Population Zero

Chapter Two

It had taken a great deal of restraint for Todd not to extend his offer of sterilization in exchange for free government money to every man or woman who walked through the door that day. He knew that he ought to be cautious. But as he watched a woman stagger in, obviously wired on methamphetamines, carrying a screaming newborn that had probably been born addicted to meth – tried to imagine what the first 24 hours of that baby's life had been like in an incubator withdrawing from drugs and what his future no doubt held – Todd could hardly hold himself back.

What was wrong with our society that we allowed this type of trash to reproduce?

One after another they came in. A man who had just gotten paroled a month ago, had ten kids by six different women spread out all over town, and was clearly avoiding paying child support by not working. A couple who were third generation welfare recipients and already had two kids, now shamelessly discussing the possibility of giving birth to another in order to get more welfare money. A single mom whose mother raised her three kids while she hopped from nightclub to nightclub. And a single dad trying to get on disability that had quit one job after another, claiming everything from Lupus to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Attention Deficit Disorder. Todd wanted to sterilize them all.

He wished that he didn't even have to ask. He thought that there should have been a button he could push that would call orderlies to strap them down in their chairs while he spayed and neutered them like cats. He wondered if any of them would have taken his offer. He thought he'd better try to find out. He had gotten lucky with the fat woman. It was best not to push his luck.

Todd went through all of the usual motions, setting them up with job interviews that he knew they wouldn't attend, recommending trade schools that they showed even less interest in, giving them pamphlets on safe sex and drug rehab programs while they sat there looking bored and impatient, waiting to fill out the paperwork so they could get their check next month. His success earlier in the day with the fat woman was beginning to recede from memory. Sure there were many more honest hardworking couples who had been laid off because of the recession or had seen their mortgage payments double because of adjustable rate interest-only loans or had otherwise fallen on hard times. They were the ones who would be off of welfare in a year. But 40% of the people who came to his office would never find jobs. Three quarters of the remaining 60% would find jobs only to lose them again in an endless pattern that would see them in and out of his office year after year.

By the time the last client of the day entered his cubicle, Todd had been unable to control himself. He just hoped that he would be as lucky with them as he had been with the fat woman.

"Come in. Sit down."

He looked them over, reading their entire history in their nervous jittery motions and disheveled appearance before he'd even opened their file.

They were both crack addicts, both prostitutes, expecting their first child. Sometimes it seemed as if every welfare recipient that came into his office was either pregnant or carrying a newborn. The less educated they were, the more fucked up their lives were, the more prone they appeared to be to reproduce. That alone convinced Todd that he was doing the right thing.

"How far along are you?"

The woman squinted. Her eyes rolled slowly to the left, passing by him without seeing him at all as if she were looking for something in the dark. She brushed her oily unwashed blonde hair away from her face revealing a face dotted with a profusion of pockmarks and scabs, some of them bleeding from where she had nervously picked at them. Her eyes rolled back to the right, overshot him again and then rolled back the opposite direction before finally fixing on Todd's face. She smiled, displaying teeth blackened with cavities and the pus-filled craters where teeth had long ago rotted away or been knocked out by some angry trick. She licked her chapped lips and scratched the bleeding scabs along her arms.

"W-what?"

"Bitch, he asked you how many months pregnant you are."

The man who'd walked in with her, whom Todd assumed was her husband, grabbed the woman's arm and shook her.

Her eyes focused for a second and she smiled awkwardly. The man rolled his eyes and sneered. A drop of saliva drooled from the corner of the woman's mouth and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, and then used the same hand to wipe her nose.

"Oh, I'm five months."

She smiled again and her eyes swam in her skull as if she had once again lost sight of him. Todd caught a whiff of her breath as she handed their welfare application across the desk to Todd. He wrinkled his nose. It smelled like raw sewage. She was wearing a halter top with no bra. Her breasts were small and sagged as if deflated. The nipples poked at the fabric of her halter top. Her naked stomach bulged out over the top of her miniskirt which had slipped down on her hips so far that her pubic hair was visible. She had a butterfly tattoo on her belly and a pierced navel. A dark black tribal tattoo spiraled up her skinny calves.

"What drugs are you on?"

"Man, fuck you! We ain't no drug addicts! We ain't got to answer shit for you."

Todd looked the woman's husband over. His eyes were bloodshot and weepy. He was scratching himself and jittering just as she was. Only, instead of the gap-toothed smile his wife wore, his face was twisted into a disdainful sneer. His wrinkled t-shirt was stained with blood and what looked like vomit and was at least two sizes too large as were his baggy jeans that sagged off of his bony hips. His hair was dyed black and stood up in a spiky tangle off the top of his head. He had a teardrop tattoo in the corner of his left eye and a piercing in his right eyebrow along with one in his lip. A Metallica tattoo wrapped around his neck in two inches letters, and a dragon tattoo wound up his right arm, disappearing under the sleeve of his t-shirt.

Todd smiled.

"If you want a dime of government money you'll sit down, shut the fuck up, and answer whatever questions I ask you."

"Fuck that shit! You can't talk to us like that."

"Baby! We need this money. Just come sit down."

Todd smiled warmly.

"So, what are you on?"

"Um…well…we both use crack and meth and sometimes heroin when we can get it."

Todd looked over at her husband who looked away from him.

"Yeah, what she said and…and I use dust, I mean, PCP, sometimes too."

"What are your names?"

"My name's Nicolene De Marco and this is my husband Michael."

"How old are you two?"

"I'm 22 and Michael's 25. We're trying to get on welfare. We're expecting our second child."

"What happened to the first one?"

"He was born with some mental handicaps and a bad heart. We couldn't afford to take care of a sick baby so we had to give him up for adoption."

"And now you're having another one?"

"Yeah, but don't worry. We're both going to kick before the baby's born. Michael's going to get a job as soon as he's well. We're going to be good parents."

Todd shook his head.

"No. You won't be good parents and you're not going to get sober."

"Fuck you, man! You don't know shit about us!"

Todd leaned forward and stared directly into the eyes of the young drug addict.

"Do you really believe that? Do you really think that I haven't heard your story a hundred times before? I even know what you apparently don't, how this story ends. Care to hear it? You'll get your welfare check if I'm dumb enough to give it to you. You'll shoot it all into your arm or up your nose until you finally miscarry or else give birth to another kid with birth defects because his mom didn't give enough of a fuck about him to stay off of drugs for even nine months. You'll give this kid up for adoption too because deep down you know what shitty parents you would be. And if by some miracle your kid comes out with nothing more serious than a bad case of withdrawal, you'll take it back to whatever hovel you're living in right now and feed him and change his diapers only when you're sober enough to remember. If he survives repeated infections from bad diaper rashes, malnourishment, neglect, and the physical abuse you'll no doubt subject him to when his crying blows your high, that in itself would be a miracle. But then you'd eventually lose your apartment or get kicked out of whoever's house you're crashing at and since the government can't give you a check without an address to send it to you'll wind up right back on the streets where you'll both go back to selling your ass for a hit of crack. Then one day some pedophile will offer you money for a few hours with your kid and you'll sell his ass too."

Nicolene's eyes widened. Her bottom lip trembled and she began to cry.

"I-I wouldn't…I'd never do that to my baby." Her eyes were still rolling around in her head, still unable to focus. Her brow furrowed as she tried to sober up through sheer force of will. She was obviously having trouble thinking clearly.

"Yes, you would. You'd do all of that and more. That's why the world would be better off, your baby would be better off, if you'd just have an abortion and get yourself fixed so that you can never get pregnant again. Then you can go back to smoking crack and shooting smack until you kill yourselves."

Nicolene stared across the desk at Todd, her mouth hanging open. She looked as if she were still waiting for the punch line, trying to decide if the tall, skinny redheaded white guy in the yellow polo shirt and khaki pants was really serious.

Todd's smile never left his face but Nicolene could tell by the look in his eyes that he was completely serious. She was used to tough love. She'd had her fair share of family interventions over the years. But no one had ever spoken to her with this type of brutal, sadistic honesty.

She hugged herself and began to rock back and forth in the seat. Her husband looked wild-eyed from his wife to Todd.

His pulse rate was jacking up. He looked like he was about to explode. Todd was expecting the man to jump up and punch him right in the jaw at any second. The guy was just as skinny as he was but Todd was skinny because he ran every day, rode a bicycle to work, and didn't eat meat or dairy products. This guy was skinny because he hardly ate at all and was constantly jacked up on amphetamines. If he was on PCP he might have been able to pull Todd's arms off like the wings of a fly if he got mad enough.

"But," Nicolene looked over at her husband who was staring back at her blankly, his face betraying his shock and confusion, the rage still boiling there just under the surface, "we don't believe in abortion."

Todd rolled his eyes and shook his head in exasperation.

"Obviously you don't believe in birth control either. Look at yourselves. Do you really think you'd be any good to a kid? Do you want your kid's life to be even more fucked up than yours?"

Michael sprang from his chair and jabbed his finger into Todd's face. Todd winced and prepared for a blow.

"You son-of-a-bitch! We don't have to listen to this shit! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"No. You absolutely do not. You can walk right out that door if you'd like. I'll just stamp rejected on your welfare application and you can go back to turning tricks for drug money."

Michael sighed and slumped down in his chair.

"You know damn well we can't do that shit. We're sick, man! We need some cash."

"Well, even if I approve you now, the most you could get today would be food stamps. You wouldn't see a check for another month."

"A month!"

"Six to eight weeks actually."

"Shit! This is a waste of fucking time!" Michael began to pace the floor, looking lost and desperate.

"That's okay, baby. We can always sell the food stamps until the check comes."

"That's if I approve you and why should I? Like I said, I already know how this story is going to end for you and your baby."

"But-but we need it. We really need this money!"

"What if we did like you said? I mean, what if we got rid of the baby? If Nicolene had an abortion?"

"No. No. I can't. I won't!"

"Do you really still want to be out there two or three months from now, trying to turn tricks when you're seven or eight months pregnant? Come on, you know we ain't never gonna kick. You've probably already fucked that kid up with all the horse you've been shootin' in your arm."

"She'd have to get her tubes tied as well."

"Yeah, what if we did all of that?"

"If you had an abortion and a tubaligation then I'd sign all the papers to make sure you got your monthly check. I'll even put a rush on it, put you down as an emergency hardship case so you can get your check sooner and I might even make a clerical error and put the son you gave up for adoption down as a dependent to get you some more money."

"But, I don't want to have an abortion."

Michael took Nicolene's track-marked arm in his hands and tried his best approximation of a sympathetic look.

"Nicky, we have to do this. You know we wouldn't be good parents anyway. Look at us. We can't bring a child into the world like this. This guy is right. This is the best thing for us to do."

"I'll go get the papers."

Todd watched as they filled out the paperwork. He reached into his safe and pulled out a book of $100 in food stamps.

"You'll get the rest in the mail, after you come in here and show me that it's been taken care of. Here's the number of a clinic that will do it all for free."

Michael and Nicolene De Marco walked out of Todd's cubicle holding hands.

For the second time that day, Todd felt as if he had truly made a difference, not just in the life of the unborn baby or that fucked up couple or that fat woman and her kids, but in the world.

Todd left that day feeling like he should skip down the sidewalk. He walked out of the building and into the parking lot with a smile chiseled into his face.