A Complete Turnover

A Complete Turnover



“Girl, can you come over, please?” Shenika asked, sounding rather weird.

“Yea, but what’s the problem? You don’t sound right,” her best friend, Brea, said into the phone.



“I’ll tell you when you get here,” Shenika said.

“O.K. I’m on my way,” Bree said before hanging up.

Ten minutes later a very distraught Shenika opened the door for her best friend, Brea.

“Umm, why are your eyes all red and puffy? You been crying?” Bree asked.

“Sit down. I got something to tell you,” Shenika said.

“O.K. I’m sitting. What is it?” Bree asked, worried now.

“Umm… a few days ago, I went to the clinic to take a test and I got the results today. They came back positive… I’m HIV positive,” she whispered, on the verge of tears again.

“You are WHAT?!?” Bree screamed and then started bawling. “How’d you get it? Was it that boy Rodney? I told you he was no good! Didn’t I warn…,” she was silenced by Shenika’s shaking head.

“It wasn’t Rodney,” Shenika said.

“Mm hmm,” Bree said, disbelieving.

“Really, I don’t even know who it was,” Shenika said.

“You don’t know?!? How could you not know?” Bree everything but screeched.

“I hope you don’t hate me for this, but I made some bad choices in the past,” Shenika said.

“What was so bad that made you go get HIV?” Bree asked.

“Don’t judge me,” Shenika said through gritted teeth.

“O.K. I won’t. Just tell me what happened,” Bree said.

“Well, I never knew my daddy and my mother ditched me at the hospital when I was a baby because she couldn’t take care of me. The people at the hospital took me to an orphanage where the people mistreated me, so I ran away when I was about nine. I didn’t have anywhere to live so I was left to live on the street. Things got so bad that when I rained, I slept in a doghouse.

When I was about thirteen, a couple took me in. They didn’t have any kids so I happily went along with them thinking that they just wanted a young person around their house.

Well, they took me out to parties and later on they started dressing me up and putting make-up on me. They gave me alcohol and drugs. Gradually, they started prostituting me; they gave me some of the money. I mean. I didn’t mind because they were the best thing that ever happened to me. After all those years of living on the street, in a doghouse, they took me in and did all that for me, I was willing to do anything for them. I lived with them until I was grown. When I left their home, prostitution was all I knew, I didn’t have any education because I never went to school, and I had to make a living somehow… so I did it… didn’t know what else to do, Bree… I had no other choice,” she said before breaking down into tears.

“It’s O.K. You gonna be alright. We gonna work through this. But you have to make this right with God before you can do anything else,” Bree said , comforting her best friend.

“O.K. Take me to church with you tomorrow. I’ll tell the pastor that I want to get baptized and start a new life in Christ,” Shenika said.

The next day, Shenika and Brea went to church. Later that day, Shenika was baptized into the Family of God. Shenika turned her life over to God and lived a happy, healthy life.