My Family: Chapter 53

I  stayed with Aunt Wanda while she lived in Logan, before she moved to Man. This one time she became pregnant while having two boyfriends. Pearl, her live in fella, was still with her but he would often leave then he would write to say he was coming home. The day he showed up, her other boyfriend would stop coming around until Pearl left.

Aunt Wanda working in  a Greyhound Bus Station

 in Col, Ohio

I spent almost the whole nine months with Aunt Wanda because with her being pregnant we couldn’t hitch-hike into Man to see Aunt Hannah and her dance hall. Aunt Hannah wouldn’t come and get me.

The night Aunt Wanda went into labor, she asked me several times if I thought she was in labor and I would yell at her how should I know. I’d never been around someone who was in labor. See, Aunt Wanda had no labor pains and all she wanted to do was sit on the commode. I hadn’t been with her when she gave birth to her son, Spanky. I came to her house when he was a couple days old. So, I asked her how she knew she was in labor with him and she told me she hadn’t; eventually her oldest son had called a cab and sent her to the hospital.  I thought this was a good idea, I would do the same thing because I wasn’t going to deliver this baby like her oldest had to deliver his sister when he was twelve. I sent him to call a cab. When the cab came, I helped her get in and I sent her to the hospital by herself and told her what to name the baby if it was a boy.

She said later the cab driver helped her into the hospital because she nearly had her 4th son on the front steps. She was home in two days because she was a welfare case. Her other boyfriend came to Logan to see his baby, but Wanda told him it wasn’t his that it was Pearl’s baby. They’ve argued the whole nine months over rather this was his baby or not - him for and her against. The other boyfriend got so angry he went all the way to Man and came back with his baby picture just to prove they looked like twins. She still said the baby was Pearl’s.

After I had moved away and had came back for a visit, I asked her who really was the baby’s father - she just looked at me and grin. Of course, I knew her other boyfriend was the father. Many years later, when the other boyfriend died in North Caroline, his son's brought him back to West Virginia to be buried along side His Parents.Wanda is buried behind her second son.