Don't want me to go. . . Don't want me to go.

The words haunted me and I barely noticed anything until I returned to my relatives' home in Brooklyn, when Keith let me go on vacation apart from the others. It thought it was the result of my pregnancy that made me look bad, but not because I couldn't let it leave me.

I leaned over the frying bed, looking at the big man who was still undressing, showing his toes, feeling an indescribable lump in my back, and the pain in my left chest was unbearable. I never thought it would be so painful to leave him, even...