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

him that I was standing up for myself and for our child. This time, he knocked me out with his fist. This time he went to jail.

I wasn’t going to call the police because I didn’t want him to get in trouble. It was just a “love lick,” and as much as it hurt, my ego mostly, I still loved him. When B. angrily left the apartment, I immediately called my mother. My eye was swelling and blackening. My lip was busted and bleeding badly. My mother came over and called the police. My mothermade me tell the police what B. had done to me, just like she did for me when that guy raped me. She is always the person who defends me, even when I won’t defend myself.

A few hours later, B. went to the police department and turned himself in. Zion and I left our apartment and went to stay with my mama.

Mama had finally left my father and gotten her own apartment in Greensboro, a neighboring city that was only fifteen minutes away. Despite my father telling Mama that she was “useless” and “could never make it without him,” she was actually living on her own. My father said that she couldn’t do it, and she needed to prove him wrong. My mother found a job at a nursing home that was within walking distance from her apartment. She had no car, so she walked to work every single day.

The day after I arrived at my mama’s, I was sitting in the apartment when my little brother came in, looked at my battered face, and said with a child’s enthusiasm, “He messed you up!” He had a look on his face that I had never seen before. I jumped up, looked in the mirror, and crumbled at the sight. I was so ugly. My hair needed to be done. My eye was black and swollen. My lip was blue and black with trickles of blood crusted in the corners. I looked at myself and said out loud, “This ain’t Fantasia! This life ain’t for me! I ain’t supposed to be like this!” My life wasmessed up. “I have to raise up and respect myself.” I looked at Zion. She was so little and she was giving me these looks that were saying, Mama, you disgust me.

I didn’t want Zion ever to see me letting a man treat me that way again. My baby wasn’t going to go through it, too. My change finally was occurring. Sometimes for a change to hit you, it just takes looking in the mirror and saying what you really mean out loud.

B. was only in jail for two days. I called him when he got out and said it plain: “We have to let this relationship go or we are going to kill each other.” He agreed and never came around or did anything again for Zion. When I would get weak and call him, he would hang up. He did nothing to help us.Nothing. I guess that’s what finally gave me the eyes that I needed to see him.

Now I could see that I was in need of a better life. A couple of months after my relationship with B. had ended, I met a guy. He was a working man. His name was J.B. He was nice looking, respectful, and he told me that I was beautiful. He would ask me about Zion and he would buy her diapers when she needed them. He became like her father. He did a lot for her and he would do anything for me. He was the man I had been looking for. This was the man I needed. I thought to myself,This is what I should have.

After dating for four months, we moved in together. I went from having to hide my money and doing everything for myself and my child to having a man who was taking care of both of us and doing everything for me. J.B. was going to work every day and would come home at lunchtime just to bring us food. I wasn’t sure that I deserved him. His generosity somehow made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to it, and I always felt that it wasn’t real and would be taken away. This happiness didn’t seem real.

J.B. treated me like a queen. He is the first man who showed me what respect is.

J.B. was willing to help me financially, but he also wanted to help me help myself. J.B. wanted to help me gain my independence. He wanted to help me get my driver’s license.

This was when my readin’—or the fact that I couldn’t really read—came out. I told you I was not too good with paperwork, which is the real reason I didn’t like going to the social services agencies. I had gotten to the eighth grade, but I had really just slid by. No one had really checked my reading comprehension, my vocabulary, or my word-recognition skills. It was easy to keep going to the next grade in public school, which wasn’t good, but it was common.

When J.B. realized that I couldn’t read well, he didn’t laugh at me. Instead, he would show me different words on the street and in magazines and books. He would help me pronounce difficult words that I wasn’t familiar with. He would buy me books and read them to me. He would make me read things to him and sound out the large words. I was ready to improve my reading. I had gotten this far without reading, and I knew that I could continue to get by in the same way. My family didn’t really know that I was having trouble readin’ and I didn’t think they needed to know. Most people in my family couldn’t read very well. So not reading was normal for us.

It only struck me that I needed to read when Zion brought over one of her books for me to read