“Chile, you fantasizing now,” Grandmother Williams added.
Ella didn’t pay her no mind as she continued to verbalize the dreams she had for her daughter. “No, maybe she’s going to start her own business. End up young and rich.” She looked at her mother with excitement in her eyes. The eyes staring back at her hadn’t been moved by a word she’d spoken.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Grandmother Williams said, full of doubt. “Them straight A’s she was making in school before she got knocked up, you might as well forget about it. That baby is going to take up so much of her time that she won’t even be able to think about studying. She’ll be lucky to even make C’s. Can’t get no full ride to college making C’s, and you ain’t got no money to send her. The welfare she gon’ end up living off of ain’t gon’ be enough to even get her through community college.” She laughed.
“So a college scholarship to an Ivy League school is going to be out of the question.” Jackie added her two cents.
Ella shot a look at Jackie and said, “We will see.”
“You are right. We will see. I hope she’ll be able to bring me some free chicken nuggets from McDonald’s, because that’s exactly where her destiny would be. Now that’s it, that’s all. It is what it is, and I don’t want to hear no more.” Grandmother Williams spoke like she had the power to speak all things concerning Bianca’s life into existence. “You know how you used to brag about how Bianca was going to go off to college and become a doctor or lawyer or something, and take care of you for the rest of your life?”
Ella stared off, nodding. It was almost as if she were watching that dream she’d once had about her daughter float farther and farther away.
“Well, you might as well prepare your mind to settle for nothing more than free French fries for the rest of your life, because all she gon’ be able to do now with a baby on her hip is drop out of school and work at a fast food restaurant, talking about, ‘May I take your order, please?’” She let out a loud, wicked bellow that caused her to have to hold her stomach.
Ella watched her mother cackle away all the dreams she’d once had for her child. Before she knew it, she was giggling too. It was sad, but she had to laugh in order to keep from crying.
In her spirit, Ella knew her mother was right. The curse of becoming a teenage mother hadn’t skipped a generation yet. Unfortunately, it had landed right in her baby girl’s lap. That was that moment she decided that if she couldn’t beat ’em, then she should join ’em, so she teamed up with all the other naysayers who thought Bianca wouldn’t amount to anything. After all, she didn’t want to keep holding onto a hopeless dream and be the laughingstock when Bianca proved her wrong. She’d rather be on the winning team, even if it was against her own daughter.
Listening to them get jokes off of her misfortune hurt Bianca’s heart. Tears raced down Bianca’s face, while the baby inside her womb began kicking. Bianca looked down at her belly and cupped her arms around it. She shook her head, questioning how this could have happened to her. What was worse was that she did not have a clue who the baby daddy was.
It was definitely true that even at her young age, she had experienced sex and things that she had no business experiencing, while looking for love in all the wrong places. But in spite of what people thought and said about Bianca, she wasn’t a whore who just gave it up to any and every guy that hollered at her.
Grandmother Williams let off of her roaring laughter when she had what she could have sworn was a lightbulb moment. “What you should do is take that grown-ass little red heifer down to that abortion clinic and make her have an abortion.”
“Mother, she has to be like four or five months pregnant. That’s murder.”
“Well, she should have thought about that before she went spreading her legs to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
“You make the bed; you must lay in it,” Jackie added.
Bianca couldn’t take any more. She ran to her bedroom and slammed the door closed behind her. For a split second she thought that maybe her mother would come and console her, since the slamming of the door made it apparent that she had overheard them talking about her, but an hour went by and no one came in.
Bianca lay there, rubbing her belly and staring out the window in pain, trying not to let her thoughts run wild. No matter how much she tried, her mind just kept going to the same place. If only she could turn back the hands of time. She would have been smarter.
Before crying herself to sleep, Bianca’s last profound thought came to her that would change her life forever. She might not have the power to control what had already happened in the past, but she vowed that she would damn sure control her future. In order for that to happen, there was one thing that she must take care of, something that if she’d handled properly in the first place, she wouldn’t even be in the predicament that she was in now. It may take months or years, but one way or the other, it would get handled.
Before finally closing her eyes and drowning in her tears, her last words were, “God have mercy on my soul.”
CHAPTER 2
Nine Years Later
“Ummmm, please, ma’am. Please take this order. I really need my shit like ASAP!” Frank, the owner of a
