I thought it would be easy, of course I was only barely twenty-three and still had yet to learn about true hardship. I mean, I loved Tony with all my heart and, having been the oldest of six daughters, I knew all about how to take care of a child. I was pretty sure I knew everything about child-rearing…we would just give them a roof over their heads and feed them and hug them and tell them to “just say no” to all the bad stuff, and then they would turn out perfectly, yes? They will grow up to be self-sufficient, respectable, responsible adults…and this will all be because we made a real difference in their disadvantaged lives, right?
As their approach made it’s way directly to us, I reached out and gave each one a hug. They were shy (and had probably never been hugged by a white person before). They were smaller than I thought they would and should be, that surprised me. Rex carried in his young hands our boombox that Tony had taken out for them when he visited Mississippi a few months prior. Daniel carried one, single suitcase, small enough to be considered carry-on luggage but apparently big enough to contain both boys worldly (and moldy and stinky) possessions. Both the boombox and the suitcase would soon prove to have been large enough to transport many others from the dirty place they came, as evidenced by the troops of cockroaches that would eventually crawl out to explore our tiny apartment as though it were the last frontier.
The apartment…we were so proud of our little, two bedroom apartment. Even though it was small, it was clean and well put together and I knew it was much more than what they had just come from. I was anxious to make a difference in the lives of my little brothers-in-law, but I was even more excited to prove to the love of my life that I was, indeed, the Bonnie to his Clyde…and so began our family…Tony, Donna, Rex, and Daniel.
