Pregnant in the Ghetto
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN from CAUGHT UP Truth and Metaphor | An Imaginary Tale
Pregnant in the Ghetto
17
At first, it felt eerie that there were no other white people in the neighborhood, but as time passed, the situation normalized. Over the holidays, when the shelter served Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, everything changed. The predominately Caucasian board members, which included local politicians, business owners and other wealthy benefactors, volunteered as cooks and servers. On those rare occasions, Petra realized just how immersive her life on the means streets of San Bernardino had become. In a strange twist, seeing white faces on G Street jarred her sensibilities. She was unaccustomed to fair-skin and stared much longer than was polite.
Sister McKinney and her holiday entourage served the dinners outside on cloth-covered tables. A sit-down feast complete with silverware and porcelain plates. She was not interested in a “bread line.” The meals were not a charity event, they were a celebration of the love of Christ, and she wanted every participant, housed or unhoused, to feel valued and cared for. Close to three thousand people attended each event. Media attention soared, and as a result, massive donations poured into the ministry. The rest of the year paled in comparison, which presented a serious problem. Petra tired of their constant rounds to drum up financial support. To her, it was time consuming and felt a lot like begging. She wanted to focus on front-line outreach to other addicts. In service to them, she found purpose and an increased sense of self-worth.
“I’m going to write some private foundation grants.”
The idea paid off. A Los Angeles family, with old Hollywood money, gifted the Samaritan Social Services two fifteen-passenger vans and a $24,000 matching funds grant. With such prestigious backing, it was easy to raise the matching $24,000 from the city’s upper crust. Everyone wanted to support such a worthy cause.
Pastor McKinney, impressed by Petra’s fundraising gift, gave her the office next to his. She would be his right-hand man. Her unemployment had run its course, and he offered her a weekly stipend that, while modest, paid the bills. In the early 1990s, the city was suffering from a rash of property foreclosures. She began conversations with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and secured several HUD houses earmarked as transitional homes for unhoused families.
Between the houses, the vans and the matching funds grant, the future appeared brighter than ever, except for an unforeseen complication brewing underground in the tunnels of Petra’s unconscious mind. The only reason she continued to thrive under such unusual circumstances was her proximity to Sister McKinney. She absorbed her mentor’s energy field like a vampire. The foundational belief that every human being has inherent worth and value did not belong to her, rather, it was an appropriation. Like a parrot, she could repeat it out loud as an affirmation and even teach it from the pulpit, but the belief did not reside inside her. It was contingent on an external source. Sister Mary McKinney, full to overflowing with the Spirit of God, spilled over like a steady stream and washed away Petra’s insanity. Truth be told, left to its own devices, her mind was still a whirlwind of self-deprecating and suicidal thoughts.
As an addict, she, God bless her, you know she had all the best intentions, fell into the same repetitious trap. Addicted to a godly charismatic, she, like all addicts, required a regular dose of medicine. Her new role as an administrator cut the umbilical cord to her daily supply. Pastor McKinney had, unwittingly, thrown her into rapid detox. With a mind and heart in mental and emotional withdrawal, her innermost self tore wide open, letting loose a relentless barrage of unstable, derogatory, and self-harming thoughts. Up they flowed from a bottomless toxic wellspring. It was a methodical and ruthless takeover.
“Pastor, I need to be doing outreach with Sister McKinney.”
“I know you want to be with her, but I need you here. She can handle it on her own. She always has and always will.”
The right words eluded her. How could she explain the uncomfortable rumbling and threatening tsunami of fear building in the back corners of her psyche?
“Pastor, please. I feel like I’m dying here. I’m not an office person.”
Angry and impatient, since, by this time, he was her employer and she was receiving a paycheck; he insisted she stick to fundraising.
On the outside, she appeared normal. Inside, she imploded; her veneer cracked, and a survival-based madness, a kind of running sickness, possessed her. Voices from her childhood surfaced, berating her with judgments, criticisms and accusations. They came from every direction at once, and, more often than not, it sounded as if she was the one condemning herself. There was no escape. How does a person run from themselves? Drugs had always been the perfect solution. Religion was a poor substitute, and without the added component of outreach to other addicts, it was useless.
“This is not working. I have to get out of here!”
Night terrors and strange fragmented flashes of impending doom interrupted her sleep. She needed constant validation. Petra, like her mother, Lou, was a bucket full of holes that required a continual water source. On top of all that, her hormones were raging. She was thirty-five-years-old and longed for a child. If she could pour all her love into a baby, maybe the voices would quiet down.
Given Petra’s innate manifesting abilities, it should shock no one that Pablo chose this moment to knock on the church door, looking for an opportunity. He was over six feet tall, with long sculpted limbs, a good-looking Latino man of European descent. Ten years her senior, he thought Petra was all that, and more. One weekend, he talked her into going to Tijuana to meet his father. For whatever reason, he had it in his mind to prove to her he would age well and that he came from superior genetic stock.
What nonsense was she sputtering to bring about that field trip?
Pablo’s father, in his late seventies, was drop-dead gorgeous.
Petra was astonished.
“How is this possible? My God, this guy is handsome! He looks like Anthony Quinn.”
They talked about marriage. She admitted to a history of addiction and he talked about his time in Vietnam as a prisoner of war. Two survivors out to serve the Lord. What could go wrong?
Pablo, in a secret meeting, made an inquiry to Pastor McKinney.
“Can I try out the goods first?”
“That’s not how this works. Trust God.”
Out of desperation, they pushed the wedding date forward, way, way forward. Petra did not stop to question any of it. She had her eye on the prize. She chose a black dress as her wedding gown. Her subconscious knew a funeral when it saw one. Pastor McKinney prayed over them for an eternity, as if praying would somehow save them from themselves.
They spent their two-night honeymoon up the mountain at Christ for the Nations. On the first afternoon, a staff member reprimanded Pablo for his wife’s indecent two-piece swimsuit. It was the first and only time he stood up for her.
“I told him to go to hell.”
“Oh, my God! The side of this bottom is three inches wide. This is a huge two-piece! I wish I had one of my string bikinis from Brazil—bunch of perverts.”
Pablo’s family did not attend the wedding, even though they all lived in Los Angeles. There had been no time to plan or send out invitations. She met them for the first time a few weeks later.
Culture shock galore!
He was one of twenty-one children, all from the same mother. They were born and raised in East LA. The brothers were tatted-up gang members, addicts and raging alcoholics. Pablo and Petra spent the afternoon sitting under a tent in the backyard while his family danced to Latin music and got wasted. It was “Órale” this and “Esse” that. All the men wanted to dance with the gringa.
“Esse, what’s up with your lady? She too good for us?”
Her repeated refusals annoyed them.
Pablo never let on that his family was gang-affiliated. He did not have a single tattoo. He spoke what Hawaiians would call, “The King’s English.” His father was a well-to-do gentleman. What was all this?
“Get me out of here,” she whispered. “Please take me home.”
Several hours later, he obliged.
Petra often came home from work to find one of his brothers crashing on their couch. To make matters worse, Pablo was not bringing in any money. He spent his days hanging out at the church, reading the Bible and talking to the Pastor. In an unforeseen turn of events, he became disinterested in having a romantic relationship. Perhaps the “goods” disappointed him?
“How am I supposed to get pregnant if you never have sex with me—You promised me a baby. Are you a man of your word, or not?”
She confided in Pastor McKinney.
“He’s not sleeping with me. It makes no sense.”
Following one dutiful sexual encounter, she conceived. Throughout her first trimester, she experienced morning sickness all-day, every day. She couldn’t work and couldn’t bring home a paycheck. He refused to look for a job.
“I expected you to work,” said Pablo. “I’m going to stay home with the baby.”
Even after the landlord pinned an eviction notice to the front door, he did not get a job. Pregnant and facing homelessness, she telephoned her friend Brad, a well-to-do contractor, in Hawaii. He offered her a live-in position helping him, his wife, Susan, and their two sons with light housekeeping and shopping.
“You’re a lifesaver. Thank you!”
With a plane ticket to Maui in hand, she fled. As she stepped into a cab (she no longer had the Volkswagen Bug, as Pablo and one of his brothers had blown it up on the 405 freeway), she turned for one last look.
Pablo was two flights up on the balcony.
“Don’t you take my baby!”
“If you can pull together five thousand dollars in cash, call me and we can start over in Hawaii. Otherwise, the baby is better off with me. I left Brad’s phone number on the kitchen counter.”
Pregnant and dependent on friends, with no personal resources of her own, was stressful. In exchange for room and board, she cooked, cleaned and took care of the kids while their parents worked. Even though she was grateful for a roof over her head and all the free food, she couldn’t help but feel trapped.
In her second trimester, Petra developed an insatiable appetite.
“She’s eating us out of house and home,” said Susan, throwing her hands up in the air.
“I remember you eating like a bird. Now, you eat like a football player,” said Brad.
His wife continued complaining about the cost of keeping her around. Susan had a valid point. Petra had put on eighty pounds at their expense. At the six-month mark, having qualified for welfare, she packed her few belongings into a rusty, bruised blue VW Bug she had purchased on installments from a church member. Brad assured her he was sad to see her go and that he did not share his wife’s opinion on the matter. She headed out to the West coast of the island where she had rented a studio on the cliffs. Isolated, it was a perfect place to hide out. She drove the winding road to town twice a week for supplies and church.
Trina, a social worker on the staff at the church, took an interest in her and the pregnancy. Today, they would call her a Doula. Back then, she was just a kind soul drawn to helping pregnant women give birth. Aware Petra had no one to support her, they made a birth plan and a week before she was due, Trina moved her into a spare bedroom in her house. She lived near the hospital, which was fortunate. There was a false labor, and the hospital sent her home. Two days later, the contractions began in earnest. They sat tight, waiting for her water to break. Contractions too close for comfort resulted in a mad dash to the hospital. After forty-five minutes of pushing, her son entered the world face first, encased in an un-ruptured amniotic sac. Trina called it an “en caul” birth. She had heard old wives’ tales about it but had never seen one in person. She was thrilled!
When the nurse handed him to Petra, she gasped.
“Why does he have a cone head?”
“Babies’ heads are very soft and he came out face first. The top of his head has stretched into a bit of a cone shape, that’s all.”
She grabbed a little blue knit cap, covering the anomaly.
“Don’t you worry about that. It will settle.”
By then, it didn’t matter. Not one little bit. Petra gazed into her son’s eyes as love flooded her heart, mind and emotions. It was unlike anything she had ever felt. Far beyond the love she had for Vincent. That love, in comparison, seemed selfish and self-serving. This was a kind of love that moved mountains. No sacrifice would be too great.
For one swift flash, one fleeting moment, she reverted into a state of self pity.
“What happened to my mother? Why couldn’t she feel this for me?”
An avalanche of unworthiness rose from the polluted pit inside her. It passed the minute she landed back in the present moment and focused on her newborn baby. She allowed her love to wash over him in comforting waves and witnessed the formation of an unbreakable bond. If she had been capable of reflection at that moment, which she was not, she would have considered all her advantages. She was clean and sober. That single fact was tantamount. In addition, she had carried him full-term. He was robust and healthy. In an act of love-struck awe, defiance and fear, she vowed to be the best mother her generationally cursed family had ever seen. The following morning, with hands shaking, Petra changed her first diaper.
“Shouldn’t I stay one more day?”
“You’ll be just fine,” said the nurse.
Trina drove them back out to the cliffs. They remained in isolated bliss for close to three months. Becoming a mom was the greatest gift Petra had ever received. She wanted a baby more than anything else in life and treated motherhood as a calling. There were all the usual complications, like no sleep and, in her case, limited resources, but none of that mattered. She continued her twice-weekly trips into town for supplies and church.
Following a Sunday morning service, a group of women cornered her.
“We don’t think it’s safe for you to drive that winding road with a baby in the car.”
“What if you skid and go over the cliff?”
“Your car doesn’t look very dependable to me.”
“Tell her, Trina.”
“Why don’t you rent the spare room at my place?”
“Yes, we all agree. It’s the smart thing to do.”
The next two years at Trina’s were idyllic. Petra lived as a stay-at-home welfare mom and had adequate resources. They were comfortable. Mom and son had the house to themselves most of the time. Trina worked long hours. They spent mornings at the beach, napped together, played together, and grew together.
Right around Daniel’s second birthday, an amazing opportunity landed in her lap. The church had a K-12 school. They desperately needed a high school English teacher. The principal from Maui High School sat on their board of directors and brought up her name for consideration.
“Do you think you can teach English grades 9-12?”
“Absolutely!”
There was no question in her mind. She had spent a decade in New York surrounded by writers and poets. In their esteemed company, she accumulated an extensive literary repertoire. As a result, she possessed the equivalent of a graduate degree in English Literature.
Ka'ahumanu Hou Christian School was privately owned, and they did not require a teaching certificate. Her former principal clarified the terms.
“Your salary will be less than what you earned at Maui High, but the church includes childcare.” Classes begin in three weeks. Does that work for you?”
Of course, it worked for her. It was a miracle.
Two months later, Petra and Daniel moved out of Trina’s and into a two-bedroom plantation house in Wailuku. The house had single-ply walls and sat a foot off the ground with open air underneath. The boards were not flush, allowing thin streaks of light to shine through. Basically, it was a shack with the added feature of a shower house in the backyard. Perfect for rinsing off after a day at the beach. Their new home sat at the edge of a dead-end road surrounded by pineapple fields. It was perfect.
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A harrowing tale, shot through with unlikely humor and fantastical creatures.
This autofiction (autobiography and fiction) novel revolves around a lifetime spent underwater struggling to find the surface. The narrative follows the journey of an unlikely heroine from the bondage of childhood trauma to self-awareness and freedom.
It is a roller coaster ride from the depths of hell to triumphant success that finishes with a big Hollywood ending.