“I don’t see how you got much choice in the matter.” Mama dipped a hand towel in a bucket of hot water, just as midwives used to do in those old black-and-white movies.

“It hurts so bad.”

Pressure built in her groin, spreading to her stomach and back. This felt twenty times worse than her most intense menstrual cramps, the ones that had kept her home from school many days. Rocking back and forth on the bed, Ruth writhed on the sheet, riding each wave of pain.

“Women been birthing babies for thousands of years. No different this time.” Mama’s face had turned into a black cloud hovering over her. Still, Ruth pawed the air until she gripped her grandmother’s arm, digging her nails into her skin.

“Please. I need to go to the hospital,” Ruth begged.

Mama dabbed her forehead with a cool sponge. “Now, you know better than that. You’re going to be just fine. Trust me. Have I ever led you wrong?”

Ruth watched Mama looming above, her breasts swaying in her threadbare gown like two pendulums. Mama had been so careful to keep the pregnancy secret, and a trip to the hospital would expose their lie. She’d insisted that Ruth wear long tunic sweaters to cover her stomach and bright short necklaces that lured people’s eyes away from her midsection. When she could no longer hide the obvious, Ruth stayed hidden in the house, feigning illness and completing her schoolwork at home those last two months of senior year.

The whistle from the nearby plant sounded, cutting the day in half. Work had ended, and it was suppertime. Eli’s shift would’ve been over, but he had called in sick that day. Her brother always wore a baseball cap, even inside the house, but on this afternoon, he’d taken it off in reverence for what was about to happen. A crease lined his forehead as he looked down at Ruth.

“Come on now, lil bit. You got this,” he said, holding to her ear a Sony Discman that played Erykah Badu’s “On & On,” which had been her favorite song that year.

But the music did little to calm the war raging inside her body. Her lower back seized up and the muscles twisted into one long braid of unbearable pain. It got so bad she even begged God to take her from this world and end her misery.

Mama covered her mouth lightly with her hand. “Now, you hush with that kind of talk. Don’t play with God like that.”

There were moments when the pain subsided, after one contraction ended and before the next one began, and Mama reminded Ruth of the pact they’d made as a family. As she dipped the sponge in a bucket of water on the floor, Mama’s eyes never met Ruth’s.

“Once you have this baby, you leave it right here with us. You go on to Yale like we planned and don’t think any more about this child.”

“It’s not up to you or you.” Ruth swung her head between her grandmother and her brother. “It’s my baby. My choice. Actually, it’s our baby. Mine and Ronald’s.”

Eli laughed, but it came out as more of a snort. “You don’t even hear from him anymore. You think he’s sticking around to raise a kid? Soon as he finds out, he’s ghost. I’m telling you.”

“You can’t keep this baby,” said Mama. “How are you going to go to Yale as the Black girl on scholarship toting a baby? I don’t think so.”

“Plenty of girls have kids and still go to school.”

“I don’t care about plenty of girls. I care about you. And if that’s the way you want it, you might as well stay here in Ganton and go to community college. Your papa and I worked our fingers to the bone so you’d have a chance like this to get your education and make something of yourself. I bet your grandfather’s turning over in his grave listening to your nonsense right now. We can’t have a baby messing things up now.”

“For months, all you been talking about is Yale this and Yale that,” Eli chimed in. “You always bragging about being smarter than me, lil bit. So why you acting dumb now? We already settled on all this.”

Ruth tried to steady her voice, knowing she was up against Mama and Eli, a formidable force when they got together and ganged up on her. “I don’t have to go to Yale. At least not right now. Ganton Community College is perfectly fine. It wouldn’t be forever.” Her voice sounded shrill and foreign to her own ears because of the exhaustion that had overtaken her. Tears spilled from her eyes because she didn’t know what she wanted and knew she’d been dreaming of life in the Ivy League, away from everything in Ganton that suffocated her.

A framed copy of her acceptance letter from Yale sat on the nightstand next to her bed. Eli picked it up and held it out to her. “Sis, I’m supposed to be the dummy in the family. But even I know you can’t give up on this shot right here. That would be like being a number-one draft pick for the NFL or NBA and saying, ‘Nah, I’d rather ball with my boys on the block.’”

The sticky air choked Ruth. The contractions had come again, faster this time.

“Do we understand each other?” Mama said, trying to pry a promise from her before the baby came.

Ruth had no energy left to argue. Sweat dribbled onto her lips and pooled on her chin. It tasted salty. “Yes. Okay. Yes.”

Then everything happened fast. A fresh wave of pain overtook her body. She was caught in the undertow. Trapped.

Mama slid a plastic sheet under her bottom. It clung to her thighs. For a moment, Ruth thought someone was yanking organs from her body, one by one. The louder she wailed, the harder she squeezed Eli’s hand, the way she’d imagined doing with Ronald. For the most part, she kept her eyes closed, but a few times she peered through the curtains of her eyelashes at Mama’s face between her thighs.