From Adams Street

When I was about 11, I went to a party at my aunt and uncle’s house with my dad and his wife. Most of my cousins were there. A couple of days beforehand I had sprouted a lovely pimple right in the middle of my forehead. I put a band aid over it before I went to the party and tried to pass it off as a cut. My cousins weren’t buying it. Most were older than I was and knew what a band aid on the face meant. Zit! They weren’t horribly cruel, just mildly cruel in the way kids can be. And I was alone among siblings and very anxious and nervous. I remember wanting to be anywhere on earth but there.

In the twilight, some of my cousins sought me out and told me a horrible thing. They said that my Uncle Bob had told everyone that I wasn’t the daughter of my parents. I was really the daughter of my much older sister. “That’s why you all had to go to Missouri. So Debbie could have you. They’re just pretending that she’s your sister.”

The noise of the grown-up party filtered out through the windows in a happy din, but it didn’t feel warm to me. It felt like a wall, and I didn’t want to be on either side of it.

Did I run to my father and demand the truth? Did I protest to my cousins that Uncle Bob was a liar?

I did not.

I filed this nugget of information away, where it nagged at me for 20 years.

Eventually I came to believe it was bullshit. Eventually I came to believe that it didn’t matter if it were true.

But it affected me profoundly throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. I never felt like I fit in. I felt like the whole operation was a house of cards that could come down at any minute. I believed that no one told the truth, especially my parents.

My Uncle Bob died on Friday. I’m sorry that my father is in pain over his loss. But, really, he was kind of a shit.

Originally published here.