stephen

He sees his father every other week, when his foster mother sets up the visit. They are not allowed to meet alone. It is one of the rules. The father’s name is Victor. The boy’s is Stephen. Stephen is 13. He is bright and has a ready smile. In three weeks, he will begin attending middle school, the breeding ground for the local gangs. He will be recruited and he will have difficulty refusing. It is the way things are, down here. His foster mother is good. She cares for him; she loves him. But the draw to his kind, or those he thinks to be his kind, will be far too strong. His father will like this development. His father will say it is what he did, before he got hooked on crack and cheap liquor. His father will show his son the gangbanger tattoo on his left biceps. Pretty soon, as soon as the law allows, the father will be inviting Stephen to live with him, again, and Stephen will agree and weeks later Stephen’s ready smile will be only a memory and he will be dead before he is 19. It is the way things are, down here.