PART 1
I was nineteen and about three weeks gone when I finally told them.
We were in the living room. Wednesday evening. The television was on with the sound off, which is how it always was in that house.
I had the test in my hands and my hands were going.
My mother stared at it. My father leaned forward in his chair and his face went cold in stages, the way it does on a man who is deciding something.
He said: who’s the father?
I swallowed and said: I can’t tell you.
Nobody said anything for a while. I counted the radiator.
Then my mother said: what do you mean you can’t tell us?
She said: are you covering for somebody? Is he married? Is he twice your age?
I said: it’s complicated.
I said: but I can’t end this pregnancy. I can’t.
And then I said
the thing that blew the room apart, and I have gone over those words about four thousand times since.
I said: and if I do, it won’t just be me it happens to. It’ll be all of us.
My father got up so fast his chair went back into the wall and knocked a picture crooked.
He said: don’t play games with us. As long as you live under my roof you live by my rules.
He said: either you get rid of it, or you get out.
I said: Dad, please. I can’t explain now, but one day you’ll understand—
He said: get out.
I said: Dad—
And he said: now.
Less than an hour later I was standing on that porch with a holdall and about ninety dollars.
My mother stayed behind the screen door, crying quietly, with her hand on the frame.
She never once tried to stop him.
She has told me since that she thought he would change his mind by the morning, and that by the morning I was gone, and that those are not the same thing and she knows it.
She also put forty dollars in the side pocket of that holdall while I was upstairs packing.
