He was due on my birthday, September 6, 2008. My birthday came and went. I was so ready to have Brooklyn. I was constipated all the time. It was hot in Ms. Byrd’s 1,100-square-foot two-bedroom, one-floor, one-bathroom apartment. It was so unbearable in the daytime. She had no air-conditioning. Imagine me, eight months pregnant, a hundred degrees in the house, with no money and no man whom I was fighting so hard to have, and still too hardened to go home to Mema’s house.
It was finally time for Brooklyn to arrive. My labor was induced because my fluids were low. Great, I could stay in the hospital for a few days, gather my thoughts, and think of a plan to get my life back. The labor happened fast. Gem came down and brought two friends for support. One was actually my aunt, not the aunt whom I had physically fought with earlier that summer but my aunt who loved me and who had the most in common with me. We called her Smalls. Gem and Smalls held my legs while I pushed. Ms. Byrd recorded a video. We laughed and cried. I pushed shortly. Seven minutes later, Brooklyn arrived.
Brooklyn came into the world happy, healthy, and blue. He had the cutest little face—my face and the face of an angel. I saw him for the first time and without his father but with his paternal grandmother.
“He looks like me,” I said, and I smiled at him. “You are perfect. Thank you.”
The next day, who showed up? None other than he himself. Lyulle had walked out of the Oriana House and was now on the run. He had done it for us. He knew I had wanted him at the baby’s birth, but I tried not to make him feel too bad. It was fucked up in the world, in my life, in my pockets, and definitely in our relationship. I was crushed. I knew nothing of the world in which parents were not present when their children were born. It was unheard of to me. Could this happen to me?
Again, the self-imposed super-trance said to me, “Nah, J, there is just something fluky going on. Everything is still golden,” but everything was far from golden in my reality. I was happy, at least, that he was there for the moment but was salty at the fact that he had been absent. He held the baby up against his tattered, filthy, sweaty T-shirt turned inside out. I was comforted, knowing we were all together, him and Brooklyn and me. That was what family meant to me, that we stuck together no matter what, no matter how tough it was, or no matter how mad I was. I was determined to never give in to whatever I was thinking. I’d stick with Lyulle through it all. After all, it was no more than I can bear, right?
Wrong!
We brought Brooklyn home to Ms. Byrd’s, and Lyulle was back to his antics. I was not okay. Feeling hopeless and worthless, with nothing to offer my new baby boy, I was mortified, humiliated, and stressed out. Lyulle was just as worthless, but I looked to him. He was my hope and my saving grace for my insanity. We kept each other hanging on.
The day after bringing Brooklyn home, the car was repo-ed. Neither of us had worked in months. I was desperate.
Feeling extremely beat down and humbled, I called Gem. “Hi, Gem.”
“Hi, Jericho.”
“How are you?” I asked politely.
“I’m fine.”
“You think Brooklyn and I could come stay with you for a while?”
“Ummmmm, no. I’ll take y’all to a shelter. I can call you a taxi or something but—”
Click. I hung up the phone, and the dial tone I heard next chilled my blood.
What would I do? I was now thinking to myself. I had begun to cry. Lyulle was out of the house. Ms. Byrd walked in and saw me in tears.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Lyulle and I …” The tears were still rolling.
“You are all fighting?” she asked me.
I nodded my head in affirmation, defeated.
She comforted me. “It will all work out.”
I was on the clock though. Time was presumably up for my stay with Ms. Byrd. I was in need of a job and a car and a phone. I was in need. With Lyulle still on the run and he and Ms. Byrd at odds, I was between a rock and a hard place, too hard to make any decisions. I pressed forward though, facing each day.