Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (5 page)

My boyfriend had no problem stealing from me. He thought he was justified because his Medicaid contribution made him feel like he was supporting me. One day, I remember feeling so proud because I had a whole hundred dollars in my purse, which was for the rent and to buy food. He came into the house and said, “I need some money.” I said, “No, because I need it for food.” That was our first physical fight. He hit me and I hit him back. He hit me again and I hit him right back. Eventually, his hits were harder than mine, so I gave in and gave him the money. I thought that giving in to B. was coming from love. It was my “love” covering up my loneliness. I couldn’t stand being lonely, so I easily forgot his “love licks.” A couple of my girls in Farmington were victims of “love licks” as well. They all had reasons and excuses that made it seem okay to be hit by your man. It was a warped form of intimacy. In some way it was a privilege for the man, because he would say, “I’m the only man who is allowed to hit her.” That was the thinkin’ back in Farmington.

My lights were soon cut off because I couldn’t pay the electric bill. B. left us again and went back to his parents’ house. He wouldn’t and couldn’t ask his parents to help because his parents would not allow us in their house. I couldn’t ask my parents for help, because it was my fault that I left them in the first place and I knew that my mama was going through her own drama with my father. B. went home to light and warmth. Zion and I were once again in darkness and cold.

I had to ask a friend, Shanetta, if Zion and I could stay with her, temporarily. Shanetta was my brother Rico’s baby mama. She let Zion and me stay in her apartment. We slept on a mattress in the middle of her small living room floor. Shanetta had three children at the time.

Shanetta was struggling herself. My brother and she had gone through some terrible things. Their relationship was the talk of the Farmington Apartments. Not that it was so unusual, but because it was just the most recent incident of a woman standing up for herself. They argued a lot with each other, but mostly they were yelling and mad at themselves for ending up in a similar scenario to every war-torn relationship in each of the government-subsidized apartments.

My WIC vouchers had run out for the month. That was the month that I started stealin’ milk. I would go to the store, walk the aisles, and take three cans of milk and put them in a big purse. When I needed diapers, I would go into the store, open a package of diapers, and stuff as many as I could into a purse with the milk. Three cans of milk and about ten diapers were all I needed to last me until the next WIC vouchers came. I felt bad stealin’, but my baby had to eat and her daddy was not around and even when he was, he was always asking me for money or just taking what I had. Shanetta and I, and our kids, existed on very little. All we had was each other and the daily conversation of how dirty and doggish our men had been. I would cry on her shoulder and she would cry on mine. I loved my brother, but I could almost understand her rage. It was the rage of all the women in High Point put together who had made families for these young men who so easily walked away.

My lights stayed out for a while. I wasn’t going to ask anyone for the hundred dollars to get them turned back on. Everyone I knew was strugglin’ and waitin’ for their lights to be turned off in the next few days as well. I used to ask God in my prayers, “When is it all going to be over with?” B. was still coming over to see us. Why I let him, I don’t know. I still felt like I needed him. His presence made me feel like I was better than my neighbors, because temporarily, I had my man, even if he wasn’t really loving me. At least my boyfriend was
there,
and those other lost daddies were not. The fighting continued. B. would come over and fight with me and never pay any attention to Zion. When she would crawl up to her daddy, he would ignore her or act like she was a stray dog that had gotten too close to him, reminding him of obligations that he wanted so desperately to forget.

Our arguments were infecting Shanetta’s fragile household, and one day, out of the blue, she gave me one hundred dollars so I could get my lights back on—and so that Zion and I could leave.

I returned to the First Farmington Apartments, apartment F in building 316, and B. moved in again. I started drinking. I would put Zion to sleep and I would go downstairs and sit on the steps and drink beer. While it was the wrong thing to do, that is what people do in the projects. Project life is like no other life. “Nothin’ to do” is a common reason for the crowded staircases, beer bottles, and cigarette butts strewn throughout the parking lot. Ghetto girls need to look good, so they dress up every single day in heels, makeup, tight shorts, and halter tops. They stroll their babies up and down the walkways of the projects with their cordless phones in their pockets instead of cell phones, going as far up the block as you could go and still get reception. Sitting outside after dark was summer in the projects. The familiar sound of loud voices and deafening car radios was all you could hear inside the project’s gates.

I spent too much time walkin’ the projects with a drink in my hand instead of turning to God and falling on my knees. My heart had been hardened. I needed
things,
not
prayers.
I was asking myself, What was praying gonna do?

B. was always out with his friends, so I was out with mine. And when we got home, we would fight about everything and nothin’ at all. We would fight because we were mad that we were sitting in the projects with no money and a child that was not conceived in true love. It continued to get worse every night.

The fights would begin when B. would get off the ugly purple couch with the stuffin’ coming out. He would open the refrigerator door and yell to me that there was nothin’ to eat. That would wake Zion up. I would go into the white kitchen and try to explain: “There was no money this week to get food.” He would say nasty things under his breath. Things like, “How did I end up here with you?”

The morning would continue like this until B. would leave, with his last words being, “Have some food for dinner, bitch.” And he would leave in a hurry.

I didn’t know what to do next in my life. I tried to get back in school, but I would have had to go through social services and apply for child-care benefits. I just didn’t want to go through that hassle again. They would require all kinds of paperwork and start dates and contracts and I didn’t want to deal with all of that. I wasn’t too good with paperwork. Besides, it was depressing going through the social services system. I felt those people’s eyes were looking down on me. Their eyes said, You are a project girl. You are not going to do anything with your life. I didn’t have any other options, but something in me just wouldn’t allow me to go back in there and face their looks anymore. I was beginning to feel hopeless. I no longer wanted to wake up in the same life that I went to sleep in. I wanted to wake up as someone else and be somewhere else. I just had to figure out who and where I wanted to be and how I would get there.

B. and I had one last fight. Of course, we were fighting over money. When he asked for my money I said no. I told 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 mother
made
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 was
messed 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 to her. I cried because I couldn’t read the large words on the colorful pages of the child’s book. I opened the page and recognized most of the words, but didn’t know how to pronounce them. I didn’t want to further humiliate myself in front of Zion. She had seen me in the worst moments, and it isn’t good for a little girl to see her mother that low.

At that moment I realized that when I was trying to be cool by dropping out of school, I was at home looking stupid, not being able to read and not being able to count. I cried because the truth was that I couldn’t even get a job because I was afraid that I would count somebody’s money wrong. I cried because I was dumb. Plain out dumb.

I cried and knew that my tears meant that change was coming. It was time. I didn’t want my daughter to come to me and ask me what I asked my mother only a few years before: “Mama, where is your diploma?” Just like my mother had to say to me, I didn’t want to say to Zion, “I don’t have one.”

So I started attending a program to get my GED. I also returned to church. I was singing as much as I could and when I wasn’t singing I was reading everything I could. I was reading street signs, signs in stores and markets, labels on groceries—I was reading everything. My relationship with J.B. continued. He was generous, loving, and kind—but still not what I really needed. God is what I needed.

As I started to listen to God, I started to become further away from J.B. It wasn’t because I didn’t care about him, but God’s voice made me start to care about myself. I realized every day that J.B. was the person who truly had it all, and although he was givin’ me a lot, I still had nothin’ and would never have anything until I got up and got somethin’ for myself. That is always the hardest thing when you realize something about yourself, but you have no idea how to make a change. What I realized was even though I didn’t know what I was going to do, just tryin’ anything would be better than sittin’ scared and not movin’ at all. I had a child now and needed to think about her and not think so much about myself. How would I sound tellin’ Zion that I had nothin’, was doin’ nothin’, and that my “man” was our only source of anything? Once I took the focus off me and my fear, I started thinking about this child that was here because of me and needed me to do more than just wait for someone else to take care of us. When you are in a bad spot in your life, it is easy to get so wrapped up in your situation that you can’t even see your way out of it. When you stop thinkin’ about yourself and think about the people around you, you will start to see the light of what you are doing and what you are not doing, just like I did.