My parents believed me at first, but as my belly grew, even their faith wavered. The whispers turned to open mockery. I was harvesting corn in a neighbor’s field when a group of women passed by.

“Shameless,” one of them said loudly enough for me to hear. “Pregnant and unmarried. What would her grandmother think?”

“No respectable man will touch her now,” another replied.

I kept my head down, kept working. Because stopping meant letting them win. The worst was when village children started taunting me. I was eight months pregnant, carrying heavy bags of groceries, when a group of teenagers surrounded me.

“Does the baby have a father?”