Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital

It's One

Outside Lisa Dean's apartment, a group of young men held money and threw dice against concrete steps. Each either exulted or groaned at each throw. Next door to Lisa's place, a boy stepped out of Cheryl's apartment —store—shaking a steamy bag of microwave popcorn. A young woman entering Cheryl's apartment told a little girl, who held her hand, "We're going to see the candy lady." Lisa sat in her kitchen,Jonathan's new Rottweiler puppy tied to the barber chair and nipping at her feet. Her washing machine turned rhythmically. She said she was taking her two children to stay with her mother that weekend. "I have to do my community service, picking up trash by the side of the road. I got eight more days before I'm finished. It happened a year ago. I was hanging out with the wrong people. They were stealing in a mall, and I was with them." She said Dwayne had come in once last week and asked to hold the baby. "He's held her two times since then, but he still doesn't come to see her like he should." Child support? "Nah." Her friend Tiny came in and began washing dishes in the sink. "Jonathan buys her Pampers. He's more like her father than her biological father. I'm ready to go back to school, as soon as I finish my community service. I'm going to this place that has GED classes." Someone knocked on the door. "Who is it?" A boy came in and asked for change for a ten. She gave him a five and fiveones. "Iwould have graduated in 1990.1 should have gotten my GED a long time ago. I was stupid. I just didn't like school. I hung around with site®!© 306 It's One people who don't want to do nothing. They quit school already. It'll rub off. My mom told me, 'You're too stupid to go back to school and too smart to go back.' She said I acted like I was the smartest person in the house. Right, Tiny?" He scrubbed a frying pan. "Yeah, you thought you were highly educated ." "Heh heh heh. Mom kept trying to get me to go back to school. I didn't want to get up early. I wish I had now. My principal told me to miss one quarter since it was so close to my due date, and come back the second, but after missing the first, I didn't want to go back. If they had let me go back that first quarter I would have finished. I was hanging with people who didn't say, 'Get back to school, or I'm not your friend/ They said forget school. Now, I am twenty-three, and I ain't got shit." "Yes, you do," Tiny said. He finished the dishes and left. D'Lisa cried. Lisa picked her up and kissed her face. Lisa cradled her, looked around the room, and said, "I got a secret I'll tell you some day." She looked out of the corner of her eye. "Believe this or not—No, I'm not going to ever tell you. I can't. Yes, I can. No, I can't. I'll tell you . . . one day. You're going to say, 'How could you?'" She moved to a metal folding chair and put D'Lisa in the big soft easy chair, where the little girl sat upright well. "Sit up there," she said and went upstairs to her room, then returned. She picked up D'Lisa and sat in the soft chair. "She can really focus on stuff now, like she knows she's looking at something. And I bet she'll be talking before she can walk. My mom was real upset with me in high school. Now I wish I had done what Mom told me. I would have a high school diploma. I would have learned a trade, and I'd be doing better." D'Lisacried again. Lisa gave her a bottle, looked around the room and said, "Jerry, I think I'm pregnant again. I believe I am. I will be getting my tubes tied if I am. We used condoms, and the time it burst last month, that's the last time I seen my cycle, and this month is almost over with. He wants me to go to the doctor, but...