I slept in that car for three weeks.

I showered at the YMCA on Ridgeway. I signed up for a free trial membership with a fake email. The woman at the desk looked at my belly and didn’t ask questions. I think she knew.

I ate from the Dollar Tree. Canned fruit. Peanut butter crackers. Those little cups of applesauce. I counted every dollar. $23 does not go far. I found a church that did free meals on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I sat in the back and left before anyone could ask me questions.

I washed my clothes in the YMCA bathroom sink. I hung them over the back seat to dry. My car smelled like wet fabric and peanut butter. That smell still makes me sick.

My mother lived twenty minutes away. She was in her house. With her Bible. With her air conditioning. With a guest room that had clean sheets and a ceiling fan. Twenty minutes away.

She didn’t call. Not once.

I went into labor on a Tuesday morning. August 12, 2019. I was in the back seat of the Civic trying to sleep because my back was killing me, and then I felt it. I drove myself to Regional One Health. It took fourteen minutes. I ran two red lights.

I walked into the ER alone. No partner. No mother. No friend. No one. A triage nurse took one look at me and put me in a wheelchair.

I was in labor for eleven hours. A nurse named Sheila stayed with me for the last two. She wasn’t assigned to me. She was finishing someone else’s chart and she heard me crying and she came in and she held my hand and she stayed. I didn’t even know her last name until I saw it on her badge. Sheila Watkins.

Jaylen was born at 9:47 PM. Six pounds eleven ounces. All his fingers. All his toes. A full head of black hair. He cried and I cried and Sheila cried and a doctor I’d met four hours earlier cut the cord and that was my son’s welcome to the world.