Elena and I were finally going to have a child after years of waiting, trying, and hoping. I couldn’t wait to hug our kid, but when the day came, I was surprised and couldn’t believe it.
Elena said one day, “Honey, I think I want to be alone in the delivery room.”
What she said surprised me. I thought about why she didn’t want me there. I agreed since she said she had to do it by herself.
A few days later, we headed to the hospital. I kissed Elena at the door to the maternity ward and then had to wait.
The doctor finally came out, but the look on his face warned me something was wrong. As I walked to Elena’s room, my heart fell.
I was happy to see that Elena was fine.
She was holding our baby, but she wasn’t acting like she usually does.
She looked me in the eye and showed me our baby girl. The kid had blue eyes, light skin, and blonde hair. My heart fell. “You lied!” I screamed.
“Marcus, I can explain,” Elena said softly as she took my hand.
My world changed. We are both Black, yet our child is white.
She tried to convince me that the baby was ours, but I couldn’t understand how that could be.
“Elena, don’t lie to me. This can’t be my girl. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I’m not an idiot!”
The nurses around us tried to calm things down, but I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.
“Marcus, please look at this,” Elena said as she pointed to the little birthmark on my daughter’s foot. My brother and I both had the same birthmark, and it looked exactly the same.
“I have something to tell you.” “I should have told you this years ago,” Elena said. That’s when I learned that she had a rare recessive trait that might cause a child have pale skin and features, no matter what the parents looked like.
She told me she didn’t tell me before because she didn’t think our baby would be white.
I started with the little child. The birthmark should have been proof that she was my, but I had a lot of other feelings that were hard to deal with.
What Elena says seems true. I believed her, and soon my anger changed into something stronger than anything else: love and trust.
We thought my family would judge us when we brought our new baby home, but we didn’t realize they would be so harsh.
My mother and brother both called me an idiot for letting my wife fool me and encouraged me to confront the truth that the baby wasn’t mine.
They laughed at the news about Elena’s gene, saying it wasn’t real and was just made up.
One night, I heard the door to my daughter’s room open, so I went to check it out. There was my mom with a damp washcloth in her hands. She was trying to get rid of my baby’s birthmark to show me that Elena was lying.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t take it anymore.
I told my mom to go. I yelled at her, “Mom, you have to accept our baby or leave us alone.”
The yelling woke everybody up. Elena woke up. I told her I was sorry for not standing up to her sooner when she started to weep.
I agreed, even though I knew we didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.
The results showed that the baby was ours, as we had hoped. I was the genuine father of her.
When we showed them the test results, my family members expressed they were sorry. Some of the apologies were real, while others were awkward.
At that time, I felt tranquil. It might not be like other families, but it’s mine and it’s perfect.