I looked over at my sister, but she just shrugged. She couldn’t tell me it was going to be fine because for weeks she’d been describing the miracle of her childbirth. It sounded like the worst X-rated horror movie ever made: “Rabbit, for real, it feels like your insides is being ripped out . . . like you got an alien in there and it’s tryna to kill you . . . when the doctor cuts you down there to let the baby head out you won’t even feel it cuz you already gonna be in so much pain . . . and you know you gonna shit yourself, right? Yep, you gonna doo-doo right on top of your little baby’s head. . . .”
“You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about,” Mama said again. “You don’t need me tonight.”
I turned away from her to face the wall, trying not to cry. I was so mad at myself for begging her to come with me. I should have known Mama would never say yes. If there is one lesson she’d taught me in life it was not to ask her for shit: not food, or clothes, or to comb my hair. But I had been fooled, because lately things had been different.
Ever since school let out for the summer, Mama and I had been together from dawn till dusk, sitting in that hot-ass efficiency watching all her shows: The Price Is Right, The Young and the Restless, and As the World Turns. One day she looked at me and said, “Girl, you big as a house! That’s just how I was when I was pregnant with you.” She even put her hand on my belly and felt the baby kick. It was the closest we’d ever been. If felt like we were bonded. Like she was gonna be there for me, for real.
Instead all she said was “No use in both of us going to the hospital,” as the ambulance men lifted up the stretcher and carried me out the door.
Outside, I felt the night air against my face. I closed my eyes and promised myself that I would never ever ever EVER ask Mama for shit again as long as I lived. I gripped my belly and squeezed my eyes shut to keep the tears from falling. When I opened them again, I was inside the back of the ambulance.
I looked around and was startled to see, on the bench against the wall, a balding, middle-aged man wearing dirty sneakers with no laces. He had a bandaged right shoulder and his faded T-shirt was ripped and covered in blood.
“Who the fuck are you?” I said. I tried to sit up, but I was strapped to the stretcher. “What the hell?”
“Miss,” said the chubby ambulance man. “I’m gonna need you to calm down.”
“But who is he?” I pointed at the man covered in blood.
“Well, miss, as I previously informed you, we were tending to this gentleman and his injuries when we got the call about a woman giving birth. Now if you just lay back down, we’re gonna take the two of you directly to the hospital.”
I turned to the bleeding man. “What happened to you?”
“Nigga cut me,” he answered, with a shrug of his good shoulder. I could smell the liquor coming off him like he’d been swimming in a vat of Granddaddy’s moonshine. He looked from my face to my belly. “You pregnant?” he asked. “Or is you just fat?”
“What it look like?” I said, suddenly irritated. “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M HAVING A GOTDAMN BABY?”
“Okay, okay, okay . . .” He put up his hand like he was stopping traffic. Then he leaned back and stared at me like he was trying to get his eyes to focus.
“Now, miss,” he said, pointing his finger in the air. “Let me tell you somethin’. Babies are a gotdamn blessing, ya heard me? I got four children of my own: Rodney, Samuel, Joseph Jr., and Joleen, my little baby girl. She ’bout three, maybe four months old. Can’t be no more than six months. Maybe a year, give or take. Hell, it don’t matter! That baby is the prettiest little baby you ever seen. I enjoy the shit outta them kids. So I just want to say congratulations to you, miss!” He swept up his arm like he was holding a Bumpy Face bottle and making a toast. “Congratulations!”
“I mean that,” he added. “It’s a gotdamn beautiful thing.”
Just then another contraction hit. I grabbed my belly and moaned, “Ohhhhhhh . . .”
“Now that shit gotta hurt,” said the drunk after it passed. “You ain’t got nobody ridin’ with you to the hospital?”
“No.”
“You want to hold my hand?”
“Nope.”
“All right then. Good luck.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Chapter 12
Baby Formula
My daughter was born at 1:07 p.m. on August 9, 1986, weighing eight pounds, fifteen ounces, with big brown eyes and a full head of hair. “You so pretty,” I whispered when the nurse placed her in my arms. I named her Ashley, after the beautiful Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless, who was having an affair with an older, married man, just like me. Ashley Abbott and I had almost the exact same life problems. The only difference was her married man was Victor Newman, the billionaire owner of the worldwide cosmetic and real estate conglomerate Newman Enterprises, while mine worked the fryer at Fish Supreme.
Derrick didn’t have Victor Newman money. But that didn’t stop me from having big dreams about the life of luxury I wanted for our baby. Most of my fantasies involved white-lacquer furniture. The kind I’d see when I went with Mama to Carson’s, a buy-now-pay-later furniture store where Mama was paying off her nineteen-inch color TV.
Every month, rain or shine, as soon as she cashed her welfare check, Mama would get in the Pink Panther and drive over to Carson’s with her ten dollars in hand. Mama might fall behind on the rent, the electric, or the gas, but there was no way she was gonna miss a payment and let Carson’s repo her TV. While she argued with the cashier about how much she still owed, I’d wander over to the Baby Room to take a look at floor displays of the most beautiful furniture I’d ever seen.
I had my eye on a shiny white crib that came with a matching dresser. I’d run my hand along the rail and imagine my baby luxuriating in that crib, dressed in a pink Adidas tracksuit with a pink baby bow around her head and tiny British Knights tennis shoes that I’d clean with a toothbrush. To me, Carson’s Baby Room represented everything good in life: a clean home, nice things, a mama who cares. It reminded me of sitting at Granddaddy’s bar, my eyes glued to his black-and-white set, watching Leave It to Beaver, my favorite show. I noticed every little detail in that TV house, from the checkerboard curtains in the kitchen window to the way everybody was always smiling and nobody ever got mad.
I didn’t know how I was going to get a Leave It to Beaver life for my baby, but I knew it’s what I wanted. I could see it clear as day: Me, Derrick, and our little girl, smiling in our home full of gleaming white furniture. I imagined it so much it felt like it was real.
Mr. John brought Mama and Sweetie to visit me the afternoon Ashley was born. The next day Derrick showed up. I’d only seen him a handful of times since the morning he kicked me out of his car for saving his ass from jail. But this was the day I’d been dreaming of, when he’d come back and the three of us would be a family.
My heart pounded with excitement as I watched Derrick take our baby in his arms, grinning like a fool. He insisted Ashley looked just like him. “She got her daddy’s eyes!” he exclaimed. He stared at her for a good twenty minutes. Then he got bored and handed her back to me. “I gotta bounce,” he said.
“But you’ll come back tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be back.”
I took a breath and started pulling myself out of the hospital bed, careful of the stitches in my cooch.
“Where you going?” Derrick asked.
“To walk you to the elevator.”