Fifteen

It wasn't too long after we moved into the second sardine can of a two bedroom trailer that I found out I was pregnant. I hadn't planned on having any more kids, but it didn't hit me nearly as hard as the second time I found out I was pregnant. Thankfully, I was still working during the six weeks he was laid up with his broken leg. That's the only way we were able to survive and just barely. We were without a car because of the wreck and I had to have my mama take me everywhere I needed to go. It wasn't until a couple of months later that we bought another vehicle. This time, it was a tiny Mitsubishi truck with barely enough room for my daughter's car seat and the gear shift. This truck also ended up totalled in a wreck, but alcohol was not a factor.

My daughter seemed happy and content. She was about four years old at the time. That's when she still liked The Evil Bastard. At least that part was going as planned because, after all, she was the reason I had married Satan. I never told her to call him 'Daddy', even though we moved in together shortly before she turned three. I wasn't sure it was going to work out and I didn't want her to be attached to him. So I let things take their own course and figured she'd call him whatever she felt like. I didn't realize until years later that the fact that she never did call him 'Daddy' spoke volumes about our home life.

This became another bone of contention between us. He said it's my fault she never called him 'Daddy' because I never told her to. 'Daddy' is a title you earn, it's not given. He still resents her for this, considering all he's done for her. She wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire. This has forced me to be in the middle and the tension is almost unbearable when they are in the same room.

Even though we were still in a 'happier, more bearable' time in our lives as a family, I was still apprehensive about having another baby with things the way they were. I felt like he was going to alienate my daughter and show favoritism toward 'ours'. I was very adamant that that was not going to happen. I absolutely was not going to stand for it. He might have only one child, but I had two. If they couldn't be treated the same, they wouldn't be treated at all. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about in that aspect. The Evil Bastard never did show favoritism. There was never any 'She's yours' or anything like that in the relationship, even after my second daughter was born. They were treated equally and I was pleased.

We moved into yet another sardine can of a two bedroom trailer in the middle of the Texas sweltering summer. I was 7 months pregnant at the time. This last sardine can was to be home for a lot longer than the others had been. It was very nice compared to the other ones, too. We were moving up in the world- sort of. They say you don't know what goes on behind closed doors. Well, 'they' were right.