My mother kicked me out of the house the very night she found out I was pregnant. Five years went by and she never contacted me, nor had she ever seen her grandchild. Then, after meeting the baby’s father, she wanted to come back into my life.

I was eighteen when I told my mother I was pregnant. We were standing in the kitchen of her four-bedroom house, the same house with the white shutters, the clean porch, and the quiet suburban street where everyone waved at each other like nothing ugly ever happened behind closed doors. She looked at me for a long time, then told me I had two hours to pack and leave.

She said I had made my choice, so I could figure out the consequences alone. By sunset, I was sitting on the front step with two garbage bags of clothes beside me and nowhere to go. She changed the locks while I was still outside.

My daughter’s father had been a brief encounter during freshman orientation at college. I did not even know his last name. I only knew he went by Alex, he was visiting from Switzerland, and he had laughed at my terrible jokes in a way that made me feel interesting for one night.