Simone Nobody ever warns you about the placenta. Like, you spend days seizing and stretching open to get some shoulders out your coochie and then the baby, or babies in my case, are writhing in your arms, and you realize it''s not even over. You''ve still gotta push out this pulsing purple heart bigger than your man''s head--and my man had a big-ass head--and find a way to cut the cords. I guess if you''re in the hospital, then maybe somebody hands you a fancy pair of scissors to cut them or mentions the placenta in between the choke of contractions to get that second baby out, but I gave birth set up in the bed of my boyfriend''s red pickup truck, so I wouldn''t know. I''d tell you I did it that way ''cause I couldn''t afford the hospital without no insurance, which was true, but really I just didn''t want people looking at me funny like, girl what are you doing having a baby with this gangly man who keeps telling us to call him Tooth? I knew how it looked. I was sixteen. He was twenty-two. But really, at the time, I didn''t think it mattered any more than the birthmark on my ankle and so I didn''t wanna have to explain to some nurse as I chewed ice that I love him, have to say, They my babies, I wanted them, I want them, even though at that point I don''t think I knew what I wanted or who I loved or how I ended up in the back of a pickup truck in Florida giving birth at thirty-six weeks.

At least in the truck, no questions was asked. Except, why didn''t nobody tell me about the placenta? I thought it would come out with the rest of that fluid, but nope, I had to do all the work while Tooth just stared at me, repulsed. The twins was still attached to the fleshy heat of my body, slippery and smaller than one of his shoes, and I''d passed them to Tooth when I felt the faint cramps begin and knew I had to push one more time, maybe twice ''cause I''d been told there was two placentas up in there. But now Tooth was tryna give the babies back like they wasn''t half him, holding them out to me like grocery bags with the handles torn off. "Should we go to the hospital?" Tooth asked, trying not to look between my thighs even though I saw his eyes drift there and shoot back up, his lashes fluttering in disgust. I didn''t respond, mid-push, and then one soft big placenta slipped right out, two cords dangling from it, and I glared up at Tooth. "You think after all that, I''m about to go to the hospital now? No." I didn''t care none about the mess or the fact we ain''t known what we was doing, ''cause all those months of torment--when I''d been stretched out like an old sock by a big foot, expelled from the only family I''d known, whispered about among the throngs of a town high on contempt--was suddenly worth something.

My babies. I was exhausted, but I knew I couldn''t rest yet. "We have to cut the cords." "I think I got my pocketknife," Tooth said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the dirtiest pocketknife you''d ever seen, popped the blade and it was all crusted in dried brown blood, shed fur from some long-dead animal, and Lord knows how many fishes'' yellowed intestines. "Where do I cut it?" he asked. I looked at him. He stared back.

"Are you fucking with me? You can''t cut ''em with that," I said. "Why?" I gawked. "It''s dirty." "So is that thing," he said, nodding to my placenta. "That thing fed your children for nine months. I''m not cuttin'' nothing with that." "Then what you gonna do?" I looked around again, like I was gonna find some spare scissors among the pooling fluid, and then I looked back at the placenta, and I knew. This was the moment I became a mother, when I was the only person in the world that knew what needed to be done to keep my babies safe, to excavate myself just to feed them.

"I''ll bite it," I said. Tooth''s face twisted up like I''d just said I was gonna eat my own shit. "The fuck you talkin'' ''bout? I''ll go find another knife, just stay here and--" Before he could do nothing, I had one cord in my mouth and I was gnawing. It didn''t take much work before my teeth found each other and then I tied it and moved to the next cord and my teeth ripped through that too. I expected them to be chewy, dense, but they felt like nothing but pasta before it''s cooked through. And then it was done, both cords severed. The babies now fed on breast and body, each of their little mouths searching my skin for nipple. My girl found it first, and she was lucky ''cause my right breast had been leaking for days and was ready for her, far more full than the left one, so when she latched, the yellowish liquid came out thick and spilled right into her mouth.

My boy kept searching but he was stuck around my heart, and he turned his head and opened his mouth wide and let out a roar. With a new fever, he continued until he found his life source and I helped get it in his small mouth. I gazed down at my children, amazed, both of them latched to my titties and feeding, then I turned to look at my now-cut cords, still and white, and finally back to Tooth. I was grinning. His mouth was warped with loathing but I didn''t care none. I shoved him with my foot. "Look! They so perfect. Ain''t they so perfect?" He tilted his head, tried to shake the repulsion from his face, pocketknife still in hand, and sighed.

"Yeah. They perfect." To tell you the truth, I didn''t know much of nothing back then, sitting in that pickup truck staring at my placenta. How could I? Not ''cause I was young, but ''cause I was new. Like my newborn babies, skin so soft it seemed like they could tear open at any moment, I was just a fragile thing in a sharp world, like every other girl is before they meet themselves, before they meet their child and know what it means to give. I already know y''all will take any chance you get to say we don''t know what we talking about, I''ve seen all the Teen Mom shows, but that''s not what I''m saying. All those shows get made just to give y''all some white girls to laugh at, pity, and say they should''ve known better, but really maybe you should''ve known better than to believe a camera is a mirror or an ocean is a pool or a mother is anything but a mother. You won''t know till you know, and now I do.

So that''s gonna make it even harder for you to understand why, four and a half years after I gave birth in the back of a pickup truck, I found myself squatting in the ocean pissing on another stick. I''ll put it this way: teen moms, like Florida, are the country''s favorite scapegoat. Your favorite niece got addicted to fentanyl and is living with her boyfriend''s grandpa? At least she''s not a teen mom. You got laid off and have to move back to your parent''s house in Colorado? At least it''s not the hellhole they call Florida. Your daughter''s a lesbian? But she''s not pregnant! Got hate-crimed? But it''d be worse in Florida! I''m from Florida and I was sixteen when I had my kids, so take it from me, it''s not a golden walk down a yellow brick road or nothing. But we don''t exist to calm your woes that at least your shitty life could be shittier. I love my kids. I spend my days rolled out in the sun in a little town called Padua Beach and I wouldn''t have it no other way.

Or maybe I would, but wouldn''t we all? Grass is always greener. Ocean looks so much bluer from far away. They say that in Florida, you go north and you get South, the Panhandle being the most South you could get in the Sunshine State. Padua Beach being one of those towns on the Panhandle coast nobody bothers to stop in on their way to the only thing that warrants a trip down to Florida: spring break and retirement. Us Girls didn''t think about ourselves like that, though. Sure, our accents slung themselves into the room ''fore we even made it through the door and we ain''t needed more than one trash bag to stuff all the clothes we owned in, but that wasn''t all we was. We was more than South, more than Florida, more than sea. Don''t be foolish, thinkin'' Padua Beach was just some coastal blip on the way somewhere bigger and better.

We big on our own. And the Girls and me only made it bigger. The Girls began the way all things do: in the seething foam of a wave spitting us to shore. Me first, then each of the Girls following. One after the other, cast off by the venom of a town built on y''all being good now? and babies havin'' babies, said in the rasp of a loud whisper and one polite little shake of the head. We found each other from our singular aloneness, made family out of a truck bed and the milky delight of watching our babies grow through the fog of distant shame. I wasn''t the first one, that''s for sure. Young girls been having babies as long as there was babies to have.

Meaning, forever. Not even a hundred years ago, nobody woulda batted an eye at me and my children, but things had changed. Somewhere along the walk of history, somebody decided we was a transgression to all things good and pure, and ever since then, despite the fact there''s less of us now than there was a decade ago, politicians and pastors and regular folk always talkin'' ''bout preventing teen pregnancy and poverty and sin, all in the same boastful breath. As though that''s all we was. As though the pace our skin stretched and spotted defined our motherhood. But before we were an us, before we merged into one glorious sea, we were just our own sad drops of water in a cavernous basin of thirst. And I was the very first pel.