Play Puts Pregnant Teens, Older Men in Spotlight

“You got one of them older guys over 21, huh? . . . I’m not sayin’ it’s bad. Most of the girls got old guys.” --Sam, 12 and pregnant

*

When Julia Jordan arrived in West Virginia with a commission to write for schoolhouse stages, she circled the state with wide and wondering eyes.

Everywhere she met pregnant teens and preteens. She met them on her visits to the capital, Charleston, and to the small coal town of Williamson. She lived with dozens of them at a home in Wheeling.

A few weeks later, back in New York, Jordan was fuming. Over and over, she had found the story that horrified her: “That a lot of the fathers are older men--and that they weren’t in jail.”

And so she wrote.

Jordan’s play, “A Better Hand,” has only three characters--Sam, whom local boys have paid for sex, and 16-year-old Candace, who is first molested by her stepfather and who then falls victim to the play’s third character, Bill, a man in his early 30s.

The story explores how the girls end up together, on New Year’s Eve, at the Florence Crittenton home in Wheeling.

It hits home. This is raw material; no effort is made to smooth over the language or the subject matter.

With a $25,000 state grant, a coalition of public and private groups hired Jordan to write this play--not for the sake of art, but to reach out to girls, to make a difference in their lives.

“It could change behavior,” says Nancy Peoples, of the Adolescent and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Task Force. “It could change one kid’s life.”

Will West Virginia’s schools be willing to show “A Better Hand” to their children? Peoples says some of the language may need to be tempered, but the content is not likely to change.

“Now the question is: Are we brave enough as a state to embrace it and test it?”

*

Candace: “Boys don’t know how to treat a lady.”

Sam: “They look nice, though. Not so big and hairy. I look at the pictures and I just think, Why? Old guys wanna be with us ‘cause we’re pretty. Don’t you wanna be with someone pretty, too?”

Candace: “That’s not love.”

Sam: “Maybe not, but it’s nice. And it’s your only chance. Pretty soon we’ll be too old. Too old to kiss a boy.”

*

“This is not a palatable subject,” warns Kathy Szafran, vice president of Crittenton Services Inc. in Wheeling.

The problem--men pursuing impressionable teens--is much bigger than the stage at Shepherd College, in Shepherdstown, where an audience first applauded a draft of “A Better Hand.”

There are nearly 40 Florence Crittenton homes nationwide, primarily filled with pregnant girls, many of them victims of abuse and neglect, rape and incest, drugs and alcohol.

“For the majority of the kids we serve, the least of their problems is being pregnant and a teenager,” Szafran says.

Most of the 42 girls currently at Wheeling’s Crittenton house are underage and pregnant. In West Virginia, one in six births is to a teenager. Indeed, between 1980 and 1995, the pregnancy rate for girls ages 10 to 19 soared by 83%.

Most of the girls at Crittenton began having sex between 12 and 13, says Szafran, and “they think there’s something wrong with them if they’re not pregnant by 16 or 17.”

Although some were molested, many simply considered sex at that age normal--a fact that backs up a national study that found the largest increase in teenage pregnancy among girls under 15.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute in Washington, D.C., concluded that teen pregnancy nationwide is at its lowest point since 1973. But its study also found that seven in 10 teens end up pregnant when their partners are five or more years older.

Older men are “very common” in the lives of Szafran’s young charges, who range from 12 to 21. And the trouble they bring continues even after the girls are whisked off to Crittenton. The men, says Szafran, do not pursue: “They’re concerned ‘the law’ will come after them. And usually they’ve already moved on to someone else.”

But the girls don’t give up. They hold out hope the men will return. “In many ways,” she says, “we’re almost shattering their reality.”

*

(As the clock strikes midnight, Candace is at Crittenton. She’s awaiting a phone call from Bill, who is at home with her younger sister.)

Sam: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! Year our babies are gonna get born! . . . What’s wrong?”

Candace: “Would they tell me if he called?”

Sam: “They would. It’s New Year’s.”

*

“None of that is fiction,” Szafran says. “It truly is a collage of stories” that girls shared with Jordan.

Jordan shakes her head when she remembers those conversations. “These guys are not attractive men. They’re old. They have no teeth. And these girls are so pretty; they have no scars yet. But they see a way out of their homes through these guys.

“I was at a loss for words most of the time,” she says. “I had girls tell me they were responsible for their own rapes. I tried to explain they were 14 and the guy was a criminal, that he belongs in jail.

“They’d look me at me and say--and this is a quote--’How do you figure?’ The guys have them convinced they deserved it.”

The play’s predator, Bill, charms Candace with ice cream, pink champagne and high-heeled shoes. He calls her an angel and tells her she’ll always be a virgin. But he also has his eye on her 12-year-old sister, Jenny.

And when Candace shows signs of independence, another side emerges. In a scene that gives the play its title, Bill takes control, makes Candace cry, then lectures her on the need to toughen up and develop a poker face.

“Play for something you love, something you need,” he suggests as he deals from a deck of cards. “We’d play for your sister, but she’s not here.”

The theme is one Jordan saw again and again in her days at the Crittenton home and in her travels around the state: Girls from abusive homes, “rescued” by older men who make them feel special. They ingratiate themselves, slowly alienating the girls from their families, then controlling their every move.

Although many girls Jordan met were under 16, the legal age of consent in West Virginia, none of the sexual relationships she encountered had been prosecuted as rape because, she says, the girls “consented.”

“Some want to be pregnant,” Szafran says. “They do it out of hope the boyfriend stays with them, to get out of the house, to finally have something to love them back--all the wrong reasons.”

*

Sam: “Babies are the nicest thing on earth. Bundles of joy. Everyone says so.”

Candace: “ . . . Haven’t you ever baby-sat?”

Sam: “No.”

Candace: “Well, it’s not fun and the pay is lousy.”

Sam: “Then why does everyone have ‘em?”

Candace: “ ‘Cause they’re old and done havin’ fun. Or ‘cause they weren’t havin’ any anyway. And everyone who says otherwise is lyin’. Everyone lies. Let me clue you in: Your ‘boyfriend?’ He’s not. You just got screwed.”

*

In the 1880s, when millionaire Charles Crittenton started the first home, babies were spirited away at birth. Today’s girls, living there on the advice of a doctor or child-welfare worker or at the order of a judge, are learning to be mothers, learning to be independent.

For some, the task is daunting.

A judge sent 17-year-old Shelly to Crittenton when she was pregnant with her daughter, Amanda, now 20 months old.

Shelly was not rescued. She was raped--by an older man, a friend of the family. She has run away from one abusive home after another.

Until she is 18, Shelly will live in the dormitory, working on her GED and her parenting skills. If lucky, she will not be among the four of five pregnant teens in West Virginia who drop out.

In Sam and Candace, she sees herself and her friends.

“Everybody made fun of me,” she says. “The play might have made them a little more understanding.”

And it might help other girls avoid her plight--if they have an opportunity to see it.

Ed Herendeen, founder and producing director of the Shepherdstown theater festival, believes the dramatic, “in-your-face” scenes will have a powerful effect on teenage audiences.

“It is, in some cases, brutally honest,” he says. “It definitely has that feeling that young people will respond to. The question will be, are funders and schools ready for this approach?”

*

Bill, approaching Candace for the first time: “Anyone makes you cry again, you confide in me. And they’ll be the ones crying. Let’s go get that ice cream cone. Straight-up vanilla for you. Pure. We’ll put that sweet taste back in your mouth.”