It amazes me how people are constantly standing on the outside, while attempting to peer in to the depths of other people lives. But instead of peering into the depths they only see the shell and in doing so they assume that they know all there is to know about you.

The lady on the train glance’s at me as I sit down opposite of her. Her eyes stare at my face and make their way toward my feet. When she gets to my stomach her eyes freeze, she does a double take of my face to try and gage my age and then looks at my midsection again. In her eyes I could see disgust, in everyone’s eyes I can see disgust. Nobody asks how it happened they just all assumed that I was a young girl trying to grow up to fast but if they only knew my story.

My mom named me Faith because she said that she had faith that I would make something of myself, but I know that is not true. She named me faith because she is a fanatic and has been since she was three months pregnant with me. She goes to church every sunday and she is constantly telling me that the only way to survive and succeed in this world is to have faith. So she named me Faith in an attempt to constantly remind me that those of us who lack faith will be condemned to hell.

But I lost my faith months ago, because if having faith is suppose to make everything alright, then what happened to me. I was raised in the church and I abided by their rules I did not wear shorts or skirts that went above my knees, or shirts with no sleeves. I always crossed my legs like all Good God fearing women should even when I wore pants. I did not cuss, fight, kiss boys or let them touch me. I respected all of my elders, avoided makeup, gays, jewelry, and baby killers. I prayed every night and morning and over all of my meals, I even prayed when I had sinful thoughts. I had enough faith to share with the whole world.

The train came to a stop and the lady across from me gave me one more distasteful glance as I exited the train. The morning was cold and the first snow of the winter was beginning to fall. I pulled my hood over my head and zipped my coat over my swollen belly.

At North High I am one of four pregnant girls. There would probably be more but most of the girls drop out the second they start showing. I should leave too, I won’t drop out but I should find a new school to go to. North is about 110 years. At first it started out as just a square building with four floors, but as the years wore on a science wing was added, then a gym wing with a swimming pool, dance room, and a shooting range was added, lastly a English wing with a auditorium, and a cafeteria.

One of the problems with having an old school, even with all the additions over the years, was that the school continually leaked gas.  The smell was revolting and occasionally they even had to kick us out of school early due to the unhealthiness of the situation.

Anyway since I was pregnant I shouldn’t be smelling any of this, but in reality I don’t want the baby, so I don’t care what it is subjected to.

The day passed without anything exciting happening. Since it was a Monday there was biology, geometry, key boarding, American Government, then lunch.

“Whats up girlie” Tonya said smiling mischievously like she had something she wanted to tell me.

“What happened?” I asked, knowing there was something she wanted to tell me but wouldn’t tell me until I begged her to.

“Nothing, so did you do your French home work”

“Yes, why – did you do yours, or were you to busy again”.

“I was busy” she says smiling.

We make our way to the line to get a cheese burger and some fries. School food is gross it smells and taste like dog food but since this is my first meal of the day, and my next one wont be until 8:30. I grab the burger and a hefty serving of fries and 2% milk, entering my number as I make my way out the door and back into the cafeteria.

“So are you going to tell me or not” I ask with a mouth full of fries.

“Are you going to give me the answers to the homework” she asked.

“I can’t give you the answers, you were suppose to write a short paragraph about what you did this weekend. So there are no answers to give you, I suggest you get to work. Maybe you can get a few lines down before class.”

I wasn’t going to help her she should have did it herself. Tonya is my friend but she can be really stupid at times. Besides I am sick and tired of spending my lunch period bailing her out of the hole she had dug herdelf in. It is always the same, “I was busy” she says, busy talking on the phone, chatting online or hanging out. Sometimes I wonder if we only hang out so that she can get help with her homework during lunch, because frankly me and Tonya are nothing alike.

“So” she says staring at me, with eyes to big for her head.

“What? No I’m not helping you out of this one so get started” I snap a little annoyed that she continues to ask.  

“Well I guess that you won’t know how my night went or what happened in algebra.” She says looking smug and shaking her head.

“Oh well, you probably hung out with some dude on Sunday and Martin finally asked you today in algebra.”

“Whatever” she mumbled, signaling to me that I was right about the particulars but was still missing out on the minor details. “Have you been to see a doctor yet”

“No” I said, now really pissed off because I know where this is going.

“Well if you don’t want the baby, and if your not going to take care of it long enough to give it to someone else, why not get an abortion”

“You know why?”

“Due to your ridiculous religion”

I didn’t say anything my religion was a touchy subject between the two of us. Tonya didn’t understand why I was so devoted to my religion, she thought of it as a cult and has called it such plenty of times. Whenever Tonya got pissed off at me she would talk about my religion. When we first met she use to tease me about other things but when she realized that they weren’t  getting the reaction she wanted, she started assaulting my religion, and while I don’t care about many things in this world my religion was one of them or so it used to be.

Anyway Tonya knew I wasn’t going to get an abortion she knew it was against my religion, she knew I considered it to be murder.

We spent the rest of our lunch period in silence, both mad at each other. Me because after all these years Tonya still felt the need to attack what I believe in. Tonya because I wouldn’t help her out with French and without me she would probably get an F. Tonya wrote her paragraph for French and I thought about my religion, my mom, and home.

Sometime during French Tonya decided she wanted to speak to me as we watched a movie called La Rouge Balloon. The movie was pointless. It was about a boy who got a red balloon and spent the day chasing after it, and finally he got it and somehow the red balloon called out to all the other balloons in the area and they all came and carried him away. There wasn’t even any dialogue during the movie, how were we to learn French from a movie that no one even spoke in.

During the movie Tonya passed me a note

I went out yesterday with Patrick.

Who is Patrick.

 The guy that I met Friday, on our way home from school, do you remember him.

Yes

Well, he called Sunday around five and asked if I wanted to hang out with him and so of course I said yes.

Well he came and got me and we went to the sixteenth street mall and saw a movie and then he took me to chili’s

Did you sleep with him

Yes. I didn’t mean to but it kind of just happened you know.

Yeah I know.

 

Yes I know, I told her but what I really wanted to tell her was, no I don’t understand. She sleeps with every man that comes her way. Pastor Parkes would call her a whore or maybe even a slut if he was feeling bold. It sickened me to know that my best friend slept with so many guys. I prayed for her every night but maybe her back has been turned on the lord for so long that she has harden her heart and now the lord can’t reach her.

I know right now you are thinking how can I judge her so harshly when I am the one pregnant. But you haven’t heard my story and until you do don’t judge me, at least not yet.

The rest of the day went without a fuss. After French there was ceramics then English.

The bell rang signaling the end of the seventh period and ending our discussion about Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck . I stuffed my note book in to my bag taking my time as I was in no rush to leave the school.

Tonya was waiting for me at my locker talking to some boy who was not Martin or Patrick. When I reached my locker the guy was already half way down the hall.

“Who was that” I asked smiling, but shaking my head in the inside. Tonya was one of the many loose girls at North. She had a different boyfriend at least once a week, and when she didn’t have one she slept with anyone that came her way.

“That was Jesus, he is in my Drama class” she said it like he was insignificant. But I could tell by the way she was looking that he was probably going to be the next dude she had sex with if it wasn’t Martin.

Opening my locker I took my coat out and stepped out the way as Tonya put her backpack in, put her sweat pants on over the mini-skirt she was wearing and grabbed her coat. Tonya only wore clothes that showed her figure. She believes that winter is the worst time of year for a girl with her looks because the weather forces her to cover up more than what she is willing to. But since Tonya can’t stand the cold she has to find some way to look cute at school and stay warm during the summer. Her solution is to wear a sexy outfit, something like a miniskirt or short shorts, and wear sweat pants over them on her way to and from school.

I tried to point out to her once that although she looks cute during school she looks pretty rough before and after school. She told me that it was ok because in the morning no one worth mentioning rides the bus and during the afternoon sometimes the weather has improved enough that she doesn’t have to wear her sweats back home.

Sometimes she stands outside shaking and shivering while we wait for the bus to take us home. When she gets to cold and she can no longer take the cold any more she slips on her sweat pants. Then she says that only crazy people would be out in this cold so she doesn’t run the risk of looking a hot mess when she meets a hot guy. Some days she just gives in and wears pants like any sensible person would.

At the bus stop we waited for the 31 that was headed downtown. It seemed like the whole school went either north or south on federal.

“So did you tell your mom that you are pregnant” she asked.

“No” I replied hoping that she would not start on the subject of the baby and my mom.

“So do you think she is going to freak out, you know go crazy have a 24hour praying session. Or try to exorcise the baby out of you” she laughed. My religion amused Tonya, and since I’ve been pregnant her favorite game was trying to figure out what my mom’s reaction was going to be. If only Tonya knew that my mom already knew. But for some reason I can’t bring myself to inform Tonya about my situation.

 “I can’t believe she hasn’t noticed something is different. You have a bump and you haven’t had a period in two months how can she not know something is wrong”. the bus was coming which saved me from having to make a reply to either of her remarks, as we all positioned ourselves to be the first people on the bus to avoid having to stand up.

Tonya got off of the 31 on Colfax to catch the 16 going west. I stayed on the bus headed towards downtown, my stop 16th street mall.

On ordinaries days, or since I found out I was pregnant anyway, I would walk up and down 16th street mall looking through the windows at stuff I couldn’t buy, my mom called it window shopping. But today it was too cold, although the snow had stopped falling, it was still 33 degrees outside. So I hoped on the free mall ride huddling between business people on their way back to their nice cars parked somewhere in a parking garage that would take them back to their nice homes where they could come and go as they pleased and they didn’t have a curfew.

I got off the free mall ride on Broadway and walked toward the downtown Denver library.

In the library I found a table on the third floor and pulled out my homework. I started on French, then studied the bill of rights, next was geometry homework that we never had to turn in but was great for practice, lastly I sketched a picture for my next ceramics project.

At 6:45pm I packed my backpack went to the bathroom and made my way back to the free mall ride. Getting off of the bus I stood up against Walgreens and waited for the train. When I got on the train I unzipped my coat and sat down, the man across from me looked at me once and then starred out the window. Wondering how much more of this I can take, I pulled out a book and read.

At 7:25 I stood in line waiting for the door to my shelter to open. The snowflakes begin to fall and like every night I wondered how could this be my life. How could the lord I worshipped since I knew he existed allow me to live this type of life.  

At 7:30 the doors opened and I made my way to my room. Unlocking the door I walked into the 17x20ft room that belonged to me. I sat down on my bed and sighed. Doing this during the fall when it wasn’t that cold was fine, but now it was cold and it was snowing and I didn’t know what I was going to do on the week-ends when there was no school and I still had to be gone for twelve and a half hours out of the day. Because I stay in a shelter and because we are suppose to be looking for jobs or working at our jobs we have to be gone from 7am-7:30pm everyday.

At 8:15pm Shirley came down the hall announcing that it was time to eat dinner. Locking my door behind me I made my way to the bathroom to wash my hands.

At 8:30pm I sat down next to Diane, a 43 year old woman who spent the last ten years in prison for violating her parole. She used to be a prostitute, and from there a drug addict and to support her habit armed robbery, I guess no one wants to pay money for a burnt out 33 year old crack head. Now she was clean and trying to change her life around. The problem was her old pimp couldn’t seem to let her go. He seems to think that she rolled on him during their investigation because she only served half the time that he did. Somehow he managed to contract a hit on her through jail. So that her first night out of prison she was stabbed twice by a mutual friend that she shared with her pimp.

Cherise a 25 year old woman with four kids sat at the same table as us. Her kids 6,9,10, and 12 looked tired and beat just like me and everyone else here they had to be gone from 7:00am to 7:30pm. Cherise was here because her ex was so jealous he locked her in the house 24/7. When she finally escaped he kid napped her kids from school and threatened to kill each one if she didn’t return. She returned to him and stayed for a year before she found another way out. Now she has moved halfway across the country, trying to give her children a new life.

Did I fail to mention that I stay in a safe house, don’t ask me why I am here or how I got accepted here, but I just figure that they thought that maybe I needed to be protected from my mom who I told them was a fanatic.

 “Hey, Faith”

“Hi Cherise, Ebony, Joseph, Lorenzo, and Keith”

“Hey” the boys all said together as Ebony sat on the bench next to me.

“How was school” I asked her.

“It was okay, I guess. We had a substitute because Mrs. Jacobson was sick.”

“Oh, did you learn anything interesting” I asked

“No, we watched a movie, worked on our handwriting, and did some math that I already know how to do.”

Ebony, was a sweet heart. she was her moms only girl and the baby at that. She loved school and wanted to grow up to be a lawyer. Me I wanted to be a doctor an open heart surgeon to be exact. But now I can push those dreams out the window. I am fifteen, homeless, and pregnant I don’t have time for dreams.