We dated in secret for two months until one afternoon in late October I stared at a pregnancy test in a gas station bathroom and saw two pink lines. My hands shook so badly I could barely hold the stick, and when I told Jordan he held my hands and said, “We will figure this out together, you are not alone.”
I told my parents at Sunday dinner on November fourteenth, and I remember the overcooked roast beef because I could not look at their faces when I spoke. When I said I was pregnant, my father asked who the father was and whether he came from a respectable family, and when I said Jordan worked at an auto shop everything changed.
“You will not keep that baby,” he said coldly, and when I refused he told me I was no longer part of the family.
By nine fifteen that night I stood outside in the rain with one suitcase while my mother pointed at the door and my siblings watched from upstairs without coming down. I called Jordan from a pay phone, and within twenty minutes he arrived with his uncle and held me while I cried.