A car pulls up a few minutes later with a muffler that rattles, and I know it’s hers. She waves me in, and I open the door and sit down next to her.
“I’ll keep the window open a minute until the cigarette smell gets out of my clothes.”
“No, you don’t have to,” I say as it occurs to me that maybe she needs to go overboard to protect my child for her sake, because of what she went through. “But thank you.”
Brittaney makes the wide turn on the roundabout to leave the hospital’s campus. “So I called my old foster mama in Ferguson, and I’m gonna go see her after I drop you off!”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I say. “When did you live with her?”
“That was while Dione was sick.”
I feel an ache at the way she says the name.
“She took care of me afterward. She was the one who got me to fill out all the paperwork to get the money from my parents’ insurance, ’cause at first I was like, I want nothing to do with anything that has their name on it, you know?”
“Yeah, I kinda do,” I say.
“Oh?” she glances as me as she rolls up the window manually.
“I recently found out that my, uh, baby’s daddy’s father put a bunch of money in his name before he died, so like, legally, the money should be the baby’s. To get it, I’d either have to deal with him or sue him, and part of me doesn’t want to do anything about it.”
“But it’s not your money,” Brittany says, still smacking her gum. “It’s your kid’s money, right? So you gotta think about that.”
“I know,” I say.
“You have to think about the future, even when it feels like there won’t be a future. That’s what Sherry, my foster mama, said to me. You got dreams and shit, Autumn?”
I can’t help my smile.
“Yeah, I got dreams and shit. I want to be a writer,” I say. “I mean, I am a writer. I wrote a novel, and I’ve started editing it, and when I finish, I’m going to look for an agent, then a publisher.”
“No shit? Look at you, girl. Fucking proud of you. But writing doesn’t pay out, does it?”
“No, probably not.”
“Man, I was so glad I had that money when I found out I was pregnant with CiCi—my daughter’s name is Cierra, but nobody calls her that but me when I’m mad—but babies are expensive. Have you read The Hip Mama Survival Guide?”
“Uh, no?”
“Okay, so that’s, like, required reading for you, okay? What’s her fucking name… mermaid politician? Ariel Gore, that’s it! Read it. You need it.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.” I wasn’t expecting a book recommendation from her, and it’s a pleasant surprise.
“I’ll be getting off the highway soon. What street are you on?”
I give her directions to my house （“No way! I used to get drunk at the creek by your house!”）， and we settle into a surprisingly comfortable silence.
I look out the window at the splendor of the season I was named for.
“You should try not to stress about the ultrasound,” Brittaney offers.
“Most of the time, this baby doesn’t even feel real,” I admit to the fall colors outside the window. “But when it does, then it hurts, because I can’t think about this baby without thinking about Finny and how he died and how someday, somehow this baby will di—”
I realize what I’m saying and start to apologize, but Brittaney is nodding.
“Being scared for the kid is a big part of the job.”
“How do you live with it?” I’m asking about so many things.
“I don’t know,” Brittaney says. “I guess the reason I don’t break down scared that something will happen to CiCi is because if I did, who would be her mama? Like, maybe she deserves better than me, but I’m the only mother she’s got. I guess if me and my girlfriend get married someday, she’d have two mamas, but you know what I mean. Right now, CiCi needs me to make sure that she’s clean and fed and knows she’s loved, so I can’t lose my shit.”
“Clean, fed, loved,” I repeat. A puzzle piece feels like it’s falling into place for me.
“Yeah, those three things are, like, ninety percent of the job. They’re also the only things you’ll be able to control. The world’s gonna fuck with your kid no matter what. All you can do is teach ’em to brush their teeth and love themselves.”