Page 96 of Coast

Then that was what I did.

I got them all up in the morning. Made them brush their teeth and helped manage their hair. I picked out clothes for school, then made sure everyone ate breakfast.

“What about the toddler?” Zoe asked, snapping me out of the memory of those chaotic, scary, overwhelming first days. “When you were in school, what about the toddler?”

“At first, I thought I could trust my parents to at least watch him for a few hours. I mean, as fucked up as they were, they did manage to keep me alive as a toddler.”

“But?”

“But after the first week, I came home to find the baby beet red in the face, snotty, belly growling, and with a fucking terrible diaper rash. I didn’t know what that even was at first. But I knew it hurt when I tried to change his diaper. It wasn’t until his brother got home and said there was ‘butt cream’ to fix it that I found the cream, looked up the product online, and understood what it was from.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. So then, it was clear I couldn’t trust my parents all day with the baby.”

“Did you drop out?”

“No. I mean, eventually, yes. But not then. I didn’t think it was an option. So I made sure the baby was changed and fed and set up in the playpen with lots of toys and the TV going. Then I’d go to school, sit through some classes and then play hooky with others, so I could go home and check on the baby. Then I went back and snuck back in.”

I was surprised how well it actually worked. Teachers occasionally remarked that I was absent a lot, but I managed to keep my grades up enough that no one could complain. And I tried never to skip the same classes more than once a week.

“Eventually, summer came. And I at least didn’t have to try to juggle school on top of parenting three littles.”

“That’s way too much to ask a kid to do.”

“Yeah, well, my parents were dicks. Took advantage of how little I knew about child welfare. They had me convinced that I might go to juvie if the littles weren’t taken care of right.”

“Wow. That’s just… wow.”

It turned out that the kids were doing pretty well, though. Because all inspections turned out fine. The kids stayed on.

“Then, at about three in the morning after I’d been up all night with a teething toddler, there was a knock on the door.”

“More kids?”

“More kids.”

“How old?”

“Four. And a newborn.”

“Oh, my God.”

“My mother cooed over the baby, loving all over it, listening to the spiel from the child services lady. Then, the second the door closed, shoved the newborn at me and went out back to smoke weed.”

Luckily, at that point, I had been doing a lot of research in my free time about babies. So while I’d only been taking care of a toddler at that point, I’d come across information about newborns—shit like supporting their heads, and their weird-ass belly button falling off. So I felt prepared.

“I was so fucking unprepared,” I admitted, glancing down at Lil’ Bit, but seeing a different baby this time. One that was completely reliant on a much younger me who felt like he was doing everything right, but the baby never stopped screaming.

“Luckily, the one thing my parentsdidhave to do was show their faces at doctor visits. Especially with a newborn who needed vaccines and shit. I went with my mom and told the doctor about all the crying and other issues. Found out the baby needed to be on soy formula.”

“I’m not paying for that fancy shit,” my mother had said in the car when I’d asked her to stop at the store to pick some up.

“I’m having such a hard time imagining someone being so cruel to a baby,” Zoe said.

“To this day, she’s the most selfish person I’ve ever met.”

“What’d you do?”

---