Miss Understood: One Young Girl's Struggle with Ghetto Street Life.

Colophon

–Preface–

When I was younger I thought I’d never make it to see adulthood. I just couldn’t imagine making it out of my teens. The spirit of suicide followed me from the young tender age of 11. I felt so hopeless and helpless. I was plagued by the despair, devastation and degradation all around me. I saw no reason to continue through such a miserable existence. I believe the hopelessness I felt was and simply is a reflection of many of today’s youth. To walk out of your door everyday only to experience and witness racism, drugs, alcoholism, homelessness, poverty, abuse and violence can at times seem overwhelming. And these are just some of the issues that affect our communities.

While it’s not a topic for a lot of discussion any more, teen pregnancy has been a lingering epidemic among youth only second to gun violence in events that have a high impact on young people of all races. What we are witnessing is a psychological, cultural, and spiritual genocide taking place in our cities and neighborhoods every day. What it boils down to is that more and more teen boys and girls are literally and symbolically lying down. Our young men are being laid out in blood shed on street corners while young girls are having three and four babies before they reach age twenty one.

This symbolic lying down, in bloodshed, or sexual impurity is an example of the defeat, devastation and despair these kids are experiencing and facing every day. Many of our youth have been laid out and they don’t even know it. Many are in the state of cultural, psychological, and spiritual emergency. The truth is that so many of these children are lacking hope. Many don’t see a way out and can’t see past today. I am praying for a complete paradigm shift in the lives of these teens. My prayer is that God instill not only hope back into our youth but that He gives them vision.

Vision sees past our present circumstances, beyond the horizon, and looks brightly at the future. Vision sees past despair, past devastation to hope against all hope. Vision is why some have faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles yet still beat the odds. It’s why some have a will to live, fight and press on while so many have given up and into the spirit of suicide.

The bible says that even Jesus for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross… He had to have Vision that what was coming after the pain on that cross was so much greater than his present circumstance. We have to understand that with ;Vision comes promise, with promise comes relationship, and with relationship comes the love and strength we need to survive. Write the vision and make it plain that he who sees it may read it and run with it. Our youth need Vision. As I write this book, I look brightly on for them, pray they grab hold, catch on and run with it.

–Chapter 1–

Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite.

Exekiel 16:3

The 39th St Shelter Part 1

Now I swear to tell the whole truth,

Shoot, I was only fourteen

when I pulled down my jeans and she was conceived,

her lungs so underdeveloped that she could barely breathe

and her monitor screened her heart beat

I was just about out on the street when the man reached

and snatched the only one I was attached to…

Toya, as if walking through a dream, slowly undressed the baby and laid her down on the bed. Little Shawnee laid there oblivious to what was happening around her. Toya knew she had to get the baby ready before the social worker got there. Mrs. King, the Children & Youth worker was due to pick up three month old Shawnee in another hour. Still, that knowledge did nothing to snap Toya out of the trance she was in. Just like a zombie or well oiled machine, Toya picked Shawnee up off the bed and headed for the shelter’s bathroom.

The room she shared with three other families and two teens reeked of a combination of smells which included dirty diapers, mildew, and cheap perfume. The paint chipped and peeled around areas where people, either women or children had written graffiti on the wall. Toya made her way through the room around the maze of army cots stacked high like bunk beds. She hated the way the army green wrought iron metal sounded when it scrapped against the hard tile floor. It reminded her of nails screeching against a chalkboard every time someone tried to move one. The beds made the shelter seem cold and lifeless like a concentration camp or prison. The army cot bunk beds all cramped together made it possible to stuff four and five person families in one room.

Toya could remember when she first came to the shelter. She recalled getting squeezed into a very small room with three other women and their children. In the first room, a bunk bed pushed up against the wall on one side of the room, was where a girl named Tisha and her baby daughter Gemma slept. A little behind them, perpendicular to Tisha and Gemma’s beds, in the far left corner three other bunk beds were pushed together. It was where Ms. Toddi and her four children, two boys and two girls slept. Next to Ms. Toddi and her family, in the right hand corner of the room was another family in two other cot bunk beds. Marcella and her three girls, ranging in age from three to seven were just behind Toya and little Shawnee’s cot bunk. Toya and Shawnee’s beds stood stacked next to the door when you entered the room. The beds filled the room in a horse shoe shape. The arrangement of the cots caused the door to hit Toya and Shawnee’s bunks any time someone came in or out. Toya found it hard to get comfortable in the tight space.

Tensions often ran high between the women in the first room where Toya stayed. In particular, there was always some kind of conflict between the women. Marcella was a young mother and many of the other women complained that she didn’t have control over her children. Toya thought about the time Marcella’s daughters jumped on Shawnee knocking her off the bed to the ground. It was a miracle that Shawnee wasn’t hurt. The three little girls seemed to wreak havoc all over the shelter and their mother did little to discipline them. The oldest woman in the room, Ms. Toddi was loud, obnoxious, and loved to speak her mind. Most of the time she and Marcella argued back and forth over Marcella’s lack of control and her seemingly nonchalant attitude over her daughter’s behavior. Toya feared that one day a fight would break out in the tight cramped space.

The shelter staff often shifted people in and out of rooms based on the day to day needs of new families coming in and out. If a family came in with a lot of children, the shelter staff would make space in a room to accommodate their number. Toya was one of the people who got moved one day. Between the tight space and all the fighting she was more than happy to change rooms. The room Toya was moved too was much more calm and peaceful. The new room just down the hall was larger and had more space but just as many families. The other mothers in her new room were a little older and seemed a little bit more mature.

As Toya settled into her new room, what she didn’t know was at that moment there stood somewhere off in the distance, a stranger. The stranger had been watching her and following her all her life. He saw when she was born and watched her grow up. Toya was oblivious to his presence but sometimes she got an eerie feeling that someone was staring at her. She would be sitting in her room at the shelter with the window open; the wind would blow causing her to get a chill. She would sense the presence of another person. She’d look all around but no one would be there. She’d get up, close the window, and shake the feeling off.

Flashbacks Part 1

None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born.

Ezekiel 16:5

Two months earlier, a 6 month pregnant Toya sat on the steps of the house, where she lived with her mother and two younger sisters. The street Toya lived on was tiny and narrow. The homes were just as small and stood connected, one right next to the other. It was hard to determine where one miniature sized row home stopped and the other began. The houses had this feel to them that you could walk around the corner only to discover that they were flat boards with nothing behind them. Something about them looked fake as if they were off a movie set. It could’ve been the fact that they didn’t have porches. There were only a few steps leading up to the door of the houses. The windows sat low to the ground almost at waist level. To walk down the block made Toya feel like she was in one of those rooms where the walls moved and would close in on her. Cars inched down the tiny street afraid they would side swipe the parked cars or hit someone standing on the narrow sidewalk.

Toya had been banging on the front door for over an hour. The sound of her banging could be heard echoing off the walls of the homes across the street, only inches away. Her mother had given specific instructions to her younger sister Cecil, not to open the door or let Toya in. Eight year old Cecil felt caught in the middle. Did she disobey her mother or leave her big sister, who she loved and looked up too outside? Toya pleaded with Cecil through the door, Come on, Cecil, she insisted. I have to use the bathroom. Besides I’m in a lot of pain and I think I need to go to the hospital.

In the end Cecil took pity on Toya. Her loyalties to her big sister won as she opened the door against her mother’s wishes. Toya didn’t know what punishment befell her little sister that day. She was too preoccupied with the contractions. The pain swirled and bunched up in and around her abdomen, at times increasing in intensity and duration. Toya wasn’t sure but she knew something was wrong. In addition to the excruciating pain, the baby was unusually restless. Toya had been leaking a clear fluid since the night before. Eventually she had to put protection between herself and her clothes to prevent the fluid from leaking through. She was ignorant to the fact that she was in labor. At 14 years old, the soon to be teen mom had no idea what the clear fluid streaming down her legs meant nor did she know what to do.

Toya had been out with Jeremy until late the night before. She hadn’t come home until close to 1am. She had snuck in the house while her mother and sisters were still sleeping. She got up early the next day to meet up with her girlfriends and had been able to ignore the pain for most of the day. What she originally perceived as stomach cramps had somewhat subsided and lessened by the next morning. Only now while hanging out with her girlfriends the pain had returned with a vengeance and was becoming unbearable. Reluctantly she relied on her girlfriends from the neighborhood, Booma, Denel, and Sharia for help. While they all were only around 14, the same age as Toya, they each had been sexually active longer than she had. They also were, as her mother like to call it, more street wise than she was. Toya’s mother hated her relationship with the girls. Brenda, Toya’s mother knew that the girls were steering Toya in the wrong direction.

Despite their sexual activity, ironically none of her girlfriends had any children. Yet they still knew more about having a baby than she did. Only one of Toya’s girlfriend’s had been pregnant before her. Thirteen year old, Denel had become pregnant the year before. Denel’s mother made her have an abortion. A year after Toya got pregnant and had her baby, her best friend fifteen year old, Booma got pregnant. Booma had an abortion that year without her mother’s knowledge. Sharia, who was the most sexually active out of all of them had never been pregnant but had her share of STD’s. Toya was the first of the girls getting ready to embark on motherhood.

Toya was convinced that she would face a similar fate as her girlfriend Denel. Her mother and older sister had discussed her predicament and it was settled that Toya would have an abortion. After all, her mother couldn’t face the shame of having her 14 year old child have a baby. Even though no one asked her opinion or what she wanted to do, Toya couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief upon learning that the situation would be taken care of. The truth was that she was terrified. She didn’t know the first thing about raising a child, much less how she would support a baby. She hadn’t even entered high school yet.

The day that Toya’s mother was supposed to give her older sister Alisha the money to get Toya the abortion her mother disappeared. She was found later in the bar drinking. Brenda had spent the money on alcohol and Toya was left to go through with the pregnancy.

Out of all her girlfriends, Toya was the new kid on the block. She had moved into the neighborhood three years earlier when she was only eleven years old. Her girlfriends had all lived in the neighborhood since they were five or six. Toya always sat on the outside