I looked at myself, age thirty-two, a grandmother... Yes, I made all the wrong choices in life, causing my daughter to follow suit... I had been a sixteen-year-old mother, and now my precious baby was the same. She fled to her boyfriend's apartment when she found that she was pregnant. I didn't stop her. I didn't want to see her turn into me...but I would fix that. About four and a half months into the pregnancy, her boyfriend dumped her, and she used every penny she had ever made in her life to buy a two-room condo to raise her family in. She came running to me multiple times in the pregnancy, and as a result, I had a key to her condo and permission to visit at any time. After all, to buy the condo, she had to get my permission. And I gave it to her. I don't know why...I just didn't want to have to watch her failure.

And that's why, on the night the hospital called and told me that my granddaughter Nina was born, I drove myself down to that condo and set up my daughter's old crib in the corner of the cramped bedroom. The doorman paid me no attention as I left and drove to the hospital.

I walked right up to the receptionist and said, "I'm looking for my daughter. Rachel Martin. She should be in the maternity ward, and she just gave birth to my granddaughter." The woman looked up, startled at my age, and began ruffling through her book. "Room 759," she stated simply.

My finger hit the elevator button and it came immediately. After all, it was about two in the morning. Why did my family have to be cursed with giving birth in the middle of the night? I punched the "7" button and it lit up. The doors promptly closed and I was whisked up to the seventh floor, uninterrupted. On the way up, a song that I had heard in the car was playing... I actually listened to a few lines of it.

"Pretty pretty please
Don't you ever ever feel
Like you're less than
Less than perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel
Like you're nothing
You are perfect to me."

Just then, the elevator hit the seventh floor, and I immediately got off, almost running into a student nurse. I read the sign, which pointed one way down the hallway and said, "700-750". I headed the other direction. Within the first ten doors, I hit room "759". The door was unlocked, and I opened it to see a baby, asleep, in Rachel's arms. The baby, Nina, was...adorable. I knew she would grow up to beautiful. As I walked over to the bed, the song I had heard in the elevator and the car came back to me, and I realized exactly how much it applied to me. As Rachel handed me my granddaughter, looking ashamed of herself, I smiled down at the infant and mouthed, "You are perfect to me," to her. The sleeping Nina squirmed slightly in my arms. From that moment on, I vowed to raise her as if she were my daughter.

I was so glad I made that vow, even if I broke it later in life... Within a week of Nina's birth, Rachel had gotten a job, taking the night shift at a local department store. Every night, I would be the one who rocked Nina to sleep, who fed her, who changed her diapers, and who sang to her when she cried.

As soon as Rachel turned eighteen, her new boyfriend proposed to her. I didn't like him. He was a party animal, and usually got drunk at parties, even though he was below legal drinking age. The wedding was rushed, with the now-two year-old Nina sleeping in the front row of the local church only two months later. Then, Rachel started growing distant from me...she and her boyfriend always were out at nights, and I began to wonder if Rachel was even working. Every night, I would stay at their condo. Nina was developing well. She was two, able to walk, and her first word had been "grannie" at nine months old. I smiled at the memory. She was the best granddaughter I could ask for.

She would often wake up in the middle of the night, though. Nightmares, she said. I didn't blame her. I didn't know what her stepfather did to her when he came home, late in the morning, long after Rachel returned and I was shooed away.

I was the one who started taking Nina to the local church for preschool as soon as she turned three. She practically became my daughter, and I was okay with it. Thirty-five was about the age of the other parents at the preschool... One day, on the way home, the song came on again. The song that kept on popping up, from the night of Nina's birth onward. It was one of the songs I sang to her to get her to fall asleep. Well, I only sang the chorus. The rest was too inappropriate for a toddler. Nina perked up in her toddler seat and said, "Gwannie, you sing song?" A smile involuntarily crossed my face. Nina's voice was so adorable...

"Yes, honey. I sing this song to you. Do you know what perfect means?" I asked her, talking slowly so she would understand me.

I saw Nina nod her head. "It means wondewfuwl and amazwing and me!" she explained in her cute little baby voice.

"And don't you ever forget that you're always going to be perfect," I whispered to her.

Suddenly, I saw her head drop and her expression change from excited and triumphant to rather...depressed. "What's wrong, honey?" I asked her.

She gave a sniff. "Daddy...he doesn't thwink I'm pewfect..."

I stiffened up. "Honey, don't listen to Daddy. Never listen to him. Listen to me. Daddy can't think right a lot of the time. If he ever hurts you, tell me."

I heard her sniff again. Poor baby...

The rest of her life...well, at least until she turned about twelve...was a wreck...

When she got to be four and a half, I started getting reports that she was moody and not talking to people, other than her best friend May. And, one day...she wouldn't talk to me. She was almost five. It was the summer before she was to start kindergarten. I asked her what was wrong...and her best friend, May...she had died in a car crash caused by some drunk driver.

The report was publicized that night...and the drunk driver had been Nina's father, Rachel's husband, my son in-law. I was furious. I almost went to file a lawsuit against Nina's parents to switch Nina's custody to me, but decided against it. I had been parenting her so far, and I was going to give her real parents one more chance to get it right.

I made the worst decision of my life the next day. I decided that I really would let her parents try to get it right, and I left her on her own...with them...for a week. About three days in, I got a phone call from Rachel. She was forcing me out of Nina's life for good, because she had just found out about how I had signed Nina up for preschool. She thought that I had just been taking Nina to my house, or out to other places, for the time she was gone every day. That night, I cried and cried. I had lost my baby daughter, the one who I was trying to raise right and the one who I had already screwed up.

Finally, when the night before the first day of school came around (about three weeks later), I sneaked back into Rachel's condo at almost midnight. I wasn't questioned; I never was. Within five minutes, I was in Rachel's condo, heading to the supply closet where Nina's bed was, and had been, since Rachel's husband moved in. I lifted her tiny form from the small bed and cradled her in my arms. She was very heavy, no longer my little baby. That thought brought tears to my eyes. My eyes rested on her face, and I suddenly noticed that her nose was slightly crooked and she had a bruise on her neck...anger boiled up in me. She hadn't gone anywhere over the last few weeks. She had been stuck in the house. The only way she could have gotten hurt was her father, or even her mother. Her eyes blinked open as I sat on the couch, stroking her short light brown hair. The whites of her eyes were red, and I assumed that she had cried herself to sleep. As soon as she registered that it was me on the couch, she sat up and threw her arms around my neck, crying.

"Mama and daddy hurt me," she sobbed into my shoulder. "You told me to tell you if they ever did...and now..." A fresh round of sobs began. I rubbed her back soothingly, though I was brimming with anger myself.

"Ssshhhhh...it's okay, Nina...I'll always be here for you...I'm never going to hurt you...you're going to start school tomorrow...your birthday..." I stopped dead in my tracks while I was talking. "Oh, my gosh, I forgot your birthday...I'm so sorry, Nins...we'll celebrate after school, tomorrow, okay? You're enrolled in extended school services, which means your mom thinks you stay at school late every day. I'll take you out after school tomorrow, okay?"

Nina sniffed and nodded into my chest. I pulled her closer and rested my head on hers. What had my daughter done to my granddaughter...?

It only got worse from there. Nina stopped talking, even to me. She would get in trouble every day after school...the song kept on popping up, and, when she was almost twelve years old, after seven long years of schooling, I could come up with almost a scrapbook that went with the song...it was very sad for me to see my granddaughter fail...it was a reflection of my parenting, and it always had been.

One day, I just began to sing, secretly watching Nina's PE class as I had done almost every day...it may seem creepy, but I just cared so much about her and I wanted to find out what was wrong.

"Made a wrong turn, once or twice." In the first grade was when it all began...Nina was sent to the principal for hurting a young boy who had been harassing her because her mother was only twenty-two, and he knew that she was a mistake. That was the day she stopped talking to me.

"Dug my way out; blood and fire." Then she began wearing dark makeup, around third grade, and walking to school from her condo three miles away because she didn't want to take the bus. At recess, all she would do was sit in the corner of the far end of the playground, where no one went, and watch as everyone had all the fun they wanted, ignoring the girl who needed them most.

"Bad decisions; that's alright." I wasn't mad at her at all. As she got to fourth grade, her mother tried to parent her more than before...I overheard one of their fights as I was sneaking out of the condo in the early morning of one of Nina's worse days. Nina's mother was worried that Nina was turning emo, or goth, or whatever the word was. Nina didn't use the defense that she wasn't, but she didn't want anything to do with her mother and her mother's fashion choices.

"Welcome to my silly life. Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood." Nina stopped paying attention in classes. She would come out to the playground with scissors on hand and scars on her arms. She had dyed her hair black with permanent dye. She and her mother weren't on speaking terms. She wasn't on speaking terms with anyone.

"Miss "no way, it's all good". It didn't slow me down." I saw through her cover of makeup and lies. I knew that she was almost always sporting a black eye or a cut lip, and that underneath her shirt were swollen bruises up her belly and chest from her father's physical abuse.

"Mistaken, always second guessing." The guidance counselor approached her one day at recess. It broke my heart to see Nina's cover of lies keep her out of trouble once again. I knew that makeup was covering the scars on her face, arms, and various parts of her body.

"Underestimated, look, I'm still around." Then came fifth grade...Nina began to develop sexually at that point. Not very much, but enough for her father to take notice. And enough for me to take notice that her father had taken notice. Every recess, instead of just staring at the other kids on the playground, she would stare blankly at her knees, completely lost. One night, I was going to sneak into the condo when I heard something...her father, telling her to stay quiet and to not tell anyone.

"Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel, like you're less than fuckin' perfect." I sang the profanity because I knew that the song didn't mean as much without it. Nina was being sexually abused and possibly raped by her father almost every night, and I guess I was a bad grandmother for not telling anyone. I didn't want to interfere anymore. Nina's failure hurt me. I loved her, but I hated myself for not loving her enough to fix the situation she was in.

"Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel, like you're nothing, you're fuckin' perfect to me." Rachel began going back to school. She had quit her night job and started night school, taking a daytime job, leaving Nina either at school or alone with her father at all times. That thought scared me. I knew she needed someone to talk to, but I didn't think I was that person. One day, I saw that she had run out of makeup...the teacher whisked her off to the principal's office.

"You're so mean when you talk about yourself. You are wrong." I overheard the principal screaming at her from my spot right outside school grounds. I winced as I heard Nina's hoarse voice reply with, "It was an accident. I fell and hurt myself on the corner of my bed last night. No one did this to me!" I knew she was lying.

"Change the voices in your head. Make them like you instead." By sixth grade, she was resorting to wearing almost all of her makeup at once, ditching classes to harm herself with a blade, and I swear I caught her smuggling drugs in her backpack. She needed relief from that nightmare, and I was helpless. I should have done something the first time her parents abused her, almost six years ago...

"So complicated. Look how big you'll make it." I also noticed that Nina was hardly bringing anything to school. Her backpack was tiny. She wouldn't wear her PE clothes, and she wasn't bringing lunch and her parents sure weren't giving her any money to eat. After all, she was a mistake...

"Filled with so much hatred... Such a tired game." I flashed back to my elementary school years. I had looked up ways to relieve stress on the Internet when I was young. One thing had popped up, and it seemed to be the right choice. And that's how my life became exactly how Nina's was.

"It's enough. I've done all I can think of." I got out of it, of course, but that was later...I realized that I had no future doing what I was, and...I made myself quit. Nina didn't have that kind of willpower. My beautiful granddaughter, who I had vowed to protect, was...completely different.

"Chased down all my demons. See you do the same." I decided to count how many things were wrong with her one day. Her hair was black and straightened. Her eyes were dark purple due to contacts and she wore heavy black eyeliner, mascara, and eyeshadow. Her lips were blood red and her face looked swollen yet flawless. A thin layer of skin colored makeup covered scars up and down both of her arms. Her breasts were swollen from constant abuse. She was so skinny you could count her ribs. She was doing drugs. She was completely gone. Thirteen differences...

"Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel, like you're less than, fuckin' perfect." I decided to confront her that day, after school. "Nina..." I whispered from the side of the road as she left the school, stopping singing as soon as I caught sight of her, though the song continued in my head.

"Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel, like you're nothing, you're fuckin' perfect to me." "Gran. Why the hell are you here?" she demanded. I flinched at her cursing. "I'm sorry..." I whispered, tears falling down my face. She walked over to me.

"The world stares while I swallow my fear; the only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer." I gently reached out to touch her face, and she almost screamed. "I'm sorry!" I responded, alarmed.

"So cool in lying and we try, try, try, but we try too hard, it's a waste of my time." That's when she started crying. Her makeup slowly ran off her face and she buried her face in her hands. I pulled out a tissue and she took it gladly, wiping all the remaining makeup from her face.

"Done looking for critics, 'cuz they're everywhere. They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair." She looked worse than I expected. Both of her eyes were bruised and there were cuts on her lips and cheeks. At that moment, she completely collapsed. "Nina!" I screamed.

"Change ourselves, and we do it all the time. Why do we do that?" A girl with dark brown hair and glasses ran over to us, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. Within five minutes, an ambulance was at the school, and we were surrounded by at least one hundred middle school-age students. The paramedics shooed them away, and they took my poor Nina away, to the ambulance.

"Why did I do that? Why did I do that...?" I held Nina's hand in the ambulance. She was immediately hooked up to several machines, and she was hardly breathing on her own. Her heartbeat was slow and faltering from malnutrition and she was losing blood from where she hit her head on the sidewalk after she collapsed.

"Ohhhhhh! Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel, like you're less than, fuckin' perfect." I continued mouthing the words to my poor little Nina. Eventually, the paramedic spoke up and said that she was suffering from anorexia, and that she was traumatized from everything that had happened to her. Seeing me had apparently set it all off.

"Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel, like you're nothing, you're fuckin' perfect to me." She said that the trauma was probably a result of physical and sexual abuse. I hung my head, ashamed that I hadn't reported it before... I spoke up. "It was her father...I know it was."

"You're perfect; you're perfect." The paramedic gave me a startled look. "Well, unless she confirms it..." "She will. As soon as she wakes up." I stroked my poor granddaughter's face. I knew what had to be done.

"Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel, like you're less than, fuckin' perfect." And that's how, six months later, Nina was in counseling for drug abuse, her anorexia, and trauma recovery, and her parents were both in jail, her father facing a lifetime sentence and her mother an accomplice. Nina was officially my adopted child. And that was how it should have been.

"Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel, like you're nothing, you are perfect to me." After three years of counseling, Nina was finally back to normal. She returned home from the care facility she had been staying in, and as soon as she got to my doorstep I embraced her, burying my head in her shoulder. When I looked up, I smiled. Her hair was a mess, but it was blonde and curly again. Her face was tired and her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but her skin wasn't harmed. The scars were a faint white on her arms, and she was a normal weight. "You are perfect," I whispered to her. All I got in return was a faint smile, and the best granddaughter a forty six year old could ask for. And that's all I ever wanted.

A/N: Well, what do you think? My thoughts are that Nina couldn't handle being in America any longer after suffering all that abuse, so she applied for a scholarship at the school she now attends. And I know that her life couldn't have been that bad without anyone knowing, but I was over dramatizing it to emphasize how it looked from her gran's point of view.