Stranger in a Strange Land

Cynthia Miller Coffel

Word Count 1394

Young Mothers’ Program, 1979

First Quarter

First, be single and just out of college. Be uninterested in finding a husband; be interested, instead, in babies.

Second, move to Utah. Teach in a high school program for teenage mothers. Live in a slum.

Teach your students things you know nothing about. Teach a Foods class when you do not know how to cook. Teach Child Development when you have never raised a child.

At night, dream about babies. Dream that you’re pregnant by the drug dealer with the golden-red hair. Dream that you’re lying next to him in his hut. Feel your breasts swell, your belly grow. Think, after this, my life will never be the same.

In school, be uncomfortable. Feel surprised that so many of your young, pregnant students have husbands. Listen when Carla tells you that before they married, her husband was her babysitter. Listen when Anita asks her husband how to spell their baby’s name.

Watch your student assistants tack a paper Raggedy Anne onto your bulletin board surrounded by the words: “God made heaven and Earth above but when He created a little child then God created love.” Wonder if it’s okay to mention God in this public school.

Feel annoyed when a student’s husband, visiting, says the young women you teach don’t need your Child Development class, since they instinctively know how to mother. Disagree, but don’t argue. And what about fathers, what do they need to learn, you wonder. Bite your lip.

Second Quarter

Feel lonely. Write in your diary, I will be brave.

In the English class you teach, learn more about your students. Learn that Carla’s husband can’t fall asleep unless she’s holding onto his “wiener.” Learn that elegant Joyce found out that her husband is cheating on her. Learn that LaDeane’s parents have adopted the boy who got her pregnant. Now he’s her brother as well as her husband.

Learn from Anita that in Utah, when a girl gets pregnant, she doesn’t have an abortion; instead, she gets married. Listen to Anita explain that Utah teens have better morals than teens in other states—do teens in other states even read the Bible? Hear her pride when she explains, “It’s different, you know, being married. It’s not like dating.”

Read Anita’s paper about finding out that she was pregnant—it’s pretty good. Wonder if her husband helped with the spelling.

At lunchtime, learn from Carla that her husband doesn’t want her going to Planned Parenthood for the pill. Since they teach about masturbation, they probably teach girls to become lesbians, too.

Overhear two students comparing their husbands’ good qualities. Darlene’s husband has a cuter butt than Gina’s, but Gina’s husband has a better job. Gina’s husband really loves her: he married her even though she wasn’t pregnant.

In Foods class, teach your students how to make whole wheat bread. Watch the bread rise, then forget to take it from the oven in time; put the blackened bread on the shiny counter. Wonder if you’ll ever become a decent teacher. The next day, call in sick.

Decide that you need help. Invite a fellow teacher over for Saturday lunch. Try to ask about lesson plans, about how to teach Foods class, but instead learn about her single status, about how badly she wants a husband. Learn that in her church, the Mormon church, she can’t get into heaven on her merit alone: she can only get there if she marries a righteous man.

At night, dream that you’re pregnant by the bald seminarian you met in church. Remember, in your dream, that his grandfather was husband to three women at the same time. Feel glad that the Mormon church no longer supports polygamy; feel glad that the seminarian is no longer Mormon. Wonder, in your dream, if you should marry him.

Third Quarter

In English class, give a quiz about the play A Taste of Honey. Feel confused when pregnant Darlene runs out of class, muttering that she’s about to puke. Notice the bruises on Anita’s neck.

Learn that Carla got mad at her husband and sprayed whipped cream all over him. Learn that Joyce found her husband’s car in front of his girlfriend’s house. Hear how she rammed her Ford Fiesta into his Mazda, five times.

Anita can’t come to school because she doesn’t have enough money for the laundromat; on the phone she whispers that her husband doesn’t want her going out in dirty clothes.

Adina can’t come to school because she needs to pack: her husband wants to move the family back to his home in Nigeria. She doesn’t want to go—her mother lives here and helps with the children, besides, she’s just been accepted at the community college. Still, her husband is the master of the house, kind of like Jesus: he presides over the family.

LaDeane can’t come to school because she’s having her baby.

Teach your students new vocabulary. Teach the word “heretic;” teach the word “patriarchy.”

In Child Development class, listen to students tell you that the student who struts around the school in silky skirts and high heels is really a prostitute: her husband is really her pimp: “That’s why she has all those cool clothes.”

In English class, learn that Gina is pregnant. Hear her describe dreams in which her baby is born with twelve fingers. Hear her worry about her husband’s temper: will he get mad if the baby’s not perfect?

Invite your fellow teacher over again; maybe this time she can really help you with Foods class? Instead, learn that her whole church wants her to marry the blind Sunday School teacher. She knows people think that she’s too independent, but she can’t help it: she’s thirty-three; she went to Japan on a mission; she’s lived on her own for years. She wants a husband, but she doesn’t want to have to lay out his socks every morning.

Fourth quarter

Begin to prepare for the school year’s end, for leaving Utah. Take down the Raggedy Anne poster, move dangling mobiles back into boxes. Wonder how much you’ll miss the Wasatch mountains, the seagulls, the pink knitted baby booties you see in school most days.

Learn that Gina has moved back to her parents’ house; at least she knows her baby will be safe there. Laugh when Sandy runs into your class and says, “Guess what? I’m a heretic!”

Talk again to your fellow teacher. Tell her that next time you teach Foods class, you won’t try to make whole wheat bread; instead, you’ll use her recipe for chocolate-chip-cherry-coconut macaroons: harder to burn, and the girls will enjoy eating them. Learn that the teacher has decided not to look for a husband anymore. There are no good husbands in Utah, she says. She’ll wait until she dies to get married.

Mormons can do a lot of things in the afterlife.

Instead of teaching, spend Foods class talking to Anita, the only student who shows up. She’s left her husband and knows she has become a statistic: “Just another divorced teenage bride,” she says. Listen while she tells you how her ex-husband broke into her apartment and stole all the baby clothes; listen when she says he threatened to kill her if she dated anybody else. She has a restraining order out against him, but those things don’t really work, she says. Still, when she tells you she’s glad to be rid of him, her voice is firm.

Read your students Diane Wakoski’s poem, “What I want in a husband besides a mustache.” Skip the sexy parts and the bad words. Ask your students to talk about what they want in a husband; then ask them to write poems on the subject. Later, in your slummy apartment, read the poems: Carla, who signs herself Mrs. Hernandez, wants a husband just like the man she has now, with long eyelashes and skin as soft as a baby’s butt; Joyce wants someone who loves Pink Floyd and doesn’t cheat.

Dream that you’re pregnant by the kind Jewish chemist. Watch drips of milk come out of your breasts, feel the creature move in your belly. Understand, in your dream, how much you want a baby; understand how hard it would be to raise a child on your own. Wonder about the chemist. Would he make a good husband?

Cynthia is the author of the essay "Letters to David," which won The Missouri Review Editors' Prize in 2007. She is also the author of the academic book Thinking Themselves Free: Research on the Literacy of Teen Mothers. Her essays have been listed as notable in Best American Essay anthologies and have appeared in The Missouri Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, and elsewhere.