She sits on her screened-in patio, Fantasia Barrino doesn't seem fazed by the activity around her. Not the two gourmet chefs out back of her new Charlotte, N.C., home grilling steaks, chicken, shrimp and scallops dipped in butter and wrapped in bacon. Not the makeup artist tending to her face, the hairstylist laying her "do, the clothing stylist matching up her clothes, or the award-winning phoriotwearrapher waiting to capture her at her best.

Make no mistake. The 21-year-old American Idol--who received more votes after her four-minute version of Gershwin's "Summertime" than President Bush received after his four-year version of Reagan's compassionate conservatism--was physically there. She acknowledged her mother setting out a large sheet cake for an impromptu birthday party for her brother, Joseph, and felt her 3-year-old daughter, Zion, tug on her leg every few minutes. But as she looked off into the distance, toward the manicured yards of the exclusive golf-course community, her big brown eyes told another story.

Was this the moment when it all began to sink in? Was this the moment when America's newest singing sensation finally realized the extent to which her life had changed? How--after winning last year's national singing competition, and signing a big-dollar recording contract--she was now a household name and one of the most recognizable people in the music industry.

Now she no longer had to eat those 10-cent packets of flavored noodles for lunch, and instant-grits dinners. ("Grits and bacon. Grits and ham. We ate grits every day with different meats.") Now she and her family no longer have endless bills with limited money. ("We've had the candles lit up in the house when the power was off. We've had the stove on when the heat was shut off.") Now she no longer has to run from one bad situation to another, from one mistake to another. ("I did everything you can think of. My life was going downhill fast.")

Was this the moment when she realized that the nightmare that seemed inescapable had indeed ended, and she could finally dream again? Fantasia says that she used to dream when she was a kid, vibrant dreams about singing in front of large groups of people, about all of the adulation that came with fame. "I used to watch people walk down the red carpet and I would say, 'Wow, I wish that was me.'"

But by the time she had dropped out of school in ninth grade, those dreams were distant memories. It wasn't so much the hanging out all night, getting high and trying to fit in with the older kids who pulled her down. But at 16, she was also pregnant and, she says, in an abusive relationship. "I had left home. I left school. I didn't have a job and was living with a man in an old rundown apartment," she says. "I thought I was grown. I didn't wait on anything. I tried to move too fast. I was going to clubs when I was 14. I hung out with older women."

Every time she looked into her daughter's eyes, she says that she wanted to make a change. If not for herself, for her baby. But in small Southern towns, news about bad situations often travels faster than reports of good intentions. "I felt ashamed," she says. "My life was just crazy then; so much was going on. My family started giving up on me. They began to think that I wasn't going to do anything with my life. There was a point when I began to think that I wasn't going to be anything."

When everything else failed, Fantasia says she would laugh her way through the tough times. ("When we didn't have any hot water, we would be like, 'Save me some water. I'll look out for you tomorrow.") But her life had reached such a low point that it was even hard to muster what she calls her "big-ole smile." In fact, Fantasia says if it hadn't been for American Idol and God's grace, "I would have been dead by now. I was singing in the choir on Sunday, but running from the church life the other six days of the week ...," she says. "But I gave God praise through the bad times. Even when I was out on the street, I still gave God honor. I still thanked Him. There's a saying that when praises go up, blessings come down. He heard me cry. I just believe that He had a set time for me to be blessed."

That time is now. For a woman who has always been self-conscious about the way she looked--always thinking that her lips were too big, her mouth too wide, her skin too dark--Fantasia still finds it hard to believe that her life has come full circle and that now she is a star. She always knew she could sing. If she wasn't singing, she was listening to music. She had been around music all of her life, growing up watching her mom and dad, Diane and Joe Barrino, sing duets at weddings. "We would watch them, and around the house we would imitate what they would do. My dad saw us and said, 'Let's start a group.'"

Called The Barrino Family, the group consisted of little Fantasia, her parents, and her two oldest brothers, Joseph Jr. and Ricco. They would sing gospel music in churches, at weddings, at funerals, anywhere they could get hired to sing. The family would drive as far away as Alabama for a singing job. They released two albums and sold them on their own. But their limited success was nothing like the success Fantasia has come to enjoy.

Encouraged by her family and friends to try out for Idol, Fantasia and her family drove down to Atlanta to audition. However, when she got there, the producers of the show weren't allowing anyone else in. "We actually left the building," she says. "My dad told me to go back because you never know what could happen."

Ironically, when she went back, it was a security guard who happened to see her through the window and helped her get in. "He had heard me singing earlier," she says. "We had a long conversation. We just talked and talked. He came to the front door, and asked me if I had auditioned. I said, 'No, they are not letting anyone else in.' He said, 'I got to get you in.' He went and got somebody from Idol, and they got me in. I was one of the last one's to audition."

Although she had never been in a singing competition, Fantasia ran away with the top spot as millions of people voted for the raspy-voiced single mother from High Point, N.C. Almost overnight, she had become the biggest thing to come out of the nation's furniture capital since the advent of the L-shaped sofa.

In the past few months, she has won awards, appeared on talk shows and even has had two shades of lip gloss named after her. Feeling extreme pressure to prove to the world that she is a legitimate R&B singer, she worked day and night on her debut CD. She even says that she couldn't sleep the night before its release. She spent most of the time before the release calling her friends, attempting to get their honest opinion of how well they thought the CD would sell. And in the days that followed, she says she even went so far as to go to her local Target to conduct her own sales investigation. "I looked to see how many CDs they had left," she says. "I went to the cashier, with my hat pulled down, and asked how they were selling."

Turns out, her worries were unwarranted. Her debut album, Free Yourself, has gone platinum. Her first single, "I Believe," immediately went to No. 1, making Fantasia the first artist in the history of Billboard's Hot 100 chart to debut at No. I with her first solo record. And while Free Yourself has done extremely well, she did receive criticism for her song "Baby Mama" from some people who feel that it glorifies single motherhood. "I knew there was going to be controversy, but it's just life," she says. "We are babies' mamas. We are who we are. If you listen to the words, I'm not telling anybody to go out and have a baby. I'm talking about how it ain't easy, how it ain't fun, it's hard and it ain't cute."

She and her daughter live in her Charlotte home with her youngest brother, Xavier, and her parents. She says that she can't imagine living anywhere else. "It's so peaceful here. I'm a Southern girl. I'm country. I like chitlins and pig feet. I talk loud, and I'll take my shoes off in a minute" she says. "I couldn't live in New York City. I would get lost. Somebody would say, 'Meet me on 52nd and 70-something street,' and I wouldn't know which way to go. I love the South. It keeps me grounded."