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Truth and Consequences at Pregnancy High

Grace Padilla, 17, with Delilah.

(Photo: Clémence de Limburg)

Mayra was surprised to find herself seriously considering abortion as an option. The South Bronx has a high birthrate in part because in this largely Hispanic and Catholic community, the idea of terminating a pregnancy meets with such intense disapproval. Her mother told her that she would not be able to live under the same roof if they went through with it, but Mayra didn’t see how Grace could manage to raise a child, nor did she want to put her daughter through the difficulty of labor only to give the baby away. Grace guessed that she was about four months along and agreed to visit an abortion clinic. The sonogram showed that the baby was due in ten weeks.

“Ten weeks?” Mayra asked. “This is a 14-year-old who’s been to theme parks, eaten junk food the whole time, had no prenatal care. Ten weeks? I don’t know what this baby’s gonna be like.”

The nurse nodded sympathetically, but there was nothing to be done. “There’s nowhere in this country where they’ll do that abortion at seven months.”

Mayra set about preparing for the baby. She arranged for Grace to be enrolled in Jane Addams, the closest school that had a LYFE program. She put a call out to friends and family for a crib, a stroller, secondhand baby clothes. She started making doctors appointments, pleading her daughter’s way into clinics that didn’t have openings until after the baby was due. Grace looked so young when she brought her in, no one could believe she was the one who was pregnant.

Grace’s water broke in the hallway of Jane Addams the second week of her freshman year, a full month before her due date. Thinking she had wet her pants, she called her mother from a bathroom stall.

“Um, I want to go home,” she said when Mayra picked up.

“Why? What happened?”

“My pants are all wet.”

“What do you mean your pants are all wet? Did a car splash you or something?”

“No. Like, they’re all wet. Like, I went into the bathroom, and they’re all wet.”

“Oh my God,” Mayra cut in. “Your water broke. Oh my God! You’re gonna have this baby in that school!”

When Grace arrived at Albert Einstein hospital, she was having contractions. Her mother stepped outside to calm her nerves with a cigarette, and Grace took the moment alone to ask her doctor if it was possible that she might die in childbirth. He reassured her that the chances were infinitesimally slim. “He sugarcoated it,” she says. “He was a nice guy.”

By the time Nikko arrived the following afternoon, Grace was in the throes of “the worst pain I ever felt in my life,” she says, gasping just at the thought. She refused to allow him in the room. “I was in so much pain I really just wanted to kill him. I said, ‘I advise security, doctors, nurses, everybody on this floor, if that man reaches this room, it’s gonna be chaos, because this is all his fault.’ ”

On Sunday, September 17, 2006, at 2:55 a.m., Delilah Joli Vega was born, alert and healthy.

At the McDonald’s on Prospect Avenue, teenagers crowd the counter, munching fries and competing for attention, the boys with their hooded sweatshirts pulled down low over their eyes, the girls in tight jeans and baby tees, nameplate jewelry shimmering, hair ruthlessly slicked back into high ponytails. As Iruma orders a pile of cheeseburgers and two Happy Meals, Grace and Jasmine drag high chairs up to the table and settle in with Nikko. The conversation is no different from that at any other table in the place, except for the constant interruption. There’s drama going down on Grace’s block—“Dumbass Samantha was talking about, ‘Oh, if Sasha did punch A.J. in the face, it wasn’t ’cause A.J. hit her, it was over Killah …’ ”—but she can’t focus on the story with Lilah sending golden arcs of boxed apple juice into the air.

“Lilah, you’re spilling the juice,” Grace points out. “You’re. Spilling. The. Juice.”

Jayleen, Jasmine’s daughter, looks over at Lilah, then squeezes her own juice box with vigor.

“You must want to get smacked,” Grace tells her, raising her eyebrows before turning to the girl’s mother. “I been telling you about that, Jasmine.”

“Later, later,” Jasmine pleads, not in the mood for a parenting lesson. But the fact is the mothers often act as a check on one another, imparting what parenting wisdom they have, holding one another to a certain standard. Grace, particularly, prides herself on her parenting skills. She’s observant. She’s strict. Her mother, Mayra, taught her how to take care of Lilah but refused to do the tasks for her. Grace was the one who changed Lilah’s diapers, fed her, got up in the middle of the night when she cried. “She’s not Baby Alive, is she?” Mayra would ask. “There’s no off-button on her.”