I don’t quite understand the feelings that came after learning the truth about Max. I can’t say that it was betrayal. Honestly, I doubt that my mom even knew that Max wasn’t my dad. I don’t think that she would have allowed him to change his entire life for a child that she knew was fathered by someone else. Perhaps, she always had a doubt that she didn’t want confirmed. I know that feeling. All of those years ago, as my child grew inside of me, I thought that I might be pregnant. The thought had crossed my mind a time or two, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe that God would allow such a thing to happen to me. It wasn’t until that night in the hospital that I finally permitted myself to accept the possibility.
Maybe that’s the reason that my mom always hated me. She knew the truth and she saw the eyes of her tormentor whenever she looked at me. She did always say that I had her daddy’s eyes. I had never meant him, but I confirmed her comments using pictures at Mama’s house. Truth is, I don’t even remember Max. Why would I? He was in prison for most of my life and it wasn’t like mom had time to take us to visit him. Some people may have perceived the news of my parentage as a loss. Some even may have thought it to be traumatic. I was surprised, but shock wasn’t a feeling that I had the privilege of feeling anymore.
I wasn’t there when Max found out, but I’m told that he freaked. Something about he never would have ended up in prison if he wasn’t trying to take care of me. After that discovery, he didn’t want to take Sasha, even though she was beyond a doubt his child. I don’t think that she minded it much. It wasn’t like Max was ever around long enough to form any kind of relationship with us. He spent most of our lives in jail.
I haven’t heard from my mom since I was sent here. Sasha tells me that she sees her on the street occasionally. She’s usually arguing with herself, most of the time imagining that her father is there. I’ve given up on her. Some people don’t want help, others are too far gone to save. I think that she’s always been the latter. My mom has been carrying a heavy load on her back since she was a child, it was only a matter of time before it broke her. If drugs are the only way that she can find peace, I can’t be mad at her.
As for this place, it’s my last week here. I always heard stories about detention centers. Sexual and physical abuse were allegedly common place. Yeah, girls get into fights. What can you expect when you lock us up in tiny spaces and allow us no privacy? People are gonna get frustrated. A few girls have tried to pick fights with me. I don’t have time for that. They can’t make me angry. I’ve had everything that I’ve ever cared about taken from me, what more could these girls do?
They make us do therapy sessions once a week. Most people don’t want to share, but those that do usually have the same story. We all do. It’s pretty much a math equation in this place. Abuse + abandonment x number of years = criminal. Every now and again we’ll get a rich girl in here who got strung out on drugs and kicked out of her parent’s home, but the rest of us, same old story. If I learned any lesson while being locked up, it’s that there is only one way to change the math equation, school.
One of the therapists here always tells me that we have the power to change the equation, we just have to choose to be different. Me choosing not to steal would have meant that my sister would starve. That path wasn’t an option, so I chose a different one, only one made me a criminal, but the other would have made my sister a victim.
For the longest time, I ignored the things that she said because I thought that she didn’t know anything. She grew up in a nice neighborhood where everyone knew what time their next meal would be ready for them on the table. Not long after I found out about Max, she sat me down and told me her story.
Her mother was on drugs during her pregnancy. When my therapist was born, she was given the label of crack baby. Her mom cleaned up soon after she was born. At around five-years-old her mom’s boyfriend brought drugs back into her mom’s life. She resisted at first, but it’s like they say, once an addict, always an addict. One day, she awoke to find her mom had drowned in her own vomit after shooting up. The state didn’t know who her father was, so she was sent to her first of many foster homes.
School was always difficult for her. Her mom’s drug use caused developmental delays. Delays that she had to overcome in order to keep up with her classmates. The guidance counselor at school told her that she would never be able to learn like her peers. She was determined to prove them wrong. She never became the valedictorian and she didn’t graduate at the top of her class, but upon graduation, her grades were good enough to get a scholarship into a pretty good university. Now, she said, her mission is to help us to save ourselves.
Her story changed everything for me. Every woman in my family had a slight variation of the same story. They got pregnant as teenagers, they dropped out of school, they lived in the same dangerous neighborhood, and never had enough money or willpower to go somewhere else. I didn’t think that there was another way, not for me anyway. She showed me that I had a choice.
Sasha
I’ve been living with a foster family for what seems like forever now and it’s been AMAZING! We live just outside of Philadelphia. The only down side is that I don’t get to see my friends as much as I would like to. Whenever I go into the city I try to stop by Junior’s grave. With Nevaeh gone and my mom in the state that she’s in, he doesn’t get very many visitors. Sometimes I’ll see my mom hanging out in the cemetery. She’s usually at the wrong grave, but at least she found her way there. She doesn’t recognize me, but somehow, she remembers how to find Junior. True love does that, or maybe it’s true heartbreak.
I never imagined that I could live a life like I’m living now. This family is more than I could ever ask for. After Nevaeh was sent away, our dad decided that he wanted me to come live with him. I visited his place once. Never in a million years would I want to live with him. He seemed like a nice guy, but his apartment was like ours after mom had left. I couldn’t go back to living like that, especially not with a stranger. I begged the court to let me stay with my foster parents. The judge said the only way that I could stay was if Max wasn’t my actual dad. The court agreed to do a test on me and Nevaeh. They justified it by saying something about child support.
Max came around, on occasion, while we waited for the DNA results. It was the longest time that he’d been out of prison since I was alive. He was actually a really nice guy, he just got a bad shake at life. We all did. He told me that he wanted to build a relationship with me since he missed out on his chance with Junior and Nevaeh. It wasn’t long until the results came back.
We opened the results together. I could see the heart break in his eyes when he read the first part of the results, I don’t think that he even finished reading the letter. Tears fell from his eyes as he read that Nevaeh wasn’t his daughter. At first, I thought they were tears of sadness because the child that he thought was his for the previous fourteen years was now gone. It soon became obvious that the tears were shed for his lost years. Max said that he turned to selling drugs in order to pay for diapers for Nevaeh. He could have joined the military, avoided being another statistic. Instead, he was the father of a murdered son, stranger to an estranged daughter, and betrayed by the only woman he ever loved. He told me that I would never see him again. Said it was his turn to live for himself. We said goodbye and for the past two years, I haven’t seen or heard from him.
Nevaeh
I’ll be going home in a week. My sentence has been up for a while, but they didn’t have anywhere to send me, so I stayed longer that I was supposed to. There are a few other girls in here that are in a similar situation. Some of them actually never got into trouble, their cities just ran out of foster parents. I guess they found a place for me. I only have about one year left before I’m out of the system, it would have made no difference to me if they just left me here until then. At least here I know that I’m safe. Yeah, I get into the occasional fight here, but at least I’m not worried about bullets flyin
g passed my face while I’m walking down the street.
I still dream about Junior. I still feel his blood against my skin. This place may not be a palace, but it isn’t a battlefield either. Nothing that has ever happened inside of these walls will ever make me more afraid than the things that have happened to me outside of them.
I am excited to see Sasha again though, we haven’t seen each other in years, outside of pictures. I don’t know if I’ll be living close to her, they haven’t told me where I’m going. When I told her that I was coming home last week she didn’t sound excited to hear it. Her reaction took me off guard. That girl gets excited about everything, but I tell her that we’re going to be reunited after all of these years and I heard a pin drop it was so silent. Something is going on, I just don’t know what.
Sasha
I meant Lucas soon after Max disappeared. I don’t even remember how we meant, but I’ve never looked back. He’s the love of my life. We’ve already made plans to get married. My foster parents don’t like us talking about marriage. They say that I’m only fourteen and don’t know what love is. Adults always say that to teenagers though. I know what love is, I can feel it whenever I’m with Lucas and whenever our baby moves inside of me. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was afraid to tell him. After four months he figured it out. I was too skinny to hide it for long. He was so excited. His parents were willing to take the baby since I am in foster care. If they wouldn’t have, the baby would have gone to a foster family. His parents aren’t happy about the baby, but they weren’t willing to let their grandbaby get stuck in the system.
Nevaeh called a few days ago and told me that she was finally coming home. I didn’t know that she would be back so soon. I thought that it would at least be a few more months. She’s going to be so mad when she sees me. I’ve kept the pregnancy a secret all of this time because I knew that she would be angry. She would have found out eventually, it’s not like you can just hide a baby. I made it to seven months without Nevaeh finding out. Now I guess the gig is up. I know she had to find out sooner or later, I would have preferred later.
Nevaeh
My heart was pounding so hard. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to see my little sister until that moment. It took them so long to open the door, I thought that she had forgotten that I was coming today. Finally, a stranger opened the door. Her smile was genuine, she told me that family of Sasha’s was family of hers. I believed her, the system didn’t fail Sasha, they found a family that loved her. A real family, not the thing that we had that was duct taped together and fell apart piece by piece.
The woman led me into the living room and there she was, my baby sister. The last time that I saw her she looked like a little girl, now she looked almost like a woman. Sasha stood to great me and I saw the reason that she wasn’t excited for me to come home. I stopped walking towards her. I didn’t have words, I just stared in disbelief and shook my head no.
“Nevaeh, I can explain,” Sasha said as I backed into the wall. “Everything is going to be fine, we’ve worked it all out.”
I finally found my words, “I just, I just,” I said as I opened and closed my eyes, hoping that this was a horrible dream.
“Nevaeh…”
“How could, how could, how could you do this?”
“We didn’t mean to get pregnant. I love him Nevaeh, we’re to get mar…”
“Sasha stop! Don’t even say it! What do you mean you didn’t mean to? Were you using protection?”
“No but…”
“That means you meant to! It’s basic biology Sasha.”
“Well I’m failing biology Nevaeh.”
I took a deep breath. “Failing biology?”
Sasha dropped her head knowing she made a mistake by telling me that.
“Don’t you understand Sasha? You got out. Living in this school district you could have gone anywhere, done anything. I told you a million times on the phone, education was your only way to stay out of the hood. How could you let this happen?”
“If education is so important then why did you stop going to school?”
“News flash Sasha, mom’s a fucking drug addict and the state wouldn’t give money to people who couldn’t pass a drug test. I stopped going to school so I could make money so that you could eat. I gladly started classes back up when I got locked up.”
“Well grandma and mom were living just fine and neither one of them finished high school. And Tanisha’s mom didn’t graduate and nothing’s wrong with her.”
“Tanisha’s mom work’s nonstop to provide for her kids, grandma did the same, and mom used to work day and night and was still living paycheck to paycheck before she started on drugs. Why do you think she started drugs? Because she was so blissfully happy? She couldn’t take it anymore! People don’t live in government housing with the fear of being killed every time they walk outside because they’re doing just fine. They live there because they’re trying to keep their head above the water.”
“Nevaeh, let’s just be honest with each other. I’ve never been that good in school and I’m about to have a baby now. Even if I was doing well in school, it wouldn’t change the fact that my highest achievement is going to get me behind the drawer of a register or in a factory. Everybody knows this Nevaeh and I’m at peace with it.”
“Stop looking at the people from our neighborhood and thinking that their highest achievement is equal to your potential. You can do anything, be anything! But if your plan at fourteen years old is just to survive, please tell me now so that I can walk out that door right now and know that I’m officially on my own. I will not let laziness and irresponsibility drag me down and I am not going to stand idly by and watch another of my siblings throw her life away.”
“Throw my life away? Don’t forget Nevaeh, you got pregnant at my age too! Actually, you were younger! Were you choosing to throw your life away?”
“I had been raped Sasha, I didn’t get a chance to choose. Life chose for me twice.”
I had never seen Sasha so upset. Finding out that I had been raped caught her off guard. She just stared at me. Then she grabbed the arm of the couch and collapsed.
Nevaeh
There was a time when the sky was the limit. When I believed that I could accomplish anything if I just worked hard. Then one night I met the boogie man. He broke into my dreams and turned them into nightmares with one intrusive touch. He taught me that the future was a black hole that others decided for me, my only choice was how I was going to react to paths that I was forced to take. The clock became a timer that was counting down the seconds until I could escape my misery. I finally realized that once hope dies, the heart is just ventilator moving the blood through the limbs of a corpse.
I sat and stared at my sister’s limp body. Doctors and nurses were moving all around us running in and out of Sasha’s room. Her foster parents allowed me to ride with her in the ambulance. They said that they would meet us at the hospital, but now that I was here, I wish one of them had come instead. I had seen this movie before, years ago when it happened to me. I didn’t want to see this happen again.
They decided that Sasha needed an emergency C-section. They said she had preeclampsia. The sooner they got the baby out of her, the better her chances were. This kind of thing didn’t usually happen in mother’s that are so young, everyone was surprised. I could see the fear in their eyes. I didn’t dare to ask what the chances of survival were.
Sasha was the only thing that kept me alive once. Now it was time for me to be there for her. They didn’t want me in the delivery room, but I refused to stay out. The doctor’s said they didn’t have time to fight me and just gave me a cap and gown. I watched as the machine showed Sasha’s blood pressure rising, then I watched as her heart did the opposite until finally, it just stopped.
As the doctors prepped my sister for the defibrillator, a silent, limp child was lifted from her womb. I didn’t see where they took the baby, I couldn’t take my eyes off of my sister.
My sister’s body jumped, but the straight line on the heart monitor didn’t change. They charged again and again placed the paddles on Sasha’s chest. Nothing.
“Time of death…”
I turned away. In my short life, I had watched everything that I held dear die. I felt like the vampire that was cursed to live an eternity while all that he cared for wilted and passed away. Was I cursed? Was this my punishment for wishing death on my unborn child? Or was my curse being born in the “City of Brotherly Love” where there are as many murders as there are days of the year? Did we ever really have a chance?
The doctors had not yet given up on Sasha’s baby. It had been so long and not a sound came from it. Silence filled the room as Sasha’s monitor was shut off. Then suddenly, a muffled sound came from the edge of the room. A sound that transformed into a scream. The medical staff breathed a loud sound of relief. All of those who had been hovering over Sasha ran to where the baby laid. I thought my heart stopped. I could barely breath as I took labored steps towards the incubator and tears ran from my eyes.
There she was, the child that Sasha had given her life for. She screamed out and the sound was like her declaration of life. She was here to stay, and so was I. After all of the death and destruction that I had seen, this child brought back something that I thought was gone from my life. Something that I hadn’t had since Jamal’s first visit to my room. This baby would make it out, she would have a chance, I would make sure of that.
“What do you want to name her?” The nurse asked as they exited the room to take her to the infant ICU.
“Hope.”
Nevaeh's Hope Page 8