Chapter 1 #2
To cope I found myself turning into a party girl with no direction in life.
All I did was drink, smoke and shake my ass.
I had nothing going for myself but my looks.
Of course, Sonni took care of all my needs, I got whatever I wanted as long as I stayed quiet and did whatever Sonni said.
He honestly liked me when I wasn’t sober because I didn't care about anything and I loved to fuck.
Sonni would basically encourage me to not be shit. It was his way of keeping me in line.
When I got pregnant with Sunshyne, I saw my pregnancy as another shackle that chained me tighter to Sonnie.
During my entire pregnancy I was deeply depressed, I didn’t want this baby, but when I looked into my baby girl's eyes I knew she was going to be the light in my life, which is why I named her Sunshyne. For a while Sonni turned back to the man I loved, and he made me believe he’d changed.
I found myself falling back in love with him and I didn’t care about anything besides our little family.
When he asked me to marry him, I said yes.
I thought it was going to be the family I always dreamed of.
I owed it to my baby girl to try to give her a two parent home.
I wanted to give her the life I always wanted.
I started encouraging Sonni to get out the streets because clearly, they weren't for him. By this point he’d gotten robbed so many times his brothers were side eyeing him.
They’d basically demoted him and Sonni was pissed.
We got married right away; we’d been together for four years now.
There wasn't any point in waiting, we’d seen the good, bad, and ugly of each other.
Our first year of marriage was good, then the old Sonni reappeared like he never left.
I was at a point where I wanted to better myself, I had a daughter who was looking up to me.
I started going to trade school to become a dental assistant.
Sonni didn’t like that and he made sure I knew he didn’t support me.
He saw me going to school as a way of gaining my own independence from him.
He hated the thought of me not needing him.
He tried to sabotage me going to school every day.
One day he brought Sunshyne up to my school and left her.
I was so embarrassed but that was my breaking point.
I was so fed up with Sonni and his bullshit I took our daughter and left.
Instead of going to my mom’s I went to a hotel.
I paid for my room for a month until I could come up with a game plan.
I didn't have much saved and the majority of our clothes were still at the house we shared with Sonni. A few days later, I guess Sonni was looking for me when he pulled up to a light, and three other cars boxed him in. According to his parents he was too distracted with trying to find me, he didn’t notice the cars.
They robbed and killed Sonni that night, but I never fully believed that story because the police found a wad of 100’s sitting in his passenger seat untouched.
That didn’t stop me from being blamed by his mother.
Let her tell it If I would have stayed home Sonni wouldn’t have been looking for me and he would still be alive.
Even my mom blamed me in so many words and although I wanted my freedom from Sonni, I didn’t want him dead.
I did still have love for him, and I was very sad about him losing his life.
I probably wasn’t as sad as I could have been but that still didn’t give anyone the right to blame me for Sonni’s death.
His brothers were the only ones who weren’t blaming me.
They were actually supportive and offered to help me with Sunshyne.
Sonni’s mother hated me so much they tried to bar me from going to his funeral.
It didn’t matter that I was legally his wife, his will left his parents in charge of his estate.
But his brothers weren’t going for that.
Since Pricilla, Sonni’s mom, couldn’t get her way about us not going to the funeral, her sneaky ass decided to leave me and Sunshyne out of Sonni’s obituary.
She only named Gretchen and her three kids, two of them that I had no clue about.
I didn’t even care about not being mentioned, Sonni was far from the ideal husband but to not put Sunshyne was bullshit.
I was so pissed I left his funeral early.
I couldn’t sit there and smile when I was ready to cuss Pricilla’s bitter ass out.
I did end up moving back into my house I shared with Sonni, however that was short lived too.
Sonni had our house in his mom’s name, so she swiftly gave me a thirty day notice.
She didn’t care that she was about to put her grandchild on the streets.
Her hate for me extended to Sunshyne too.
She didn’t stop there, no, she took my cars and removed me from all of Sonni’s bank accounts.
I had no income and with so much stress on my shoulders I dropped out of school.
I couldn’t focus on school if I wanted, I had bigger things to figure out.
One my last night in my house I stumbled across a loose floorboard.
I cried when I found wands of hundred dollar bills neatly organized in five rows.
Paranoid, I took all the money and packed what I could of mine and Sunshyne’s stuff.
Then I left that same night. Getting to a hotel I counted close to 60,000 dollars.
Thankful yet I wasn’t dumb that money wouldn’t last me a year.
Half of it would go to rent and food. With my back against the wall, I started researching cheap living places and cars when I came across skoolies.
I was kind of apprehensive, but I couldn’t beat getting a place to live and car for a little over 30,000.
A week later I started my skoolie journey buying a smaller school bus at an auction.
While staying in the hotel I tirelessly worked to transform my bus into my home.
I did have to hire an Electrician for some of the small electrical stuff.
I wasn’t that handy to play with electricity.
After a month of demanding work, I finished, and I fell in love with my skoolie. I don’t know if it was because I did all the work myself or what, but I knew this was going to be my home for a while.
A lot of people, mainly my mom, didn't understand why I would want to go from living in a luxury home to a skoolie. She called me a fool every time she saw me, and I kept my distance for that reason. I didn’t care as long as me and baby girl had a roof over our heads.
What other choice did I really have at the moment Sonni’s family had turned their backs on Sunshyne, even his brothers didn’t hold up their words.
My mom wasn’t any help either, so I had to do what I had to do.
“What snack do you want mommy to bring you back?” I said pulling into the empty parking lot adjacent to my job.
“Uuuhhh,” Sunshyne tapped her finger on her chin like she was really thinking when we both knew she was going to say the same thing she always did. “A Tweekee,”
“Okay, I’ll be right back don’t open these doors for anybody. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, mama.” I walked over to Sunshyne kissed the top of her kid before I walked off the bus closing the doors.
I worked at Goldie’s Gas, a big gas station chain in Beaumont.
For the time being it kept money in my pocket and away for me to work without worrying about a babysitter.
Daycare was far too expensive, and my mom wanted to charge me just as much as daycare.
With my hands tied I worked overnight at Goldie’s, twenty dollars an hour was hard to come by without a college degree.
I parked my skoolie in the trucking lot next to the gas station.
I had a clear view of my skoolie, and Sunshyne was usually sleep by time I clocked in. We had a system that worked for us.
As much as I loved my skoolie I knew it was time for me to start looking for something more permanent for us.
With Sunshyne getting older she was asking questions and wanting to know why she didn’t have a room of her own and why we didn’t have a house.
I didn’t want too but I had to for my baby girl.
I just didn’t know how I was going to pull this off.
I was debating on going back to school once Sunshyne started kindergarten this coming year.
She’d just turned five last month. I prayed everything would go as I was planning for… Hopefully.