The Other Father
Are you that guy?
I didn’t tell my son’s father I was pregnant until my mother made me.
I was 16 in 1970 when I got pregnant in the backseat of my boyfriend’s Ford without going all the way. Facing up to the unlikely consequences of that October night felt impossible. My boyfriend and I were good students, intent on escaping blue-collar life in our small Catholic Midwestern town. We were in love, had been going steady for years, and planned to marry — being pregnant would ruin it all.
Something better than minimum-wage jobs awaited us, I was sure, and so I kept my secret to myself. Aided by 1970’s tent dresses, empire waists, and my Catholic school uniform, which helped me looked exactly as I had the day before, we took a trip with our chorus to Chicago at Christmastime, were crowned runners-up to the king and queen at the prom, and at the end of May, strode onto the temporary stage in our high school gymnasium to receive our diplomas in front of our 124 classmates and a crowd of proud families. No one suspected I was pregnant.
The baby’s due date was only six weeks away when, the week after graduation, my mother asked me why I hadn’t been using any Kotex. With my scheme to run away to Chicago and have the baby in secret derailed, new plans to get me out of town were hastily concocted. I would stay with a foster family in the…
