All About Amy (part 6)

Breaking my life in to segments is taking longer then I thought it would, so today we are going to catch up to the present, buckle up.

After S left our life things were quiet for a bit, we finally had a little time to adjust to being a couple and having a kid. Things were going well, but we had a baby and 2 dogs. Our place was small and we decided it was time to upgrade. After looking around for awhile, we found a 5 bedroom house that was rent to own and only needed minor repairs that Rekoh and I had the skills to repair ourselves. It was also just a mear 2 blocks from a large playground that would be perfect for having a child. Best of all? We could afford it! We had everything arranged, the owner just wanted us to come see it in person before we finalized everything.

Before we could set the date to go see the house we got a call from my mother. She had gotten herself addicted to heroine. But she wanted to get off it and she needed my help, plus she’d love the chance to meet her grandson.

After discussing things with Rekoh we decided the right thing to do was to try to help my mother. She said her apartment was small but my family could have her room until we got our own, which she assured us wouldn’t take long because she was in good with the management of the building.

So, we canceled our purchase of the 5 bedroom house and moved to New Jersey.

It didn’t take very long for things to start going wrong, the first thing that happened was the management told us we would have to get rid of our dogs if we wanted to get an apartment there. Don’t forget that the one we had hand raised from the day he was born. But, we took them to a shelter.

Not too long after that my mother got high again. She even brought a junkie she just met home with her. I gave her a piece of my mind about bringing that shit around my son who wasn’t even 1 yet. And told the junkie to leave. Well as you’d expect from a junkie, she refused. So I attempted to escort her out. She tried to attack me, which gave Rekoh all the reason he needed to drag her out by her hair. She made some noise outside for a bit, I refused to let my mother go outside or answer the junkie. It would just encourage her to stay longer. After she left my mother cried and apologized and said it would never happen again.

Rekoh and I retreated to our room with our son. We needed to be away from her for awhile. About an hour passed, we had just started to relax after everything that just happened.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

We open our bedroom door to find a police officer standing on the other side. “Can I talk to you folks a minute?”

So we told the officer everything that happened, and how we were only here in the first place because she asked us for help with her addiction. The officers informed us that she had accused Rekoh of threatning to kill her husband along with a bunch of other crap. The officer said he could tell that my mother was high but what it boiled down to was that she felt unsafe and we were not on the lease so we had to leave. They gave us a week, and told us that we didn’t want to be raising our son around her anyway.

We were gone in 2 days.

I had found a room-for-rent back in Maryland and Rekoh had friends in the area he could stay with until we worked something else out. Well as fortune would have it this go turned out a little better then that. When my soon to be landlord was showing me the room I had agreed to rent, he inquired as to why we were living separately if we were a family. So we told him our story. He then asked if he could show us something.

He took us down the alley to the back of the house, through and unassuming white door on a plain  brick wall, followed by a long basement-like hallway and another door. We were telephoned somewhere quite unexpected. It was the basement of the house and what used to be a garage. But it had been completely transformed into a 1 bedroom  apartment with a huge living room and a kitchen / dining. The living room had a fireplace, and the kitchen part of the kitchen dining combo was big enough to have 5 people working on something different without anyone being in anyone else’s way. The dining room table could probably seat 7 to ten. The bedroom fit our king size bed, our sons crib and 2 dressers. It also had 3 large closets and an on suite with a large sunken tub in the center, heat lighting, his and her sinks, an extra long counter and extra storage space. There was a powder room off the living room, and an extra full bathroom in the back off the kitchen.

The place was amazing, and to this day I miss it. Anyway, the landlord (who we will call R from now on) said if we wanted we could have this apartment, it was connected to the house, we were still welcome in the common areas upstairs and had full access to both the front and back yards. Everything is included, we’d even get free cable and internet. The only thing is since it was much bigger then the room I had come to rent it was going to be more expensive. We told him  we could only afford to give him the lesser price for the first month, we had used the rest of our money getting here. But after that we could afford his requested price. He agreed. So we had ourselves an amazing new apartment.

Shortly after getting settled, we celebrated our sons first birthday.

We’ve now been together for 3 years. We’ve gone through some tough stuff but we are still together. For about an year, things continue and we are good. Then R runs into some trouble with his house, it has a history I can get into another time if anyone is interested. But we try to help R do what’s needed to keep his house, and our apartment. We help him in the yard, help get a few things up to code. We give him extra money to help cover the bills to keep everything on for everyone. All of a sudden things turn strange. R isn’t nice to us anymore. Any time we talk to him he gets rude. So we avoid the yards and we avoid the upstairs. When my son wants to play outside I take him out in the alley. A little time passes in this fashion until one day we hear R on the roof, our cable goes out. He said he couldn’t afford to keep it on. I venture into the yard at night, looking through the window from a distance I can see the front rooms tv is on. R had just disconnected our cable. A week or so later R trys to tell us the internet will be shut off at the end of the month. We’ve seen the truth now. All the while we were trying to help we were being used. The net might get shut off, but it will only be for us. So we decide to leave. Who wants to live in such a hostile place anyway.

Rekoh’s  mother found a place for us. So we decide to move back, luckily we had just gotten Rekoh’s tax return. We pack up our lives again and head out. After a very long drive, we finally get where we were going. So we call Rekoh’s mom. No answer. We find somewhere to park. Still no answer. We call up his mom’s friend, she’s at home we can come over. After sitting with her for a few hours Rekoh’s mom finally shows up. We tell her we’re tired. Where is our house so we can pay the landlord and move in? Turns out she never even had it set up. We have nowhere to go. We try to buy a car, we can live in it for a month or two. The guy never shows up. We are out of daylight.  We have to give the usual back or pay a retarded amount of money. So we rent a storage unit. Now we have our stuff in a storage unit, no wheels and no home. We find the blankets. We sleep on the floor of the storage unit. The next day we wake early. We go get some food and come back to the unit. No where else to go. We get a hold of Rekoh’s ex father in law. He lives an hour away, we can stay at his house for a few days but he does that have enough room to keep us longer then that. After the truck and the storage unit, we don’t have much left for a first month and security. We can’t find anything we can afford. We start looking for a motel, at least it’ll be a place to sleep for a few nights. We find one we can keep our dog at (he used to be R’s) turns out if we rent for the month it’s pretty cheap. We have a roof. A tv. There’s a microwave and running water. It’s better than the storage unit. We tell the management we might be stuck here for awhile. That’s fine as long as we pay every month.

Rekoh’s dad makes a few trips to the storage unit. We get all of the important stuff. But he can’t help get the rest, it’s a long trip and he can’t afford it. We used the last of our money to get the room. I’d still get money next month but after paying to keep the room we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for the storage unit. So we lost the rest of our stuff.

Now that things are stable, I think about how I got sick on the long drive. I don’t get car sick, and it felt a lot like….Oh. My. God. I’m pregnant. A pregnancy test confirms it.  I’m stuck in a motel room with a dog a 2 year old and my husband and I’m pregnant. Life is just freakin great.

Dad takes us grocery shopping. I have a mini fridge and a microwave. We buy a hotplate. Now I can cook just about anything. My life gave me that skill. The people in the room next to us are Dads friends. Sometimes they grill outside. They invite us to join. Our son has grown fond of them. They find a house. The had a mini oven that they used while here, they gave it to us. Makes cooking a lot easier.

More time passes. I pester the management, tell her I’m more then willing to help out. She’s worried because I’m pregnant. Some more time passes, on March 29th I wake up feeling unwell. My belly is cramping, i have to poop. I feel like I want to throw up. I try to poo. I am unsuccessful. I get back in bed. Rekoh is gone, he left early to help his dad. I try to rest, my son behaves. The cramping persists. Eventually I wonder if I’m in labor. I was induced with Jj. So I don’t know what it feels like. I spend the next 2 hours trying to time the cramps to see if they are contractions. They are erratic and irregular. When Rekoh and his dad return, I ask him to take me to the hospital.

They hook me up to a machine. It tells them what I already know. My cramps are erratic. It’s probably just Braxton hicks. But since they are strong, they want to do a pelvic exam just to be sure. I’m 5cm dilated. By this time it’s around 9pm, dad has to work in the morning. I tell Rekoh to take Jj home. He’s too young to spend that much time here and we don’t have any food if he gets hungry. So we say our good byes.

I stay hooked up to the machines. After a few hours nothing changes. They decide to go ahead and break my water.  If I thought it hurt before…oh boy. I had to tough it out until the anastegoligist was free. He set the epidural, it didn’t work. He tried to redo it. It worked a tiny bit. But i still had to grind my teeth through the contractions.

Eventually everything was ready and I had my daughter on March 30th 2015.

It’s been almost a year since then, sometimes I’m amazed that I made it through everything I did.  My children, tho both unexpected at hard times, are my pride and joy. I would go through it  all again just to have them, and I hope one day when they look back on their lives, they will remember their childhood with fondness.