The night shift

Night’s a time for the dancing Lorax. Jaxon, 3, is fixated on the little orange figure dancing on the big screen. Mouth open, eyes wide. He’s long cast aside the Spiderman mask he wore atop his head. Old news. Night’s also a time for homework. Denice King, 19, is a sophomore pre-nursing major. She likes hanging out with friends. She likes parties and concerts. And binging on episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” into the early hours of the morning. But it's not about what she likes — or wants. Her main priority is raising her son, Jaxon.

SHE'S FIXATED on a different screen, her computer, knee deep in Ancla, a Spanish assignment. She’s also answering emails and working on psychology. But that will all be put on hold when the movie ends. Then she'll make sure Jaxon finishes his dinner. They'll watch cartoons and splash at bath time. She’ll pick up the rest of her work after Jaxon falls asleep. She tries to tuck him in by 9 p.m., but that doesn’t always happen. He always seems to want just one more episode of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” She tries to be in bed by midnight, but that, too, doesn’t always work out.

Night is a time for catching up. For escaping to the drama at Seattle Grace Hospital. For worrying about her nursing program application. For thinking about the future.  
For being a good mom to Jaxon.

EARLIER THAT DAY, Jaxon pounds on his little brown drum.  The music mixes with the cries of laughter, the clashing of blocks, and the whine of discord at the coloring table. It’s 3:35 p.m. in the preschool room of the IU Campus Children’s Center. This is Jaxon’s first month at the center. His first time being cared for by someone other than family.

“Just coming from a family experience to a big group especially, he’s done very well,” co-preschool teacher Michiru Oleson says.

Soon, Jaxon, in his little black Velcro shoes, moves on to Buttercup, the golden-brown class guinea pig. As he feeds her blades of grass, a much taller figure walks up behind the chestnut-haired boy. The young woman stands with her IU lanyard in hand. Her brown hair frames her pale face. Denice just came from Herman B Wells Library. She had some extra time for homework after her afternoon class was cut short.  Play is over for now. So is Denice’s free afternoon.  Mommy’s here. Time to go.

HE'S IN CHARGE on the way home. “Let’s go, mom,” he says as he pushes on the big door.

“How did you get here?” he asks, trailing behind her as she leads him to the car.

“I drove here like I always do.”

“Did you get gas?” he asks, opening the gas nozzle door and sticking his face inside.

“You should get gas.”

“Do you have money?” Denice quips.

Jaxon likes to talk.

“He never shuts up. Ever,” she says, ?laughing. She glances every so often into her rear view mirror.

“He usually falls asleep on the way home,” Denice says. A lounging Betty Boop poses seductively from an air freshener hanging off the rearview mirror. Her black, red, and white Southridge High School Class of 2011 graduation tassel hangs there, too. Mom rides in front, sunglasses over her purple eyeglass frames. Jaxon’s in back, black wayfarers reflecting Bloomington as it passes by.

DENICE GREW UP in Huntingburg, Ind. The second youngest of 10 children, she remembers siblings that both cared for her and fought with her.

School was always a priority. It still is. But when she was in junior high, her image as the good girl who got A’s and stayed in to watch movies with friends bothered her. She wanted to make a change. In eighth grade, she met Ryan, a bad boy by junior high standards. He stayed out late on the streets of their town. He shook up her bookish life and helped form part of Denice’s new group she began to hang out with in high school. Her family and friends didn't approve.

Then in the middle of winter her sophomore year, she realized she might be pregnant. She told her best friend. She told another friend just to get her to drive her to the pharmacy. Eight positive pregnancy tests later, it was confirmed. The condom failed. She was pregnant at 15.

Abortion wasn’t an option. Adoption was a consideration, but she shot it down, too. She was going to keep it, and with additional support from Ryan, things moved ahead. Her family wouldn’t find out until the five-month mark. She was hoping it would just go away. ?Eventually, she told her mom, who made her tell her dad. He took it very hard, falling silent in disbelief when she told him. But the months passed, and on Aug. 31, 2009, Jaxon Phoenix Trambaugh was born. 9 pounds, 23 inches.

DENICE NOW LIVES with Jaxon’s aunt, her ex’s sister, and the sister’s husband. She’s remained close to Ryan’s family despite the couple’s break-up their senior year of high school. Jaxon still visits his father about twice a month.

“He didn’t get the big picture,” Denice says. “We didn’t want the same things.”

Last year, she lived in Forest Quad as a freshman. She would have had to wait an additional year for family housing on campus, so in the meantime Jaxon lived with her mother in Huntingburg. Denice tried to make it home every weekend to spend time with her son, but it was hard.

“That’s the number one thing I felt so bad about because I didn’t want her to have to raise him because it wasn’t her responsibility, but she was so helpful. I don’t know what I would have done.”

She missed him last year when they were apart. Her mother couldn’t work Skype and phone calls were usually one-sided as Jaxon couldn’t yet talk. He occasionally called her Denice when she came to visit, and that hurt, she says. She felt like he was forgetting who she was. But her mom told her to have the college experience for the year and live like a normal college student, and that they’d figure out something for next year.

“Not having Jaxon was good, but it was also bad,” Denice says. “I didn’t have a kid anymore, not technically, but pretty much.” It had been two years since she had days and nights to herself.

“I was just free for once.”

She went out at night. Out to parties, out to drink. She had a casual love interest. Mommy was off duty.

In October 2011, Denice went out to a party. She came home to Forest, but never made it to her room. She doesn’t remember it happening, but police found her in the building’s stairwell and took her to the hospital. She remembers how upset her parents were.

“That was even more disappointing than having to tell them, ‘Here I am with a kid.’”
Her record has been clean since then. In fact, she says she has much of the “college experience” out of her system. Friends call her to hang out, but Denice usually stays home.  She'd often rather sleep.

“I feel like I push them away mostly,” she says. She hasn’t had a steady boyfriend since Ryan.

“I feel like I can’t get a boyfriend just because I have a kid. That’s what I think, so I don’t look. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

"NOT LIKE THAT." He corrects her as she tries to set up his train set. That’s the latest. Jaxon loves Thomas the Tank Engine.

“Somebody bought him Thomas DVDs for his birthday and I was angry,” she says. “He wants to watch Thomas all the time, and I’m just like, ‘This movie sucks.’”

Jaxon plays on the plush carpet. The model train orbits him as he sits in the center of the track. It struggles ahead, batteries dying.

He gasps.

The train has stopped, caught up on the rails. Denice crawls over and gets the train back on track. Jaxon now occupied, she slips away to take her clothes from the dryer.
“Jaxon,” she calls. He has clothes to take back to his room, but he doesn’t listen. He might miss the 25th go-around.?“Jaxon, I’m going to put your train away.”

He zooms from the room.

DENICE SPENDS a lot of her time studying, her GPA a constant worry. She’s trying to get into the highly competitive nursing program. Only about  60 of the 250 or so applicants are accepted each year. Denice’s grades last year didn’t earn her a spot, but she's trying one last time, this year, before she switches majors, or perhaps even leaves IU. It’s stressful to have to worry about that on top of raising Jaxon, she says, but overall she feels that her mothering is improving, along with her grades.

“I just feel like I wasn’t here for him at the beginning, like last year and stuff. Now I can see that I’m better, but I feel like being a teenager makes you a worse mom just because you don’t know things. But I’ve always felt like a bad mother, but I guess that’s what keeps me motivated to do the best I can.” It’s not always ideal. She’s not always perfect, like the time she forgot to pack extra underwear for Jaxon when he had an accident at the amusement park. But she wouldn’t go back and change things.

“This is the best thing that could have happened, having a kid,” she says. “My parents being so supportive. Me getting into the college I wanted to. Things have played out pretty well, even though I feel like my life sucks, but I know it doesn’t, thinking about it.”

THEY TURN the page together. It’s 8:47 p.m. Bedtime. Jaxon wears his Thomas jammies to bed.

“Where’s George?”

“There,” he whispers, pointing to the friendly little monkey. The book is short, only a few pages.

“I love when he picks short books,” she says as she puts the book back into the closet. After story time, Denice will finish up her homework. Maybe watch TV.

“Give me a kiss.” She leans in.

Jaxon first squirms and covers his face, laughing. But he stops, and she kisses him goodnight.

“Goodnight, love you.”

“Love you, too.”