The Men who Knocked Up My Mother

When my mom was 18 years old, she became pregnant with me. The man who got her pregnant immediately moved to Massachusettes from California in order to avoid paying child support.

My mom raised me by herself until just after my brother Ed was born. His father was a stoner. He was nice, but he was not prepared to take care of a family and when he wanted to spend my mother’s welfare money on pot, she made him move out and he faded away. Ed and I have the same last name, my mother’s maiden name.

Not long after Ed was born, my mom met Chuck, he was young and in the Air Force. She married him and had two more children, Ira and Audra and they all had the same last name as Chuck.

I hated having to explain to classmates why I had a different last name than my mom or my siblings. In the 70’s that was still not that common. The first time someone referred to me as a half-sister (not by my siblings) it broke my heart.

I always envied girls that had daddies. I called Chuck “daddy,” but he had a short temper and frequently pushed me away during his cuddle times with Ira or Audra. The older I got, the more distant Chuck became. When I was 11, he was transferred back to Germany and went ahead of us so that he “could get us a good place to live.” While we waited for him, in a filthy motel in Linda, CA, he shacked up with some other woman and essentially abandoned us without telling us his plan.

I had fantasies of my biological father coming to find me and be my daddy. It never happened of course. But it never stopped hurting.

One day, I was working at Target and a co-worker and I were playfully arguing over our music tastes. He said, “I’ve been listening to jazz since before you were even a gleam in your old man’s eye.” I was about 21 or so and those words echoed in my head. I had never been a gleam in my old man’s eye.

I decided to go looking for my biological father.

As I explained in a previous entry, I had gone looking for my father when I was around 12 years old. In the process, I met my paternal grandfather. After only a couple of visits, he got extremely inappropriate and I lost all contact with him.

My paternal grandfather continued to live in the same area as me. He passed when I was 17, and I’d gone to his funeral but didn’t speak to anyone.

After my coworker had made this comment about my “old man” I went to the library and looked up the obituary of my grandfather. I found the name of one of his sisters who it said lived in our area. I looked her up in the phone book, found her address and wrote her a letter explaining my situation and asked her if she’d consider helping me find Donal, (my bio father’s name).

Donal and I met for the first time at my house with my husband present. The first question he asked me as he walked toward me, the first time ever seeing my face was, “So, do I have any grandchildren?” He was a very awkward man, and I got the same uncomfortable feeling around him that I’d gotten from my grandfather. He came for visits a few times and then fell off the radar.

I wrote these two poems about my experience with Donal.

Blood Tattoo

I am the black reminder
bathed in reds and golds
of a night when you were drunk
and looking for a purple memory
to brag about

I am the blazing orange mistake
that you brought to life
when you were young and green
and your actions
were excusable because
you were

I am the brilliant ink
impregnating the flesh
of the pale white part
you can forget about
if you don’t see it

You can cover me
with black cloth
pretend you don’t remember
but I’m there in your reflection
when you forget to forget

You cannot erase me
because I’m in you
you cannot forget me
because I’m part of you
You can only deny me because you don’t see me
and only we know

Nothing Like Me

There is no one
in the world
like me. Thanks to you
I’ve a prefix on
every name:

Half-sister
Step-daughter
Illegitimate child.
I look like no one
I love.

And now you stand there
with your heart
in your hand.
You expect me to
call you dad.

But I feel nothing.
Not love
Not hate.
I think you’re
Nothing to me.

You slip right through the hole
in my soul
that I thought
you’d fill only you
made it bigger.

You are nothing.

Nothing
that looks like me.

He popped up again several years later after I’d moved to Sacramento and Ben and I had been together. I still had that uneasy feeling around him, but I wanted to give it a try. We had taken him to a Renaissance Faire which he really enjoyed. I had made him an outfit to wear.

I couldn’t get past the uneasy feelings, so I wrote Donal a letter telling him that it made me uncomfortable that he said he loved me. How can you love someone you hardly know? I know how, now, having lost a pregnancy at 8 weeks, but at that time, it didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t hear from Donal again until about a month ago.

I had gotten into contact with his brother, my Uncle David, whom I’d met before and really liked. He uses Facebook, so we chat now and then. He’s sent me pictures of various family members and I’ve actually found people whom I resemble!

I don’t know if I can have a relationship with Donal. I’m not willing to be hateful to him, but I’m also not going to go out of my way to include him in my life.