I Ain't Me No More (4 page)

“You're pregnant, aren't you?” Lynn asked me as I lay on the top bunk of our bunk bed set, which we'd had ever since I could remember. Lynn and I shared a room in the small two-bedroom duplex home we lived in with our mother and her boyfriend. She and our dad, Rakeem, had long since been divorced. She'd unfriended her drug habit, denounced stripping, and got a job in housekeeping. Rakeem was still chasing his high, so he wasn't in the picture much. So not only had my biological father chosen another life over me, as far as I knew, but so had his proxy.

“I've been using this same box of maxi pads for two of my cycles in a row,” Lynn continued, holding up our shared box of sanitary napkins. “Usually, I would have had to buy more by now if both of us were using them. But obviously both of us are not. This is the only box we have, so either you have been running around bleeding in your panties or you ain't been bleeding at all . . . which means you're pregnant. So which is it?”

Lynn stood there, waiting for my reply.

When I lowered my head, not uttering a word, Lynn got her answer. I was, in fact, pregnant. After having sex with Dub a total of only three times, I was in a state of disbelief. All I had wanted was love, attention, and validation that someone of the male species actually loved me. Feeling that way had led to sex, which ultimately had led to sex that resulted in a now unwanted pregnancy.

“Oh, my God,” Lynn whispered. “What are you going to do?” She stood there looking at me through the bunk bed's wooden rails. The rails were there to keep the top bunk recipient from rolling onto the floor. I had to admit that I had had thoughts of removing them in hopes of “accidentally” rolling onto the floor. Losing the baby naturally would be cheaper than the plan I had in mind.

Without even stuttering, I told my sister, “Abortion. I'm going to get an abortion.” She could tell by the conviction in my voice that having this baby was not a possibility.

At the time of my pregnancy, it was 1986 and the abortion laws had changed. A girl couldn't get a life sucked out of her without the consent of an adult. Lynn knew this very well, as she'd already preceded me in this dilemma, having turned up pregnant her tenth grade year of high school as well.

“Yeah, but who are you going to get to go with you?” Lynn questioned. “I won't be eighteen for four more months. By then it will be too late.”

That part I really didn't have all worked out yet. My first prospect, though, had been Dub's mom. She was cool, one of those moms who let her kids do what they liked and come and go as they pleased. Her kids didn't even have to go to school if they didn't feel like it. But even with that being so, and despite the free spirit that abided in her, abortion was a sticky subject in their family.

When I'd shared my plan with Dub and discussed the possibility of his mother taking me to get the abortion, he informed me that that probably wasn't a good idea. He'd said that Ms. Daniels had already done the abortion thing with his older sister, Kelice. She had forced Kelice to have an abortion when she turned up pregnant at the age of sixteen. Kelice had wanted desperately to give birth to the life that was growing inside her belly, but Ms. Daniels was the boss of her. Under any other circumstances, her children were unrestricted, but in this particular situation, Ms. Daniels put her often concealed authoritative third foot down and forbade her teenage daughter from embarrassing the family with her pregnancy.

Dub said that Kelice had never forgiven Ms. Daniels. He recounted many of arguments that had taken place between the two of them, always ending in Kelice making their mother cry by reminding her how she had made her kill her baby. So the last thing I wanted to do was add another brick to the wall of guilt and regret Ms. Daniels had already built around herself. Asking her to have the blood of not only her daughter's unborn baby on her hands but her son's to boot might have been the brick that brought the wall tumbling down on top of her.

“I don't know who I'm going to ask to go with me,” I told Lynn and shrugged.

I didn't really know who else to ask. I had jumped into the ocean of Dub headfirst, leaving everybody who had been remotely close to me back on shore, waving their hands, trying to get my attention. Begging me to come up for air. But it was too late. I had already drowned.

“Even if you do find someone to go with you to get the abortion, how are you going to pay for it? You don't have a job.” Lynn was bound and determined to tear my plan to shreds.

I couldn't see where my big sister was being any help at all. She was adding fuel to the fire. But I'd started the fire. Not only had I started it, but then I'd stood there and watched it. So no wonder I'd gotten burned.

“I don't know. I'll think of something.” The conviction I'd had in my tone only minutes ago was now gone, replaced by a sense of pure defeat. From the moment I missed my period last month and took that store-bought pregnancy test, I'd known what I wanted to do, which was to get rid of my baby. Now I didn't know exactly how I'd accomplish this. The frustration and defeat built up until they spilled out of my mouth in the form of the following words. “I'll kill myself before I have this baby,” I said, more to tell myself than Lynn. But I meant it. I meant it from the depths of my soul. If I couldn't figure out a way to kill the baby, I would kill myself. I'd kill two birds with one stone.

The certitude was back with my last statement. I think it must have scared Lynn, because her tone got even more serious. “Didn't I tell you I'd take you to Planned Parenthood to get on birth control when you first started kickin' it with that boy?” she scolded.

Almost four months ago, when I first told her about my hanging with Dub, Lynn had indeed offered to take me to the clinic.

“You don't want to go through what I went through,” Lynn had told me. “It's better to be safe than sorry.”

I'd declined. Dub was the first boy who I'd ever simply just liked. I had never imagined I'd be having sex with him. Even if I had, not in my wildest dreams would I have thought I'd get pregnant. After all, my mom had neglected to have “the talk” with me. Lynn had told me that once a girl's period started, she could get pregnant. I somehow had misconstrued that to mean that a girl could get pregnant only if it was actually that time of the month for her.

Just imagining having sex while bleeding made me cringe, so I remember saying to myself,
I'll never get pregnant then, because I will not be having sex while on my period.
If only I'd had a better understanding.

“Look, I don't want to talk about it anymore.” I rolled over on my bunk bed, turning my back toward Lynn.

I had a lot of thinking to do. I had to figure out how I was going to get an abortion, and fast, before my mother figured out that I was pregnant. To this day, Lynn had kept her teenage pregnancy from our mother. I needed to be so lucky. I just knew my mom would be pissed to no end if she found out her baby girl was pregnant.

Never mind that my mother had gotten kicked out of high school when she got knocked up at age sixteen with Lynn. And who said there was no such thing as a family curse? This wasn't about my mother and her past mistakes. It was about me. Still, I knew my mother would see her mistakes in me and do what she always did whenever she was mad, upset, and disgusted with herself. She'd take it out on us, Lynn and me, by yelling, fussing, and cussing. It was like because we were the results of some of her bad choices in life, she was going to punish us. The mere sight of us reminded her of her mistakes. At least that was how I felt, anyway.

My mother finding out about my pregnancy ranked last among all the things on the totem pole. My biggest concern was terminating the pregnancy. If I could get rid of the baby, there would be no pregnancy for her to find out about. Believe me when I say I couldn't terminate this pregnancy fast enough. Not just because I had to keep my mother from finding out, but because I was sick as a dog.

Just a couple of months pregnant, I was throwing up every time I moved. I couldn't take it. It was miserable. I couldn't envision that something that was making me feel so bad while inside of me would make my life any better once it was outside of me. It had to go. Heartbeat or no heartbeat. Brain development or no brain development. Fetus, embryo, or baby. I knew one thing for certain and two things for sure: Somebody was going to die. It was going to be either my baby or us both.

“He's so cute. Look at all that hair,” my sister said as she stroked Baby D's hair. “He looks just like you, Dub.”

“I don't know,” my mother countered. “I can see a little of Helen in him too.”

In my opinion, my newborn baby didn't look like either one of us. He had my complexion. He had lots of hair. It was coarse like mine, but his facial structure didn't really favor Dub's or mine one way or another. But he was mine. He was ours, and we were loving all over his little chocolate self.

Seven months earlier I had been hell-bent on getting rid of the baby that was growing inside of me. Now, seven months later, I had to grow up because I had the baby.

Dub stood next to my sister's chair, grinning from ear to ear as she held his son, the son I had decided I would not give birth to. But my plan obviously hadn't been God's plan. For someone whose business I managed to stay out of, I couldn't figure out for the life of me why He wouldn't stay out of mine.

Oh, you can best believe that I had gone to the abortion clinic to initiate the procedure. I'd begged, cried, and pleaded with my aunt Lisa until she agreed to go with me. Between Dub and me, we had managed to scrape the abortion money together. Dub had supported my decision either way, so he wasn't tripping on the fact that I wanted to get rid of the baby. By the time the nurse at the abortion clinic had explained and demonstrated the procedure to me, I couldn't bring myself to terminate my pregnancy. I just couldn't do it.

I couldn't honestly say that it was more so my conscience than the fear of pain. All I knew was that needless to say, I never returned to that room or the clinic.

Now that the baby was here, Dub and I were proud parents. Way too young to be parents, but proud nonetheless.

“He is handsome, isn't he?” Dub smiled, reaching his hands out, which was Lynn's sign that her time with Baby D was up.

“Dang, I ain't been holding him but five minutes,” Lynn spat.

“And that's four minutes too long. Daddy wants to hold his son.” Dub's arms were still extended.

“But you got years to hold him. His auntie wants to hold him.” Lynn made cooing noises at the baby.

“I hate to break up a good argument,” the nurse said, entering the room, “but this little fella has to come back to the nursery with me for a minute.” The nurse lifted Baby D from Lynn's arms and placed him in his rolling bed after Lynn kissed him on his little white-, pink- and blue-striped hat.

“Well, I'm coming with you so that as soon as you're done with him, I can have him.” Dub looked at Lynn and stuck his tongue out as he began to follow the nurse.

“And I'm going to go have a smoke real quick,” my mother said, trailing Dub. She looked just as proud as Dub and I did. I wasn't surprised, considering the day I came home from the clinic after deciding against the abortion and told her I was pregnant, the first thing she did was forbid me from having an abortion. That made me all the more comfortable with my decision not to return to that clinic.

“Just make sure don't nobody be smoking around my son,” I heard Dub saying to my mother as they left the room.

“Dub is a mess,” I told Lynn and giggled.

“Yeah, but at least he's here.” Lynn smacked her lips. “Look at all the chicks at school who be having babies and the daddies won't even speak to them in the hallway at school, let alone want to be there for them in the delivery room. Girl, if you were going to have a baby by any boy, looks like Dub was the one.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you're right,” I halfheartedly agreed. I was only sixteen, now in my junior year of high school. While everybody else had been walking through the school halls, talking about the upcoming games and dances, I had been walking through the halls, talking about having a baby shower. At least I could say that nobody acted funny toward me or seemed embarrassed about a pregnant girl hanging around.

As far as what Lynn said about other girls being pregnant and their baby daddy not even speaking to them in the halls, I didn't have to worry about that, because half the time Dub didn't come to school. He figured he was flunking all his classes, anyway, so why bother.

Either way it went, whether Dub was a good guy or a bad guy, I didn't want to be having a baby by any guy. I guess Lynn sensed that in my response as she prepared to ask me a question.

“So are you glad you had the baby? Glad you changed your mind about getting an abortion? I mean, you were so set on having that abortion, I almost wanted to be like Mommy Dearest and get rid of all the wire hangers.” Lynn began laughing.

“Shut up,” I said to her, rolling my eyes.

“I'm serious. I thought you were going to go old school and use a wire hanger to give yourself an abortion.”

“You stupid,” I said and chuckled.

“Well, girl, you know I had your back either way. But now that my nephew is here, I'm
so
happy you changed your mind.” Lynn got up from the chair and kissed me on my forehead. “Almost makes me wish that I had kept . . .” Lynn's words trailed off, and I knew what she was thinking.

I grabbed her hand.

She looked down at me with moist eyes. “I'm just glad you kept yours.”

I was glad, too, that I hadn't aborted Baby D. Would every baby that God placed in my womb be so lucky?