She was only sixteen and with child, left to follow in her mom's footsteps. From the day Serena was born to Flo, life was never going to be the same for her mother's side of the family. Events took off as if set to continue in a vicious circle. Flo didn't make good of her education and Serena stashed away that legacy. Only the latter could break the spell if she had the willpower to wager, but alas, that was not the case. The drama began way back and accelerated when Serena came into the world in February 1993. That day, angels in heaven rained tears on her parade. The skies suddenly turned dark grey before a downpour hit the ground running into rivers along the way. Flo was knocked out of consciousness and remained hospitalized for over a week, not knowing the difference between her mother and a broom. She hadn't paid a single visit to the doctor to get prenatal care, and her blood pressure had risen to touch the sky. But just then, insults were added to injuries.

"She is just not mine," Zac claimed, even before he took one look at Serena. "Go find your real baby daddy."

Zac was from a family of a dozen boys and they were all guilty of the same sin. Dorcas, his mom, was always on their side, giving them the right to get girls knocked up before sidestepping their responsibilities. It wasn't like Flo didn't know that she was putting her hand in the tiger's mouth, since everyone involved was born and bred in a too-close-for-comfort place called Cassidy in Montpelier. Making matters worse was that Zac's best friend was Flo's first boyfriend, who she claimed had taken her virginity when she was fifteen. Such foreknowledge only added fodder to the fire.

Flo was left to suffer in silence while Myrtle, her mom, took over the reins.

"You need to get him to pay child support," she advised. "He has to pay."

In her days, Myrtle had also had her fair share of mayhem when it came to men. She had had multiple miscarriages relevant to which she endured the aftermath of dealing with the delinquents behind her seven dry spells in those pregnancies. She was a little lucky when James eventually came into her life and got her to save four, Flo included. Such wealth of experience came in handy when Serena was seriously sick a year after being born, so that it was Myrtle who came to her rescue. By then Flo had already thrown her hands in the air, expecting the worst.

"Let her die," Flo said. "That will end all of my woes." She sounded like Jonah in the weather-beaten vessel. Perhaps with good reasons since she had only been faced with bad luck so far, coming off the heels of disappointment with Kenneth, the man who impregnated her with Samantha, her first fruit, before disappearing into oblivion.

Meanwhile, Serena's growth was stunted from the lack of attention, and driven by the commotion that was cascading in accumulation on the poor little poor girl, like water precipitating down Niagara Falls. Nevertheless, the neglected baby started to bear the spitting image of Zac, though that didn't seem to get the twenty-five year-old father of three other toddlers to step up to the plate. The deadbeat dad was getting his up draught from Dorcas and company, and therefore he felt it was too late to turn back like a dog to its vomit. He was set free from all expenses while Myrtle and her older daughter, Skeeta, assisted considering that Flo was more like the bird with the broken wing.

Serena's life started off on a rocky road and it never promised to get better anytime soon. After she pulled through her childhood illnesses, thanks to Myrtle and the middle-aged woman's homeopathic therapeutics, health was never an issue, at least not until way in her teens. Zac never needed any DNA to prove his paternity of Serena, and so he was left without an alibi to say why he was not involved in his daughter's life. Hence, he kept his silence and his distance. He had a ticket to ride and he didn't care. That was forever the song of guys in the dump, and Flo should have looked before she jumped. But it was obviously too late to cry over spilled milk.

Then a Good Samaritan woman, one of rich descent, decided to take Serena under her wings. What a relief! At least, so everybody thought. Mary had money lining her driveway in Kedleston, but so too was Jeremy, a twenty-four-year-old truck driver of Welmington, whose father owned most if not all the buses plying the main routes in Montpelier. Jeremy had met the thirteen-year-old while she commuted to school on one of his father's transportations. Flo knew about the encounter, but mum was her word. And of course, silence meant consent.

When Serena left Cassidy, the whole community knew she had moved on to bigger and better things. Many eyes were green with envy, while others who knew about her misfortune, gave the situation their blessings, even if they were hypocrites too. Meanwhile, Serena lived in the lap of luxury, and like everything else, all good things would come to an end. She was like the crow on high while Jeremy was like the fox below waiting for her to give up the cheese. And give up the cheese she did! In other words, the cunning guy found his way to Kedleston, fifty miles away, and blew her balloon.

At sixteen, Serena carried her pregnancy for nine, live long months without saying a word to the woman who kept and cared her, all the time denying that she was an expectant mother. Her conscience must have been as hard as a vulcanized boulder, given that she kept a straight face in her replies, knowing that she owed every loyalty to a woman she barely knew, one who provided one of the finest home existence she might probably live to experience.

"Are you pregnant?" asked Mary repeatedly, doubting her eyes.

"No, I am not," Serena lied, giving the poor woman the impression that the 50-year-old biological mother of a pair, plus three adopted kids, was only imagining things. Serena could afford to hide her true colors since her tummy kept its normal girth. But Mary was not born yesterday, and therefore had noticed that her breasts had enlarged significantly. Plus, her face had discolored dramatically.

It was Monday, February 26, 2009, the day that Serena went in labor while Mary was still in Miami on business. Jo, Mary's hand and foot, who still lived at home, was at the office running the show as usual. Only this time, she was alone with her staff and canteen customers, as Serena had told the twenty-year-old that she preferred to stay home. The keen young woman thought it was a little strange, and decided to call home periodically to follow her intuition. On the first occasion, Jo's heart sustained palpitations. She didn't like what she heard.

"Are you okay?" Jo picked up the groans over the phone, and probed to find out more. The first thing that struck her mind was that Mom was away. "Talk to me!"

"Ooh, aah, I, ooh, aah, am ooookay!" Serena could hardly utter an intelligible word.

"Oh my God! Wait, please, I am coming!" Jo left the workers in charge and sped off in her blue Volkswagon in the direction of Kedleston.

It normally exhausted twenty minutes or so to cover the expected distance, but this time it took Jo ten. Once at the gate of the million-dollar apartment, Jo pressed the remote to get the garage door open, but even the movement of the retracting device felt like a snail was the force behind the hinges. Once inside, Jo jostled with her instincts towards Serena's room. There, she found the lame young lady in total disarray, lying in distress on the carpeted floor as if she had not a moment more to live. There was what appeared to be drooling in the room like a teething baby had passed through, and there was also a lot of newspapers all around.

"Get ready, get ready!" Jo commanded, but had to take a second look when she realized that her words fell on deaf ears.

The young Caucasian girl came to her senses that she had a patient on her hand, and the nearest doctor was like miles away by any stretch of her disoriented imagination. Waiting for an ambulance would have been a speed race against time. And she wouldn't have forgiven herself for the mental picture of a dead, black girl in her widowed mother's house, coming back to haunt her after the storm had passed. While Serena's groans took timeout, Jo pulled on her adopted sister's almost lifeless arms and got her to her feet. With no time to spare, the heroic youngster managed to get Serena into the throttling car as was, and within seconds they were whistling their way through the afternoon traffic. The puny teen was writhing in her seat, but that was the least of Jo's concerns.

Then Jo came to a bottleneck caused by an accident that slowed the pace to a virtual crawl. Cars snaked their way to a halt as the opposite-bound drivers rubbernecked to keep themselves alert. By this time, Serena sounded more like a heifer being slaughtered. Jo just didn't have a choice. She put on her hazard lights and swerved out into the lanes of the oncoming vehicles, pressing the gas pedal down to its limits. That got the other motorists' attention to give her the way. Jo was at her personal doctor's office in no time, slinging a wailing girl who was hopping and dragging her feet to prevent herself from falling face-first.

The office was packed with patients waiting to honor their appointments. Some sat reading magazines, others chit-chatted to kill time. However, when Serena entered the building screaming on top of her lungs, the patient patrons knew they had to reschedule. The front desk attendant had no time for registration, but instead, beckoned the two helpless ladies to go straight inside. Once Dr. Wainwright took over, Jo rushed back to the waiting area and breathed a sigh of relief. It was like her reverie had ended, but little did she know that it was just the beginning.

No sooner had Jo taken a seat among the madding occupants in the lobby, than Dr. Wainwright came back for the listless lady, while he displayed a sense of urgency. He had something to say to her behind closed doors, and she suspected it wasn't all good. Jo tried to gather herself to brace for the worst, but even in her wildest dreams, she couldn't have prepared for a moment like this.

"You see this young woman," the doctor began, pointing to the maternity patient. "She has an eight pounder baby in her body and the boy is ready to come out," he continued, switching his stare from Serena who was covered from her waist down, to Flo who stood speechless and disheveled. "And when I say 'ready', I don't mean tomorrow or later. It is NOW," he emphasized. "I need you to sign some papers," Dr. Wainwright said.

Jo fainted. By the time she came to, Serena had undergone a Caesarean section to bring Durant on the planet, and Mary had flown in almost landing on the top of St. Joseph's Hospital, where the story terminated its plot. As for Jeremy, the loser had moved on to another innocent victim, assuming that he got away scot-free with blue murder. But wherever he went, he was not so lucky. He had to show his marksmanship, fighting to fend off a co-competitor for the coveted prize in a love triangle. He pulled his father's loaded gun and the trigger went off and hit his target, killing him dead on the spot. That done, he went to serve sentence behind bars while Serena was demoted to poverty by Mary's orders. (A TRUE STORY tailored literarily to conceal identity)

By Vernon Augustus Brooks, author of The High School Rapist found at: http://www.amazon.com/School-Rapist-Vernon-Augustus-Brooks/dp/1442124377/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255800788&sr=1-1