You don't have to love your parents and siblings all the time. But knowing where you come from gives you security. How does it feel when this certainty is suddenly called into question? Our author experienced it.
When I was a kid, I often dreamed about crocodiles. Not a nightmare from which you wake up crying, rather a recurring image of falling asleep: I was walking across a dingy, deserted wasteland when they stirred, first here, then there, then directly below me. That wasn't solid ground. Just a layer of earth and sand over reptile bodies.
At some point the disturbing dreams stopped and I stopped thinking about them. Until one autumn morning many years later, when I fished a lawyer letter out of the mailbox. I would soon take a picture of the decisive sentence and send it to my siblings via Whatsapp. In addition the link to a music video from the eighties: "We Are Family". I thought so.
"Did my mother have a dark secret?"
There was a thick pile of papers in the envelope. Cover letter, five pages from the genetic expert, tables from the laboratory. Finally I found the phrase I had been waiting for months for. But something was wrong with it. "According to these figures, it is practically impossible … the same organic producer …" Next to it my name. Also, the names of the women I have called my half-sisters for over 40 years. And the name of the man who was our father together. At least that's what I believed until a few seconds ago. And all the crocodiles crawled out of their mud holes at the same time.
A child needs to know where it comes from and where it belongs. This is the ground on which we stand, our inner order. For a lifetime, even if our parents are long dead. I always felt safe. My childhood was happy and safe. Even if I wasn't a desired child, at least not right away. It was said that it emerged from a fleeting relationship that crumbled before I was even born. But my mother loved me unconditionally, and there was never any question of who that was: my father. Even if I didn't call him papa, but Günther. My mother did that too.
Günther was a tall, blond man, and everyone said I looked like him. Especially my eyes, those slightly low-hanging lids, very different from my mother's. He came by two or three times a year, more dutiful than joyful. He always remained a stranger to me. I didn't understand his dialect, and on our excursions – fun pool, zoo, picnic – we stood together like two third-rate actors for a father-daughter duo who cannot find a connection. You could say I lived with a numb place in my heart. But better a deaf place than a blank. Once, when my mother was angry about his lack of commitment, she said to me: "We're looking for a new father. One who will take better care of you." The sentence seemed logical to me. I was her child, he was nothing more than a wrong ingredient, an unsuitable spice. It never came to that.
Finally siblings
Five, six years after my birth, Günther married. On the next visits he carried first one, then two baby photos in his wallet. Nora and Franziska had dark, googly eyes and looked more like their mother than him. I finally had what almost all of my friends had: siblings. When I met them, Nora was in second grade and Franziska was in kindergarten. I practiced the multiplication tables with Nora and invented stories for Franziska.
We always stayed in touch. Once the three of us were sitting in my shared kitchen and I complained that Günther hadn't been there for me so much. "Yes, do you think for us?" Asked Nora dryly. At that moment we were more sisters than ever. Three young women with the same absent father. Growing up smoothed out the differences: I was no longer that child from the ex-relationship, the second-class daughter, the appendage of the otherwise intact family. We were three young women with our own plans, relationships, addresses – and no one asked about our parents anymore.
When Günther died last year, a few years after his wife, my first thought was: It's good that there are no questions left between him and me.
Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. A few weeks later I received mail from the probate court where he lived. Nora and Franziska gave my address. I should prove that the deceased was my father. That hit me in the marrow. As soon as I was looking for my birth certificate for my marriage, I noticed that his name was not on it. And no other official document either. I ticked it off as: strange, that was obviously the seventies. My mother was crying on the phone. "It was just never necessary," she said, "we settled it among ourselves." After all, he had never doubted the obvious. Had paid alimony and looked after himself more badly than well. Shared photos, letters, the eyelids, the dimples in the cheeks, the familiar certainty – did that not matter?
Sue your own father?
The lawyer in whose office I was sitting two weeks later shook his head. I was born out of wedlock, there was no official recognition of paternity, and no will either. The only thing left to do was to sue my father. Günther Huber, died on March 2, 2019. Or … The lawyer picked up the calculator, asked what there was to inherit and typed: Here are the costs for court and a genetic report. Because the tax that is due outside the legal succession. Was it worth it? But that's not what it was about for a long time. It was this feeling that stuck to my soles like a stinking, viscous mass: Being second class daughter. Worse: a cheater. Someone who made a mess of a whole family. I had always been a thorn in the side of Günther's wife, even if she didn't say it. I wanted to fix that, once and for all. Instead, it broke into a thousand pieces one autumn morning.
If this story were a film, then at the latest now it would be decided which genre: comedy or drama. Possibility one: a mix-up in the laboratory, relief, final laugh. But the safety precautions for the saliva sample were too detailed for that. Option two: catharsis. The moment my mother sighs at my excited questions and accusations and says, "There's something you need to know." But this is not a movie, just my life, and none of that happened. Except my mother started to doubt her sanity. She knew what it was like! But how should she prove it? A second test should definitely be done, somebody that would free them from the burden of this suspicion. Meanwhile, my own brain was beating other capers. Did she have a dark secret – so repressed that it escaped her own memory? Or vice versa: were Nora and Franziska cuckoo children, both of them? Did that explain why I looked so much more like him?
Our Father – or not?
The call to the appraiser brought at least a little light into the darkness. In fact, gene comparisons between half-siblings are more prone to error than a test between father and child. They still counted in court. "You could request the exhumation of the body," the lawyer informed me. "Even against the will of the other parties involved." Sure, why he didn't talk about siblings. It still hurt. I also knew that I would cross a line that would make us strangers for good. No matter what came out of it.
I lay awake late at night. I was afraid that if I closed my eyes the crocodiles would come back. Towards morning I remembered the moment with Nora and Franziska in my shared kitchen.
"Suddenly I thought: protein sequences on chromosomes, eye color, drooping eyelids – none of that matters."
Who we are for one another – parents, children, siblings – is in our own hands. It's about how we bring these roles to life. About the common story. In the morning I called my mom and told her I didn't want another test. That her word was enough for me. Then Nora.
"I told you right away," she replied after a moment of silence. "We'll take care of the money between us. And I also know that you're my sister." I think she never really understood that I wasn't interested in a few thousand euros in inheritance tax that I could have saved as a daughter. You and Franziska always stood on safe ground. But maybe it was precisely this imperturbability that brought my inner carousel of thought to a halt again.
That was now six months ago. My life is no longer as right as it was before, and maybe it never will be. I now live with a numb spot and a splinter that won't pull. Nevertheless we are family, cannot be terminated. Not because we have to. But because we want to. That's all that counts.
* Our author has changed the names of her sisters and a few details. She also keeps her name to herself to protect the family.
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