I also invoke, that both of these things or a multiplicity of things might be "true" at the same time ... also that "truth" is only truth until it encounters something that renders it untrue. **
So on March 8, 2020, one month before my 50th birthday, Ancestry DNA confirmed that my brother was indeed my brother and thus it confirmed what the family had already decided - that redacted is my father. Just like that their truth becomes THE truth. And, it does nothing to undo or disrupt pre-existing truths - family truths - the deeply held truth that redacted was a good man. Redacted was a family man. Redacted was a married man with two beautiful daughters. Redacted was committed to his wife and daughters. This morning I realized that the reality is that all of these truths exist at exactly the same time. They are asynchronous. They are outside of time. And, I also understand. that these are truths that people will kill, lie and die to protect.
Part of this discovering, this unpacking, this reframing is around my classification up to this point of most of the familial truth-narratives about Redacted as lies. Right, how could Redacted have been this family man and have 7 of 9 of his children out of wedlock? The truth of his goodness, his charisma, his love of family must be a lie... Now I understand that their truth and mine are each only one of the many truths about this man, my father. Just like my fierce need to defend myself as his daughter and he as my father, my sisters and their mother need to defend their truth that Redacted was THEIR father and husband and that none of the rest of us exist and that we certainly don't matter. Multiple truths functioning at the same time until they encounter each other and one truth renders the other an untruth. Or, when that rendering is then framed as the untruth itself.
Truth disrupted.
One truth that has been discovered in the last couple days, that I have not shared with family, is that Redacted was 35 when I was born. All clues pointing to my genetic mother suggest she was between 17-20 years old. It makes me sick every time I think about it. It also suggests a reason for why I was put up for adoption. It also explains why Redacted, "who stayed in touch with all of his children and surely would have been in touch with you if he had known about you", didn't know I existed. I am still holding out that this was not rape but how is sex between a 35 year old married man and a teenager anything but coercion. All coercion is violence. And yet, at the same time, he is still my dad. I am grateful to know that for certain. All of these truths are moving, pushing and pulling, on me at the same time.
Truths that suspend and disrupt each other... Redacted was both of these people and probably many more. By our count, "our" being the children born outside of Jim's marriage, there are six of us born after Redacted's daughters with his wife. As of right now I am. his fifth child and there are four more after me. He had his first daughter, my precious sister, right out of high school. He did not sign her birth certificate but he - our grandmother - raised her. But when my sister and I were talking about her taking the DNA test, she said "wouldn't it be funny if he wasn't even my father". No, it wouldn't be funny at all.
I came to realize in the months between connecting with my brother and sister and my brother's DNA results, proving that I was in fact their sister, that I had more truth-flexibility than other family members. I am building my truth with each discovery. I have substantial experience building, disrupting, discarding and rebuilding truths. As an abused adoptee with a mentally ill adoptive mother, the flexibility of truth is a survival skill. There was no way that I was going to let my sister encounter truth disruption - new and painful truths - at 65 years old. I did send her a DNA test but it never got delivered. Ancestry has failed me several times. I took the botched test delivery as a sign and turned to my brother. I never resent her the test. I didn't want to be the person to bring her such pain. I wanted her to have her truths about her father, her mother, her BEING. I could do that for her. My brother and I did that for her. She still talks about Redacted not having signed her birth certificate. That is one of her dissonant truths.
When my brother and I talked about his taking the test for me, he also had to really think about whether to do it. He told me that he didn't need a test, that he felt it in his bones that I was his sister. He reiterated this exact truth when we finally got the results "I didn't need a test, I knew you were my sister. I told you that." Sometimes, the truth you feel is as mighty and worthy as a test or any other kind of formal proof. My brother also mentioned that, before he ordered the test, he talked to his mother. I am now realizing that he was also preparing for the possibility of dissonant truths. The possibility had existed for him in that moment, and I haven't asked him about this, that Redacted might not be his father. But, his mother must have assured him and he ordered the test, took it, sent it in and never said a word to me. I think he was still sitting in a place where the truth might shift out from under him at any moment.
Redacted text me the day his results came in. The text said, "he isn't my father". I called him back. "what do you mean" ... he said, clearly shook but also very accepting of this truth, "I don't have any Native American DNA. He cannot be my father." It took a couple beats before I realized what he was saying. I said, "Redacted do you have any Redacted?" He answered, "yes, tons". The only way he could have Redacted - the same cousins with the same shared DNA as I had matches with - was to be Redacted child. But the strong truth-narrative about our Gramma, who was raised on a Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma, was more salient than the reality that all of these Redacted were related to him. It was amazing. That is when I really started to appreciate how important truth, truth-narrative and the avoidance of anything that would destabilize or negate a truth really were.
I had to talk to my brother for awhile to get him to settle in to the idea that there were more secrets - truths - in our family than anyone cared to admit. And that one truth was. that Redacted was indeed his father. A few weeks later we confirmed that I was his half sister as well. It was remarkable that, because I had not grown up in the family, it had been so easy for me to let go of the Choctaw heritage everyone else talked about. I understood that Gramma certainly could "be" Choctaw without being genetically Choctaw. I never questioned my DNA results around this. But the absence of that native DNA almost undid my brother.
Everyone I talk to in our family has a truth or two that is not shared with others. Myself and my cousin, had figured out the year before that Gramma was culturally Choctaw but perhaps not biologically related to her father - or that her father was not Choctaw. In real life, we may never have had what would qualify as "Choctaw" DNA, despite all of the proof that our family was in fact Choctaw. We have papers - enrollments - land purchases and a deep genealogical and generational truth- narratives of being Choctaw. The other truth, most of us have 1-3% native showing up in our DNA results. Some of us have none at all. We know that Gramma was raised as Choctaw. I am still amazed, however, in the face of DNA "proof", how tightly the family holds onto this part of our identity, this truth, about our being Choctaw. When other truths about our family seem, at least to me, far more salient.
There is a certain level of kindness and care in our family to not disrupt each other's truths. I have a first cousin who took a DNA test for me to exclude her father from my paternity final two. Her one request was that she not have to be in contact with anyone from Redacted Her truths were such that she wanted to keep those doors closed. Her truths allowed her to believe I could be her sister and that I was certainly close family. She also understood how the truths, which I think for her show up as lies, would keep other family members from helping me find out who my father was. So, she trusted me to not force her into difficult and emotionally dangerous positions, and took the test. She never talked about her DNA findings. That test was for me. Her truth remained uninfluenced by any of it.
My brother's truth is one of a step-mother who could not forgive the circumstances of his birth and her daughters - our sisters, that is a truth that I will struggle with for a very long time - truly treated him badly. My sister, Redacted's first born child, has similar nightmare stories that are Cinderella-esq in nature. When our father was dying, they wouldn't let his children, his other children, see him. When you read the obituary for Redacted - no one in the family has ever referred to him in that way - there is a complete absence of detail and no mention of those who survived him. I keep looking at this obituary. It speaks so many truths and no truths at all. The obituary is written so that myself and the other five of my siblings get shut out. The obituary is written to protect and maintain the truth that my father's wife and their daughters - our sisters - wished to live in. Their truth that Redacted was a loving father and husband. The 6 of us, the remaining children, are truths that won't be dealt with, not by them, maybe ever.
This framing of truth and truth narratives has freed me a bit today. I am less resentful of my father's wife and children and the relatives who protect them from 6 of Redacted children. I can only imagine how many other truths, children, will pop up now that DNA testing is a pop-culture staple. I am still unsure how disruptive I plan to be. Some days my truth screams so loudly. I want to unleash my truth and my BEING on everyone who is withholding membership, authenticity and familial acknowledgement from me. Other days, I want to be tender, thoughtful and truly loving of everyone who is struggling through the realities of who my father was, who our family is and who we are becoming.
We are a multiplicity of truths ... if we work to accept that ... none of those truths need to be canceled or even rewritten. I think those truths might just live side by side, no longer hidden, but running parallel and adjacent ... above and below ... before and after ... as they always have been. That is the truth.
More soon...
Baby Girl Redacted
*from a text discourse with Dr. Shay Welch without whom I would not have gotten here today.
*I have chosen to redact the name of my father and other identifying information to protect my mother and the truths that she holds dear. I wrote this before knowing who she is and before entering a reunion relationship with her.
