Life Is Not a Fairy Tale by Fantasia (books for students to read .TXT) 📗

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 muchmore 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