Free Live and Learn by Niobia Bryant Page A

no-good, scheming scoundrel like Reverend Luke DeMark.
    How could I believe in the Word when my spiritual and moral leader obviously didn’t believe or follow the verses that he spoke?
    He preached from his mighty thronelike pulpit about premarital sex being a punishable sin, yet he fucked me and we sure wasn’t married.
    He shouted to the rafters about abortion being murder in God’s eyes, yet he convinced me to kill our unborn child.
    I didn’t have pain anymore when I thought of his cold indifference when I told him of our “blessing.” That night, his words cut me like a knife….
    “I’m pregnant,” I blurted out in a soft and hesitant voice as I lay in his bed still naked and sweaty from his sex.
    He said nothing, but his body went as stiff as a board beside me. Seconds later my eyes widened as he jumped from the bed and jerked on his discarded slacks. “You’re…you’re what?” he asked, his tone sharp as he looked down at me with angry eyes .
    I clutched the damp sheet to my naked body as I sat up in bed. “I’m pregnant,” I repeated, even as my heart nearly raced out of my chest in slow-rising panic .
    “Aren’t you on the pill?”
    My lips shaped the word “no,” but I didn’t have a chance to let it free from my mouth .
    “If this is some kind of trick to get me to marry you, you can forget about it,” he said in a nasty tone as he paced back and forth before the bed.
    I said nothing more. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. Being told by the man you loved that you were good enough to fuck in secrecy but not good enough to marry—or to be happy that you were pregnant with his child—had a way of making a person shut the fuck up.
    I rose from the bed to search out my clothes, hating the tears that burned first the back of my throat and then my eyes.
    “Where are you going?” he asked sharply, reaching out to tightly grasp my upper arm like a vise grip.
    To be honest, as I looked up into his eyes, I saw anger and fear. I became afraid. I didn’t know what he would do to keep his secrets from being told.
    I nervously licked my lips. “I’m going home,” I said in a voice I hoped was calm.
    He must have seen the fear of him in my eyes because he suddenly released me and backed away, wiping the fine sheen of sweat from his upper lip. He was a coward. To hell with him.
    I knew then I was in it alone, and alone was not a good place to be.
    Quickly I got dressed.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked, now sitting on the edge of his bed looking older than his mid-thirties.
    I was at the bedroom door and turned to look at him. “I’m getting rid of it—and you.”
    Still, I hoped he would stop me and tell me we would get through this together.
    He didn’t. “That’s the best thing,” he said, not meeting my eyes.
    I walked out of the house and haven’t been back to it or him since.
    To dare accuse me of trying to trap him into a marriage by “getting myself in trouble.”
    Is he crazy?
    I’m a senior in college with a part-time work study job paying just $5.65 per hour. I live with my religious parents who will disown me if they ever discover this secret. I long since sinned against God. My lover rejected me.
    I lay down with a dog and came up with fleas.
    I was so glad to have my friendships with Alizé, Cristal, and Dom. How would I have gotten through it without them? They all went with me to the clinic, held my hand, and told me everything would be okay. Never once did they ask who the father was or why he didn’t help me pay for…for… it .
    I felt weak.
    Even with my girls’ support, I felt so alone.

11
Dom
    S hit with our little crew was gettin’ mad hectic.
    Moët’s straight trippin’ ’bout the abortion. Hell, I had two and I ain’t never felt as bad as she does. And she still ain’t tell us her who her baby daddy is…was…whatever. Cristal thought it was an undercover freak nasty professor. Alizé said she can’t even guess who it could be since Moët