Of course I couldn’t find him the night Catrina was born.  I knew he had a living situation very similar to the one I had in Sandusky.  He boarded with his uncle’s elderly cousin.  She was a sweet old lady.  I had visited her a few times with Trey and a few times on my own.  She knew I was pregnant with his child and tried talking sense to him about responsibility and the consequences of whoring around, but she generally had no idea where he was.

Catrina was born early on a Monday morning.  I remember, because Mom had been in church all day Sunday and was pretty tired when I woke her up that night.  I had stopped going to church about a month before.  I didn’t have anything dressy in my maternity collection, and I couldn’t wear dress shoes.  Besides, the thought of wearing panty hose during one of the hottest summers on record didn’t appeal to me at all.  I spent most of my days sitting in from of the fan.  I would only run errands after sundown.  It was a good thing that a couple of the major grocery store chains had started staying open twenty-four hours a day.

I remember that, on Sunday night, my water had broken just after I went to bed, at around 11:30.  I was almost asleep when I felt warm water gushing all over the bed.  I got up and tip toed down the hall to Mom’s room.  “Mom,” I said softly through the closed door.  “I think my water just broke.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Nope.”

“Well just go and lay back down.  I’ll call the doctor.”

After mom called the doctor, she tried to reach Trey.  No luck. From my room, I could hear her on the living room phone.  “Well, you tell him Candi’s getting ready to have this baby.  She’ll be at Grant Hospital.”

Mom came back to my room.  “He’s not at home,” she told me. 

I just shrugged and lay there in my bed thinking that I should be in more pain than I was.  I wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t home, even though it was Sunday and he had to be at work at 7:00 in the morning.  I had never seen someone who could run the streets twenty-four/seven and hold down a job.