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boys. Four-year-old Peter was the oldest. Little Sammy just finished potty training, and Willie Jr. was still on the bottle. All of these children had different fathers. Petey and Sammy’s dads were locked up, doing big time for dope pedaling. Willie’s father found himself on the wrong side of a .44 Magnum two days before his son was born.
    Trisha was unemployed and unmotivated to do anything to better her position. She was the woman Rilla said Candace should go to with her baby-rearing questions. She would also have helpful information on getting doctor visits and government aid. Candace never thought she’d be in need of such help, but, unless she called her parents, that was the only help she was likely to get.
    Trisha thought she should man up and bite the bullet. “It’s gonna have to be done sooner or later.”
    “Who says it has to be done?”
    They sat in Trisha’s living room, each girl with a baby in her arms. Candace held Little Sammy. He was too old to be running around topless, but such was the case. He was also too old to get toted around, but the two-year-old had a thing for Candace. Whenever she visited, he managed to get in her lap within minutes.
    At one o’clock in the afternoon, Trisha still wore a nightgown and robe. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but the roots were fuzzy and unkempt. She was dark-skinned with a red tint, the color of mahogany. She had large eyes, a pudgy nose, and thick lips. Candace didn’t think she was attractive, but at least three guys felt differently.
    Trisha breastfed Willie Jr. openly. Her boob was huge. The baby gobbled on her nipple so hard that Candace’s were starting to hurt.
    “ I say you gotta call them,” Trisha said. “That’s they grandbaby. You know they’ll help if they know you’re pregnant.”
    “They didn’t sound like they wanted to help last time I talked them,” Candace reported.
    “When was that?”
    “I only talked to them once, when I first got here.”
    “What’d they say?”
    “I talked to my mom first. She was crying, trying to get me to go home, but then my dad took the phone and started talking crazy. He’s not even my real dad. He’s my stepdad.”
    “What’d he say?” Trisha asked.
    “He said I was stupid. I was disgracing the family. He said if this is the life I wanted to live, then so be it. Don’t ask them for shit.”
    “You’ve been gone a while,” Trisha noted.
    “Almost eight months,” Candace confirmed.
    “Yo daddy said that long time ago, girl. You need to call them back. I’m telling you, it’ll be different now.”
    “Why?”
    “Cause they miss you more. Especially if they knew you were pregnant.”
    “I don’t know,” Candace said. “I wanted to call and talk to them when things were good. So I could tell them I was doing all right. I don’t want to call with problems.”
    “Why?”
    “Cause they gonna say, ‘ I told you so .’ I don’t want to hear that.”
    “You don’t want to raise a baby by yourself, either.”
    “I’m not by myself. Rilla’s happy about it.”
    “You finally told him?”
    “Yeah, this morning. He was excited.”
    “Girl, all men is like that. They be like, ‘ Ooh, I can’t wait till you have my baby, my little Raul .’ ”
    Candace laughed. “That’s exactly what he said.”
    “I already know. This boy’s daddy,” Trisha patted Willie Jr. on the head, “he called everybody he knew to tell them I was pregnant. And this was two in the morning.”
    “Rilla didn’t do all that,” Candace said.
    “Did you tell him about CC?” Trisha asked.
    Besides Candace and CC (and whoever else he might have told), Trisha was the only one who knew about the CC connection.
    “No,” Candace said. “And I sure as hell can’t tell him now. You should have seen how happy he was.”
    “You shoulda told him when it first happened,” Trisha said. In retrospect, that probably would have been the best course of action, but hindsight is 20/20. “Do you