Child support existed on paper and nowhere else.
It never did.
I was too busy learning how to hold three lives together with two hands.
The divorce took six months.
Child support existed on paper and nowhere else. My wife had found a way to completely dodge all of my requests for payment.
I worked days at a warehouse and nights doing inventory for a distributor, but I did not do it alone. My brother took whatever shifts with the girls he could. Mrs. Alvarez downstairs watched them two nights a week and refused to let me pay her what she deserved.
Blindness frightened me at first because I did not know what kind of world I could build for them.
Pride does not warm bottles. Pride does not buy diapers.
So I let people help, and I kept moving.
I learned which daughter liked being bounced, which one calmed down to humming, and which one needed a hand resting over her stomach to settle.
