June 2000

"You are hereby sentenced to three years in the state correctional facility". I knew those words were coming. I thought I was prepared to hear them, after all, I had pleaded guilty and this was not a trial but a sentencing taking place at the Orange County Detention Center. I felt sick. I desperately wanted to sit down and collect my thoughts. But the guards were already grabbing hold of my arms and firmly escorting me back to the holding area. There were no family or friends to witness my sentencing, just a room full of prisoners waiting for their turn in front of the judge. I felt nauseous. I buckled over and started to throw up. The guards just kept dragging me along.

March 1998

I was sitting nervously in a waiting room. "Mr. Worku, can I talk to you for a second" I looked up, "Can you come in my office for a second?"

I got up and followed. "Is Selam OK?" I asked as soon as he shut the door behind me.

"She's still in the operating room, it's going to be a couple of hours before she'll be ready to go home". "I'm Steve," he continued. "I'm a counselor here at the clinic."

"Counselor? You're not her doctor?" I was confused.

"No I'm not a doctor. I counsel abortive fathers here at the clinic?"

I'd never heard the term "abortive father" before. And the notion that I'd need counseling had never occurred to me. This was a good thing we were doing. It was the right thing for us. We were two Ethiopian students far away from home. Living off $4.25 per hour on campus jobs. I couldn't have a kid; I did not want a kid. Counseling! Why would I need counseling? I sat there and let Steve counsel away. He talked about the feeling of guilt and low self esteem "abortive fathers" experience. He talked about the need of having someone to talk too and then he made his pitch about the support group he runs. I just sat there nodding, when he finished I thanked him and walked out without taking the card he offered.

After another two hours of squirming in the waiting room, Selam emerged from the recovery room. I helped her out the building and into a waiting cab, and we drove back to our lives- away from the nightmarish hell of the last month.

I hated school. I never really fitted in. I was a lousy student struggling to maintain a C average. There were a number of Ethiopian students at CSU (campus location with held), and they were mostly bookworms, especially the women.

But Selam was different. She drank, she partied, she experimented. She made college bearable, until we became pregnant that is. She carried the baby; we struggled with what to do. We could get married and move back to Ethiopia or she could have an abortion. We could both drop out of school and join the underworld of illegals trying to raise a child with less than minimum wage or she could have an abortion. It was not really a choice. I wanted the abortion. She said she thought it was our only choice. We had the abortion.

Things changed after that. She took the Spring semester off and stopped living. For three months she sat in one room and cried. I didn't know how to help, so I drank and experimented, and drank and experimented some more. When summer came, I packed up and move down to Los Angeles. She stayed and took make up classes.

I didn't go back to school that fall. I stayed in LA. Drinking and experimenting had become a way of life. To make ends meet, I dealt. I dealt not in seedy side of LA, but in trendy Burbank where flunkies from studios would be out shopping for the talents they served.

I heard Selam got pregnant that winter. She graduated while she was six months pregnant and married the father, an Ethiopian grad student that summer. I never saw her again. Never wanted to.

Last summer, I was dealing down in Irvine when I got busted. I did not care. I did not want to go to trial or talk to a lawyer; I just wanted to go to jail. By December I'll be eligible for parole at which time I'll be handed over to the INS. I should be back in Addis in time for Christmas.

I left home five years ago to get an education. I'll be going back an ex-con.