“Ms. Byrd, are you home? Hello?” I yelled into the house. Finding the door to her apartment unlocked, I walked into the living space.
“Yeah, Gura, that poor thang. She ain’t never gon’ have nothing long as she’s dealing with him. Ummm-hmmm, she s’posed to be stayin’ here ’til they moooove,” her Southern drawl rang out.
I waited in the living room, lugging my bags and my big seven-month-old belly, when I realized she was talking about me. I waited for a break to interrupt the everlasting conversation between Ms. Byrd and her friend. Finally, I said, “Ms. Byrd. I am here.”
I could have died at the sight of what was before me, what was to be my and my new baby’s home due to an ongoing series of unfortunate events. Lyulle was now facing jail time. He had been PV’ed, which landed him in the Oriana House in Akron. We had no place to live, no place.
Mom had long repossessed her car from us, forcing him to make a huge move at the time, buying a car we could not afford, a Charger. I was still dead broke and now big bellied as hell.
I maintained my mindset. I was gonna deliver this baby if it killed me. My love was all I had. That was what got me through.
In the months before arriving at Ms. Byrd’s home, I had graduated college in March, and by July, with our lease up at the campus apartment, I went back to Mema’s house, pregnant, with no direction, and still dead broke.
After getting into a physical altercation with one of Gem’s sisters, I left there too, and Gem’s house was beyond out of the question. I could not fathom doing that even if I needed to, and I did need to. Pride is a hell of a layer of molten rock that is hard to chip away at. Nothing—and I do mean nothing—would get me back in her house. I’d die first, literally would die, before I would ask her for a bread crumb to feed my hungry ass because I was seven months pregnant with her first and only grandson. It was because I was oozing with disease, hatred, shame, and disrespect. I held on to the one thing that gave me new hope and new life: the thought of Brooklyn. I journaled to him every day, and I prayed for him.
Ms. Byrd had given me her bedroom to make myself comfortable while I carried her grandson. She was most generous and tickled pink to be able to take care of me, of us, while I finished this pregnancy.
Now when I think on things, I was actually in a super self-imposed trance, in survival mode. I’m talking about outside of my right mind.
What could have possessed me to do such a thing, having put my physical and mental health in jeopardy because of pride? This is me, Jericho, admitting I should have had my ass right at home with Nana and Mema, getting ready to give birth, but I was stubborn, unmovable, angry, and callous.
Lyulle and I had fought so much. He’d had me in a duck off at Sand Run Metro Park, beating me and slapping me around because an ex of mine had come to visit me at Mema’s house. When Lyulle pulled up, my ex was there, sitting on the porch with me, not touching me, not even sitting next to me in a compromising way, but just there. I swear Lyulle hit me so hard that the three-inch hoop earrings I’d worn that day flew across the park in opposite directions, one from each of my ears. What had I become? My life and now my son’s life were in danger. Still not fully recognizing this circumstance as a domestically violent relationship, I was afraid for the life of my unborn child. I panicked out there at the park and began having deep contractions. I began to groan and say to Lyulle that I needed to go to the hospital. A woman who had been walking in the park yelled to him, “Is she okay?”
He snapped out of it, racing me to Akron City Hospital, where we had arrived in minutes. I was taken straight to the maternity ward, sharing with the routine case worker the answer to her question of what had gotten me to the hospital and hooked up to their baby heart-monitoring and contraction-measuring system nearly two months too early—well, actually, sharing very little of the reason I was there. I wanted to tell the social worker everything every time she asked me if I was safe, where I lived, and if I felt my life or anyone’s life at home was in danger. I wanted to cry out and say that I didn’t even have a home and that neither would my son and that he hit me all the time … but I remained silent, hoping that eventually, someone would see through any crack in my shell.
That was when it came to me. One could be screaming, and no one could ever hear them, dying to be saved because there is no perceived way out, but I prayed to the Almighty to just help me get through this. I shook my head at the social worker in a convincing gesture. I would carry my burden happily with his strength.
The pressure was breaking me. Every day, it was breaking me down. I felt I should be doing something. I ate, slept, wept, and waited. Ms. Byrd cooked all the time. Everything she cooked gave me gas and heartburn. I was big and uncomfortable. We did our best under the conditions. We laughed and talked about Brooklyn. I remember she and I had a conversation early in my relationship with Lyulle. She had asked me if I was a stupid woman. I answered her, “I sure hope not,” but I felt I had become that woman she was speaking of.
I was still grateful to have this hidden away and a friend in Ms. Byrd, however temporary or short lived. Lyulle called me whenever he could from the Oriana House, and I was okay with that. A vacation was what I needed. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I managed to keep the bills that I had paid. The car and phone bills were what I could manage, more or less, or rather, what I had allowed myself to manage.
Ms. Byrd’s place was a temporary haven, at least until Brooklyn entered this world.