Chapter 1: My Regret

"That's none of my business. Since you want to act like a grown woman, then you will figure it out.

“How could a night I barely remembered steal a future I had spent eighteen years of my life carefully building?” I questioned myself as I saw my world shattering right in front of me like broken pieces of expensive jewels.

"Oma, are you in there?" I heard my father’s voice, hammered against the bathroom door.  

I hid the test result in the bottom of the trash, covering it with tissues, but my face gave me away the moment I opened the door and my father, a man I feared most, didn't need any form of confession. He instantly saw the ghost in my eyes.

"Oma, you've been sick every morning for weeks now, are you alright?" he asked. I looked at him while fidgeting with my fingers, not knowing what to say. "Tell me my observation is wrong, go ahead, and tell me" my father roared.

The silence that followed was deadlier than any shouting. He dropped his newspaper, took off his reading glasses, and looked at me as if I was a stranger who had just tracked mud onto his carpet.

The second pink line didn’t just signal a pregnancy; it signaled the total annihilation of the girl I used to be. 

I stood in the bathroom of my father's house; the air was suddenly too thin to breathe as I clutched a plastic pregnancy test strip that felt like a death sentence. 

I sat on the edge of the tub, the cold porcelain seeping through my jeans. But how did this happen to me?  I couldn’t help asking myself. I am Oma Johnson, the girl who color-coded her study notes and had a five-year plan that definitely didn't include a baby at eighteen.  I was supposed to be the "success story” of the Johnson‘s family. A brilliant girl and dedicated chorister, and the unwavering promise I’d made to myself that my body belongs to me, and I wasn't sharing it until I said “I do.” My boyfriend, Franklin, had spent months trying to chip away at that wall, and every "not yet" I uttered seemed to bruise his ego more than he seemed to let on.

As I contemplated, the whole night incident became clear in my head as my mind rewound three weeks to the "Sign-Out" party. It was the final celebration before graduation, and was supposed to be our night of freedom after final exams.  Franklin and my best friend, Tasha had been insistent on making me attend the party with them.

 "Just one night of fun will not kill you, Oma. You’re too wound up,” Tasha said, pressing a cup of champagne into my hand. 

After much persuasion I gave in. I trusted her, because all along, I had seen her as the sister I never had; and Franklin as the boy I thought I would eventually marry.

Franklin, my boyfriend kept handing me cups of sickly-sweet jungle juice, while Tasha kept whispering, “live a little Oma, and stop being such a prude."

 

Tasha tricked me to go in with a total stranger. I thought it was my boyfriend, little did I know that I was to be lured in with a total stranger at the party.

 Everything after midnight was a hazy montage of flashing lights and spinning rooms. I remembered waking up the next morning in an unfamiliar motel room, alone, and wearing only my T-shirt. The duvet smelled of expensive cologne and I felt wetness all over my body. 

Later, after that night, when I asked Franklin and Tasha about it, they laughed it off. Mocking me of going in with a certain Leo or maybe Theo or whoever. Tasha said, dismissing my panic with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand.

After that night the strange man I slept with was nowhere to be found, I felt all will be forgotten until three weeks later when I started noticing changes in my body, early morning sickness and shame ravaging me like a victim. 

“Oma, who is the father of this thing you are carrying? My father beckoned. I knew I couldn't hide this from my father, a retired military man who ran his house like a barracks and nothing escaped his penetrating eyes.

"Who is the father?" His voice was still terrifyingly calm.

"I... I don't know his name Dad; it was one night, at the sign-out party." I responded as tears welled in my eyes.

Out of anger, he slammed his hands immediately against the doorframe, which made me jump out of fear. 

“You think I’m joking with you? You want to tell me you don’t know the father of this bastard in your womb?” he asked again with his eyes burning with rage.

"You don't know his name, really, Oma? You, the girl who preached about purity? You've now decided to drag my name in the mud for a nameless coward; how could you be this careless and stupid? You are a complete disgrace to the memory of my mother. You think I raised you to throw your life away on a nameless degenerate?" he spat, walking to the front door and yanking it open. 

And don't you dare cross this threshold again until you bring the man responsible for that baby growing in you. Make sure you find that bastard, or forget that you have a father." He concluded, pointing to the door. 

"You are no daughter of mine until you bring the father of that child to this front porch to take responsibility. Until then, you are a stranger, and I don’t have rooms for strangers." He said with a note of finality.

The door slammed shut, severing me from the only home I had ever known. I stood on the porch, the rain instantly soaking through my thin hoodie and I was shivering violently.  As the screen of my phone flickered, a text message came through from Tasha:

 “Hey girlie! How are you doing? Franklin and I are heading to the movies. Do you mind being a third wheel?”