I was three years old sitting in the seat of a Greyhound bus

My brother and me, Mama's tears falling like a Carolina rain



Cause she pulled out a gun the night before

Said he ain't gonna drink and hit me no more

She pulled the trigger on my father in a moment's rain



Thank God that gun wasn't loaded

Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere but there that night



Now she held her babies tight

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to



She got her a job in a trailer out west

It wasn't much but she was doing her best

Putting food on the table for her family



But then one day I came home from school

My Mama was crying alone in her room

She said, I lost my job and we're gonna lose the trailer too

And she got that volkswagon loaded

Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere but there that night



She held her babies tight

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to



Whenever things go wrong in my life

I just think of her, what it took that night

To get on that bus in a Carolina rain



Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere but there that night



She held her babies tight

(She held her babies tight)

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to

What she had to (what she had to)

Yeah, yeah, ooooh, what she had to

What she had to