Don't Speak

“GM 😊.” I texted Ben, finishing the last of my toaster strudel. It had been two weeks since we’d spoken and I couldn’t figure out why. Today was our last final and we hadn’t had any of our usual study sessions. I hope he sticks around for summer so we can get over this awkwardness between us. Sure, we’ve only been dating for six months, but that’s a long time to dream, and I don’t want to give up on our dream. I head upstairs and finish getting ready for school. Geneva should be picking me up any second. Normally I would just ask her what’s up with Ben; they’ve known each other since second grade. I, however, just moved here last year. I didn’t meet Ben until my parents dragged me to a new church they’d been trying. I’d gotten saved just a year prior to that at the church we’d been attending since I was a baby. I’d always felt freedom there, and a sense of peace. I’d served in the children’s ministry, gone to teen nights, and had teen bible study, but ever since we’d moved to Austell, I never felt the same. Even though I never tried to hide my displeasure during service, my parents were always trying to get me to be more involved. I think they truly believed that after a while I would find one of the plethora of groups to my liking, or at least fake it, so they kept finding reasons for me to go.

Despite my less-than-enthusiastic feelings toward the church, I’m happy I met Ben and Genny. Genny is the best friend every girl needs in her life; she’s the realest. She’s always telling me when I’m trying too hard with my look, with certain crowds, and especially with Ben. Which is why I’m not even bothering to ask her what’s up with him. I can hear her now, “Girl you been dickmatized. You need to chill.”

I laugh to myself as I brush my kinky hair. I’m just starting to get a small section of it detangled when I hear the doorbell ring. “Damn,” I whisper, checking the clock. Genny’s about five minutes early. That girl is always in a hurry to be on time for something. Oh well, Mama can keep her company while I finish up. Initially, I wanted to do a crown braid, Ben loves my hair like that, but with Genny already here I’ll have to brush my mane up into a curly bun.

As I finish up with my hair, and scan my jewelry box for some earrings to complete my outfit, I hear mama talking downstairs, and while Geneva can put some bass in her voice when she’s ticked off, she doesn’t sound like a baritone man. Part of me is nosey and wants to know what’s up, but I decide to mind my business for once.

“Kelsey!” Mama yells. “Come down here.”

“Okay, I’ll be down in a second.”

“No,” she responds. “Get down here now.”

I close the door to my mirror-length jewelry box and wonder what the hell I did wrong now. I swear I could leave one crumb on the table and get grounded for a week. I walked downstairs to see two police officers standing in the living room and Mama with tears silently rolling down her face.

I freeze with one hand still on the banister; unable to pray, or hope, or breathe.

“Kelsey Townsend,” one officer said, “you are under arrest for the illegal termination of a pregnancy and wrongful disposal of a fetus.”

“What?” I asked, frantically looking from him to my mother. “Mama, what’s he talking about?”

“Miss, please turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

“No,” I said almost in a whisper as I was still in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. Ben promised me this wouldn’t happen. His voice drowned out everything at that moment.

“Nobody ever comes back here except the teens,” he said. “And none of us are digging around in the dirt, especially not that deep.”

No. No. These officers can’t be real. It can’t be true, I thought.

“Miss,” the officer said sternly this time, reaching for my hand, “put your hands behind your back.”

I drew my arm toward my body and held it near my chest, as though that would somehow prevent the officer from taking me into custody.

“No!” I shouted this time, adamant that I wasn’t going.

“Mama! It’s not true, don’t let them take me.” I said, waiting for her to step in and defend me as the daughter that she’d known for sixteen years, the daughter who would never do such a thing. Unfortunately, she seemed as stunned as me, at least that’s the look I saw on her face. Or, was it horror? It was hard to differentiate. It’s even harder now.

“Miss,” the officer said, “this is your last chance.”

Stunned, I slowly turned around and placed my hands behind my back.

~

‘Fetus Found behind New Mount Zion Church.’

The words glared at me as though they were 3-D: my sin lifting off of the front page of the newspaper to stare me in the face. Within three days I’d been plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Hell, the first day I was on WorldStar Hip Hop. I wanted to scream at the guard to get that thing away from me, but what good would it have done? He stood in the corner with a gun, a Taser, a baton, and an extra set of handcuffs. I sat at a table with my wrists cuffed in plain sight, my ankles cuffed in front of my chair. The worst thing about handcuffs wasn’t the pain, it was that they clung to your skin so tightly that it began to itch, and there was nothing that you could do. I’m sure there are people out there thinking that there was nothing my baby could do either, that nobody, not even her own parents protected her. I take a deep breath to try and clear my head, but all I smell is stale piss and musk. I’d give anything to be back in that courtroom. I’m sure the judge thought that I was some spoiled, disrespectful teen, but he hadn’t been locked in a cage for three days with another teen whose breath smelled as bad as this cell; prostitute I’m willing to bet.

I’d sat in court earlier this morning, and as the judge read the charges against me, I did the same thing I’m doing now. I took deep breaths. I forced myself to bask in the moment, telling myself that I’d better enjoy this semi-fresh air because I wouldn’t get to smell it again for a long time. I wonder if Ben is enjoying the fresh air. Another newspaper article said they’d be laying our baby to rest today; even though he wouldn’t acknowledge that she was his, I knew he’d be at the service. I’m sure his father is officiating, and Ben is standing amongst the crowd, with his head bowed as everyone says a prayer for the one who never got the chance to live. I think the prayer is about me and Ben. All we wanted was to be free, and he might get over this; maybe he’ll get the chance to live, but I know I won’t.

The clack of high heels hitting the concrete floor, pulls me from my thoughts. Finally, the slender white woman I’d seen in court appeared.

“Hi, Kelsey,” the woman said, shaking my hand. “I’m Lana and I’ll be representing you. I just want to review the charges against you.” She read them from a paper she pulled out of her briefcase.

“Do you understand these charges?”

“I guess,” I said, looking down at my hands. I’d bitten my fingernails down to nothing, and still had the urge to bite them.

“Because of your age, I don’t think you’ll be tried as an adult. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you could still be in detention for a long time because this was a late-stage abortion. I’m going to try to get you the help that you need, but I need to know what happened,” she said in a factual tone. “Now, do you want to tell me your side of the story?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her. All I could think of was how I’d stared at that test and thought of how much things were going to change. Would I be able to finish school? Should I keep it? How was I supposed to tell Ben?

As my eyes began to water, I said, “I had to do it. We didn’t have any other choice.”

“Who’s we?” Lana asked. She looked at me curiously and reached absently into her bag for her pen and legal pad.

She doesn’t believe me, I thought. I could see all of her thoughts plastered across her square, porcelain face. She’s probably wondering why I didn’t just give it up for adoption, or where the father is.

“Me and the baby,” I said in a brusque tone. “I couldn’t take care of it, and I don’t believe in giving it to strangers.”

“Where’s the father?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Why don’t we start at the beginning and just get to know a little bit about each other. Tell me some things about you like where you went to high school, what your interests were, who you hung out with.”

“I was never ‘that girl’, the popular one, or the really smart one, or the really pretty one,” I said. “I was just me. I didn’t do much or hang out a lot until…”

“Until…” Lana prompted me.

“My family started going to Mount Zion. They really loved that church.”

“And you didn’t?”

“It was just too big, and everybody seemed so hype about feeling the holy spirit, but I never did. It was just another place for me to fade into the background.”

Well, that and a place for me to uncover their blatant hypocrisy. I’m still baffled by the things that I saw: fights, gossip, lies, adultery, fornication all right under the pastor’s nose and yet they’d whoop and holler during praise and worship like nothing was wrong. But not me. For me, it seemed like everything was falling apart. What happened to being raw and honest with God?

“Kelsey,” Lana said. “I need to know more about your relationship with the father of your child. What happened?”

You may as well be another nosy reporter, I thought. I guess winning this case was supposed to show teens that if they made adult decisions, they’d suffer adult consequences. But if I told them who the father was, then who would the town look up to? Who would love me after that? And who was going to believe me anyway?

“Nothing happened,” I said.