Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) Read Online Free

to me and telling me some things I really needed to know. At age sixteen, I finally heard my mother’s version of the facts of life.
    “If you run around here kissin’ these little boys, you’ll come up in a family way.”
    That was it. I didn’t even know what “pregnant” was. I’d never seen that word. That same year, my mother let me go to the birthday party of a friend. The parents—church members and friends of my mother—weren’t home. A boy there leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. Oh, God. If Mama knew I was up there kissing … I would get be headed. I slapped that boy. Slapped him silly. But I knew it was too late. I
knew
I was pregnant. I left the party right away and ran home. When Mama came in, I was in the bathroom gagging. I had a toothbrush almost down to my tonsils.
    She just stood there. “Gal, what’s wrong with you?”
    “I’m gonna have a baby,” I declared.
    “Oh, my,” she said. “
What
have you been doing?”
    That’s when I told her about the boy kissing me. And instead of her telling me everything was all right, instead of telling me that I couldn’t possibly get in a family way that way, she simply dismissed it, turned, and walked off. And I was left there, all alone with my biggest fear and a toothbrush down my throat. I waited, and waited, and waited for that baby to arrive.
    One day, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I worked up the nerve to ask Mama when the baby would be coming. We hadn’t talked about it, so what did I know?
    Finally, she said something. “Gal, you’re not pregnant.” And that was it. Until I really did become pregnant with Emmett. Eventually, I discovered where babies came from. I learned at the hospital, during labor. In the delivery room, I told the doctors and nurses to get the bedpan because I thought I was having a different kind of problem. And the doctor told me that was the baby. I asked where the baby was coming out and the doctor told me that the baby was coming out the same way he went in. Ooohhh, I was embarrassed to pieces. I should have known that the doctor knew how the baby got there, but I just couldn’t face the doctor knowing that I had slept with a man. Even though the man was my husband. Well, I was pretty educated by the time I got out of the hospital. I surely knew a lot more than I knew when I went in.
    Still, I struggled with it all. There had been so many things my mother didn’t tell me; things that might have helped me avoid so many difficulties along the way. I just don’t know what her problem was, but it left me feeling vulnerable. My mother and father were divorced and my stepfather was a very nice man. But it was my mother who always was the source of strength for me. A stately, sturdy woman, who seemed so much taller than five-foot-three, she had the look of someone who could handle anything that came her way. And she always seemed to be guided by traditional values—the kind of things you learned in Sunday school more than everydayschool. She taught me these things, how to be a good person, but still something was missing.
    There were several incidents that occurred during my early years, events that I wish I had been better prepared to take on. Because I was used to her taking care of me, I thought I could rely on her to handle them, or at least show me she understood. There was this neighbor of ours, one of our church deacons. I was about seven, an only child, and I always loved playing with his children, three girls and a boy. One day he sent all the kids out of his house, but he told me to stay behind with him. He was cooking a turtle and asked me if I wanted to look at it. Of course I did. He picked me up and I looked over in the boiling pot and I could see the turtle’s heart beating. He told me that the turtle’s heart was like a timer, that it would not stop beating until the turtle was done. I was fascinated, but I knew right away that I did not want any turtle soup, or whatever it was he was