My mother slowly shook her head.
“No.”
I looked down.
“Yes, Mama.”
She stepped away from me as though she needed distance to understand what I had said.
“But I told them…” Her voice broke. “I told them you had never been with a man.”
I felt tears burning behind my eyes.
“I know.”
“You let me say that?”
I couldn’t look at her.
“Yes.”
My father struck the arm of the sofa with his hand.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?”
His voice was so loud that I flinched.
“You have humiliated this family!”
Those words hurt more than I expected.
Not because I hadn’t anticipated his anger, but because they confirmed what I had always feared.
He was more concerned about what people would think than about why I had been so afraid to tell him the truth.
“I never wanted to humiliate anyone,” I said.
“Then why did you lie?”
