Chapter One

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. -Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)

When I stepped through the door of our three-story New Jersey home that bright Summer afternoon, I knew my secret was a secret no more. On our deep-beige, plastic-covered sofa in the living room sat my mother, Odessa, smiling pleasantly as usual, and my grandmother Cillar, who (per usual) was not smiling at all. These two women were not the best of friends. In fact, they were far from it, which explained why they were sitting on opposite ends of the sofa. But something had brought them together on this fateful evening, and I was pretty sure it wasn't high tea. The two most prominent women in my world were there to confront me about something I'd chosen to ignore. In the previous weeks my seventeen-year-old body had begun to change ever so slightly. I'd been skin and bones most of my young life, but suddenly I was putting on weight. My mornings before I departed for school were filled with constant trips to the bathroom to throw up, and nothing I ate stayed down for very long. These were all symptoms of a condition I was much too scared to even admit to myself was possible. This was 1971, not long after the end of the civil rights movement, and still a time when being young, single, and pregnant was a thing of shame for the entire family. To add to my disgrace, I'd been raised in the most Christian of households, so my embarrassment would be all the worse. How could I have sinned like that? my grandmother as