Chapter 1
Cassandra awakened early that morning with strong contractions. It was time to prepare to go to the hospital. Pulling herself out of the bed, she knocked then pushed the door open and entered her cousin’s room.
“Prudence, wake up; the baby’s coming,” she said quietly shaking her cousin out of sleep.
“Go back to bed,” Prudence said sleepily. “It’s your first baby. It’s going to take some hours before it actually comes. No need to bother Aunt Nat about it. She’ll just have you in a frenzy.”
“Can’t I stay in here with you?”
“Yes, just as long as you don’t make any noise,” Prudence said going back to sleep.
Cassandra paced the floor hoping for the best, practicing her breathing exercises as she had been taught from her Lamaze classes.
……………
Cassandra Nichols was an 18-year-old senior at Redding High School. She was on the cheer-leading team but missed the last three months of practice and had to sit in the stands for the last game of the year due to her pregnancy. Cassandra lived in the well-to-do section of town with her parents and her cousin. Natalie Nichols, her mother, did not take too kindly to her daughter’s unexpected pregnancy.
“Cassandra, how did you let this happen? You are just getting ready to graduate and the world was before you. Now look what you did to yourself? This has never been heard of in our family. What were you thinking?”
“Look, Mom, I’m sorry. But what’s done is done,” Cassandra said.
“Who’s the father?”
“I’d rather not say,” she said lowering her eyes.
“Cassandra, as your mother, I have a right to know, and so does your father,” Natalie insisted.
Natalie Nichols was a beauty consultant and creator of her own line of beauty products. She traveled a lot, sometimes going out of the state for home parties and seminars. Cassandra often traveled with her when school was out.
“Mom, I don’t mean to be rude. The fact is I am pregnant. It does not matter who the father is.”
“Are you ashamed of him? You weren’t raped, were you?” Natalie questioned.
“No, I just don’t want you to know now…maybe after the baby is born.”
“What will the people of our church and the community think, Cassandra? We have a reputation to uphold in this city.”
“Mom, this is why I don’t want you to know who the father is yet…so you can hopefully keep your so-called reputation.”
Cassandra’s father, Benjamin Nichols, was outraged. He was the pastor of the First Baptist Church downtown, a lily-white church that had a reputation for not allowing black people to join. He was also the president of the largest bank in the city of Mason, Mississippi. “Like most of the brethren in the church my age, I look forward to being a grandfather, but not this way — with a baby from my eighteen-year-old daughter and out of wedlock,” he said. “I was making big plans for you to go off to college — to Ole Miss, and I want you to understand, young lady, that this does not dismiss you from going to college. I have saved for eighteen years, and everything is already paid for even the new red Mustang that I was going to give you upon graduation. But I can’t justify giving that to you now seeing that you can’t control yourself. I know I have preached against this for years, but have you considered an abortion?”
“Daddy, you always taught me, the church, and this community that abortion is murder. I couldn’t do that,” Cassandra said. “Besides that, I’m nine months pregnant now.”
