Most guys I knew just ran away from women with drama, and most of us had it. Didn’t care about anybody but themselves. So many of Ma’s friends and chicks I knew from school were trying to collect child support, but couldn’t find their babies’ daddies in order to serve the papers. And if you were the type of woman who got out and worked rather than collect a welfare check, the child support authorities really didn’t care about you; nothing was coming out of their pockets, so they didn’t care to track down the deadbeat. And even when they finally did find the deadbeats, the guilty offenders only had to pay ten dollars a month or something ridiculous like that—not even worth the effort when you really thought about it. The rest of them were doing or selling drugs, skipping school, and getting us pregnant. The rest of them didn’t love nobody but their mamas. The rest of them probably wouldn’t love me.