BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

There are mothers we never forget.

As I enter into motherhood for a second time, with a newborn son who gives me late-night reasons for reflection, you are the mother I remember most.

Actually, I am haunted by you.

First I think of you in the cafeteria, a straw clenched between your teeth except when you took it out to yell at friends several tables away.

There was no point in asking about your baby in that madhouse. A junior high cafeteria is hardly the place to reveal tender feelings. But it was the walk down the hall that made me wonder if you had any.

You punched your classmates in the arm. They grabbed you by the jacket. You screamed, laughed, threatened them under your breath. We passed a number of teachers, each of whom had a warning for you. ''Keep your hands to yourself.'' ''Keep it down.'' ''That's not how seventh-graders behave.''

It wasn't what I had expected of a seventh-grader, much less of a mother. You were the most childish of children, the least serious, the least responsible. All day long, you had forgotten books, borrowed pencils, tried to find excuses for unfinished assignments. You tormented friends when the teacher turned her back. You chewed your gum loudly and blew bubbles constantly.

A cruel reality

If I had been at your school for any other reason, I would have attributed it to a bad case of early adolescence. This 13-year-old will have a hard way to go, I would have thought. She'll do a little damage to herself, but if her teachers and parents are patient, one day she'll be OK.

Maybe one day she'll be able to manage her own life.

But reality was much more cruel to you. You were a 13-year-old who had gotten pregnant at 11. You kept your baby, a pattern started by your girlfriends and one they - and your mother - pressured you into accepting.

I asked what you had wanted to do. You shrugged your shoulders, your trademark response.

I understood. From conceiving this baby with an adult male to unprepared mother at 13, you clearly felt that nothing about this experience had been up to you.

I was here asking for tender feelings, but life had never been tender to you. I was here to see how motherhood had made you grow up prematurely. But you were teaching me that, when motherhood comes so early, it can mean a girl never grows up at all.

A nightmarish day

My day with you had a nightmarish quality. One teacher told me you had not taken prenatal vitamins because you said they were so big you were afraid you'd choke. Another told me you had lived on Doritos and Coke. You had nothing to say about the baby's father. There was nothing to say. He had disappeared as quickly as he had entered your life. He was off to younger, simpler girls.

After school, I followed you several blocks to your son's day care center. Along the way, you screamed at friends and flipped off boys who responded by throwing pop bottles to smash at your feet.

All my neatly recorded questions seemed ridiculous in that chaos. ''What kind of life do you want for your son?'' ''How will you finish your education?''

We walked through the door of the day care center. I'll never forget what I saw.

Your 15-month-old son was playing with a toy. When he looked up and saw you, he screamed and tried to run away.

You flopped him down awkwardly and stuffed him into a snowsuit. I saw the look on the caregivers' faces. They had worked with you, guided you. But every day, it broke their hearts to send that little boy home with you.

I think of you often now, as my own son howls for his next feeding, dirties his diaper the minute I've changed it, scares me with his utter fragility. There are so many dangers, so many warning signs to remember. I fear I am not big enough for this role of mother.

But I have friends who bring casseroles and encourage me, and a husband who's my partner every step of the way.

But you, you were so alone.

So I think of you in the dark night. One mother to another. And I hope that there is a place of tenderness for your baby, and a place of hope for his mother as well.

Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

RAMSEY ARCHIVE