Nine months of painful pregnancy ended - September until June. My child inside me gave me rippling feelings, as I lay down in bed. I cried because I felt that my family wouldn't support me, and sure enough they didn't, though they told people they were trying to. My child's father had gone to prison, and had not introduced me to his family. I was wondering how I would get to the hospital to have the baby, and I called a Born Again Christian who had given me his number, but then said he was seldom at home. So what good did that do me? I was too upset to ask my parents for a ride, because I felt my mother would have been yelling at me and criticizing me all the way to the hospital.

When my water broke in the early morning hour of June 30, 1986, I was staying in a halfway house so I could get some support. Some support, one girl said when I was sitting alone with sad eyes, "What are you doin' havin' the child of a rapist - what kind of a woman are you?" And my physical and mental pain increased. When I told the staff I had to go to the hospital, I pleaded with him to get a male resident out of bed so he could take me, but he muttered, "I don't wanna wake up Howard. I just think you should take a cab." So I called a cab from the halfway house office, and then I went in to my room to get dressed. The staff person knocked on the door while I was still half-dressed and said sharply,"Hey, ya cab's he-uh!" I finished dressing and went out the door crying as I got into the cab, I hadn't wanted to go with a stranger, I needed someone I knew who would be like taking the place of the child's father.

I was given an "A" for delivery by the doctor, I hadn't cried or screamed during delivery, and when my son was born, he had no red on his face as most new-born infants do, although he had some amniotic drops left over around his face from my womb. He was crying lustily when he first went into the doctor's hands, then when they laid him on my breast, he immediately stopped crying and looked at me as if to say, "I'd like to know you. What are you all about?" with his little rosebud mouth. I said, "William David," and I gave him his first kiss. My little June bug.