Family Secrets

by Zina Abbott

  “I know. I have it available when you’re ready.”

  Then, she must have sensed my desire to see it.

  “Let me get it for you so you can take a look at it again.”

  Mon went to the safe in her bedroom and returned with the document in her hand. The first thing I noticed was the word **AMENDED** typed across the top. It hadn’t meant anything to me when we got my learner’s permit. Now that I knew more, the word jumped out at me. Below was the birth information for me, including my legal name, Christine Grace Carpenter. For my parents, it listed Dad and Mom and where they were born. There was nothing to show I was born to another woman. I studied the document for a few minutes, then I handed it back.

  “Why don’t you have any baby pictures of me?” I asked, not emotionally ready yet to speak about the weightier issues. “Why did you have to go to Aunt Pat to get one the time I needed it in high school?”

  “I don’t know for sure, because it was before I was with your father. But, according to him, when your biological mother left him, she took all the pictures plus a lot of other things with her. The only picture he had of you was a small one in his wallet. It became so worn, he eventually threw it away. Quite frankly, I remember being quite annoyed with him when I found out he had done that. I remember telling him that as worn as it was, we should have kept it in the safe so we had a baby picture of you.”

  “Did he say why he threw it away rather than keep it?”

  Mom flicked the air with her hand and gave a slight shake of her head with a faint smile on her face.

  “Oh, you know how your father is at times. He prefers to leave the past behind and live in the present. His attitude was that we had new pictures of you and we didn’t need to keep an old one that was falling apart. He’s still that way.”

  “So you don’t know what happened to my baby pictures?”

  “Your father thinks your biological mother burned them along with some other things. I don’t know if she did or not. I only know we never got them back.”

  Biological mother! Biological mother! Doesn’t she have a name? Why not call her by her name, I wondered? But, Mom kept talking, not really giving any important information and not giving me much of an opening to ask. The longer she talked, the more the numbness set in.

  “Fortunately, your Aunt Pat loves photography and has always been the family historian, I guess you could say. She has more pictures from those days than we do.”

  We sat awhile longer in uncomfortable silence, each choosing a different spot on the wall on which to focus our eyes. I finally collected myself together enough to ask more questions.

  “Were dad and my real mother married?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come we never talk about her?”

  “Your dad is very sensitive about the whole situation,” she said carefully. “He loves you so much and he knew how much I loved you from the start. Especially once your adoption to me was finalized, the whole matter was closed as far as he was concerned. One time he said, ‘We are not going to talk about her anymore. Christy is still too little to remember anything. The past is past, and we are going forward as a family.’ He refused to talk about it from that point on and insisted I not say anything about your biological mother to you. So, I never brought the subject up.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Mom hesitated. I could tell she didn’t want to answer that.

  “Christy, I think I have told you enough. I think you are old enough to know I adopted you, but if your father finds out I told you, he will be furious. I would really appreciate if you not tell him we discussed this.”

  Of course I was old enough to be told, I remember thinking with a burst of anger. I had been old enough years earlier. Looking back now, at how upset and confused I felt over this revelation, I wonder if I really was mature enough then. I did recall that I felt like I had to digest and make sense of what I had just learned before being ready to learn anything else.

  Mom gathered the pictures up and took them back to her bedroom.

  I knew I had caught Mom in a lie. First, she said she thought I knew she was not my real, or, as she put it, my biological mother. Later, she admitted that Dad insisted she never tell me. I struggled with my feelings over that realization. I watched Mom as she returned to the kitchen table. She tried to act casual, but, she appeared to be uneasy about my reaction. I was sure she knew that I had never been told anything about being adopted by her.

  I wondered why she decided to tell me at that time when the family was under so much stress because of my upcoming wedding. Did her conscience bother her once she saw her and Dad’s wedding pictures with me in them? Was she trying to maintain her position of trustworthy confidant while at the same time putting the blame on my father for this subterfuge?

  At that time, I wondered if Mom was trying to subtly warn me that I could only know so much and that I must never go to my father for the rest of the answers about my past. Or, was she the one who was trying to hold back on the details and using the excuse of my father’s attitude to do it? She made it clear that I would have to somehow get around my father first before I would be allowed to learn more, and we all knew that there were certain subjects that Dad refused to discuss.

  “Thank you for showing me your wedding pictures, Mom,” was all I could think to say. I got up and left the room.

  The next time Mom and I were together, our talk returned to going over some of the details of my wedding, but the atmosphere between us was strained. Although nothing else was said about what Mom had told me, that discussion was still between us, forming an invisible barrier.

  Over the next several days, this conversation with Mom was never far from my conscious thoughts. I realized that I still didn’t know my real mother’s name. This would have been the name on my original birth certificate, the one to which, by law, I no longer had access. I wondered how she and Dad met, and why they got divorced

  Several times when I was sure I would be left alone, I went to our living room and studied the latest family portrait hanging on the wall behind our couch. There was my mother—my adopted mother—with her beautiful dark brown hair, olive complexion and fine features. Mom colored her hair now, but she kept it the same as her natural color which set off her dark brown eyes. Sitting next to her was Dad with his lighter brown hair, large wide-set hazel eyes, broad cheekbones and skin tanned so that it looked like Mom’s. Kenny was an obvious mix of the two, with a youthful version of Dad’s features and body frame and Mom’s coloring.

  Then there was me. I was blonde, with large wide-set blue eyes and Daddy’s wide cheekbones. It had never meant much to me that I was the only member of the family with light-colored curly hair and blue eyes while everyone else’s hair was dark and straight, and their eyes were brown or hazel. I knew from biology classes that brown genes were dominant over blonde. Even Aunt Pat’s hair was brown like Dad’s, and her eyes were hazel, too. Thanks to this new information about myself, I realized I did not look at all like Mom and only a little like Dad.

  Who did I look like?

  I tried to feel grateful that Mom finally told me what she had. Then again, I was angry because she didn’t tell me sooner. As irrational as it was, I was angry at Mom for not being my birth mother. I felt frustrated because the doors that led to more information had been slammed shut in my face and, according to Mom, were locked at my dad’s command.

  Before the “big revelation” I had been so confident about how I fit in the family. I thought I knew who I was, but it turned out there was a lot about me I did not know. If Mom and Dad had me when they were married, that meant my real mother gave me away.

  Why?

  When I was not thinking about that, I battled within myself over my current feelings for Mom. Even though we had gone through the usual parent-child disagreements, as a child I always loved and trusted her. What I had learned should not matter. But to me, it did. She had lied to me.

  Sometimes I wallowed in th
e anger and betrayal I felt. Then, the pendulum would swing to the other extreme, and guilt washed over me about feeling the way I did. How could I be so ungrateful when she had always been a good mother to me?

  This went on for weeks. I had no idea what I should do about it.

  Chapter 10 – Jennie

  “I really appreciate your offer to take me to your club meeting, Mrs. Moore,” said Jennie when Donna Moore’s front door opened. Jennie felt a sense of satisfaction that she had arrived at her neighbor’s house a few minutes early and did not need to worry that she would be the cause of them being late.

  “Please, call me Donna. I am no longer a stuffy old bank manager.”

  “That may be hard. I’ve known you as Mrs. Moore since I was a kid. Besides, you have never been stuffy.”

  “You’re all grown up now, Jennie,” Donna laughed. “You make me feel incredibly old when you address me as Mrs. Moore. If you call me that at our GOFT meeting, everyone will look around and ask if I brought my mother-in-law.”

  “In that case, I’ll be happy to call you Donna.” This was the first time her neighbor had asked Jennie to address her by her first name. Jennie found the timing interesting.

  “My car is in the garage if you’re ready to go,” Donna said as she led the way. “I’m just happy you were able to fit GOFT in your schedule. Did you decide against bringing your little one?”

  “Yes. Mom said she would watch Garrett for me.”

  “Your mother is not joining us, I gather. I did make a point to tell her that we would love to have both of you, as well as your little boy, come to our meeting. Your Garrett would be able to play with Kaylee’s little girl.”

  “No, she definitely is not interested,” Jennie said hesitantly. “She thought it was a good idea for me to take a break from school and work to do something I want to do. But, she made it clear to me that she is not excited about our topic tonight.”

  Once they were settled in the car, Donna continued, “It sounds like she still doesn’t think it’s a good idea for you to ask the family questions about what went on years ago. Yet, in spite of that, you still want to learn more about how to gather oral histories.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “I think that, like me, she would like to learn more about what happened. But, Mom is not one to rock the boat. As for me, the more I learn about my family, the more I have questions. I know you are into doing genealogy and finding out facts about people who are dead and gone. But, in my case, I feel like the information I need is not online or in some book. It’s locked up in the memories of my living family members.”

  “What I’m hearing is that on one hand, your mother doesn’t want to create waves, so she doesn’t want anyone asking questions that the family might find uncomfortable,” Donna said with a twinkle in her eyes. “On the other hand, you feel it is more important to get things out in the open rather than to maintain the status-quo.”

  Active listening, thought Jennie. But she’s doing more than active listening. She’s playing devil’s advocate. Jennie chose her next words carefully.

  “I don’t want to cause family problems anymore than Mom does. But, we can’t change what is, right? If I could only draw out in the open what happened, maybe it would provide some insight and resolve some long-buried issues. I can’t see where avoiding the past and pretending something that really happened didn’t happen, will make it go away. It only builds barriers and prolongs misunderstandings.”

  Jennie felt the sting of her conscience at the thought that maybe she was doing the same thing with her own marital problems—building barriers around them in order to pretend that they do not exist. No, she told herself, the people who were directly affected by the situation knew about it. If she didn’t tell the rest of the world her private business, it was because it was none of their concern.

  “I know Mom is not going to be the one to break through those barriers, or she would have done it already,” Jennie continued.

  Donna pursed her lips and gave Jennie a thoughtful look that prompted Jennie to continue.

  “I will say this. I was talking to her several days ago and she finally opened up and told me a few things about her past.”

  “That sounds like progress.”

  “It really meant a lot to me. I was having my own issues that day. After she shared some of her experiences with me, I really felt like she understood what I was going through.”

  “That’s why I think you will like the GOFT ladies. The more we focus and share about our families, the more we experience those ‘Aha!’ moments that add so much to our lives.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, Donna, but I doubt I will be joining your group. I’m coming tonight because I have ulterior motives for wanting to hear your speaker. I want to learn the proper way to interview my family in order to get some answers, but that’s about it.”

  “Don’t worry about having ulterior motives. All of us in GOFT are shameless about having ulterior motives. We are all striving, each in our own way, to strengthen our own families.”

  “Good,” Jennie smiled, hoping her neighbor got the message. “That makes me feel better.”

  “So, you have decided to be the one to interview your family because you think you’re stronger than your mother.”

  Again, it was statement rather than a question. It was a challenge.

  “No, oh no,” Jennie shook her head. “Mom is a rock. My life is so crazy and difficult right now. I couldn’t get through it without her strength. Hers is the shoulder I cry on. I mean, my father has always been there for me, and he is so great with Garrett. But, Mom is the hub, the one who keeps things organized and in balance in our home. I think we all would fall apart without her there to hold us together.”

  “Then why do you think she has not asked her family the hard questions?”

  “I think she chooses not to. She’s basically a peacemaker.”

  “A peacemaker, huh? She has always impressed me as someone who keeps things organized and running smoothly, but I never really thought of her as a peacemaker before.”

  “Oh, yes. Her favorite lecture through the years has centered on putting an end to arguments and learning to get along. She has this routine where she insists that all the involved parties discuss the situation calmly, then kiss and make up. When Jason and I had our spats, she didn’t just send us to our rooms to cool off. Oh, no! She refereed until we either worked it out or developed the good sense to pretend we had.

  “I remember once telling her that the only kind of peacemaker I needed for Jason was the kind that shot bullets. Either she didn’t understand my meaning or she ignored it. Sometimes she laughed and said she and Uncle Kenny used to fight all the time when they were kids. But she always added that she didn’t realize until she was older how important it is to stay close to the family you have and love them, even if they’re not perfect.”

  “True.”

  “I didn’t see it growing up, and when my mother would go on about stuff like that, it really annoyed me.”

  “What does your uncle think about all this family history your mother wants to avoid discussing?”

  Jennie hesitated. “I doubt he even knows. I suspect it’s something that happened before he was born and he was never brought into the loop.”

  Donna Moore raised her eyebrows in response, but said nothing.

  “But I know my mother and uncle are close now,” Jennie reassured Donna, feeling like she had to defend her family. “She promised us that, as adults, Jason and I would become better friends. Her mantra has been this: Friends come and go, but family is always with us.”

  “What do you think about your mother’s philosophy now?”

  “Oh, I think Mom knows what she’s talking about. Unfortunately, Jason and I are not there yet. He’s a junior and has matured a lot in the last year. But, he is still too ‘high school’ for me. We have very little in common.”

  “But, do you feel like you will eventually get the
re?”

  “Yes, yes I do,” Jennie said with conviction. She realized at that moment that it was the first time she had ever felt that. “In a few years, once Jason gets past the college years and settles down with a family, I can see where we’ll be close. Sometimes I used to wish that he and I were closer in age so we could have enjoyed playing together more as children. I understand my mother had problems with miscarriages, so he and I are probably lucky that we are here at all.”

  “That knowledge about why you are so far apart in age can be one of the bonds that will hold you together.”

  “You know, I never thought about it like that,” Jennie said slowly. “I only know Mom used to talk all the time about how important it is that Jason and I be loyal to each other. She says she hardly ever sees the people who were her friends in high school and college. Most of them she has lost track of except for a few she exchanges Christmas card with.”

  “I hate to say it, but she’s right. That’s how it is for a lot of people.”

  “I know. I told her I need to get her on social media so she can look up all her old friends, but she’s not interested. She said that wasn’t the point. Friends come and go; family never stops being your family.”

  Jennie almost choked as she spoke the last sentence.

  What about the family you married into? Do they ever stop being your family? Even if she and Gerald were to divorce, she would still be connected to him because of Garrett.

  What about her in-laws? Jennie liked and admired Alice Womack. She never told horror stories about her mother-in-law because she considered Gerald’s mother part of her family. She also enjoyed her father-in-law, Ned Womack. Actually, he was her stepfather-in-law because Gerald’s parents divorced when he was young and his real father died in prison. She trusted Gerald’s parents almost as much as she trusted her own. Would they always be family if she and Gerald divorced?

  Jennie noticed the puzzled look on Donna Moore’s face. Jennie turned to look out the window, hoping Donna didn’t suspect how much she was struggling with her feelings. She breathed a sigh of relief when Donna continued their conversation without comment.