They turned out well. All six. That is not down to me alone — Dot, and my mother while she lasted, and four separate teachers I could name — but I was there, and I was there every day, and that is the entire biography.
Three things from those fifteen years, since “I raised them alone” is four words covering a lot of ground.
The first is the schedule, which I ran for nine years and which nearly killed me twice. Nights at Pilcher, five in the evening to five in the morning. Home at five-twenty. Breakfast, braids, three separate bus stops. Dot’s car in the drive at seven-forty. Sleep from six-thirty to two. Up, laundry, the little ones home at three, homework, dinner at four-fifteen, out the door at four-forty.
I fell asleep at a red light on Fennimore Road in the November of 2014 and woke up because somebody behind me leaned on a horn. I have never told my daughters that and if they read this it will be the first they hear of it.
The second is the money.
There was no support order that was ever collected on. There was a judgment. It sat there.
We were on the program for reduced lunches for eleven years. In 2016 the water was shut off for two days and I told the girls the town was working on the line, and Willa believed me and Junia did not.
Every one of those six girls has worked since she was fifteen and not one of them was asked to. That is not a thing I am proud of, exactly. It is just what happened in that house.
