Left for Garbage

that her brother used to come into her room at night when she was in middle school, and he would stare at her. She said once she woke up and saw him sitting on the floor staring at her with a flashlight in his hand pointed a t her breasts. She also told me when she told her mom about it, Mrs. Brown had called her a whore.
    I was completely shocked, I can tell you. I asked her if she’d ever told her dad, and she started crying even harder and said, “No, I didn’t waste my time. He hates me, Bobby. He used to hit me all the time, so he’d probably blame me, too, the same way my mom did.”
    I felt horrible for her. If anything, it made me love her more. I felt so protective of her and that’s why it was really hard w hen the baby was born in August and my dad told me I had to get a paternity test. I mean, I knew by then that the baby couldn’t be mine. Deeley was a full-term baby, she wasn’t premature, and Denise and I hadn’t even hooked up in that way until January. But by then I didn’t want the test because Denise had just given birth, and she’d shared all this really horrible stuff with me about her family, and I knew asking for the test would hurt her.
    It did, too. She begged me not to have the test but all the time there was my dad breathing down my neck, and what could I say to him? I surely couldn’t say, “No, Dad, I’m not going to have the test because I already know that it’s not my baby, so what’s the point?”
    Not only would he have thought Denise was a whore , which by his standards she is, I guess, but he would have thought I was a pussy … pardon me for using that word. I should have said he would have thought I was a weak vessel, and besides I’m used to obeying him, so I had the test and it proved what I already knew: Deeley wasn’t mine.
    But by then it didn’t matter. I’d fallen in love with her , and I was totally in love with Denise, so for the first time in my life I stood up to my dad. I reminded him that forgiveness was the hallmark of our faith, and I guess maybe he was proud of me, for, you know, standing up for the girl I loved and for our faith, because after that he never said another word.
    In the end none of it mattered , though. Denise called off our engagement that December on her MySpace account. She never did tell me why. I heard later she said it was because I loved Deeley more than her. I don’t know if she really felt like that or if it was just something to say. By then I had started to realize Denise and the truth were strangers.
    But she was right when she said I loved that little girl, because I really did. I even ended up babysitting for her after Leanne, Deeley’s first babysitter, quit. My dad hated that and made me stop after a month. He said I was pathetic , and he was right, I was. I know he was right but, see, it wasn’t just Deeley I loved. No matter what Denise thought, it was her too, Denise I mean. I still loved her. I still wanted her back, and babysitting Deeley was a way to stay close to both of them.
    I know I sound like a total loser but she really did keep giving me a lot of hope that we could fix things and get back together. I know now she only called me up between other guys, but I didn’t know then. I thought, you kno w, because to me it was special - our being together, I mean - well, I thought it was special to her, too. It wasn’t, of course. I’m just a chump, but every time she called and every time she let me be with her, I thought we were back together. I was still seeing her off-and-on pretty much right till the end there.
    She called me two days after she moved out of her house. By then I had my own apartment and she came by and we were together, and afterward she cried again. And, stupid me, I held her and asked what was wrong. She told me she still loved me so much but didn’t know if we could ever work because she was afraid she was going to turn out just like her mom.
    I wanted to lighten things up a little, so I said something like, “You mean , kind of mean? Because I can deal with that.”
    She said real seriously, “No, it’s a lot worse than that, Bobby. My mom is crazy. The reason I had to take Deeley and leave the house is because my mother tried to choke me to death on Father’s Day. I left the next morning and I’m afraid to go back. I think she’s insane and I’m so scared it’s in me, too.”
    Well , I was shocked. I mean, choking ? That’s pretty extreme. So, I told her that she and