Being at this school made me realize I wanted to be a teacher someday, too.
Around then I also got a job as a waitress at the local Sizzlers, making something like $2 an hour plus tips. I wanted to save as much money as I could, to make myself more independent from my mom. I had my own car—a giant used tan Cutlass Supreme my mother got me for Christmas. I know I should have been grateful to her for getting me a car, but when I first saw it, I cried, and not out of joy. It was so big and so clunky and so uncool; I was absolutely mortified. During the winter it wouldn’t even start, and I had to stick a ballpoint pen in some tube in the engine before turning the ignition. I think a drug cartel gangster must have owned it before me, because it had a gold-chain license plate and gold baubles all over the inside lining. It had no shocks and bounced like crazy over every little bump. I wound up going to school late and leaving early every day, so no one would see me pull up in my hideous car.
But that embarrassing car would come in handy soon enough. The fighting with my mother was getting worse, and we had another one of our epic battles. Somewhere in the middle of all the yelling and pushing and hair-pulling, my mom told me that if I didn’t like her rules, I should leave. And that’s just what I did.
I packed everything I owned into my enormous car and basically lived out of it for the next month. I stayed with friends and never missed school, and I savored my newfound freedom. For three weeks I didn’t even bother to call my mom and let her know I was okay. Finally she showed up at school one day to tell me she loved me and was worried about me. Eventually I agreed to move back home, under one condition: no curfew. My mother was forced to concede that I was an adult now, and she promised to start treating me like one.
WHEN I WAS seventeen, I met another man at a party. Dean had already been married and had custody of his three-year-old daughter. He was six years older than me, but I didn’t care. I always felt older than my years, and I was used to hanging out with older people. Plus, I loved that Dean was so attentive and seemed to really like me. We went from zero to super-serious in a matter of days. He was the third great love of my crazy, teenage life.
But of course that love story, like the others, didn’t last long. After a whirlwind summer it was over as suddenly as it had started. This time I didn’t wallow as much, because I was excited about starting college. What I didn’t know then, and what I would soon discover, was that my breakup with Dean wasn’t as clean as I thought. In fact, it wasn’t clean at all. One afternoon, my mother came home and found me crying uncontrollably on the living room sofa.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
But I couldn’t, because I was crying too hard. Finally, I gulped in enough air to blurt it out between sobs.
“Mom,” I said, “I’m pregnant.”
I’D BEEN BROKEN UP WITH DEAN FOR A MONTH when I found out I was pregnant. Our breakup hadn’t been especially dramatic; after three months of being together—going to the car races, me babysitting his young daughter—he told me he thought we should stop seeing each other. We were sitting on a wooden bench in a playground when he told me. I took off the class ring he had given me and threw it at him. And that was that. The breakup still hurt, but it just seemed to be the inevitable end to all my relationships.
When I told one of my girlfriends that I was late in my cycle, she took me to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test. I took it to the bathroom of her parents’ house, and when I was done, held up the strip to see the result, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. My girlfriend took a look and suddenly her eyes got really wide. That very instant I knew I was pregnant.
I was seventeen years old and having a baby.
How did it happen? Well, I know how it happens. I mean, how could it happen to me? I was taking birth control pills that I got at our local health department, and I guess I may have forgotten to take a pill one day. Okay, maybe more than one day. It was a small act of carelessness, but it was enough to drastically change my life. No matter how grown up I convinced myself I was, I was really just a mixed-up child. And I sure wasn’t ready for the responsibility of taking care of a child of my own.
The first thing I did after finding out was call Dean. He came over to my friend’s house, and we sat on her bed and talked things through. He wasn’t upset or angry or anything, but he was very clear about how he felt.
“I don’t want any more children,” he said. “If you get an abortion, I will pay for it. But if you have this baby, I won’t be there for you.”
It was the first time I’d heard the word “abortion” uttered in a conversation about me, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. I burst out crying, but Dean wasn’t budging. He didn’t blow up, and he wasn’t mean—he just said he didn’t want anything to do with me or our child.
I went straight home and took another pregnancy test. The result was the same: a single pink plus sign. I lay down on the sofa and cried like I’d never cried before. The overwhelming sensation I felt was terror—an ice cold panic in my bones. What happens now? What am I going to do? Did I just ruin my life? Having a baby meant saying good-bye to all my grand plans and dreams. I wanted to go to an awesome college, and I wanted to be a teacher. Most of all, I wanted to get out of my hometown and see the world. But with this news, all those plans went out the window. I was seventeen, and I felt like my life was over.
That’s when my mother came home for lunch and found me sobbing.
I’d been dreading telling her from the moment I found out. She blew her top when I missed my curfew; what was she going to do now that I was pregnant? I thought about lying to her, but when she walked in the living room, I felt the urge to just blurt it out. So I did. I told my mother I was pregnant.
Her face froze, and she stared at me and said, “How do you know?”
I told her I’d taken a test and the strip was on my bed. She walked into my bedroom and didn’t come out for forty-five minutes. I don’t know what she did in there, but I was sure that when she finally came out, she’d give me a lashing like never before. I curled up tighter on the sofa, crying and bracing for the storm. After what seemed like forever, my mother came out of the bedroom, the test strip in her hand. I waited for the yelling, but it never came.
Instead, she came over, sat next to me, and pulled me in for a hug. I sobbed into her shoulder, amazed by her reaction.
“It’s going to be okay,” my mom said softly. “I don’t care what anyone in this town says; you are going to hold your head high. I love you, and this is my grandkid. You will not be ashamed. This does not define you.”
I knew right then that I was having this baby.
MY MOTHER WENT with me for the ultrasound when I learned my baby’s sex. The technician asked if I wanted to know, and I said I did. For whatever reason, I was hoping it was going to be a boy. My mom and I focused on the blurry ultrasound image, trying to make sense of what we were seeing.
“There,” the technician said, pointing at my little baby. “You’re going to have a boy.”
My mother says she fell in love with my son right then and there in the doctor’s office. She tells him, “I’ve loved you since you were a kidney bean with legs.”
By then I’d already been in love with my child for some time. I’d sit in my bedroom, hand on my big belly, feeling him kick, and I’d marvel at the depth and newness of the love I felt. I was still scared to death that my life was over, but at the same time I was thrilled by the idea of having someone all my own to love. My whole life I’d been desperate to love and be loved, and I had this deep wellspring of emotion and affection in my heart that, because of my difficult childhood and my terrible choice in men, just went untapped. But now I would have someone I could love without reservation, and someone who would love me back unconditionally.
Nevertheless, it was still a big deal to be seventeen and pregnant in our town. It is not something that sits well with most God-fearing people in the Bible Belt. My father and his family, for example, were d
evout Catholics, and I knew they’d be less than thrilled to find out I was having a baby. I kept the pregnancy a secret from my dad for several months, until he sent me an invitation to his wedding. He was marrying some girl who was just seven years older than me, and he wanted me to be in the wedding party. He kept telling me to send him my measurements so he could have my dress made, but I kept putting it off. Finally, just a month before the big day, I had no choice but to call him.
“I can’t be at your wedding,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m pregnant.”
There was a long, excruciating silence on the other end, until after about a minute, my father finally spoke.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” he said. Then he hung up.
I waited the rest of the day for his call, but it never came. It never came the next day, either. Or the next or the next. Two weeks passed before my father called me one afternoon. And when we spoke, he didn’t mention the pregnancy—we just chatted about other insignificant things. I don’t know why I felt so surprised and crushed by that. After all, I knew full well my father couldn’t handle this kind of sticky situation. He preferred not to discuss it at all, and maybe even to pretend I wasn’t pregnant.
My mother, on the other hand, did everything she could to make me feel good about my situation. She took me out shopping for baby clothes, dismissing the looks of disapproval my growing belly got. When I was seven months pregnant, she threw me a baby shower at her friend’s home. There was a special cake, and I got diapers and a swing and a car seat. I felt really happy that day.
Most nights, however, I’d lie awake worrying about how I was going to raise this little boy on my own. I was already losing friends left and right, because I couldn’t hang out and party like I used to. And once the baby came around, I was sure I wouldn’t have any friends left at all. I would no longer fit into the only world I knew.
My mother had a wonderful friend, whom I called Aunt Connie, and I had asked her to be my Lamaze coach. I’m sure Aunt Connie could see how frightened I was, because one day she told me, “Crystal, you have options. If you feel you absolutely cannot handle this child, I will adopt him.” I didn’t say yes or no, but I kept her offer in mind all the way through the pregnancy. As I got nearer my due date, I honestly didn’t have any idea what I was going to do. My life was hurtling forward like a roller coaster, and I was just holding on for dear life.
Then one Sunday I was sitting in church watching my mom sing in the choir when I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. I caught my mom’s eye and motioned I was leaving, and I quickly drove back home. Aunt Connie came over, asked me some questions, and declared, “Crystal, you’re in labor.” I was only thirty-six weeks along, so I hadn’t even packed a hospital bag yet. Aunt Connie packed one for me, and we drove to Comanche County Memorial Hospital, about thirty miles away in Lawton. I was admitted on Easter Sunday.
Aunt Connie told me the discomfort I was feeling was caused by contractions, and I remember thinking, Wow, this pain isn’t that bad. Then they broke my water to speed up my labor, and the real contractions began. These were long, slow waves of pain that built and built and felt like they couldn’t possibly get any worse, except they always did. The first one was so horrible and scary, I jumped out of bed and started putting my clothes on over my hospital gown. Aunt Connie looked at me in total confusion.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I can’t do this,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
Aunt Connie burst out laughing. “Honey,” she said, “it doesn’t matter where you go; you’re gonna have this baby.”
They gave me an epidural so I could sleep a bit, and my mom showed up with a camcorder to tape the delivery. My doctor told me what was going to happen and how I had to push, and suddenly, I had only a single frightening thought: Will I ever be able to give this child what he needs?
Then everything happened at once. Nurses swarmed and the doctor got into position. My mother pressed record. I heard the doctor say push, so I pushed. I heard him say it again, so I pushed again. And then he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t know what was happening. I was terrified, until he stood up cradling something in his hands: this squirming little pink thing making funny noises.
In that moment, I met the love of my life. I met my son.
The doctor handed him to me, and I held him against my chest and looked at this tiny miracle in my arms. In a flash all my fears and worries and terrors went away. I loved my son deeply and instantly, and I knew that I always would. Aunt Connie never had to ask if I was keeping my child. Just from watching me with him in the first seconds of his life, she knew for certain that I was.
I named him Jameson Payne, the first part in honor of Grandma Ernie (that was her maiden name) and the second part because I just liked the name Payne. Inevitably, he became JP.
The euphoria of being a first-time mother is something I will never forget, but unfortunately that glow didn’t last too long, either. Back at my mom’s house the reality of my situation announced itself quickly and clearly, in the form of JP’s wails through the night, every night. I’d imagined JP and I would sleep blissfully together, a mother and son cuddled up and lost in their own dream world. Instead, JP barely slept at all. He was born without a sucking reflex, so feeding him was nearly impossible. I had to tape a small tube to my finger, connect it to a syringe of milk, and hold the tube against the back of JP’s throat, letting little droplets of sustenance trickle into his system. And I had to do that several times a night. It was a lot of work, and I wasn’t sleeping at all. I was in over my head.
One night I sat next to JP’s bassinet and watched him cry and cry, and I started crying right along with him out of sheer frustration. I picked him up and held him and rocked him, but nothing could stop his screaming. Finally I just gave up, and my son and I wept in unison in the long, dreary middle of the night.
And then, right on cue, my mother came into my bedroom. She’d been helping me with JP quite a bit in those early days, but still I tried to do everything myself because I didn’t want to feel too dependent on her. I remember rolling up pennies and dimes so I could buy diapers without asking her for money. But when she came into my bedroom and asked, “Can I take him for a minute?” I was so relieved I nearly threw JP at her. I knew my mother had to get up early to go to work that morning, but I was so tired and so desperate for sleep that I let her walk JP around the living room while I lay down and closed my eyes. I woke up a couple of hours later, with JP sleeping peacefully in his bassinet.
My mother was my hero in those early days, and I will never forget all that she did for me.
It turns out my dad was actually pretty excited about having a grandson, too. He came down to see him not long after he was born, and when JP was about six months I took him up to Illinois to meet my dad’s mother, Mardel (my grandfather had passed away when I was just a baby). Now, Mardel was an extremely private person. Even her own children didn’t know very much about her. A few years before she died, Mardel wrote her own obituary, and when her sons read it, they didn’t recognize any of the names from her side of the family. But they were also relieved they didn’t have to write it, because none of them would have known what to say.
Not surprisingly, I was a little nervous bringing my baby to meet her. According to my dad, she didn’t like her family’s name to be a matter of any public discussion, good or bad, so her granddaughter having a baby out of wedlock couldn’t have thrilled her. Still, I hoped for the best as my dad drove us over to her house in Illinois. When we got to the back porch, my dad said he had to tell me something.
“Um, your grandma doesn’t know you have a child,” he said, precisely two seconds before he rang the doorbell.
What? He’d never told her about JP? I didn’t really have time to be shocked, because just then the door opened and Mardel was standing in front of me.
“Hi, Grandma,” I said. “This is my son.”
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bsp; Mardel didn’t say anything. She had a super-serious look on her face (but then I can’t remember a time when she didn’t have that look). She walked back into her house, opened a closet, and came back with a little stuffed clown. We sat in the living room, and I watched with a smile on my face as Mardel played with JP and the clown. She wasn’t overly affectionate—she never was—but neither did she say anything like, “How could you have done this?” or “Why didn’t you tell me?” I remember feeling a huge sense of relief. Over the years Mardel was a really good great-grandmother to my kids, always sending them crisp five-dollar bills in their Christmas and birthday cards.
I wasn’t the only one who felt relieved that day. My father later told me that as we stood on the back porch waiting for his mother, he was so nervous about her reaction, his knees were shaking. Looking back, that afternoon explains a lot about my father and our relationship. I didn’t realize it then, but as we stood there on the porch, my father and I were both looking for the very same thing—approval. I didn’t want him to be embarrassed by me and my child, and he didn’t want his mother to be embarrassed by him and his child. And because of how private and distant his mother could be, my dad felt like he was always chasing after that approval—even as a grown man. Of course, that’s just how it was for my dad and me. Because of how private and unemotional he was, I didn’t always feel like I had his approval, either.
Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again Page 7
