Three Car Seats Outside My Door

At 5:30 in the morning, somebody started pounding on my apartment door.

Not knocking. Pounding.

I was twenty-seven, single, and working opening shifts at a building supply store in Columbus, Ohio. At that hour, I assumed somebody had the wrong apartment.

Then I opened the door.

There were three infant car seats lined up against the wall.

Three baby girls were strapped inside them.

For several seconds, I just stood there barefoot in an old Ohio State T-shirt, staring at three nearly identical little faces.

One was crying.

One was kicking both legs.

The third was awake but quiet, looking straight at me.

Beside them sat a diaper bag, two plastic grocery bags, a half-empty container of formula, and a folded piece of paper.

I recognized my brother Ryan’s handwriting before I picked it up.

The note was written on the back of a gas-station receipt.

Andrew,

I can’t do this.

I thought I could after Valerie died. I can’t.

They’re better off with you.

I’m sorry.

Ryan.

I read it twice.

Then I looked down at Chloe, Rachel, and Sophie.

They were six months old.

Their mother had been dead for eleven days.

“Ryan?”

I stepped into the hallway.

“Ryan!”

Nothing.

I ran to the stairwell and looked down toward the parking lot.

His car was gone.

Behind me, one of the babies started screaming.

Then another joined her.

I went back inside, picked up my phone, and called Ryan.

Straight to voicemail.

Again.

Voicemail.

“Ryan, call me. Right now.”

I looked at the three car seats.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

The quiet baby kept staring at me.

That was Sophie.

I didn’t know it then, but twenty-two years later, I would still remember exactly how she looked that morning.

“You Can’t Keep Three Babies Here”

My mother arrived forty minutes later.

My older sister, Patricia, came right behind her.

By then, my apartment looked like somebody had shaken a daycare upside down.

I had put Chloe on my bed because she wouldn’t stop crying. Rachel needed changing. Sophie had spit formula down the front of my shirt.

My mother walked through the door and covered her mouth.

“Oh, my God.”

Patricia picked up the receipt.

She read it silently.

Then she looked at me.

“Call the county.”

“I called Ryan.”

“Not Ryan. Child protective services.”

My mother sat beside Chloe.

“Maybe he’s coming back.”

Patricia shook her head.

“Mom, he left three six-month-old babies outside an apartment at five in the morning.”

She turned toward me.

“Andrew, you cannot do this.”

I was trying to figure out how much formula went into a bottle.

“I’m not doing anything. He just left them here.”

“Then call somebody who knows what to do.”

She wasn’t being cruel.

That’s important.

Patricia had two children of her own. She knew what one baby cost.

She looked around my one-bedroom apartment. There was a sagging couch, a small kitchen table, my guitar in the corner, and maybe four hundred dollars in my checking account.

“You work hourly,” she said. “Who’s watching them when you’re at work?”

I didn’t answer.

“Where are they going to sleep?”

I kept measuring formula.

“Andrew.”

“I heard you.”

She lowered her voice.

“Three babies will change everything.”

My mother looked at her.

“Patricia.”

“I’m telling him the truth.”

Then she looked back at me.

“Money. Work. Dating. Everything. You think you’re going to do this for a few weeks until Ryan gets himself together, and what happens if he doesn’t?”

That question stayed in the room.

Because none of us knew where Ryan was.

I finally called Franklin County.

A social worker came later that afternoon.

Her name was Ms. Carter. She wasn’t cold or judgmental. She walked through my apartment, asked about my income, checked the refrigerator, looked at where I had placed the babies, and wrote things on a clipboard.

Then she sat across from me at the kitchen table.

The gas-station receipt was between us.

“Mr. Harris, nobody is saying you don’t care about your nieces.”

“But?”

She glanced toward the bedroom.

“But caring about them and being prepared to provide full-time infant care are different things.”

I rubbed my face.

“So what happens?”

“We can arrange temporary placement while we locate their father and assess the situation.”

“Together?”

She hesitated.

That was enough.

“Would they stay together?”

“We would make every effort.”

Every effort.

I looked toward the bedroom.

Three portable bassinets had been loaned to us by one of my mother’s friends.

I could hear Rachel making a little coughing sound.

“I need to think.”

Ms. Carter nodded.

“You do. But we need a safe plan.”

That night, I sat on the floor between three bassinets and seriously considered letting them go.

Not because I didn’t love them.

Because Patricia was right.

I had no plan.

At 1:17 a.m., Sophie started crying.

I picked her up awkwardly and walked around the apartment.

“Come on, Soph.”

She screamed harder.

“I’m trying.”

I checked her diaper.

Fine.

I offered formula.

She wouldn’t take it.

I bounced her the way my mother had shown me.

Nothing.

Finally, exhausted, I sat on the couch with her against my chest.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Her crying slowed.

Then stopped.

One tiny hand came out of the blanket.

She wrapped her fingers around my index finger.

I stayed there until sunrise.

The First Thing I Chose

Ms. Carter returned the next morning.

I hadn’t showered.

There was formula on my shirt, and I had slept maybe forty minutes.

She opened her folder.

“Have you thought about what we discussed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

I placed the gas-station receipt on the table.

“Tell me what I have to do.”

She looked at me.

“For what?”

“For them to stay.”

She didn’t immediately answer.

“Andrew, this isn’t something you should decide because you had a difficult night.”

“I’m deciding after a difficult night.”

She leaned back.

“Those are different things?”

“Yeah.”

I pointed toward the bedroom.

“Yesterday I thought I couldn’t do it because I didn’t know how. I still don’t know how. So tell me what I need to learn.”

She studied me for several seconds.

Then she turned to a clean page.

That was the first list I ever made for my daughters.

Safe sleeping arrangements.

Childcare.

Medical appointments.

Emergency contacts.

Income verification.

A larger apartment eventually.

Formula assistance.

Temporary kinship placement requirements.

Background checks.

I worked through it one item at a time.

My manager, Carl, let me rearrange my schedule for several weeks. Mrs. Lewis, a retired widow across the hall, started knocking on my door every morning.

The first time she came over, she found me holding Rachel while Chloe screamed from a bouncer.

“You fed them?”

“I think so.”

She frowned.

“You think so?”

“They keep eating.”

Mrs. Lewis took the bottle from my hand.

“Babies do that.”

At the community health clinic, a pediatric nurse showed me how to check temperatures correctly, how to recognize dehydration, and why I shouldn’t panic over every strange noise they made.

I panicked anyway.

A lot.