Not Afraid of Life Page 15

  With everyone who visited, however, I said, “Don’t take any pictures! We’re only taking pictures with my camera.”

  That might sound like a weird request from a proud mother.

  However, as soon as it was confirmed that Levi and I were expecting a baby, the celebrity weekly magazines started a bidding war for the first photo. It might sound crass, but it’s a very common practice. The famous person negotiates the exact terms about how and when the baby is revealed. When the magazine publishes the photo, it drives sometimes millions of readers to either click through to their website or buy their magazines off the newsstands, so it benefits the magazine and the new arrival. Sometimes the celebrities donate the money to charity or sometimes they set up a college fund.

  When I was first approached by representatives of a few magazines that expressed interest in the photo, they offered me so much money that it got my attention. After all, I wasn’t going to be like Michael Jackson and put a blanket over my child’s head in public. I planned on living a normal life with my sweet child. And whoever snapped a photo could sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars, or a magazine could send a reporter to stalk us and get one for free.

  I decided to take the offer with a reputable magazine for Tripp’s first photo. Levi and I were so excited that the inevitable magazine photo would at least benefit Tripp and set him up for a very comfortable life. It was more than an apprentice electrician and a coffee barista could’ve made in decades. It could have bought a nice house for him to grow up in. (Or two nice houses.)

  That’s why I was so serious about no one taking photos and e-mailing them to friends. There would be time for showing off his sweet blond curly hair and his shockingly blue eyes. But now was a time to be discreet as we prepared to properly announce him to the world. I snapped candid photos on my phone to put in his baby book. I printed them out and handed them to Levi, with a stern warning: “Remember, don’t let anyone see them yet.” On the back, I wrote “Do not sell or distribute” just as a reminder. The first photo would appear in March!

  People kindly obliged in not taking photos, other than with my camera, and Dad and Mom were constant companions at the hospital. Eventually they had to leave for a while to run errands. When they did, Levi came in the door.

  I was filling out the birth certificate papers by myself.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m filling out Tripp’s birth certificate.”

  “What are you putting his last name as?”

  “Until we get married, I’m putting it as Palin.”

  “Don’t be such a b—ch, Bristol. I want my name on it,” he demanded.

  I had no idea what to do. Dad had warned me not to allow it, since he didn’t trust Levi as far as he could throw him. But Levi was pretty adamant that I hand over the birth certificate. I had two choices. I could argue with Levi as I lay in my hospital bed or I could give in. I was tired, I was hopeful that Levi would magically turn into a good father, and I honestly—after twenty-four hours of labor—didn’t have any more fight left in me. I filled it out and—against my better judgment and the advice of my dad—put Levi’s last name on there. I’ve regretted it ever since.

  Levi did stay with me while I was in the hospital, and he slept in a chair. The weird thing was, he wouldn’t change Tripp’s diapers, he wouldn’t hold him unless I asked him, and he wouldn’t help me get around. I got the feeling that he was there because he was supposed to be there, but he was trying not to be sickened by all that was going on around him. When it was time for me to go home and start trying to live with the baby without the help of nurses and lactation consultants, I was a little worried. Levi stayed at our house during the first few nights. And he was even less helpful. I don’t blame him for not wanting to change a dirty diaper—no one wants to do that—but I did start wondering why he was hanging around if he was going to be causing me more work instead of less.

  On one of these first nights home, Levi and I were sitting on the couch. I’d been taking care of Tripp and was completely exhausted. Have you ever heard the phrase “sleep like a baby”? Well, apparently Tripp hadn’t. The first few nights were just so terrible as I tried to figure out how to breast-feed and sleep and brush my teeth all in the same day! I’d just changed Tripp’s diaper for the millionth time and put him down to sleep when Levi’s phone went off. I saw him read the text and put the phone back on my end table.

  When he got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed he’d left his phone.

  Now, let me say that I’d never snooped. It wasn’t like me to be suspicious. (In fact, I wish I had been more suspicious before this point!) But I hadn’t slept in days, my patience had been worn thin, and there his phone sat, begging me to pick it up to see if the nagging feelings in my heart were paranoid impulses or truthful nudgings.

  Casually, I picked it up—it was the one I’d bought Levi for Christmas. He probably didn’t think too much about leaving his phone lying around, because I wasn’t the type of girl who snooped. I wish I could tell you that I looked deep into his archived texts and e-mails, and hidden amid a ton of information, I finally came across something that incriminated him. But it was right there. At the top. It took me less than fifteen seconds to find and read a certain text.

  He came back from the bathroom and said, “What are you doing?” He tried to grab the phone. But by the time he lunged for it, I’d already thrown it against the wall, breaking it.

  Because I’d had a chance to read it.

  It said:

  She had fun and wants to hook up again with you.

  “Levi, what was that?”

  “Just my sister. She was telling me that my friend was going to buy me chew.” He was trying to make me believe the text was about a hockey player friend instead of a girl.

  “Your mom’s bought your chew since seventh grade,” I said. “Why would you have someone else do it now? And why did your sister call him a ‘she’?”

  He denied it and he denied it, but eventually even he realized there was no use.

  “I know you’re cheating on me, and I’m not dealing with it anymore! Why would I put up with that, when you won’t even help me change a diaper?”

  I ran to the balcony where Dad was rocking Trig to sleep, and yelled, “Dad, guess who cheated on me!?”

  Dad looked up and just shook his head. He knew what was going on.

  I turned to Levi and waited for an explanation.

  He no longer tried to defend himself. Instead, all that happened was that he got up and simply walked out the door.

  It took that stupid text message to finally get my attention. My son was not going to grow up thinking that Levi is the way men are supposed to be. After all, Tripp did not deserve to have such a bad example. So when Levi got up and walked out of the house, I promised to never open it back up for him.

  Right after Christmas, Mom had packed her bags and headed to Juneau, because she was still governor. So she, Dad, Willow, Piper, and Trig headed to the capital without me. I still had key advantages many teen moms don’t have. Number one, my parents paid my medical bills that health insurance didn’t cover. And number two, they let me live at their house rent-free.

  Because Tripp was born over the holiday break, I didn’t miss much high school at all. Dad had watched him some mornings so I could take a shower and get ready for school. When he couldn’t watch him, I’d scramble to find someone else. (Aunt Molly would watch him early in the mornings sometimes before her own shift at work, because we knew Levi’s family wasn’t an option.) It wasn’t easy, but I pressed through. And not once did Levi volunteer to help. (Or respond to my requests for him to help.)

  The first day I went back to Wasilla High School after having the baby, I thought back to how scared I was as a freshman. I thought of Track blasting his radio and laughing at my nerves. It seemed so carefree and silly, compared to my current life. Or
the walk of shame I was about to make.

  On the way to school that morning—and many mornings after—I had to endure the pain of seeing Levi’s truck at the school because his new girlfriend was a younger student, and he’d hang out in the parking lot acting immature with his friends. That morning, I opened the door and forced myself to enter. There’s something not right about a high school kid being a mother. It seemed like I’d aged forty years since I was last there. My mother always said I had an “old soul,” but now I seemed totally different from all of my girlfriends. Though they were nice to me about Tripp, conversation always went back to boys and “can you believe she’s wearing those jeans?” It was hard for me to identify with them, and gradually the conversational distance between Tripp’s crib and their shopping sprees got too large to cross.

  On an afternoon after I went back to school, I was sitting in the kitchen feeding Tripp.

  “Hello?” I heard come from somewhere in the house.

  My pulse quickened.

  “Who’s in this house?” I yelled. I had no idea who would just barge right into our house, and I regretted that I hadn’t locked the front door.

  I turned and saw a soldier standing right there in our living room.

  Track.

  “What are you doing here?” I screamed, instantly grinning from ear to ear. I’d never seen him in his uniform, and he’d come home from Iraq for his leave. Typical Track, he didn’t tell anyone when exactly he’d arrive home. His best friend picked him up from the airport, and he simply showed up. After we visited, he drove into Anchorage and surprised Mom and Britta.

  “How could you surprise us this way?” Mom asked, obviously thrilled and emotional at seeing her son. He’d been gone a year, and it seemed that he had grown up a lot.

  There was a lot of that “growing up” going around.

  I was happy that Levi was working so hard on the Slope and trying to prepare a better life for our new “almost family.” When we got together, we exchanged our handwritten notes. They warmed my heart, though now when I read them back, I’m astonished that I wasn’t bothered by the fact that he called me “princess,” but spelled it “princes.” And “I no I’ll see you soon,” instead of “I know I’ll see you soon.” Love has a way of making even problems like that seem endearing.

  Except there was one complication . . . being an apprentice electrician is a highly valued position, and competition is fierce for them . . . and one of the qualifications is a high school degree.

  One day an Anchorage radio talk-show host talked about Palin gossip in the news once again. But now Levi was the center of a lot of interest as well. After Tripp was born, all kinds of news programs talked freely about our circumstances, that Levi was a high school dropout and I hadn’t yet graduated. It raised some questions. Like how he could be in the apprenticeship program without a high school diploma.

  Instead of assuming what any friend of Levi’s could tell you—that he lied on his application—the radio host raised an ethical question about my mom. Did she use her connections to get her grandson’s dad a good job?

  Mom was shocked.

  “Why did he sit around our kitchen table telling everyone that he passed his GED if he hadn’t?” she said when she found out.

  It was just another slap in the face. After running as an ethics reformer for governor, she was getting her name dragged through the mud again. Eventually, Levi’s dad admitted his son wasn’t qualified for the job, that he’d gotten Levi the job, and my mom had nothing to do with it. He then went on to say that he and Levi had talked about it and decided for him to focus more on his education. (That was a nice way to spin his lying on a job application.)

  This news didn’t upset me as much as you might think. Since Tripp’s birth Levi hadn’t provided for us financially at all. Though his mother had bought Tripp a couple of baby outfits when she found out I was pregnant, my mom and dad ate the cost of the hospital bills.

  The public humiliation of Levi losing his job was just further proof that I’d made the right decision in closing that chapter of my life. So I tried to forget him, concentrated on my studies, and tried desperately to escape Levi’s fate by focusing on graduating from high school myself. It was actually hard to concentrate on studies.

  On March 11, 2009, I was sitting at home, trying to get Tripp to eat, when I found out that Star magazine had published an article under the headline “World Exclusive: Bristol Palin’s Bitter Split!”

  This was the first time that people who didn’t live in Wasilla knew that Levi and I were not headed toward marriage. I’d not publicly announced it, because . . . well, it was humiliating. Not only was I a teen mom, I was a teen mom without a marriage prospect. The article also included Tripp’s first baby picture, published for the first time without my permission.

  When I saw the magazine, I saw right there on its pages a photo I had taken and let Levi have from my camera. Who had the photo? Who knew the story of our breakup? Only Levi and Sadie. I never would’ve thought that giving my son’s father a photo of him would end up costing me so much money, but it did. The Star magazine article violated my arrangement with a more reputable magazine for exclusive rights to Tripp’s first photo.

  And rumor has it that Star paid only $5,000.

  I was a combination of furious and heartbroken. How was I going to provide for Tripp for the next eighteen years? That one photo could’ve provided everything we needed: a home, a college education for both of us, a stable life. But in one moment, it was completely gone. I felt such a sense of loss—not just a loss of money, but a loss of power over my circumstances. I’d wanted to go to school, maybe go to college to get my nursing degree, and then start the rest of my life with a husband (first) and a baby (second). Now, I was so limited in my options that it seemed impossible I’d ever be able to make enough to even justify working, considering the cost of babysitting. As I looked at that magazine, it just symbolized so much all at once: my public breakup, my way-too-dramatic life, my awful relationship with Levi’s family, and my financial hopelessness.

  That week, I hit rock bottom. On top of all the other things going on, I hadn’t slept in so many weeks. (No wonder militaries use sleep deprivation to get information from enemy troops . . . it felt like torture to me!) One night, I was up yet again with Tripp, and—instead of falling back into bed—I sank down in Dad’s black recliner in our living room, in the big empty house. Life sucks, I thought, and I can’t figure out how to live it anymore.

  It may sound odd, but I hadn’t really prayed about all of this yet. While my mother had a definite moment of conversion, which was followed by her baptism near Big Lake, I never had that memorable moment on which I could look back and say, “This is when I gave my life to Jesus.” I always just knew God was a part of my life, but He was more of an idea, in the background. Even when I was at the Christmas Eve service before I had Tripp, I didn’t pray about the delivery or about being a mom. I simply was so consumed with life that eternal things got pushed out of my mind by the more pressing “have to do” things.

  But on that night, after so many weeks—so many years actually—I finally called out to Him.

  “Help me, God,” I said, with a weak voice. “I’m broken. Please fix me.”

  So it wasn’t a big, long, drawn-out prayer with fancy religious language. It was just a plea from the bottom of my being. Tears ran down my face uncontrollably. I was so desperate for someone to help me get through not only Tripp’s infancy but also the rest of my life.

  “The public breakup, the taunting in the media, the isolation I feel at school . . . I’m done being in denial about all this. I need light at the end of the tunnel, I need you to help me . . . to rescue me.”

  I prayed about everything—for Tripp, for the Levi situation, and even for opportunities to get me out of the rut I felt stuck in. I needed something to uplift me. “Just help me get through this
.”

  That moment in the recliner was a turning point for me, because God’s forgiveness is frankly a very good deal. Not only does He absorb some of the debt of my sinful decisions (in Jesus Christ), He doesn’t require me to repay the debt through my good decisions or efforts. He no longer sees my sinful self (lying, drinking, sexually unwise); He only sees me for who I am in Jesus (redeemed, forgiven, and pure). That means I don’t have to carry the shame of sins committed in my past with me forever.

  To be sure, I didn’t get up from that chair and—suddenly—life was fixed. I still had to deal with all of my problems, which would actually even get much worse. But the difference wasn’t between a troubled life and then a miraculously carefree life. Rather it was the difference between struggling against my problems alone and with Christ who loves me and has forgiven me.

  When I got up from the recliner, I felt lighter and more hopeful. I’d need that extra strength soon enough.

  Around this time, apparently, Levi had gotten hooked up with some “handlers.” Handlers, for those of you who don’t live in California, are people who try to help you milk all you can out of your temporary fame. Like agents, but not as choosy. One was Rex Butler, the same attorney who helped Levi’s mom with her drug charges. (Yes, I realize as I write that sentence that my life had become a Jerry Springer episode, and a bad one at that.) Rex represents people charged with drive-by shootings, homicides, personal injury/auto accidents, and drug dealing. The motto on his website is “Playing defense, the law and you.” He also is a black Democrat and told the press that my mother’s policies on African American issues could be summed up in this phrase: “Don’t need them, don’t worry about them.”

  Rex’s partner, Sherman Jones, is an enormous, meticulously dressed African American whom you could totally imagine as a bodyguard or a nightclub owner. (He’s also known as Tank.) He wears pinstripe suits, large watches, hoop earrings when he’s dressing up, and velour sweatsuits when he dresses down. His website reads: “Who I’d like to meet? You . . . If you believe that your signigicant [sic] other is having a fling . . . We’ll unleash the truth.”