Healing for my Hurt: A Journey to Wholeness

The Truth Unveiled

You are illegitimate; it was a word hurled like a dagger piercing my heart, its intention to wound and wound deeply. I was about nine or ten and I was not completely sure what the word meant but the inflection of his voice told me that what came out of my older brother’s mouth was not nice. I read constantly and it did not sound like a word he would know but would have heard from someone else. As children, we had a tenuous relationship at best. It appeared to me that he was not and had never been happy having a sister. I was two years younger than he was and my perception of my big brother was that of a spoiled child used to getting his way at my expense. He had whining and playing helpless because of his asthma down to a science and could generally wheedle his way out of chores. His undone work meant more for me to do and nothing I did or said could convince our mom that he was faking. His one goal in life was to make my life as miserable as a big brother could and in that, he excelled.

As soon as my momma got home, I was going to ask her what the word meant.  Before she could cross the threshold of the front door, I pounced on her about the word my brother casually flung at me. I did not initially tell her where I heard the word; I just wanted to hear from her what it meant.  I needed confirmation that it was not as awful as it had sounded uttered from my brother’s lips. Tired from a hard day at a job that most likely did not begin to pay the bills; she wearily explained the word meant that someone’s parents were not married when they were born. Poised with this information, I asked her if I was illegitimate and watched the pained look in her eyes she was not quick enough to hide. You are not she said; you are mine and I love you. The words from her mouth said one thing, but the look upon her face confirmed for me that the hateful words of my brother were true; I was illegitimate and he was not. My mother had been married to his father but not to mine. Now I understood the cockiness in his voice, the air of somehow being better than I was after all. He was two years older than I was but I was always taller, probably because he had grown up sickly; I made good grades; he did just enough to get by. The day he uttered that word to me put him on top in his mind and in my mind in a way that counted more than anything else did.  He knew who his father was and although he died before my brother was born, he had many aunts and uncles along with his grand parents to tell him about his father. I was lacking in all of those areas and that day proved to be a day of reckoning for us both.

Using the process of elimination, and the fact that my brother and I had been home alone all day, she was able to deduce that he was the source of my hurt feelings. She had a conversation with him, only a portion of which I was able to hear. His account was that he had overheard the words spoken by a member of his paternal family. I looked up the word in the worn dictionary that we owned and discovered that illegitimate also meant the same as a bastard. A feeling of deep shame spread over me from the ends of the hairs on my head down to the toes on my bare feet. It was a feeling that permeated me body and soul, one that never quite went away after that day. I felt branded, marked and different from everyone else. In my child’s mind, anyone looking instantly knew the truth about me. I recall from that moment in my life and forward, the color literally seemed to drain out of my childhood and my life. It was that day that I became acutely aware of not having a father in my life and no aunts and uncles or cousins to tell me about him like my brother had.