Just before I was born the young man made a decision to take a job selling advertising for a newspaper far from the lovely lady’s hometown. It was puffed up to her big time, like a stuffed turkey, a job of a life time kinda thing. She was scared as I was about to appear. When she got there he’d found them a small apartment and he’d invited his boss or a higher ranked employee and his wife to dinner. During this dinner he was telling lots of puffed up turkey stories and got his own lies crossed, which apparently happened often. The lady was aware that the guests were on to him. He had lied about his age and some previous employers. It ended soon with him losing his job and the two being stuck in Baltimore; they had to stay until my very chaotic entrance to the world. Why chaotic? She had just turned 19, had no family, was scared and had no friends. He was sure I was a boy and I was to be named Christian. I was not a boy. He returned all the blue genderized clothing and returned with pink. I hate pink, but nobody dresses babies in all black now do they?

No money, no job and a newborn wee me, they packed up and drove all the way back to live with the now fraudulent, broke and manic young man’s mother in Nashville. YeeFuckin’haw!

It was embarrassing for the lovely lady who was honest to the core. She took a job at an insurance company and for some time he sold vacuum cleaners door to door. No job lasted more than a month or two. My maternal Grandmother watched me by day so they could work. He drove the lady to work and picked her up each evening in their old car, until one night he didn’t. The beautiful, sad, strong woman waited. He did not come. Person after person left the building, some offering her a ride. He’ll come she had thought. He always had. But he didn’t, and it was cold and she didn’t have money to take a bus. Finally she called her older brother who was home from Vietnam. He came to get her and drove her to get me from my Grandma then went back to the paternal grandmother’s with me. She expected a flat tire, a car accident and maybe worse, was he hurt?

The young man’s mother had a sad and strange look on her face. My mother was now tired, hungry and bewildered with a baby. His mother said he had left and handed her an envelope to open. It read that he and a good friend of his from high school had gone to Mexico and he was in love with someone else. Like that he was gone. “In Love”. In Mexico. He was on a manic run again. Nobody diagnosed guys like him back then properly, he was and is what he is, a fool’s fool. Now, with a baby, no vehicle and feeling uncomfortable staying with the fool’s mother she went to sleep on the sofa of her own mother’s who lived temporarily in subsidized housing and where guests, even family, were not allowed to stay.

Mexico. The asshole was in Mexico. Shit.