It was never really a choice.
I stayed.
I worked whatever shifts I could get. Warehouse by night, food delivery by day. I stacked boxes, drove in snowstorms, and picked up every extra shift I could because diapers and formula weren’t cheap.
But rent also needed to be paid.
I learned how to ration groceries so that a $30 cart could last through the week. I became good at applying for programs and finding secondhand clothes that looked new.
I gave up my teenage years to become someone’s anchor.
I stayed.
I learned how to warm bottles at 3 a.m. with shaking hands. How to bounce one baby on my hip while the other screamed herself hoarse.
People kept telling me to let the system handle it. But I couldn’t stand the thought of my half-sisters growing up in some stranger’s house, wondering why no one fought for them.
The girls started calling me “Bubba” before they ever said “brother.” It stuck. Even their preschool teachers used it.
I learned how to warm bottles at 3 a.m….
I’d carry them around the grocery store, one in each arm, and people would whisper behind me like I was some cautionary tale.
But none of that mattered when they curled up on my chest during movie nights or drew stick-figure pictures of “me, my sister, Bubba, and our house” as if we were the luckiest family in the world.
They’d fall asleep on my chest, and I’d vow to myself: they will never feel abandoned.
I’d carry them around the grocery store…
For a while, I even believed that we were going to be okay, that we’d made it through the worst part.
And then — seven years later — Lorraine came back!
I remember it so clearly. It was a Thursday. We’d just gotten back from school when there was a knock on the door. I wiped my hands on my jeans and opened it without thinking.
At first, I didn’t recognize her.
And then my stomach dropped.
Lorraine came back!
Lorraine used to look like she’d barely survived a storm — unwashed hair, cracked lips, thrift-store jackets. But the stranger wearing my mother’s face at my door? She looked polished.
Her coat was designer, makeup flawless, jewelry on point, and her shoes probably cost more than a month’s rent!
My mom tilted her chin as if smelling something bad and barely made eye contact.
“Nathan,” she said, like she wasn’t even sure it was my name.
She looked polished.
But then she heard the girls’ voices down the hall, and her whole demeanor shifted.
She softened. Her lips curled into a fake smile. Her voice became sweet with fake warmth, and she pulled out shopping bags from a luxury store I’d only ever seen in YouTube vlogs.
