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Truth and Consequences at Pregnancy High

Jasmine Reyes, 17, with Jayleen.

(Photo: Clémence de Limburg)

Having teenage parents does mean that Lilah is prone to mimic teenage behavior. “Her attitude is serious,” says Grace. “She’ll be like, ‘Mind your business.’ Mind my business? You better be talking to the milkman! I love her, but sometimes I just want to bop her on her head.” But the good manners Lilah displays in front of company—if not always at home—testify to Grace’s efforts.

Even now, as Lilah eyes the chicken nuggets that Iruma has been tearing into bite-size chunks for Dymia, she doesn’t reach out and take one. “Hee dat icken, Mommy?” she asks politely.

“I see that chicken,” Grace answers. “But you asked for a burger, so now you’re gonna eat a burger.”

“She didn’t ask for a burger. You said she wanted a burger,” Jasmine points out. “You’re mad mean.”

Grace shrugs off the comment, as a girl from their school pauses on her way past their table.

“Hey! What’s up, baby?” she coos at Dymia before turning to Iruma. “She’s getting so big. Oh my God!”

Iruma pushes her glasses up on her nose and smiles contentedly. “Yeah, she getting big.”

“Oh my God, you’re so cute!” The girl stares at Dymia, shaking her head in amazement.

In the South Bronx, the stigma of having a child at a young age is remarkably absent, not just because teen parenthood has long been pervasive but also because the family structure is such that children often grow up raising younger siblings, nieces, and nephews. Adding a child of their own into the mix doesn’t seem like it will change much in terms of daily routine, but it does feel like a rite of passage, a one-way ticket to adulthood. Motherhood cements a girl’s fertility, her femininity. Louder than any clingy top or painted lip, it broadcasts that now she’s a woman. And for some girls, that’s appealing. When The Tyra Banks Show did an online survey of 10,000 girls across the country, one-fifth of them said they wanted to become teen moms. The latest Centers for Disease Control report shows a 3 percent increase in teen pregnancy in 2006 after more than a decade of decline. At Jane Addams, round bellies orbit the hallways like planets. The school doesn’t keep track of pregnancies, but according to the attendance officer, one week this spring, seven girls out of a student body of about 1,500 were out of school to give birth.

Grace got pregnant at 14. She told Nikko that she wanted to keep the baby and that she was happy, “in a sad sort of way.”

The mothers watch as the girl from school continues on her way, joining a booth where a group of teenagers have piled in together, plopping on each other’s laps, laughing loudly at each other’s jokes. None of them have children. They seem not to have a single care. The chasm between being a parent and being a kid was difficult to intuit until it was crossed. Now Grace knows it well. When Nikko once teased her about all the fun she would have without him if she went to college, she leveled a cold stare at him and asked, “How am I gonna have fun in college with a child?”

Iruma fishes her cell phone out of a bag and presses a few buttons. Hip-hop starts to blare from the little speakers, setting a more festive mood. The moms relax. Jayleen and Lilah bounce in time to the music.

“Jayleen, you want to dance for everybody?” Jasmine asks. “You want to get on the table and dance?”

Jayleen tries to climb out of her high chair, and Jasmine lifts her up onto the bench, where she plants her feet and shakes her little bottom back and forth.

“Oh, she gotta donk, she gotta donk,” Jasmine chants, as Jayleen’s dance grows increasingly outrageous. The moms laugh.

Sometimes it’s hard not to act their age. “You need to be adult and mature, but you’re still young,” says Grace. “Adults have fun all the time. They still joke, they still laugh. They can’t take your kid away just because of that.”

When Grace gets home from school one afternoon, her grandparents have two eyes of the gas stove burning to drive away the apartment’s chill. She steers Lilah away from the flame and to the refrigerator, where she allows her to choose a snack. Lilah points at a pitcher of red liquid, and Grace fixes her a bottle, waiting for Nikko to get home from the GED program he started the week before. When he does, he waves a sheet of loose-leaf paper in front of her. It’s his first assignment, a short essay on why he should be a candidate for the program.

“I need to finish school for my 2-year-old daughter,” he starts off in an even hand. “I need to finish school for her because she follows everything that I do, and I feel that it is time for me to step up to the plate.” At the bottom of the page, his teacher has written “good ideas, good motivation” and given him a B-plus. Grace seems pleased. “Oh snap, babe. Now what are you gonna do to get an A-minus?”