Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (4 page)

I told the counselor that I was going to keep my baby. The counselor sent me off to become yet another baby mama.

I dreaded telling my friends and family because I knew they would be mad at me. Most of them already had babies who were missing daddies. Because of my singing, people would be shocked that I fell into the High Point baby trap. People don’t understand that singin’ in the church doesn’t make you free from curiosity—or sin. Maybe it makes you even more curious—and more likely to experiment with the things that we were taught to avoid.

Tiny and I went to my grandmother’s house to break the news to my mother, who was living there at the time. My family members were in constant motion due to the marital problems that my parents were having.

Tiny walked into my grandmother’s house in front of me. He went over to my mother, holding the papers from the health center in his hands, and said, “Mama, I took her up there.” The high teen-pregnancy rate in High Point made the reference to “taking her up there” obvious. Every mother in High Point knows that “going up there” means that her little girl had a pregnancy test and was bringing home news of a grandchild.

“She’s pregnant,” Tiny said to my mother. My mother didn’t say anything at first. I stood in the background, just cryin’ and cryin’. My mother let out a squall that came from the bottom of her soul. My grandmother, Addie, was shaking her head, already knowing for weeks, because I had been coming to her house in the afternoons and sleeping until dark. “I knew that gal was pregnant,” Grandma said. “I just knew it.” My mother kept squallin’ and started saying, “No, not again. Not again!”

I was cryin’ because I had disappointed my mother,
again.
I had left the church, I had left school, and now I was going to have a child, just like she had. It was the very way that my mother had lived her life that I was trying to avoid. Suddenly, all those talks about sex and babies and protection and the things that boys would say to get you to “do it” came floodin’ back into my mind. We used to sit up late into the night talkin’ when I would come home late after hangin’ out. My mother would sit up and wait for me, every time.

In that single moment, standing with my grandmother, my mother, and myself, all young mothers, I had stepped into the darkness of what my mother called the “generational curse.” That saddened me the most.

The next person to tell was B. I sensed he would be the most upset. I was too worried about what his reaction would be to meet with him in person. I decided just to call him. When he picked up the phone the way he always did—“Yeah?”—I said, “B., I have to tell you somethin’. I’m pregnant. Tiny took me up there today.” He said these simple words, “It ain’t mine,” and the love of my life, the pastor’s son, hung up the phone on me.

I was devastated. And despite his reaction, all I could think was how much
more
I wanted to be around him. After a couple of weeks, the rumors that he was spreading about me started coming back to me. He was talkin’ junk about me, saying that he wasn’t my only sex partner and that my baby was not his.

Although I had not been to church in many months, if there was ever a time that I needed the Lord, it was then. I started attending my grandmother’s church again. Usually in the Holiness Church, when you are unmarried and pregnant, you are not allowed to participate in the church. You can’t sing in the choir or be an usher or anything that is visible. I will never forget that my grandmother didn’t treat me like that. She allowed me to sing every Sunday that I was there. She knew that singing was my only saving grace. On the Sundays during my pregnancy that I didn’t go to Grandma’s church, I would go to B.’s father’s church and sit in the back pew, with my stomach swelling with our child, trying to get some attention from him, some acknowledgment and any sign of love at all.

After church was dismissed, B. and his parents would walk right by me without saying a word to me or the child inside me. I hated myself for being in this situation. I was angry and helpless. Thoughts of dying kept running through my mind.

The stress of all of this misery caused my pregnant and frail body to fail. I was eating fast food every day, if I could afford it, and chips and candy bars on the days that I couldn’t.

I thought I was going to lose my baby. I was stressin’ myself out beyond belief. My spirit seemed to be telling me that there was nothing for me to live for despite the life that was struggling to grow inside of me. People were saying that my life was over because I had gotten pregnant. The whole town was talkin’ about me and was disappointed in me. High Point was such a small town and, because of my grandma’s church and the Barrino Family performances, we were somewhat in the spotlight.

My parents had temporarily moved to Winston-Salem, where my mother was in hell. She was without her mother, and my father was mourning the loss of his mother, Madie Barrino. When Madie died, my heart was broken again. I was the only one of the grandchildren who used to help take care of her when she was in a wheelchair.

My grandmother Madie hadn’t liked my mother because she thought that she wasn’t good enough for my father. Although she felt like that, she was always loving to me because of my voice. She used to say, “You bless me, chile.” When I used to go visit her every week, I would wheel her outside. We wouldn’t talk much, but our silent conversations meant a lot to both of us. Her death felt like another piece of me had fallen away for good.

After my grandmother Madie’s funeral, while they were putting her casket into the hearse to take to the graveyard, I snuck away to the pay phone outside the church to call B. I said, “I need someone to talk to. Will you just come and talk to me?” Begging, I assured him, “you don’t have to stay for long.” He came a few hours later, after I had left the burial. He came every day after that. Then he started spending the nights with me. I thought he was starting to feel bad about how he was treatin’ me. He was just thinkin’ it was a free place to stay.

I was at a low point. I was really depressed. Only a year before I had been the most popular girl in church, everyone loved me and my voice, and now I was the bad girl who had gotten pregnant and whose life was ending. I was an outcast. My mother wasn’t talking to me. My father would sometimes come and take me to the all-you-can eat restaurant, just so I could eat a solid meal. It was the worst time in my life. Everyone seemed to be looking at me and shakin’ their heads. The emptiness inside caused me to simply stop trying.

I started to look different. My head hung down regularly. I had no clothes and no money. I would wear my regular jeans and, as my stomach grew, I would put a rubber band in the waistline to expand them to make room for my baby. I hadn’t purchased any baby stuff, although my child was due to arrive in only a few months. The only effort I could make was to get signed up for Medicaid benefits. My mama finally went with me to do that, because she saw what a sad case I had become. I went to the doctor only a few times during my pregnancy. I was too depressed about the coming of this baby to go to the doctor every few weeks.
I was tryin’ to forget.

My family wanted me to move to Winston-Salem to be with them. My mother wanted to keep an eye on me. Winston-Salem was a slightly bigger city than High Point. I had gotten a job at a daycare in High Point at the suggestion of my grandmother.

I took a job at a local daycare in Winston-Salem. I started trying to save money for the baby. Because I was still staying out late at night, I couldn’t really hold a job. Although I wasn’t drinking because of the baby, I was just tired and irritable. I used to fall asleep on the kids while I was supposed to be watching them. I was working so that my baby would have things. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do.

My father was mad because I was seeing B. again. I was happy because I thought he loved me and he had really come back. One day, he called me and said, “I need you to give me some money. I’m going to take it and make some money with it.” I never asked what he was planning to do and reluctantly gave him the little money I had, thinking that by doing what he asked I was showing love. I was hoping that he would stay.

I didn’t hear from B. for the next two days. He had spent all of the money. Needless to say, he didn’t make anything with the money except for another good time with his friends. He didn’t even think about our baby when he was spending the money. I was so hurt by his doing that with my hard-earned money that depression seized me and started to invade my heart.

I ended up having to quit my daycare job. The stress of no job and no money again led to me having problems with my pregnancy. The doctor just kept tellin’ me,
“You have to stop stressing or you will lose this baby.”

At home, my parents’ marriage had been deteriorating for a long time. My mother was deeply involved with Addie and the church, and my father was into the ladies in the church. My father’s mean streak was hurting us all. He would call me, his own daughter, “a little whore” and tell me “you are not going to be
anything.
” The stress at home and the stress within caused me to have contractions that felt like premature labor, and I still had about four months to go.

I decided I had to leave my parents and this stress behind, so I went back to Tonya’s and the projects. My anger at my father and his treatment of my mother and myself was causing me to feel hatred for him. I didn’t want to hate my daddy. Mama begged me not to leave her. She didn’t want me to leave her alone with my father. I gave her the only advice I could offer:
“You could leave, too.”

My daughter, Zion Quari Barrino, came into the world on August 8, 2001. My mom and my little eight-year-old brother, Xavier, came to the hospital. I named my daughter Zion because that is the place in the Bible where the disciples went to pray. Her middle name, Quari, was a name that I had heard somewhere and I thought it was pretty.

The girls I grew up with used to spend hours trying to create a name that they thought was unusual. Girls from the ghetto strive to give their babies unique names, like Destiny, Shanaya, and Marquita. Often that is all they have to give.

During the labor, I remember, I didn’t scream. I was saying to myself,
I did this to myself.
I didn’t say anything else. I just cried.

B. had come to the hospital to see me, only because I asked him to. We were sitting in silence in my hospital room, trying to figure out what to do with this baby that we didn’t have a clue
what
to do with. The phone rang an hour after Zion was born. B. picked it up and it was his mother. I heard him say, like only a country boy could, “Yes, ma’am.” When the time came to sign the birth certificate, Zion’s daddy refused to sign. He didn’t sign his own daughter’s birth certificate, and his parents didn’t even come see to see their granddaughter.

When I looked at Zion, all I could see was the hole in her heart that would be permanent because there was no daddy in her life. It made me so sad and all I could think about was how I was determined to fill that hole with all the things that I could provide her. First, I needed a job.

Zion and I moved back in with my parents when we left the hospital. As soon as I got home from the hospital, B.’s parents sent him away to Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina. The school is for students who want to own their own businesses. Not that B. wanted a business. He only needed a reason to walk away from us.

I didn’t hear from B. for months. He never called. I was happy that my baby was in my arms. Zion was my only friend. I would look at Zion and think, What am I gonna do? I had to make a plan, but I had no answers. The only thing I could do was pray. Prayer was all I had left.

My father had started to disappear again. He was coming and going without telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back. Sometimes he’d be gone for days at a time. It was obvious that he was involved with another woman. That is how it is where I come from. Even when folks are married there is always another woman. My mom suspected it but finally was ready to face it and speak about it. She said to me, “I think your daddy is sleeping with someone else.” That is when I started hating my father.

My father finally confessed to me. He told me to my face that he was cheating on my mother. He thought he was justified in laying down with a woman who wasn’t his wife because of my mother’s negligence of him and her spending too much time with Addie and the church. He thought that these were valid reasons to cheat on his wife. My response to that was that I left the house and got my own apartment.

I was seventeen and my first apartment was in the First Farmington projects, the “nicer” projects on the south side of High Point. My rent was thirty dollars a week, which I could afford, and the only things I had to worry about were the telephone and the electric bills. I was able to get into the apartment because I had a child and no income. It was the projects where many baby mamas were in the same situation. First Farmington Apartments was like a camp for single, uneducated women with babies.

I started singin’ to make money. It was the only thing I could do. I would sing at different churches and people would give me love offerings of cash to help support Zion and myself. My friends would sometimes give me money, too. I was survivin’—but definitely not thrivin’.

Then B. left college and moved in with Zion and me. I didn’t really want him to come back since he had been no help so far, but the fantasy of being a real family stuck in my mind and I couldn’t turn him away. Neither of us had steady jobs. My only “hustle” was singing at the churches. Those love offerings were all I had to pay for diapers, socks, and T-shirts for Zion. The only other help I got was WIC. WIC is a welfare program that is for baby mamas. WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children. It provides milk, baby formula, cheese, and other food staples. WIC is set up so that you can get only a few vouchers at a time. If you run out of vouchers, you have to wait until the next month when more vouchers arrive. B. was paying into the Medicaid program. His contribution was so small that it was as if no money was coming to me at all.