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Truth and Consequences at Pregnancy High

Grace with her grandfather and daughter in the family's living room in the Bronx.

(Photo: Clémence de Limburg)

She’s only half-joking. Even if it is sometimes misplaced, Grace has a highly evolved sense of propriety. She expects to be treated a certain way, expects Nikko to embrace his responsibilities as a father. Her loyalties now are to Lilah, and her world is delineated: There are the players and hustlers and birds, people best avoided; then there are the “cousins” and títís and “brothers,” people she may not be related to by blood but who do well by her and her daughter. She’s not quite sure yet where Nikko falls. “He be all right,” she says.

It took a long time for Mayra to accept Nikko as a de facto member of the family. It wasn’t just his role in the pregnancy—she understood that Grace was equally at fault—it was his own neglectful upbringing that gave her pause. She refused to have his name listed on Lilah’s birth certificate until her own mother interjected. “You’re gonna leave her birth certificate just blank under father, like she doesn’t know who her child’s father is?” the older woman asked, horrified.

Since Lilah was born, Nikko has spent a smattering of nights in jail, mostly for getting in neighborhood fights or, as he says, “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Because his mother did not force him to go to school, he has not a single high-school credit. When Mayra took him to family court for child support (a requirement of the LYFE program), Mayra told the judge that she didn’t expect any money from Nikko, that she would prefer he get an education rather than a job now, so that he could support his child later; but the judge still awarded them $25 a month—less than the cost of a box of diapers—which Nikko’s mother agreed to pay until her son turned 18. Grace and Mayra have still not seen a cent.

In the end, though, it was hard to keep blaming Nikko, a child, for what Mayra saw as his mother’s failings. When he didn’t have a winter coat, she bought him one. When he was hungry, she fed him. When his mother kicked him out after a fight with her boyfriend, Mayra temporarily let him stay with them. Over time, he grew on her. “I basically showed her a lot of respect,” says Nikko. “A lot of butt kissing,” corrects Grace. Mayra realizes that, in his capacity, he is a good father: He’s present. Though other girls are still dating the fathers of their children, Nikko is the only boy who visits the LYFE center. A certificate stating that he completed LYFE’s fatherhood-training program hangs in a frame over Grace’s bed. “The only reason I don’t press it is because this baby knows who her daddy is,” says Mayra. “And she loves her daddy.”

Still, both Mayra and Grace find their patience sputtering. In the three years since Grace got pregnant, Nikko hadn’t held a single job or completed a single class. Mayra sees the writing on the wall. She knows that the statistics are not in Nikko and Grace’s favor: Only 40 percent of teenagers who have children get their high-school diplomas, and 64 percent of children born to unmarried high-school dropouts live in poverty. “Life isn’t about you anymore,” Mayra is quick to inform him. “You brought someone else into this world that you have to care for. If you’re gonna be that type of person that’s gonna just not do nothing—and because of that, statistics is gonna land you back in jail—you may as well say bye to them now while Lilah’s small and can get over you fast. Because this baby’s not visiting nobody in jail.” At the beginning of this year, to make good on her word, she gave him one month to prove to her that he was in school or had landed a job. Right at the deadline, he signed up for his GED.

Sometimes Grace feels that she’s leaving Nikko behind. She talks of going to college, studying business, opening her own beauty salon, getting her child out of Hunts Point, away from the “hustlers and divas.” She expects that there will come a day when she alone is responsible for providing for Lilah. “You can hope, we can all hope that Nikko’s gonna do something to better himself and want to be there and provide for his family,” Mayra tells her. “But the fact remains, if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be the first boy. You wouldn’t be the first single mother.”

One evening early this spring, the young family has the Padilla apartment to themselves. Mayra sleeps soundly behind the closed door of the bedroom, resting up for her night shift at eleven. Grace’s grandparents are at church, her sister out with friends. At times like these, Grace likes to pretend the apartment belongs to her and Nikko, that she doesn’t live with her mother and he doesn’t crash at a friend’s place, that they’ve managed to make a life for themselves and Lilah on their own.