Daniel Joe
Tiny brown hands grasp the handle of a bright red bucket.
Tightly gripping a miniature shovel, he digs furiously, eyebrows furrowed, eyes focused.
Micah Allen, 4 years old, is digging for buried treasure.
From a bench a few feet away, his mother watches attentively. She laughs as he drags his shovel through the sand.
“I found an ‘x!'” He exclaims with a smile spanning the entire width of his small face.
Melondey Bailey, a junior in arts applications, laughs again. She congratulates him, then pauses thoughtfully for a second.
“He can’t wait to turn five, because then he knows he’s going to kindergarten,” she said. “He tells everyone that.”
Bailey knows what people see when they look at her.
She’s another statistic: black, young, unwed — typical.
For her, though, the very person that makes her a number gets her through the day.
A chance for choice
Her son was born March 20, 2002. She discovered she was pregnant during the first semester of her sophomore year at N.C. State. It was a devastating blow. She was 18, depressed and terrified.
Prom queen, homecoming queen, senior class president, and now mother? It just didn’t add up.
“It was just a big shock to me and I guess to everyone who knew me,” Bailey said. “It wasn’t what I expected, and I saw it as the biggest tragedy in the world. But it ended up being a big blessing.”
Having lost her virginity to a friend the prior semester, and not by choice, she had gone home over the summer looking forward to a break from the whispers and speculations by former friends as to what had actually happened the night she was raped. While at home, she spent time with Micah’s father, and they ended up together one night.
“I didn’t hold onto [my beliefs] as much as I did before because in other peoples eyes it was just like, oh she’s dirty now,” Bailey said. “It was just as situation that shouldn’t have happened…but I didn’t handle advances well, meaning that even if I didn’t really want to, I did.”
After her pregnancy test came back positive, she had to face a decision she had never considered before.
“In debate class I would always be pro-life, always, always, always,” she said. “Growing up in the church, I never put myself in the situation, so when I was pregnant that’s the first time I ever thought about [abortion].”
After talking to her mother, she decided it wasn’t right for her. She decided to keep the baby.
Living in the light
Although her pregnancy seemed to bring her life to a screeching halt, the events of Sept. 11, which happened at the same time, put things in perspective for her.
“I took a walk, and I was thinking about a lot of things, and I just thought, ‘you know what, it could be worse,'” she said. “My life could be a lot worse.”
A spiritual person, Bailey looked to her faith for answers and guidance. She opened her Bible the day after the results came back and began to read.
“It said, ‘a light in the time of darkness,’ and that was in Micah,” she said. “It just fit.”
No crystal stair
While Bailey said she wouldn’t change things for the world, being a single mother and full-time student is anything but easy.
Because she made the decision to come back to school, her parents help her financially — her mother pays for Micah’s daycare and her father pays their rent. Emotionally, however, having a child takes its toll on Bailey as well as her relationships with other people.
Her mind is constantly focused on her son, every thought is about him. At the grocery store, at school, at the mall; it’s all Micah. And she does it without his father’s help.
She said Micah’s father was supportive in the beginning, but eventually, he just sort of disappeared. Whether he was scared, or immature or just not ready, she isn’t sure. But she knows the day-to-day responsibilities required of a parent first-hand, and she knows he hasn’t made that transition.
“That’s one of the downfalls of not being married first,” she said. “In the family structure you can see it. When he’s in his home and I’m in mine he can’t see when Micah needs milk, or needs shoes, and I see these things every day.”
Micah has a good relationship with his father, however. Bailey said her son will draw pictures of himself and his father playing together, although he hardly ever sees him.
“[He’ll say] ‘this is me, this is a zebra, this is my dad,’ he’s just in his own world,” she said, “I don’t shelter him or anything, but he’s just happy, and I’m glad about that.”
As for Bailey and her father, they just started talking again about a year and a half ago. While her mother was “shockingly supportive,” when her father found out she was pregnant, he cut all ties. He lived 15 minutes down the road from her apartment back home, but he didn’t speak to her for three years. She said it caused her a lot of pain, because it seemed like the one man who should have loved her unconditionally didn’t.
“My dad has a lot pride and it hurt his pride that I didn’t end up being the perfect child,” she said. “When a little bit of time passes and you don’t say anything it gets harder to start the conversation when so much time has passed.”
She ran into him by chance one day while waiting for a prescription to be filled, and she confronted him, trembling the whole time. Now, he’s active in both her and her son’s lives, taking them on vacation and being there whenever they need him.
From downtown to downtime
Another part of Bailey’s life that took a hit after Micah was born was the social aspect. There are no more nights on the town for Bailey; Micah is her best friend now.
“Just focusing on Micah, I’m happy. I don’t need to do a whole lot,” she said. “
As far as going out, I don’t miss it.”
She admitted to feeling resentful around the time all of her friends were graduating, however. If she had never gotten pregnant, she would have graduated with them, and when she started being flooded with graduation invitations, and her friends started getting jobs, it was tough for her.
“Yeah I’ve sat and been like, God why did this have to happen to me?… I’m a good person, why would you allow this to happen?” she said. “Sure, I’ve questioned Him at one point. Now, I think I just have a better discernment of things.”
She said she thinks God shows her things about herself through Micah, and that she has become a stronger, wiser person through it all.
“I know now that I was really naive when I first came to school, just about people and trusting too easily, and just judging different situations,” she said. “Sometimes you have to go through something hard to teach you something valuable.”