. “My baby and I will be just fine without you, right? Isn’t that what you said, ‘I can do this by myself’?

“Hope, you are not hearing me.”

“Then say what you are saying, Darren.”

“What I am saying is that I made a mistake. I have loved you since the first moment I saw you, and I still do. And loving you means loving everything about you, which I do. Loving you means loving this child that we created. I realize that I was the one being selfish. I ran away scared from you during the time that you needed me the most. And I’m sorry. I don’t expect this to be easy, nor do I expect you to just fall back in love with me because I’m here. But I want a chance to be a father to my child, my daughter. I want her to grow up and know who I am, and be able to count on me, no matter what. I don’t want her to ever think that her father wasn’t there for her, or that he didn’t want her, because I do.”

The baby had started to cry and Hope was rocking her gently. “Ssh, ssh, ssh,” she whispered through her own tears.

“Can I hold her?” Darren asked. Hope looked at him and saw his face tinged with anxiousness and wonder.

“Yes.” Darren rose from the chair and leaned over to take the baby from Hope’s arms. He looked awkward and out of sorts, but instantly began to smile from ear to ear because the baby stopped crying as soon as he picked her up and put her on his shoulder. “She knows her Daddy,” he said proudly. Hope just shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. She lifted her hand up to cover her mouth and watched as Darren danced the baby across the room, whispering soft words to her and rubbing her softly on her back. It immediately came to her what she would name the baby, because in the back of her mind, this was the scene that played out many times in her head. She had prayed that Darren would realize his importance in his daughter’s life, but after that scene at his house, she didn’t know if that would happen. Hope watched in amazement as Darren cuddled with their daughter and continued to smile and bond with her.

“Have you decided on what to name our daughter?” Darren asked as he came back over to the chair and sat down. The baby had fallen back asleep on Darren’s shoulder and Hope looked at her and shook her head yes. Darren took her hand and this time, she didn’t draw it back.

“Her name is Faith.”

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Copyright © 2008 by Marva Allen-Fowler. All Rights Reserved.