From the Deposition of Connie George, Chief Nurse Officer of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, NY
Dawn Cooper, wow, I haven’t heard that name in years. Yeah, she worked here, long ago. Level one neonatal unit, was great at showing new mothers how to breast-feed and swaddle. She loved them babies, almost a little too much, you know. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but she was always a little too . . . attached. Real touchy and kissy, took her time bringing infants to the mothers. I caught her feeding and rocking one to sleep in an empty room once. Odd but harmless.
Her husband died and she took some time off, but when she came back, she was never the same. Forgot to fill out charts, blanking out in delivery rooms, getting really agitated with the new mothers; she even started singing and praying hard over the preemies in intensive care. Parents were uncomfortable. I had to let her go. The last time I saw her, she came in with her daughter. I was glad for her. She seemed happy at least. And, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been working here for close to twenty-five years and I’ve never seen a new mother look so, well, regular, after giving birth. She was glowing. Good for her, I thought. Seemed like having her little girl was helping her get back on track.
Momma calls herself a healer. Says she has powers to heal people, like Jesus. She always used to talk like that when she was having “a day.”
“My prayers are powerful! I can heal the blind, bring the dead back to the living. God made me this way. But I save my special prayers for you, baby girl.”
She prayed for Alyssa too. Now look where we are.
Ted takes my hand, but I can hardly feel it. I’ve been numb all week. I feel nothing as he drags me inside Brooklyn Tech, the steel doors slamming behind us. The building reminds me of baby jail, with its hollow blue halls and bright hospital lights. Stench of cafeteria food and sweat from the gym baked into the walls makes my stomach hiccup. I stop moving.
“Chill,” he laughs, pulling me. “You’ll be aight.”
I hold his hand tighter.
We should go, this place is dangerous. Doesn’t he see that?
There are a lot of kids here. They don’t know me and I don’t know them, but they look like the ones in baby jail. Eyes dead of life, heartless, cold-blooded; smelling the fear I stank of like dogs. They line up at a table outside the auditorium for another practice SAT. Ted insisted I take it, even though I don’t see the point anymore.
We stop at the end of the line. Ted tries to let go of my hand and I don’t let him.
“Chill,” Ted reminds me, squeezing away.
I move in the line with slow shuffling steps, looking every three minutes at the corner where Ted is waiting. He nods and smiles back. A girl behind me notices and rolls her eyes.
“So fucking sprung,” she mumbles and I stay forward, eyes down at my sneakers. Gray with blue Nike stripes, the laces black with dirt. A girl in front of me has on pink sneakers with turquoise laces and jewelry hanging off the tongue. She could eat dinner off of her shoes.
“Name?”
The lady at the table looks like she grew up in the projects; that’s what Momma would’ve said if she saw her. Tan skin with short, bright red hair, a gold chain, bracelets, and rings with hoop earrings to match.
“Um, Mary Addison.”
“School?”
“Don’t go to one.”
She looks up at me for the first time, like I said something strange. She isn’t as young as I thought.
“Home school?” she asks.
“Umm . . . yes.”
I guess.
“ID?”
“0031496.”
“What?”
Wait, where am I?
“Hello? Your ID! I need your ID.”
“I . . . I don’t have one?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Didn’t yuh read di flyer? Go stand over there!”
I stand aside with a pocket of kids that look as homeless as I feel. Ted watches from the corner, his face hard like he is about to hit someone, but he doesn’t move.
0031496. My ID in baby jail. Momma played the number all the time, never won though. Even if she did, I doubt she’d have given me any of the money.
When they are done with the regular registration, the same lady calls us pack of misfits back over.
“Yuh all lucky dis is just a practice test and not di real deal. ’Cause next time, they won’t let yuh take di test. Yuh need to get yourselves an ID. Do it now before it’s too late.”
I look over at Ted and he nods. Then she gives us a form that asks for our name, number, and address. That’s the last straw. I put the paper down and walk away.
“Aye! Gyal! Where yuh going?”
The lady chases after me and I stop a few feet from Ted.
“Where yuh going? After yuh wait all dis time now.”
For the first time, I notice her thick accent, like she is from an island.
“I can’t put my address.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause.”
She blows out air. “Meh trying to help yuh. We won’t—”
“I don’t want them . . . anyone . . . knowing I’m here.”
The lady keeps a straight face, but I think she knows what I’m talking about. She looks at Ted then back at me.
“Listen to me, ’ere, chile, don’t ever let anyone stop yuh from bettering yourself. Yuh scared of people knowing, yuh scared of change? Good. Change is scary. Get used to it! But nothing comes from nothing.”
My head drops like it always does when I’m being lectured. I stare at her shoes. Plain black. Looks like they’ve been worn a while and . . .
“Look at meh when meh talk to yuh! Don’t put your head down, nothing to be ashamed about! Why yuh give up so?”
Because it’s easier this way, to give up, walk away and avoid the fight. That’s a rule in baby jail, don’t bother trying. Why break that rule now? But the way she’s yelling, makes me feel stupid.
She huffs, hands locked on her hips.
“Yuh know what, yuh can pick up your scores from our office. Meh write down the address. Come next week. Meh name Claire. Yuh can ask for meh when yuh get there.”
Ms. Claire, I say in my head. Momma always told me to call adults Mr. or Ms. I do it to everyone except Winters. He’s too much of an asshole to pay respect to.
“Yuh got your pencils?”
I dig in my bag and pull out a pack of brand-new number two pencils from the dollar store. One pack, one dollar and nine cents.
“Your calculator?”
I pull out the calculator Ted stole from the office. She snatches it out of my hand.
“Dis little ting ’ere? Yuh need a proper graphing calculator.”
I have no idea what that is.
“Come now. They starting.”
Continued Deposition of Ms. Ellen Rue—
Mary Addison’s Fourth-Grade Teacher
She said she wanted to be a teacher, just like me. Was always my little helper! She would clean the boards, straighten the classroom, and sharpen all the pencils. Used to tutor her classmates during lunchtime too, that came easy to her because she was so much ahead of everyone. I reported her progress to the principal and we had her tested. Turned out, she could skip at least two grade levels. But when we told her mother, she flipped out. Threatened to sue the school for unauthorized testing! She thought Mary would think she was better than other people, that she was “too good” for regular school. It was bizarre. Most parents want their children to advance and would be thrilled. It just didn’t make sense to leave her in a class where she wasn’t challenged. Poor Mary. She was just so bored.
“You walked out of that room like a zombie,” Ted says, handing me a hot dog. We sit on a bench at Fulton Street Mall, what they call a street mall. There’s a Macy’s, a Jimmy Jazz, a Foot Locker, and a bunch of jewelry shops. The streets are always packed with vendors selling oils, books, gospel CDs, bags, and cell phones.
We pool our money together for two hot dogs and a can of Coke. I’m glad Ted took me here. I’m not ready to go back to the house; my mind is still recovering. The test took forever with words I don’t remember ever seeing in the dictionary and math problems as long as the alphabet. The other kids had those calculators Ms. Claire was talking about. Black and bulky, not like my puny little white one.
“I need an ID. And a calculator.” They are the first words I’ve spoken since we left the school.
“Calculator shouldn’t be hard. But how you gonna get an ID?”
“Do you have one?”
He pulls out a plastic ID from his wallet. I smile at his picture.
“Oh, you laughing,” he says, tickling me.
“You look so young.”
“That was me, three years ago. My moms brought me to the DMV with my birth certificate.”
“Oh.”
Now I see. I don’t even know if Momma ever had my birth certificate. She’s never been great about keeping stuff like that. Maybe my white father has it. Maybe he’ll take me to get an ID when he comes.
We sit for a long time in silence, just people watching. It’s an Indian summer day, I once heard a CO call it. When it’s super warm even though it’s supposed to be cold. I unzip my hoodie and arch my head back, letting the sun beat my face. A couple of flies bounce around a trash can on the corner. Herbert’s family. Thinking of him makes me think of Alyssa and how I couldn’t save either of them from Momma. Damn, I think about her so much she has become a mood, an emotion. I am Alyssa-ing over a fly.
“What happened to your brother?”
I snap back up. Ted never asks about family stuff. I forgot I even mentioned I had a brother. He stares off at the people passing, expressionless, and my body tenses up, ready to run. Why is he talking about this now?
Oh God, maybe he knows.
Maybe he Googled me like New Girl did and he knows about me. He knows about Alyssa.
He can never know about Alyssa.
I start to breathe funny before he places his arm over my knee, massaging my calf. I love when he does this. I love whenever his arms are around me in any way. Even though the thought of him knowing scares me, it makes me start talking.
“I was . . . six when my momma had him. Ray Jr. He was tiny, a preemie or something. He looked just like Momma, brown skin, big eyes, but with the tiniest little fingers and toes. I always wanted to be a big sister, I just never thought it’d happen, you know, ’cause Momma was . . . well, Momma. But when she brought him home . . . he was so cool.”
Ted smiles.
“So you’ve always liked babies?”
“Yeah. I guess. Maybe ’cause of the way they smell. You ever smell a newborn? It’s so different . . . just new. They’re like these tiny, brand-new humans that don’t know who you are, or what you’ve done, or anything. But they love you anyways.”
“See! I knew it! This ain’t no mistake.” He rubs my stomach. “It was meant to be.”
I swallow, Alyssa-ing, guilt coming over me.
“Anyways, one night, Momma put Junior to bed and he didn’t wake up. That was it. She was sad. Ray beat her pretty bad after that. He lost his firstborn son and blamed her.”
“But was it her fault?”
All the feeling in my face is gone. It’s like he can see right through me, all the way into my mind, into our history.
“What d’you mean?”
“Did she do something wrong? You know, like did she forget to feed him or something?”
Now I’ve lost feeling in my legs. No one has ever thought of holding Momma accountable. For anything. The smoke from the roasted nut cart on the corner turns my stomach over. Or maybe it’s the conversation. I shrug and sip the last of the soda.
“I don’t know. Who really knows what they’re doing with a baby?”
Ted shrugs.
“You came out aight though.”
That is true, I survived. Well, if you call this surviving.
“What happened to Ray?”
“He’s dead.”
Ted looks like he wants to ask how, but doesn’t. Does it matter how he died? He’s dead. I know how, I just don’t feel like saying. I don’t feel like talking about it.
“Do you love your moms?” he asks.
He is going in a direction I need him to come back from. He is going down back roads filled with thorny bushes and poisonous fruit. I touch his temple with my index finger.
“What you got cooking up in there?”
He smiles and holds my hand. Even with a busted lip and bruises all over his face, he’s still beautiful.
“Nothing, just thinking.”
“About your mom?”
He nods.
Ted’s mom lives in the Linden Houses, over in East New York, not too far from his group home. But he hasn’t seen her in years. She’s never visited him in juvie. Not even on holidays or his birthday. I don’t know what’s worse. My momma visiting to make herself feel better or his mom not visiting at all.
“Do you love your moms?” he asks again.
I don’t know the answer to that.
“Do you?” I ask.
He sits up, playing with the tight curls in my ponytail.
“I guess. Ain’t I supposed to? Moms bring you into this world with one job, to love them, right?”
I shrug. “I guess.”
He rubs my shoulder, grazing his thumb against the scar on the back of my neck.
“You never told me what happened here.”
Momma happened. She hit me with the wrong end of her belt. The buckle cut out a chunk of skin like an ice cream scooper. I should’ve got stitches, but that would’ve meant hospitals, questions; Momma in trouble and me left alone with Ray. So I wrapped it up in toilet paper and baby Band-Aids instead. It healed all wrong. Now it looks like the inside of a belly button. I brush his hand away.
“Nothing happened.”
Ted looks at me, but doesn’t ask anymore. He knows all about scars. He has mini moons up and down his body where his dad used to put out cigarettes. But Momma’s not a monster like that. She just doesn’t know what she’s doing sometimes.
At least that’s what I’d like to believe.
“What does it mean when you love and hate someone at the same time?” I ask.
He laughs. “It means they family.”
From the Deposition of Ms. Rachel Edwards—
Third-Grade School Counselor
Ms. Cooper-Addison came to my office at the beginning of the school year to talk about Mary. She said during the summer she had some issues with her hitting and biting people. I recommended she see child psychologist Dr. Reuben Jacobs. Two weeks later, Dr. Jacobs called to tell me about the visit. He was concerned. Said that Mary was silent the entire time, never said a word or colored a picture. About five minutes before the session was about to end, he asked Ms. Cooper to join them. She asked Mary, “Why aren’t you saying anything?” Mary turned to her and said, “You told me not to talk about Ray.” Ms. Cooper was apparently very angry and quickly left with Mary. Dr. Jacobs called and tried to convince her to come back for another session, but Ms. Cooper became irate, accusing him of trying to steal her money. I tried to schedule a meeting with Ms. Cooper but she kept dodging me so I called social services. They went by the house and said everything was normal, which was bull. I don’t even think they talked to Mary. After that, Mary was out of school a few days, then I got wrapped up in some other cases, weeks went by and then . . . it happened. I should have followed up or something, but I was new. And I never would have thought . . . she was just such a good kid.
The basement erupts with applause. Kisha, standing in the middle of our circle, closes her feelings book and takes a bow while the girls cheer. Ms. Veronica wipes a tear out her eye.
“That was a beautiful poem, Kisha. Nice work!”
“Yo, Kish, that was dope,” China says. “You should put that in a book or something!”
Kisha nods, pretending to be modest in a room full of starstruck fans.
“Hey, psycho,” Marisol says to me, her long black hair curly today, clothes so tight she might turn blue. “Why you no clap for her, aye? You think you better than everybody? Estúpido!”
I’m the only one not clapping.
They can’t be serious? They really don’t know?
Kisha sits and stares at me. I stare back. She shifts her eyes away, smile quickly fading because she knows. She knows I know.
“Whatever, she stupid anyways,” she says, cutting her eyes at me.
She knows I know the poem. I know it because it was in the book Alyssa’s mother gave to Momma that she never read. The Complete Works of Maya Angelou.
“That’s why she ain’t gonna go nowhere! Trying to get into college and shit. She don’t even talk none,” Kisha snaps, her voice growing louder.
“Nah, I hear her talk with her momma,” Joi says. “She sounds mad white! That’s why she thinks she’s better than everybody. Mulatto bitch!”
The girls cackle. Ms. Veronica claps her hands.
“Girls! Cut it out!”
They high-five each other, bonding over their mutual hatred for me.
“Now, today, I want to focus on some of the positive moments from our past. It could be anything. Let’s start with something, like, what’s your favorite childhood memory?”
This is the brilliant question Ms. Veronica asks a bunch of social outcasts; a group of convicts and products of broken homes. She wants us to relive our terrible childhoods and give her the one point in our life that didn’t suck. Now I’m sure they found her off a street corner.
“Oh, come on! Someone has to have one,” she urges.
Tara raises her fat hand.
“Okay! So I got, like, four brothers on my mom’s side and two on my dad’s. So one day, my brother Ty Ty came home with a busted lip, ’cause he got in a fight with this kid at his school. So my brother Kells, he just got out from doing a bid, calls up my other brothers and all seven of us went to pay this boy a visit. Yo, he was mad shook when he saw us walking down the street, in line, like an army, coming for his ass. We beat the shit out of that nigga. After that, we went to IHOP and got a stupid amount of food, then skipped out on the bill. I think that was the only time all of us ever got together. Best day ever!”
Ms. Veronica nods, struggling to smile. That wasn’t the kind of story she was hoping for.
“O . . . k! Good story! Ummmm . . . everyone, how about you write your stories in your feelings book. Okay?”
I open my book and write one word: IHOP.
When I was little, Momma and I used to go everywhere together, but the place we went the most was church. Sunday school, Sunday service, Saturday service, Wednesday Bible study, Fish Fry Fridays, and every single gospel concert, we were there, dressed alike. They would call us the “Addison Twins.” Sometimes after Saturday service, we’d stop at IHOP for breakfast. She would let me get extra whipped cream on my strawberry pancakes; that was my special treat. Then, we would take the bus home, playing “I spy with my little eye,” just the two of us. I thought I made her happy. But I guess children don’t really fill the loneliness in your heart. At night, I could hear her crying through the wall.
That was even when she wasn’t having “a day.”
Then, one day, she put on her red heels, did her hair all fancy, made up her face, and sat me in front of the TV.
“I’ll be right back, baby,” she’d said and left. Four hours later, she’d come back with Ray and he never left. She’d said he was the ray of sunshine she had been waiting for. We stopped going to church since Ray didn’t believe in God. Momma is a follower, not a leader, so no more trips to IHOP. No more extra whipped cream, no more “I spy,” no more being twins after she dropped my last name and started only calling herself Cooper, as if she didn’t want to be mixed up with me anymore. Plus, Ray had sucked her bone dry until we only had pennies for the collection plate, and Momma would rather die than be embarrassed in front of all those people in the house of the Lord.
I’ll take my baby to IHOP. If they let me.
Interview with Anonymous Inmate at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
The kid’s a fucking genius. And that ain’t a good thing, know what I’m saying. She’s too smart. Them COs . . . Lawd, they hated that child. They never like to let her out the cage ’cause she was always getting her ass beat. Them other young girls, they picked on her bad. She was once in the nurse’s office for like a whole month with some broken ribs. So the COs just kept her in the hole. Probably stayed in there ’bout few years. But when they let her out, you can just tell she was thinking. Ever seen those people who just think too much? Yup, up to no damn good.
Ms. Stein sent me to the clinic with a note. I’m pretty sure she is supposed to come with me. Or maybe Ms. Carmen, but I don’t feel like asking. The clinic is in Bed-Stuy, off Fulton Street and Kingston Avenue. It’s where all the group home kids go, and everyone else who don’t have insurance.
Not one seat left in the waiting room. Not even on the windowsill. So I stand by the door, against the chalky green wall, making room for the incoming and outgoing strollers and walkers. There are babies busy crying and coughing up germs into the hot air. The TV is muted on some talk show right above a fan sitting in the corner. A girl, who looks about my age, sits on the opposite side of the room with her swollen belly and tangled hair. The lady next to her looks like her older twin. I can’t tell if it’s this waiting room that makes her look so pissed, or the fact that her kid made the same mistake she did a few years earlier.
Momma never liked taking me to the doctor’s. One time, I got real sick eating some spoiled tuna, starving because we didn’t have anything else in the house. I puked and puked and Momma still refused to take me to the hospital.
“Bunch of crooks, them doctors. Always finding something wrong with you, so they can take hard-working people’s money.”
But Momma had no money to give. Ray took it all. The coffee can above our stove was always empty.
“I guess he needed it more than we do, baby girl,” she would say. My cramping stomach disagreed.
That was all before Ray’s other girlfriends came banging on our door. Before he moved us to Ditmas Park, to the big house he sublet from a friend. Before we met Alyssa’s momma. Before Alyssa. Life would’ve been real different without Ray. But it’s a waste of time thinking about that now.
“What the fuck is taking so damn long,” the girl’s mother groans. “I can’t believe this fucking shit. What did I tell you? Ain’t I tell you that nigga ain’t shit? And you go and fuck him . . . uggghh. Where he at, huh? He ain’t here, like I told you he wouldn’t be!”
The girl doesn’t respond, just stares at the floor. Acid creeps up from my stomach to my throat.
“So fucking stupid,” the mother mumbles. The girl and I share a look that makes my skin go cold. Why does it feel like we’re both getting the same talking to?
Minutes tick by to an hour. My knees hurt, tired of supporting me. The girl’s mother is at the front desk now, taking her anger out on the nurse who doesn’t give a damn. The girl holds back tears. Don’t blame her; I wouldn’t want my momma here either. And the two of them in the same room . . .
The door opens again and Ted walks in. I almost didn’t recognize him with his hoodie pulled up. He scans the crowd until he spots me on the wall.
What is he doing here? He can’t be here! They’ll know!
“Sorry I’m late.”
I shake my head, pretending not to see him.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I ain’t letting you do this alone.”
I catch the girl and her mother staring at us. The girl lets her tears fall and quickly looks away. The mother rolls her eyes and mumbles more curses at her daughter. Every muscle tightens around my stomach.
That could be me. That was me.
I glance back up at Ted, grateful, and don’t argue. I’d risk being caught just to be near him, just to breathe easier. He holds my hand, palms sweaty in the funky heat, and leans against the wall watching the waiting room like a foreign film, English barely spoken.
“You scared?”
I don’t want to tell him what I’m really afraid of. Ms. Stein, Winters, Ms. Carmen, all the people employed by the state to help me; the people who only want to take the one thing that actually belongs to me.
“Do you really think we should keep it?”
He stares, drinking me in. “Do you want to?”
“No.”
He is silent for a moment, then chuckles. “You a bad liar.”
I look up and smirk. Kind of hate how he knows me yet doesn’t know me at all. Guess I love it a little bit too. Ted is so tall the top of his head almost touches the welcome sign a few inches above him. His eyes are so pretty and brown, a shade lighter than his skin, but always mellow, loving, and calm. He never looks at me the way everyone else has the last six years. He looks at me like he’s happy I’m alive. Like Alyssa used to. I could stare at him for hours if we ever had the time. He squeezes my hand and looks away.
“You know I love you, right?” he says.
I know this, but it makes no sense. How could anyone love me after what I’ve done?
“You know I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says, real serious. “Or our baby. You know I got you.”
His face darkens with resolve. He is thinking about the girls in the house. But they aren’t the ones he should be worried about. I’m the one who killed a baby.
Allegedly.
“Addison,” a nurse calls from the door, aggravated and annoyed.
“I know,” I mumble and let go of his hand.
My white smock has tiny dots on it. Blue ones; I’ve counted two hundred and twenty-three so far. Momma made me a dress just like this for Easter. During dinner, I dropped a spoonful of cranberry sauce in my lap and it seeped deep into the cotton. Momma beat me only because Ray told her to. She did everything he said.
“Get in that corner! NOW!” she’d said.
Sometimes, I think Momma used to forget who I was when she beat me. Or maybe she was just a whole different person altogether. Her eyes would go blank, face almost unrecognizably mashed up in rage.
“Take off them clothes! You gonna feel every bit of this!”
I’d strip down to my underwear and back into a corner, my whole body trembling, waiting for her to finish her belligerent rant.
“How many times I got to TELL you. Lawd Jesus. How many! Huh? You don’t listen, you just don’t listen! Father God, why did you send me this little wretch?”
She’d beat me with whatever was handy. Her favorite was the dirt brown extension cord she kept hanging on the refrigerator handle, a ready threat. It would crack in the air before biting my skin, leaving welts the size of fists all over my legs, arms, and ass.
“Mami, don’t hit her face,” Ray would say with a smirk, sipping on the brown liquor he bought with Momma’s money. “You leave marks and those nosy bitches come and be all in your shit.”
I thought maybe if I didn’t scream so much she would stop, but she never did. It’s like she wanted Ray to hear me beg for my life, to make him happy. She’d grunt and curse over me, working up a sweat, while I tried to block the blows. Then later, she’d complain about her arm hurting, blaming me for making her hurt herself. When the beatings started to get worse, when it was harder to explain the welts, cuts, and bruises, I thought about running away.
But then who would take care of Momma?
“Are you still taking your medication?” the doctor asks. His name doesn’t matter, since he won’t remember mine. He is another overworked government employee and has the same look of annoyance as the rest of them have when they see me. He does his exam with zero enthusiasm, touching me only slightly if he has to.
“Are you still taking your medication?”
Oh right. The pills.
“No. I’m not.”
The doctor scribbles some notes. He hasn’t looked me in the face the entire time I’ve been in front of him.
I shouldn’t have been on those stupid pills in the first place. You would never think it would be so easy to drug up a child. But Ray and Momma had found a way. For the fifth time, Ray had come into my room and tried to get into my bed. His musky cologne and stank underarms had woken me up before I felt his hairy hands, creeping, pulling back my Hello Kitty sheets, pushing my teddy on the floor, rubbing up my thighs. This time, instead of crying and kicking like a wild animal, I’d bitten down on his arm and drawn blood. Ray had left the house. Momma was so mad she wouldn’t speak to me for a week.
He was back two nights later; I’d heard them talking about me in the kitchen.
“Mami, I was just checking on her to make sure she was asleep. You know me, baby. I treat her like she’s my own. And she go ahead and bite me. I got teeth marks, baby. She loco. We got to get her help.”
Next thing I knew, I was in a doctor’s office, a “friend” of Ray’s, who threw around big words like hyperactivity, neurobehavioral, comorbid, and oppositional defiant. Momma hadn’t known what any of those words meant. But she had heard one word that she could relate to: medication.
“Look, baby girl, see, we both gonna be taking medicine every day now,” she’d said.
I’d tried the pills, thinking maybe it’d make her happy. Maybe she’d even kick Ray out. But all they did was make me slow, sleepy, and achy. Almost too slow and sleepy to watch out for Ray. I’d spat them out like sunflower seeds. No amount of beatings would make me take them. Momma had just given up. Soon after that, she’d stopped taking her own pills. Things went downhill from there.
They gave me more pills in baby jail, five in total. Those pills I didn’t fight. The numbness helped me breeze through prison life. But I stopped taking the pills the day I met Ted. He made me want to feel again.
“Do you know who the father is? Do you know anything significant about his medical history?”
“There is no father.”
The doctor rolls his eyes.
“Oh, sure there isn’t. Here.”
He scribbles on a pad and rips off a piece of paper.
“Walk down the hall and get an ultrasound. Go to the drugstore and pick up some prenatal vitamins. No smoking. No alcohol. Make an appointment with the women’s clinic for next month.”
He ushers me out and I do what I’m told, like always, and walk to my ultrasound. An older nurse looks me up and down when I walk in the room, then checks her clipboard.
“Mary Addison?”
I nod. She said my name like she knew it, which only makes me think of Alyssa.
“Date of birth,” she says, taking her time standing up.
“October thirteenth.”
“Hm. Okay, change into this. Then up on the table.”
The nurse scans around my belly, then jams a stick up my insides. It’s cold; the stick, the jelly, the room, and the woman running the machine. When she is done, I change back into my jeans while she scribbles on some paper.
“Here,” she says, passing me a folder. “Take this to the front. Oh, and happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, not meeting her eyes and rushing out the room.
Ted is waiting outside the discharge door, grinning. I stop by the booth and another nurse hands me an envelope.
“Take this. Give it to your guardian. Results in a week. Appointment in four weeks.”
Inside is a bunch of paperwork where the most important figure stands out: I’m eight weeks pregnant. Stapled to the report is a fuzzy black-and-white picture of my ultrasound. Ted looks over my shoulder.
“Wow,” he says, taking the photo out my hand. We stand outside the clinic, studying the picture, the fall wind blowing through my hair.
“It looks like a kidney bean. Red beans and rice!” he says.
I laugh. “I was thinking more like a jelly bean.”
Ted is in some type of trance, but happy. “It’s there.”
“Yeah. It’s there.”
“Our bean.”
He smiles and stuffs the picture in his hoodie. We walk down Fulton while I tell him about the appointment.
“That’s it? Vitamins? What kind?”
“Prenatal.”
“Aight, let’s go get you some then.”
We walk two blocks up to a Duane Reade pharmacy and Ted stops at the counter.
“Yo, my dude, where you keep them vitamins?”
The young sales guy glances at me, then at him.
“In the back, against the wall.”
Ted turns to me. “You thirsty?”
I nod.
“Aight, I’mma get you some water. Meet me in the back.”
I walk through the aisles to a towering wall of vitamins. There is an entire shelf for prenatal vitamins. More pills. But these pills are good for me, good for Bean, so I should take these. I grab the first bottle I see. Seventeen dollars and ninety-nine cents. I only have five.
“Can I help you?”
The sales guy from the front startles me. He looks my age, skinny and pimply faced, grinning in his red smock, with dry-looking cornrow braids.
“Are you looking for something specific?”
I don’t say nothing. Just stand there with the bottle in my hand and I don’t know why, but he makes me feel uneasy. Maybe it’s the way he’s smiling, like he’s up to something. And he is so close. Too close.
“Maybe I can—”
“Yo! The fuck is you doing?”
Ted walks behind him and he scoots away.
“Yo, you pushing up on my girl, son?”
Ted jumps in his face and Sales Guy shakes his head hard. Ted’s voice sounds like a giant, the store feels smaller with him in it.
“Nah, man! I was just . . . helping her and . . .”
“Then why you all up in her fucking face for?”
Ted is inches from his nose. Sales Guy looks scared. I’m scared for him.
“Back the fuck up!”
He bucks and Sales Guy jumps back a foot. Ted glances at me and I freeze.
“Why you look like that? Come here.”
I don’t move. I can’t move, but I want to run away. Ted, my sweet Ted . . . is a monster. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that story was mad crazy.
“I said, come here,” he says roughly, pulling me by my hoodie. I whimper, bracing for a smack. Instead, he leans down and kisses me, his tongue slipping inside my mouth. He tastes like fruit punch, lips greasy with Vaseline. His angry voice, the Sales Guy, the world, all forgotten because he has never kissed me like this before. He backs me against the vitamin wall, hand slipping around my waist. That’s when I feel him grab one of the bottles and slide it into my coat pocket. He cuffs my face, eyes glowing, and gives me another kiss before turning to Sales Guy.
“The fuck you looking at?”
Sales Guy chews on his words. He knows Ted is up to something, he just can’t figure out what. Ted grabs my hand and pulls me through the aisle.
“Yo, hold up a minute,” Sales Guy nervously calls after us. Ted walks faster. He drags me out the door, through the alley, and across the street. We’re five blocks away before he slows down.
“Sorry. Shouldn’t have done that with you.”
I laugh, out of breath from our escape. Is this what regular kids do? Do they feel this rush? This love? Ted grins and is back to himself, like nothing ever happened.
“You hungry?” he asks.
We walk into a Burger King down the block and he sits me by a window. I try to give him five dollars, but he doesn’t take it. A few minutes later, he returns with a tray of two Whoppers with cheese, fries, and a Coke. All that running and kissing has me mad starving. I finish my burger, licking the sauce off my fingers. Ted laughs.
“You want another one?”
I do, but I don’t want to be greedy, so I shake my head. He smiles but it fades fast, folding his hands on the table. His fist looks like a cat used his knuckles as a scratching post. I can see why Sales Guy was nervous.
“Baby . . . I gotta tell you something.”
The burger and fries drop to the bottom of my stomach.
“Remember when we first met, you asked me what I did. And I didn’t tell you, ’cause . . . I didn’t want you looking at me . . . different.”
Oh no. What if I’m dating a murderer? A real murderer.
He gives a long sigh. “When I was fourteen, I was a wild boy, man. Out partying and drinking like I was a grown-ass man. Most of my crew was older than me. So I just did what they did. And did what they say. They say to kick someone’s ass, I kicked they ass. They say stick up that bodega, it was handled. I was in and out of juvie, small stuff, nothing major, all year. My file was thick. Social worker came to my house, told my mom my nine lives are almost up and I better straighten up. But I wasn’t at the house that night, I didn’t know.
“I was with my boys, drinking and shit on my homeboy’s stoop. This girl walks by. My boy talked her into drinking with us. She got real drunk. We were all drunk, mad faded. My boy brought her inside, we all followed. She passed out, I guess. Then . . . he had her on the couch, he lifted up her skirt . . . after the second guy, she woke up and started screaming, and my boy told me to hold her arms down.”
Ted shifts in his seat a little, eyes on the table.
“They covered her mouth, ran a train on her . . . I was mad scared and . . . I let go of her arms. She kicked the last dude out and ran off. My boys blamed me for letting her go. When the cops came, later that night, they arrested all of us. Charged us with rape. The girl was thirteen.”
He finally looks at me.
“But I swear, I didn’t rape her!”
He didn’t rape her, but he sure held her down for others to. How could he be so stupid? He reaches for my hands in a panic.
“Baby, I was scared and drunk . . . I . . . I didn’t know what I was doing! But with that and my other charges, they sent me upstate, bumped out at seventeen. My boys I was with, they blamed me for us getting caught. ’Cause I let go of her hands. I ran into some of them the other night on the way home. That’s where I got all this.”
He points to his busted lip and black eye.
“But I swear on everything, I didn’t rape that girl. I would never do that. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just a kid.”
That was the defense my lawyer tried to use. The “she’s just a kid, she didn’t know what she was doing” plea. But when you’re caught red-handed trying to hide the evidence, it means you had some idea of what you were doing.
“So?” I finally say.
“So. I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”
I relax and let him touch my arm again. How can I judge him; I’ve done way worse.
Allegedly.
“But hey . . .”
He scoops a hand from under the table and sets down a Hershey’s chocolate pie.
“Happy birthday,” he says hesitantly, staring at me as if to say “is this okay?”
He remembered. I knew he would.
“Thank you.” I giggle and read the box. Chocolate mousse, whipped cream, with a cookie crunch. He grins and relaxes.
“It ain’t much, but next week, I’mma take you to the movies. Just didn’t want the day to go by . . . and nothing.”
I smile at him, at my pie, at our day. No one else is happy I’m alive except Ted.
Ted takes out the ultrasound picture, studying it hard. His smile could light up a pitch-dark room.
“So, right, if we have a boy, what you want to name him? No junior though!”
I scoop a spoonful of the pie. It’s delicious.
“Hmmm . . . Benson.”
“Okay. What about a girl?”
I think of Alyssa, but swallow back her name.
“Olivia.”
He laughs and stares at the picture again.
“Yo, this is so dope.”
Making Ted happy is the best birthday present of all. A present I don’t deserve because if he knew the truth about what I did, he’d hate me. He’d break up with me and then I’d be alone. No Ted. No baby. No Momma . . .
My eyes feel heavy again. Ted looks up at me.
“Aw, baby, don’t cry.”
He switches to my side of the booth, wrapping his arm around me. This is the second time I’ve cried in less than a month. Now I’m sure it’s the pregnancy.
“It’s aight, babe. It’s gonna be okay,” he whispers in my hair, smoothing my back.
It’s not going to be okay, but I can’t tell him that.