A/N: Reviews would keep on being helpful! I will make sure things keep moving forward!
1957 – 1963
Edna was just shy of twenty when she met Steven Jason Hyde, Jr., otherwise known as Bud. She was still waiting tables at the diner and living in the house she bought with her brother. She didn't have much; all of her money was going towards keeping her house. What extra money she got came from her boyfriends, of which she entertained many. She was stringing alone one boyfriend when her future husband came into the diner with a bunch of other leather-clad losers. He was tall, had wavy brown hair, and two grey eyes that made her insides melt. All it took was him buying a milkshake and a burger and she was hooked.
If she had access to a shrink he or she would have told her it was a mistake for in a sick way she was falling in love with her brother. He was tall, lean, and dangerous with a roguish smile that was so much like her Stephen's. He was three years older than her and was more than willing to share his booze and his weed to the pretty woman. Their courtship, if you thought getting high and screwing in his car qualified as such, was relatively short. They got married in December. It was only a judge and an old secretary, Steven's parents not wanting to come and Edna's mother still in the loony bin. To a twenty-year-old Edna it was romantic; to a fifty-something Edna it was the stupidest thing she had ever done.
The marriage wasn't a very good one from the start. Bud was always between jobs which became more of a concern as his spending never matched up with his earnings. Edna and he were trying hard to have a baby but Bud wasn't a lucky shooter and accused Edna of being frigid. He started walking in and out of her life when she took a job at the cafeteria. After a year she became used him making up an excuse to see friends and family and be gone for days, even months at a time. At first she would ride him about it, resulting in useless screaming matches, which ended up with her forgiving him and them screwing on other pieces of furniture. When she got used to it she started to sneak out too. One of her friends was a girl who somehow got lucky enough to go to school in Milwaukee and would be good enough to invite her to some of her college parties. It was at one of those parties around March of 1958 that she met William Barnett.
William Barnett was all of the things Bud Hyde wasn't. He was a little shorter, black, intelligent, and had the most searching brown eyes she had ever seen. They only messed around for a week, William escaping his pregnant wife to be around some friends and Bud was gone for a month around that time. All of her friends knew what she was doing and when she and William ended their tryst they expressed their relief for her; not only was he married but it was still the 1950s and running off with a man of color just wasn't done. The relief was short lived when just two weeks shy of Bud's simpering return home she found out she was two months pregnant. She was petrified; she knew good and well who the father was and had no doubts that this would bite her in the ass. Abortion wasn't an option; she had a friend who died from getting one from a doctor who advertized in their circles. Her friends would have her try all kinds of shit but to no avail, even in the womb her baby was a survivor. And giving up another baby wouldn't look good as she was married and had a job. All she could do after that was wrap her legs around Bud when he did return and omit like hell when he found out she was pregnant.
For seven agonizing months Edna felt like she was in hell. When she first got knocked up she knew that she was giving up that baby. Now she was stuck. Bud was thrilled that she was pregnant and actually stuck around, taking a job at a bar to provide funds for their child. She had to suffer through his cheery optimism about the whole thing. What friends she had were taking bets on when Bud would leave her when the baby came out black and even as a married woman no one in town looked at her with any form of respect. And if that all wasn't enough her pregnancy was murder. The child kicked all the time when it could, she was always nauseous, she blew up like a whale, and her hormones were driving her crazy. It almost came as a relief when her labor started.
It took thirty hours for her son to come into the world and she didn't have the luxury of drugs. He was a large-headed infant who screamed his way out. Bud was passed out in the waiting room so for a few minutes she was alone with her son. He was pink and wrinkly, but she heard from a friend that she couldn't count on that. She went through names in her head, but she only thought of one: Stephen. Her husband came into the room, smelling of beer and cigarettes. Hesitantly, she told him he had a boy and she wanted to name him Stephen. Before she could clue him in on why Bud beamed like a little boy on Christmas and she gave in. Though the name on the birth certificate said Steven Jason Hyde III, in Edna's mind he was Stephen, named after the brother she lost years ago. She put William Barnett as the father when Bud wasn't looking though, just in case.
Steven, to her relief, stayed pink for several months before he lost the baby coloring and went to a slightly darker shade than either her or Bud. His hair was loosely curled, but then she could explain that away because her father had curly hair. If anything, though his eye shape was like his father his eyes were just blue like her and her brother's. He was a cute baby, but he cried like anything and it didn't help when Bud got fired and started drinking more. Edna wasn't one to take it, like her mother. She started yelling back, her son being baptized by the language of the frustrated at an early age. Bud started leaving again and when Steven was four he was more or less gone for good. Occasionally, Bud came back with excuses and money but that never lasted. By 1963, she was a twenty-five year old single mother. She started cursing the day she met Steven Hyde, Jr. Soon, she started cursing the day she had Steven Hyde, III.