The last time she saw her baby's daddy

The automobile comes to a halt behind the house and Brad wakes her up to inform her she is home. He says to her adieu, suddenly his sister and he laughs as if this is funny. She gets out of the car and stares as they disappear, she runs into the house, the one she calls the hell hole.  Denise is 7 months pregnant and 15 years old, nevertheless lives at home. Her mom preferred her to have an abortion, but she wouldn't have anything to do with that. She loved Brad and they were planning to raise the baby together, she thought.  He had other plans he hadn’t shared with her.

 Denise is working for a family of 5 by taking care of 3 children and cleaning their house, 50 hours a week. She bought a baby crib, high chair and redone them to look new. Denise bought baby clothes, bottles, diapers, she was going to name her Christine Marie if a girl and Bradley Jay if it was a boy.

She didn't know that the day Brad dropped her off at home was going to be the last day she was going to see or hear from him again. He never even kissed her goodbye. The only thing she remembers from that day was the laughter coming from the car as they drove away.

In September she started homeschooling, because of her condition, this was in 1971 pregnant girls didn't go to public school and her family was too poor to send her away to one of those boarding schools the well to do families send their daughters, who got in trouble.

By now she realizes that Brad was never going to be there for the baby and her, so she decided to give the baby up for adoption. The baby would have a better life than she could give it. Denise did not want the baby to grow up in the hell hole she was living in.

Two weeks before the baby came, Denise stayed with her sister Warnita and her husband Don. When she went into labor on Oct 29th they drove her to the hospital in Ann Arbor Michigan. They dropped her off at the emergency door and went back home. Denise was left by herself to have her baby. The nurses were nice enough, but she was scared and alone with no mother or sister to ensure her it was going to be OK. The hospital gave her a shot called twilight sleep/painkiller, she would dose in and out of sleep. In the morning when it was the time they took her to the delivery room and the anesthesiologist gave her a shot in her spine. She remembers sitting up and could feel her baby's head as if she was sitting on it. The man that gave her the shot yelled at her to stop whining it was going to be alright. Denise knew nothing so far was alright. She was 15, having a baby she wasn't taking home with her, no one cared about her and alone.

Later that day a nun brought Denise, her baby to hold and another nun shows up and says to her she isn't supposed to get her baby, she is giving it up. So, they let her hold her for a little while then took her from her.  That was the only time she held her baby. The nuns told Denise she would sleepwalk in the middle of the night. Going to the nursery window staring at the babies with tears slowing flowing down her cheeks softly crying.

 When Denise left the hospital, she went back home to her parents' house and her father was making her life hell, so she tried to commit suicide.  Now her older sisters stepped in because there was just too much animosity between her and her father, they were afraid that someone was going to get hurt.

Denise went and stayed with her sister Gerry and her husband Jack, they had 3 children.