Just never for us.
My brothers were only six months old—always crying, always hungry, always sick.
Diane said babies cried “for attention.”
Uncle Ray complained formula was too expensive and told me to “stop acting like their mother.”
But I was their mother.
At least in every way that mattered.
I learned how to warm bottles, rock two babies at once, and tell the difference between a hunger cry and a fever cry.
I slept on a thin mat in the laundry room so I could hear them at night.
If they coughed, I woke up.
If they whimpered, I ran.
No one asked me to.
I just knew—if I didn’t take care of them, no one would.
