My parents threw me out at nineteen because I wouldn’t end my pregnancy. Ten years later I drove back with my son and knocked on the same door and I finally told them who his father was.

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.