She stood at the counter, baggy jeans hanging from thin hips, hooded sweatshirt tight across her swollen belly. A tight faced DMV worker on the other side of the counter stared at her. A tiny girl clung to her leg.
I took a number, hoisted baby Destini onto my lap and sat in the row of metal chairs that lined the waiting area.
“I don’t have my birth certificate,” said the young girl at the counter. “But I need an I.D.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. When you get a copy of it, bring it in and you can get an I.D.”
I looked around at the busy room, analyzing how long it would take for my number to be called. I studied the clock, calculating my day. I had so much to do and not enough hours in the day. I let Destini down onto the dirty floor where she toddled along, barely walking.
“But I can’t get the job if I don’t have I.D.,” I heard the girl tell the woman. Her voice began to falter. “Please help me,” she said quietly across the counter. “I need this job. We’re living in my car…I have a baby. Please,” she pleaded. The curly haired girl at her feet stared at me with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the DMV employee insisted, “There’s nothing I can do.”
The young mother sighed, reached down and pulled her daughter into her arms and went back to the chair a few seats down from mine and sat. She curled her shoulders forward and wrapped her arms around the blond haired toddler as if she were her life support…and began to sob.
I looked at the number I held in my hand and then up at the digital “now helping” display. It was taking too long. I was hours behind schedule on my vending route because my babysitter was sick. Destini put a carpet fuzzy into her mouth and I dug it out with my finger.
The young girl took a breath, squeezed the child closer, and covered her face with her hands. The room full of people, anxious to register their cars or renew their license looked at the ceiling, the floor, the papers in their hands, as the curly haired child began to cry in response to her mother’s weeping.
I thought about the extra room at my house. I calculated the cost of missing a day of work. I envisioned the back seat of my truck, filled door to door with work supplies, the car seat. I looked at the clock again, shoulders heavy with the burden of responsibilities.
The girl’s sobs began to subside as she tried to pull herself together. She put her hands on either side of her daughters face, kissed her forehead, shushed her baby girl, running her hands along the round cheeks.
I looked away from the scene, as everyone else in the room had already done. I held my own baby close and breathed in her clean hair. I took a deep breath. I stood. And I walked out.
