Devoted Love, On 40 Acres Book Sale

                                               CHAPTER 1

                                           Forever, My Love

     The best thing in life is finding someone who knows all your flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses, and still thinks you’re completely amazing.”

—Unknown Author

Buddy was known as a lover, not a fighter, but when he had to, he could take care of himself. He was born with a cleft palate. The deformity could not be repaired because his Mom had no extra money for hospital bills. One day, in school, as Buddy walked across the gym, some guy flicked his hand in front of his nose as if to get rid of a bad smell. He looked at Buddy with a sneer and said, “Hey, where ya going, Hare-lip.”

Buddy turned around, rushed back to the guy, and without a word, he picked him up and threw him through a plate-glass window.

Buddy spun away in a huff, stomped up the stairs, and never looked back. The boy was taken to the hospital and stitched up, but he never bothered Buddy again.

“I know you called him Buddy,” people said, “but what was his real name?”

Yes, Buddy was his real name. He was born in 1937 into a family of twelve children and raised in the hollers of West Virginia. His Dad was killed in a coal mining accident when Buddy was only five months old. His Mother raised her twelve kids by herself. She told me that when Buddy was a little boy, and he got mad at her, he would go into the bedroom and turn up the corner of the quilt on her freshly made bed. And, when he was sick, the only thing he could eat was radishes.

Buddy was the youngest of twelve siblings, and I was the oldest of five.

Buddy was a man who didn’t speak much, but when he did, he meant it. In all the years we were married, Buddy never raised his voice to me, well, except for that one time that broke my heart. And that’s all I’m going to say…for now.

At the time I met Buddy, I had been married to another man, named Tom, for almost four years. Tom and I looked forward to having our first baby. I finally got pregnant and was overjoyed. But the joy soon turned to sorrow. I woke up in the middle of the night when I was only eight weeks pregnant, and fear clutched my heart.

“Hey, Tom, wake up,” I said, “I’m hemorrhaging, and I need to get to the hospital.”

“Oh, go back to sleep,” he said, “You’ll be okay in the morning.”

But I wasn’t okay, even after we rushed to the emergency, and neither was our first baby.

“Sometimes these things happen,” the doctor said, “but you’re young. Just try again.”

So, we tried again. I got pregnant and carried that baby for almost three months. When I started spotting and cramping, the same thing happened; I lost our second baby. I worried that I might never have the baby I dreamed about.

“You’re young and healthy,” the doctor said, “just try again.”

So, I got pregnant for the third time. They say the third time is the charm, but on Christmas Eve, when I was in my last month of pregnancy, I had a terrible fright. We were at my brother Ronnie’s house celebrating Christmas Eve. Ronnie had had a bit too much to drink, and he slurred his words as he talked to Tom,

“Hey, Tom,” he said, “I forgot to get my wife a Christmas card. I’m in no shape to drive now. Could you take my car, run up to the drugstore, and pick one out for her?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

We didn’t have a car, even though we were making payments on four different vehicles. Tom wrecked them all, and the insurance company had totaled each one.

Ronnie reached into his pocket, grabbed his keys, and handed them to Tom. Then he opened another bottle of beer, threw the cap across the room, and took a big swig.

I grabbed my coat and headed out the door with Tom.

I usually rode along because I never considered him a decent driver. So many times I had to yell “Look out,” to prevent him from hitting someone, but when I did,

He always yelled at me, “Okay, I saw him!”

But I knew his eyesight was not the best as he looked through his extra-thick glasses.

It had been snowing hard all that day. I sat in the car freezing as I pulled my coat tighter around my swollen stomach. It won’t be long now, little one.

The windshield was covered in snow and ice so that you couldn’t see a thing. Tom took his hankie and cleared a small spot in the middle of the window.

“Aren’t you going to clear the windshield?” I asked him.

     “No,” he said, “I can see.”

Then off we went, with him leaning over and peeking through a small hole in the windshield. I couldn’t see a thing on my side, and I was afraid that he couldn’t see much more when all of a sudden, BAM!

Something slammed into my back, taking my breath away. It turned out that Tom had hit a parked car alongside the road. We found out later that someone had broken down just a few minutes earlier. He had been under his hood, working on his car, but he had left to get a part.

After I got my breath back, I started crying. I was so worried about my baby.

Tom looked at me and said, “What are you bawling about? I got hurt too. I hit my chin on the steering wheel, but I’m not crying.”

Someone called for help, and the police came. An officer walked around to my side, looked at my bulging belly, and said, “How far apart are your pains?”

“I’m not in labor,” I told him.

An ambulance pulled in. Tom jumped out of the car and yelled at the driver,

“How much is this ambulance going to cost me?”

The officer walked around, looked at Tom pacing, and said in a rough voice,

“You get right back in that car and stay with your wife until I tell you to get out.”

The paramedic approached me, questioned me, helped me into the ambulance, and headed for the hospital. I hadn’t felt any movement, and I was terrified.

After the doctor examined me, he said, “Your baby’s fine. It probably thought you just fell off a horse or something.”

My back hurt quite severely, but I was okay as long as my baby was fine. We called for a ride back to Ronnie’s and found him passed out on the bathroom floor. Tom shook him awake, told him what happened, and that his car was totaled.

“Aw, that’s okay,” he said, “as long as you’re both alright.”

Only a few days later, I went into labor. I thought I was having back labor. But I found out later that Ronnie had a five-gallon gas can in his back seat, and the heavy can had slammed into my back. I had two broken ribs.

Finally, after over 36 hours, we were blessed with a precious little girl. The baby I had longed for filled my empty arms and my heart. She was born with Clubfoot, but that was something a specialist could easily fix. We named her Tonya. We chose the name because the first part sounded like ‘Tom,’ and the second half was my name. Then we discovered a town called Tonawanda in New York.

I affectionately called her my little “Tiny Tears.” When I was a young girl, the only thing I ever wanted for Christmas was a little doll that cried real tears named “Tiny Tears.” I never received that doll. Then, when I had my first baby, Mom came to the hospital to visit and meet her new granddaughter.

She took my little girl in her arms and said, “Now, Wanda, you have your very own real ‘Tiny Tears.”

When I placed our little girl in her Daddy’s arms, he cried.

But only nine months after Tonya was born, I was the one who cried when I learned about the things Tom had been caught doing. I knew that, under the law, I could leave him for those very reasons. Although it broke my heart to go, I knew that I could not stay with a man who would do something so despicable. The day I discovered what he had been doing would have been our 4th anniversary. I made plans to move out after Tom left for work. The only one I knew who had a truck was Buddy, so I called on him for help. He came right over, didn’t ask any questions, and moved my baby girl and me out, bag and baggage, to a small, cheap, two-room apartment upstairs in Flint, Michigan. The only bathroom was down the hall, and we had to share it with the older couple in the next apartment. Tonya and I survived on a small monthly income and food stamps.

What began as a friendship, two-and-a-half years later, had turned into love.

Buddy was easy-going, calm, loving, short, cute, and cuddly – my life, my rock, my confidant, my loving arms after a rough day. We shared love, laughter, tears, pain, and the blessings and burdens of life. He played guitar and sang love songs to me. One of my favorites was “Teddy Bear,” by Elvis Presley.

Initially, we had been shopping for a set of rings. The set I had picked was too expensive, so I returned the rings to the clerk.

I whispered to Buddy, “We’ll look somewhere else later.”

But the next day, after he got off work, he surprised me and bought the set I had loved at the jewelry store. He came home, got down on one knee, and said,

“I love you, sweetheart. Will you marry me?” Tears filled my eyes as I hugged his neck and said, “Yes.”

We were willing to try marriage again. However, according to statistics, our marriage was doomed to failure because we had both been previously married. Plus, there was another problem, a BIG problem.

We were both still married to others, although we hadn’t been with them for years.

Although Buddy’s divorce was in process, mine had not even begun. Buddy was paying child support, and I only had enough money to survive on, but never any extra money to file for a divorce.

Another thing that filled me with guilt. We were living together. I wasn’t that kind of girl—at least not until we fell in love. The shame of sleeping together outside of marriage tore me apart. I vowed to stop several times, but my promises faded in his arms; I couldn’t say no for long. During that time, I became pregnant twice, but I lost them both again, through early miscarriages. I was so thankful that I still had my precious little “Tiny Tears.”

I hated to take Tonya away from her real Dad, but it’s not only blood that makes a good Dad; it’s love, too. Buddy loved her and treated her as if she were his own, and I wouldn’t have accepted it any other way. She loved him dearly, and his pet name for her was “Skeeter.” They were great together. He taught her to love animals, not to be fearful of the dark, and how to ride a pony. She was not afraid of anything in her Daddy’s arms. She felt safe. I couldn’t have been happier.

My previous husband, Tom, was way behind on his child support. He claimed that he couldn’t pay because he had no money or job.

Buddy came home one day with an announcement.

“Hey, Sweetheart, guess who I saw working at the plant today? I thought I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure, so I followed him. And, sure enough, it was Tom, pushing a cart around and working at General Motors.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, it was him, big as life. I was careful that he didn’t see me.”

The next day, I went to the Friend of the Court and told them that Tom had a job. An order was issued, forcing him to pay his child support. They would allow him to pay his back pay in small increments. Then he became angry, so he took me to court, claiming I had refused to give him his rights to take Tonya on the weekends. Although I would have liked to, I never denied him his rights. Tonya never wanted to go with him, and on the rare occasions he showed up, she complained that he had dropped her off at a babysitter and gone out with his girlfriend. There was never anything at his house that she liked to eat. One day, he fixed her scrambled eggs, but she didn’t want them, so when he wasn’t looking, she went over and threw them behind the couch. We found out later that she was allergic to eggs.

So I came up with a plan. Tom was due to come and take Tonya for the weekend, but it was a toss-up whether he would follow through.  Sometimes he left his little girl waiting on the porch with a suitcase and never showed up. It had been about a month since we had last seen him. I put on a maternity dress, then stuffed it with padding until I looked about 8 months pregnant. I thought Tom would know I wasn’t about to deliver after only seeing me a month before, but he didn’t. The minute he saw me, he started yelling,

“You’re not going to blame that kid on me!! You’re not getting one red cent out of me!! I’ll take you to court!!”

He took off in a huff, leaving his little girl behind. I found out later that he went straight to his lawyer and filed for divorce. I felt guilty, but my plan worked. Although I wanted a divorce, God used Tom to give me my wonderful daughter, for which I will be forever grateful.

Now we just had to wait for our divorces to become final so we could get married.