That morning, a cashier had asked if she was Leo’s babysitter. The pediatrician assumed she was the teenage nanny. Even her own mother, when Maya announced her pregnancy at nineteen, had said: “What’s wrong with you? You’re still a child.”
At twenty-two, Maya looked sixteen. That was the problem. That morning, a cashier had asked if she
She filled page after page: letters to Leo, stories of young mothers erased by shame, poems about the cruelty of “proper timing.” That morning, a cashier had asked if she
Maya didn’t answer. She already knew. The whispers: She’s so young. Where’s the father? Must have been a mistake. That morning, a cashier had asked if she