Summary

In “Lost in Freakin’ Yonkers,” the main character, Aida, is 18, pregnant and contemplating whether to marry her boyfriend. After a phone call from her mother who pleads with her to get married, she borrows a car and tracks James at a local bar. They have a rude exchange, and she leaves. The story flashbacks to her behavior in high school and her first year of college: partying, drinking, smoking weed, and falling in lust with the wrong men. When she tells her mother she was pregnant, her mother insisted on an abortion. Her father told her if she had the child, they were no longer family. She chooses the baby and knows that James is a terrible choice for a father and a husband. Despite their contentious relationship, there are moments of kindness, as when James gives her the extra money earned from...