Read Lane DeGregory's story about a family that took in a 14-year-old and her baby and never expected what would happen next:
"The last time I came in here,'' she told Amy, "I was in chains. Only they couldn't fit the chain around my belly, it was too big and pregnant."
Amy wasn't sure what to say. Chains? The caseworkers hadn't told her anything about Lillie's past.
"I just had chains on my wrists," Lillie said, "so I still could've run."
Amy didn't press for details. She pulled Lillie close.
"You don't have to run anymore," Amy said.
On a bench outside the courtroom, sitting with her caseworker and Amy, Lillie volunteered the scattered details of her life.
"We lived in a nasty trailer. Daddy was always drunk or passed out. Mama, she can't read or cook or nothing. We'd go to the neighbors and beg food."
Her dad's friend molested her when she was 5, she said. That same year, her dad went to prison - "for something with a gun."
Lillie said she had three older sisters and a big brother, and they'd all been raised in foster care. Lillie had lost track of them. In nine years, she had moved 10 times. The last place she had been was a group home. She had hated it, she told Amy, so she ran away. She had lived on the streets, on and off, for more than a year.
"I was 12 years old, doing crack, prostituting to pay for it."
Amy listened, trying not to look shocked. Lillie's caseworker winced and shook her head.
Lillie wasn't proud of her past. But she wasn't ashamed. She had made a lot of money, she said, sometimes having sex with 10 men in a day.
"The court's trying to find my baby's daddy right now," she told Amy. "But I don't even know who he is. I was so high all the time, I didn't even know I was pregnant till I got arrested."
That was two months ago, she said. Her friend had stolen a car, they had gone joy-riding and crashed into a fence. At the jail, she had found out she was five months pregnant.
"I'm glad now, though," Lillie said, beaming. "If I didn't have a baby, I wouldn't never have been adopted."
Amy didn't answer. What was she getting herself into?
"Don't worry, Mama," Lillie said. "I'm ready to settle down."
She smacked her gum.
"I am."
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