Family Secret: My Questionable Paternity

I have seen my father have crises and episodes of sickle cell anemia and the pain and incapacitation that follows. My father’s ill health is a big part of our lives, our household diet revolves around what is healthy for him. Our schedules revolve around whether or not he can be left alone. My mother is his nurse, dietician, masseuse and therapist. I call her his private nurse. The sad thing is, when you look closely at my parents, apart for her caring for him and ensuring he stays healthy and alive, there is nothing else there. I have hardly ever seen them have a carefree conversation or do anything together that isn’t about his hospital bills or his general health.

My mother. She is a strong, determined woman. The is the epitome of service to God and man. She will take care of everyone she comes across. And no one ever knows what’s in her heart because she hardly ever complains about anything. After she had me, she decided not to test fate anymore because she is hemoglobin AS , and chances are her children could take her hemoglobin S, combine it with my father’s hemoglobin S and become a sickle cell patient too. She thinks she dodged a bullet with me and has no need to play the Russian roulette again.

My father. He is the last of eleven siblings. The youngest and also physically weakest. he is used to being cared for. His parents coddled him and he expects nothing but same from my mother. What he lacks in physical strength though, he makes up for in mental and emotional fortitude. He is the kindest most empathetic human I know. I love him to bits.

And then there’s me. I have always been told I have hemoglobin AS. My mother always openly says that I am lucky I wasn’t born SS. I was conceived out of wedlock. My mother was a young girl, working in my paternal grandparents’ home as a maid, in exchange for an education. While my father was in the University and she, a senior in high school, they started fooling a round, I happened and both my maternal and paternal grandparents decided a marriage was a great idea.

Everybody held their breath and waited to see if I would be born healthy. I was born healthy. My post natal records showed HbAS, which means I inherited the sickle gene from my father and a normal gene from my mother. Hurray! I have the sickle cell trait but I suffer no consequences, I live quite the normal life. In our family, there is an inside joke, ten plus one, which refers to my ten uncles who dodged the HbSS fate plus one lucky nephew, me.

Hemoglobin type tests are an obsession in my family before anyone is allowed to marry. So the circumstance of my conception and birth, and my HbAS status has always been a big deal, so much so that it has defined my life. My HbAS status has been so ingrained in my psyche that I never thought to check for myself and neither did my father or anyone else. Everyone believed the post natal test my mother brought from the hospital after my delivery. And why wouldn’t they?

All was well and good until I set my sights on a beautiful medical student this past year. She and I have been friends for a while now, and have recently been attempting to date. And then one day she asked, would I be so kind to draw a little blood for her and her colleague’s project? They needed to separate the sickled hemoglobin from the healthy ones for a genetics paper.

Of course! Why not? I will draw blood for her. I would do a lot for that girl. So I went to the lab and we got blood sampling. They drew my blood and did their thing.

She came to me and said, “You are not HbAS, you are HbAA. Are you sure you father has sickle cell?”

Yes my father does have sickle cell. I have seen him in crisis. I have seen that proud, grown man cry. Yes he is!

“Do the test again!” I demanded.

They repeated the test. HbAA.

“Maybe my mother isn’t HbAS as she believes she she. Maybe she is HbAA and passed it on to me,” I reasoned.

“You take only one gene from your mother, the other comes from your father so it doesn’t matter if your mother is HbAA, you would take only one A from her and take one S from your dad. If your father is HbSS, then your best bet should be HbAS,” my friend’ colleague explained.

Denial is a brutal beast, and can be unrelenting. “Maybe my father is HbAS then?” I quipped.”

“With all those sickle cell anemia episodes?” my girlfriend asked, and she met my eyes, challenging me to face the reality of what had been discovered in that tiny lab.

I confronted my mother with the results, “Who is my father? I am HbAA! Explain my paternity to me!”

“The man who’s showed up for you, has loved you, fathered you, educated you and given you his name. That is your father. Now you can go ran your mouth and break his heart or you can live like a sensible son of a wise man. End of discussion!” she said and continued to suck her teeth, so long and so slow, i knew it really was end of discussion.

And she has not said a word about my paternity since.

Misskorang, my theory is, my father isn’t the only one amongst his brothers that did the fooling around with my mother. Given that I am not my father’s son but I am his exact replica, and he and his brothers are doppelgängers, your guess is as good as mine.

I have no interest in pursuing any paternity DNA tests. And I don’t know why, but I have a feeling my actual father knows about me but chose to be my uncle instead. I think whoever fathered me set my father up because he knew my father wouldn’t get the flack he would get if it came out he fathered me while still schooling or married as would be the case of my older uncles.

So yeah my paternity is up in the air. Unless you know of a way to line up eleven grown men to take a paternity DNA test to see who fathered me.