I'll Hush Until

“I’m your father.”

He dared not sit in my booth. He had red hair, like mine. I was skeptical about his claim. After all he did seem like a random stranger who had just approached me in Lucy’s Roadside Café. The other two here were an old woman and some clean-cut salesman.

I had been watching both of them for a few; they were preoccupied, humming on about legal insurance, about her being sued over the mote around her property in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. “It’s to keep my half-brother out. Ain’t no half-bloods welcome. He acts just like his own father!”

I’d soon be in her brother’s shoes.

There were fields around the cafe, rarely more than three cars in the parking lot. Today there were five. One belonged to the server. I wasn’t sure how my stranger managed to track me down. I rarely came here.

He clasped his hands at me, “I can prove that I’m your father Laura.”

“Sir. Just because we both have red hair doesn’t mean I’m going to be convinced by your pitch. Okay.”

“Look. Your mother is Maddie McQueen. Married to the late Boston McQueen.”

“So? He’s my father. And frankly your auburn spray-on hair isn’t fooling me. I can see that you’re actually bald.”

“That’s because.” He sat in my booth now. Used his thumb-nail to scrub his temple, gazed at the field outside. His voice cracked, “I’m… They’ve given up on me.”

“Who, your barber.” I would never have said that had I known.

“The doctors.” He looked at me. “I have cancer. One year to live. I have two children in this world and neither have known that I existed. Until now.”

Was that true? Examining his shriveled fingers, I realized that his tall form was much smaller than his robust leather jacket. The hair on his scalp was not hair that had ever been cut. It was delicate, like baby hairs. The gloss in his eyes was not from the fear of death. It was from his desperation- he needed me to hear him. I thought, Okay, he’s not lying. So. Maybe he’s just mistaken.

I heard him out. He just wanted me to go with him to do a DNA test. I eventually agreed. I had nine siblings and our mother had Alzheimer’s. Was I their half sibling by some fluke of infidelity? The truth would now be dripped out onto a high-tech test. Or, at least the facts would. The facts.

We talked a second, then a third hour at the Café. He explained, “She was frustrated with her life. Your father was sick, and she had all those kids- plus one more screaming baby at home.” That baby was my older sister Abba. “Maddie just wanted to have a good time for once. We weren’t in love. We just had fun. Danced. Saw the sights. She drank too much a few times, trying to drown her sadness when the music got old. We only- you know… Once. She loved racing on my motorcycle with me. She almost got a tattoo when I got mine.”

“A tattoo?”

“A starfish. On her foot.”

None of that sounded anything like my mother. But it had been twenty-five years before.

The next week we met at the lab. Gave samples. The woman in the white-coat said, “We’ll be in touch. Give it a week. We should have the results by then.”

I found myself drawn to this man. We’d meet up for coffee every day, sometimes dinner, for the next three months. No one knew where I was going. Our DNA had turned out to be a perfect match. His other kid was a man named Orson Holt, and he was so sadly on death row. I had no interest in meeting him if he was only going to die. One death would be enough for me.

I unrolled my silverware, “Have you met him?”

“He denies me. I went once and he lashed out in a rage. Attacked me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a risk, and a huge mistake to go see him.”

“So. When was this, anyway.”

“Last year. He wished me dead. Well.” He looked down, “He got his wish.”

That was a tragic thing for his son to say to him. My eyes failed to hold back, and we sat there crying over steak a minute until the waiter came over and apologized about the onions, “They aren’t supposed to be raw. Gets in your eyes.” I think he had been watching us, and he just came over to cheer us up, his hand on my father’s shoulder, a delicate smile.

I chuckled, looking at the onions on the steaks. They were cooked, though. I smiled at him and said, “Thank you.”

“Whatever it is just be happy you are here, right now. “He patted my father’s arm. “Pie?”

My father nodded, “Definitely. Definitely.” Smiled through the sparkle of his drying eyes.

He told me that he was sorry to hear about my dad’s passing. And my mother’s condition. Told me that I really added structure and cheer to his last days, that’s what he said- structure and cheer. He said that he never questioned what was after life. “I’ll just let that be a surprise. Who knows, maybe it’ll be like those cosmic tunnels in those time-travel shows,” he laughed, “I’ll end up being born a day before I was born or something- get to be somebody else this time around.”

Eventually he thanked me for openly accepting him. And I thanked him for the same.

He didn’t last a year. He died on the birthday of his son, during a hot June day. He left me his car and a few small treasures. I cleaned up his empty apartment. Kept all his pictures. Hid them in a storage facility, with the car. Did not attend his funeral. The only family he had were a few distant relatives from out of state, so I figured I’d give my cherished father to them now. He was the only father I’d ever known. He was my real father, too. I felt privileged to have known him. I never knew Boston, who passed away when I was born.

The death of Braxton only strengthened my secret. Now I would bury it at all costs. My mother had once said, “Secrets are just needle-sharp facts that people can’t handle. Smart. Cold. Shining.” She kept my dangerous secret before I did. Yet I would never tell her that I knew.

Six years passed. Mom was increasingly confused and disoriented. She went into a nursing home at just fifty-five. Then my siblings- painfully tight-knit- became fascinated with finding out about our DNA heritage. Over a year their pursuit formed into so much of an obsession that six of them pressured the three of us who’d lost interest in it. Sharee and Mead called it a distraction. They had other pursuits. I had my secret. My rebellion blended right in with theirs until they surrendered, took that DNA test. Of course, with them having tested I stood out even more for being contrary. “Everyone else is doing it, Laura. You’re the lone rebel here.” They literally took turns saying that.

I’d say, “Come on! Once we’ve seen one result, we’ve seen them all. All your tests are exactly the same! Besides, Abby and I share the trait for red hair. If she’s part of the family then so am I! Obviously, we’re all full-blooded siblings.”

“Are we,” Robert asked- the oldest. He’d leer at my claim since his counter-claim was that my father told him just before he died that my mother had been meeting with a man. Some of us didn’t believe him, including me. Until now.

But I pretended not to believe him, “Come on! Dad was ill. Medicated. The guy he spoke of was probably the insurance guy. Hell, he might have been the doctor.”

“Standing in the driveway at midnight. Hugging her?”

“Look. I said no. I won’t take your stupid DNA test.” They were backing me down a plank. What good did they think this would bring. They stumbled into some kind of senseless group hysteria.

My siblings pursued me in a gang of three or four or five. Came to my kiosk in the mall where I sold clocks. They made humiliating scenes. They’d all had their tests done so I was keeping their collection from being complete. That bothered the hell out of them.

Eventually I moved my shop, since coldly creative mall rumors had begun to circulate about me being switched at birth. Seriously. That was because everyone heard my angry siblings at the kiosk, barking in loud, crazy tones, “You act like you got something to hide, Laura! What do you think, that Elvis is your real daddy! Just take the test. What, are you afraid to find out that you were a test tube baby sold on the black market?”

“Shut up! Please leave.” They’d always push it to the limit, to the point of security gathering around the corner and eying them. That always made them storm off together without looking back.

My new shop was in an office suite. I assembled the clocks and put my business mostly online. They found my shop and started their crap again. At one point they started sneaking up behind me every week or so, literally trying to sneak-prick the back of my arm or neck with a pin. I was infuriated to the point of tears. I ended up moving my shop again then moved to another house. This had gone on a whole year.

Eventually I shut my shop down and vanished for a while into the forest, a hundred miles away, as insane as that may sound. It just proves how frustrated I was. And how well guarded my secret was. I could never let them know I was their red-headed half-sister. People in society are mean. A group of eight siblings is practically a small society.

I got an online job selling insurance. My cabin was the size of a small tent. I stayed off Facebook and spent my time watching music videos in six languages.

After a couple of months my water supply ran out, so I trekked across the forest floor with several containers in search of a stream. I followed my ears to it. That’s when I saw them- the Secret People. They hid from me behind trees, whispering things like, “Who is she?” And “Maybe she’s come to expose us all!” They avoided me this way for weeks.

A month later I was sitting on a log during one of their festivals. There were thirty of these strange people, six playing live music, five roasting a deer. Others made steaming cocoa for everyone, read their poems, told stories from childhood. It was a comfortable scene. I almost shared my secret with them. But I remained cautious.

I didn’t understand all the intricacies of this improvised family or how they had all found each other. I only knew none of them were asking me for my blood. Instead they had started to accept me as one of them. I needed to feel accepted. It was all I ever really wanted in life. You’d think that that’s what everyone wants. Sometimes you have to wonder, though.

But my new family certainly wanted acceptance. Months went by. I realized that they were all hiding from their families. Scott was the black sheep of his family. Karla couldn’t keep her prying aunts out of her diary. Jen was secretly in love with her pastor. Then there was Stacy. Almost thirty. She’d made a ton of mistakes, had four children in five years.

Dave once said to me, “Society has hundreds of disfunctions. Road rage. Violence. Murder. Suicide. Loneliness. Rejection en masse. Opinions exist in too much quantity, way too little quality. They can’t handle the facts about other people. The minute my father found out I was dishonorably discharged from the army he disowned me over it. Like yeah, that’s exactly the right response, right? He’d had me investigated! That was how he found out I wasn’t really sick.  He calls me sick out of sarcasm, since I lied, said I had been medically discharged. The world is sick, man.”

“The world? Why do you think that?”

“Look. I said, ‘Dad. There’s a cure for my sickness. I disappear from you and everyone else you’ve turned against me. Then I’ll be fine. But there’s no cure for what you got, man. You got the social sickness that turns people on one another.’ Personal information. They, like, poison your life with your own blood, man! With your own private business! Total bull!”

Stacy once said, “Facts are for courts; they always lead to judgement. Always. You show me a time where a fact- or even something taken as a fact- didn’t lead to judgement and I’ll go home right now.”

As a person who appreciated the strict accuracy of clocks enough to sell them for a living I said, “But people can’t just ignore the truth. We’d be lost, call a Monday a Friday… They’d make it all up.”

“They already do make up the truth. Truth is meaning, so they all give a different meaning to a fact. It just shows how some people are kinder than others, you know, according to the meaning they personally choose to give the same facts.”

“But I thought there could be only one truth.”

“Nope. Everybody can be right for her own purposes. There’s no shortage on facts. Anyone can find facts. But not everybody will translate the facts into a meaning that’s not hurtful. The best-meaning benefits all. The highest truth improves lives.”

Braxton’s son had chosen to add a dark garnish to his truth about his father. I had chosen a brighter outlook. I didn’t use the personal facts to hurt Braxton. You can’t help what your personal facts are, especially when they formed ages ago.

After six months I was outside in the clearing, alone. I stared at the moon, on whose face I saw the so-called energizer bunny, a smudgy pattern that really looks like its namesake. Then I realized this same smudge was simultaneously the face of the Old Man in the Moon.  I uttered, “They’re simultaneously there! It’s sort of like truth itself has its own duality.”

I thought about that famous image, in art illusion books, that can be either a young woman or an old hag, depending on how you look at it. Humans create truth, I thought. It was a meaningful fluke that I was able to see two truths at once in that moon. Old and young. Face and rabbit.

It was in that moment that I was discovered. Yes, my family had found me. Five of them had come.

“Laura! My God. You’re alive!”

I was furious. We had a big, loud conflict right there in the woods. Then Jeff, the middle sibling, called me aside and we talked. “Listen. We came to apologize. We don’t care about doing the blood test anymore…”

“You swear this is over!”

 “It is! I swear! Abba’s DNA matches ours. And since you’re almost like her twin… well. We’ve concluded that all nine of us share the same two parents.” He shrugged.

 “Is that what Robert said?”

 “Yes. That’s what everyone said.”

 Later that night, after everyone was asleep, he asked me, “Why did you resist the test. Out of curiosity.”

“I felt offended, Jeff! Because everyone wanted to make me prove that I’m part of the family.” He still didn’t know my secret, and I left it that way. “I mean, for my own sibling to demand proof was ij itself proof! Proof that you all saw me as anything but equal by pure default. When I should be equal by default! I’m a human being, Jeff! So, what if I was adopted? Had different genes?”

 “I know. I’m sorry.”

 “No! Tell me! Which of you would have accepted me if we didn’t all share the same blood from the same father?”

“Well.” His gaze reached for resolve but he bit his lip, “Some of us would. Some of us wouldn’t. Frankly, he sighed, “I’d. See you differently.”

“How.”

“I’d always introduce you as my half-sister.”

“Why.”

“Facts are facts. I ferret all facts. You know that.”

I wasn’t about to tell my secret. He couldn’t handle it. I nodded, played along, praying the duality of truth would come into play here.

So, I took a closer look. Why was my coldly intellectual brother Jeff, a fact-seeker, so quick to accept that I would not be taking the DNA test? I believe he was willing to deceive his own over-logical brain this once just to keep me in his world, to hold on to his normal, which included him having eight, not seven, siblings. That was how he found his truth, by extinguishing his search for the kind of facts that he knew he was prone to abuse, those he’d easily hurt others with, and hurt himself with. His conscience told him to just stop digging and accept me as his sister because he realized he could be too rigid with facts. And I saw that flash in his eyes. I saw his grace despite himself, and his struggling effort.

The Secret People understood how facts could be weaponized by anyone quite easily. There are versions of Jeff in the world who can’t distinguish people from objects, always turning people into algebraic equations- organizing, grouping, labeling them x and y. Turning souls into parenthetical items.

So I’ll hush until there’s a cure for the social pathology of abusing one another with hard facts. Why tell anyone. They can’t help themselves. Jeff barely could.

My secret. My mother forgot it. My father took it to his grave. It doesn’t have to define me.