Where do I even begin with this story?

I guess I’ll start here….
A lady in the trailer court where I lived with my aunt was looking for a babysitter. She was a single mom with two young boys — a cocktail waitress working till wee hours of the morning.
I was a high school kid looking to get away from my family my boyfriend at the time — and pretty much everything in my life. It was a recipe for disaster. She wasn’t that much older than me in retrospect; however, at the time, it seemed like we were a lifetime apart.

She was a teen mom who married the father of her child and later her second child. He cheated, she was angry and she set some of his things on fire. She actually set his underpants on fire and applied them to his back. At least that’s the story she told me. They were both so cruel. Both so focused on their own lives, and the boys seemed lost.

I stayed there four to five nights a week —sometimes more. I would cook the boil-in-bag meals she had in the freezer for them after school. I was responsible for them completely. I made sure Bobby was ready for football practice, and that he did his chores. Timmy would pick out his own mismatched clothes. I made sure they were bathed, teeth brushed and in their beds at night. I got them — and myself — off to school every day.

The boys I babysat were sweet boys. The older challenged me at every turn, but he was a good soul. “Mel please do my dishes” (while wearing his football helmet & uniform). “I’ll pay you,” he said. My reply was first of all, you have no money and second, your mom said you have to do them and then get your ass off to football practice.

They played Brass in Pocket by the Pretenders (a 45 on the record player) over and over. To this day, I can’t hear that song without being transported back to that time and that place. It’s the very reason I’m writing this.

They almost always needed lunch money or milk money or both. They knocked on their moms bedroom door but she would have the door locked. She was asleep or passed out, and most of the time, with a man. I did my best to shield them. 
I gave them money for milk for lunch. Their mother never paid me back. In fact, she rarely paid me the wages I was owed. They would call their mom Mel and then catch themselves, “I mean mom.”

I loved those boys, and I try to remember that I myself was a kid too.

After I put them to bed my friends and I smoked pot sometimes. And sometimes we drank.
The day when Bobby locked himself in the bathroom to get high, I was freaked. He was 10 maybe 12? My friend and I picked the lock to find him high AF in the bathtub. I screamed at him — he only laughed. He had a sunny disposition and always made me laugh. I could never stay angry at them for long.

I stopped sitting for them after graduation I think — maybe before. Their mom wanted me to move in, but I was ready to move on. I had been saddled with so much responsibility so young that I needed to move on even though I knew I’d miss them.

Some years later after I was married, while reading the newspaper, I saw that Bobby had died in a house fire. He had fallen asleep while smoking.
If only I had been a better example….
His mom never came to his funeral. She had moved out of state and Bobby was living with his dad.

I try to remind myself that I was a kid too, and yet, I still sometimes carry the weight of his death. I’m no longer sure it’s my weight to carry.
I somehow found a way to show up for those boys every day. We clung to one another. I knew the feeling of not being seen or loved, and I know they knew that feeling too. We did our best, all of us kids. We did our best to love one another in spite of and through our brokenness.