In 1997, my father got three women pregnant in the same year.
My brother Tyler, born November 1997, had him until he was fourteen. They lived in New Jersey. Our father married his mother, changed his diapers, then divorced just as he began high school. He would tell you his father left just as he was becoming a man.
Me, born February 1998, got my turn when I was twelve. After the divorce, our father moved to South Florida, rekindled his relationship with my mom, and is with her to this day. I would tell you gaining a father still doesn’t erase the decade without one.
My brother Anthony, born July 1997, was sixteen when he finally put a face to our father. His turn still hasn’t come. He would tell you he doesn’t want it any more.
It’s a lot to keep track of, I know.
Of course, I’ve heard the story a few times, from both my mother’s perspective, and my father’s. My father, his tone incredulous and his head shaking, would tell you we are all children of God. That is, our conceptions were immaculate and he is as innocent as Joseph, caught totally unaware on how we all three came to be. His exact words to me were something along the lines of, “Suddenly, everyone was pregnant.”
My mother would tell you he was more involved than that.
I would tell you, and I think my brothers would too, that he was never involved enough.
It used to be a game we played, comparing. What fucked up a kid the most: having a dad and losing him? Suddenly getting one back? Or never having one at all? Nature versus nurture could have a field day with us.
I’ve gotten good at telling a condensed version of events. A party trick, complete with a few built in punchlines. I’ve had to; how else do you explain that you have two brothers the same age as you, but you’re not triplets? That you aren’t an only child, but you never had anyone to play with? That you’re an Abreu, but your brothers are McDaniels, Johnson.
I’ve gotten even better at telling this story without any villains. There are no wicked stepmothers; only other mothers. There is no mad king, nor is there a duplicitous prince; just my father, who did not teach me how to ride a bike, but arrived in time to teach me to drive. He is old and weary, the consequences of his actions have grown up, graduated college, and, in my brother’s case, started families of their own.
There is no happily ever after. There is him, and there is us, and what we make now.
Anthony grew up down the street from me. Neither of us had known that until we met when we were sixteen, at a family reunion on our father’s side. I wasn’t used to telling the story then, to being a spectacle. I felt swarms of eyes on me in every room I entered – my eyes, the same brown, the same shape. I didn’t know they could narrow, could examine, could scold without a word until I saw them do it first. I wavered between wanting to earn the affections of this estranged family, and reminding myself I had never needed any of them in the first place.
Anthony was a broad-shouldered, tall young man with glasses, and a wide, squat nose like mine. He was quick with a smile, but slow with his words. He was an enigma. Somehow, he had already met and been brought into the fold of the McDaniels clan.
They would call him Junior. Not because he shared a name with our father, but because they swore his resemblance was strongest. As if by calling him that, they could force a familiar relationship between this boy who craved a father and this man who was supposed to be one. I don’t know how my brother felt about it, but it always irritated me. It wasn’t a gift. It was a constant reminder of what wasn’t happening.
I’ve never told him that. And now I’ve told all of you.
I felt the missing years between us like a yawning chasm. There should be a word for the feeling of meeting someone who should have been in your life all along. I could see the childhood of should-have-beens dangling in the air – having a player two on the Xbox, arguing over who could sit in the front seat, exploring our neighborhood together. Getting angry with each other. Loving each other enough to be comfortable being angry with each other.
Instead, we were strangers who shared a nose, tiptoeing around every conversation.
I had known about him, as an objective fact. The way I knew the sky was blue and summers are hot—I knew I had a brother who I hadn’t met. He, on the other hand, went from an only child to a brother overnight. He learned of my existence and met me in the same week. There was a moment between the whirlwind of first meetings where we sat alone in our grandmother’s house.
Her house had been built around an ancient tree that the original builders had refused to tear down. Instead, the house had a center courtyard with a garden, where the tree continued to flourish. The inner walls of the house were glass, allowing you to admire the foliage when you walked through the halls. There was a set of doors that led into the garden from the kitchen, and a couple of stone benches to sit on. The house struck me as something a witch might live in, in the best way.
We sat in the courtyard together on the first night of the reunion, alone for the first time.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s okay,” I said, not because it was, but because it wasn’t his fault. I was a gangly, awkward teen, all knees and elbows and unruly curly hair. I was better with words on a page than in person. And the pressure to love him—to offer him more than our father did—was suffocating. I had overheard snippets of what his life had been like: constantly switching schools after getting into fights, raised by a single mom, a teacher; no cousins his own age, no siblings.
“I was supposed to look out for you,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow.
He was a child just as much as I was. He had been left behind just as I had. If anything, I owed him an apology; our father had come back for me, but not him. Didn’t he blame me? Hate me, just a little? As good a person as I would like to think I am, I couldn’t envision he felt anything but distaste for someone who stole so much from him.
I must have made a face. He adjusted his glasses, and said, so matter of fact, as though this would explain it all:
“I’m the older brother.”
“By seven months,” I pointed out, trying not to laugh. We were in the same grade, had woken up to the same cartoons. I wouldn’t call him my “older” anything. Yet he had said this without blinking, his expression somber. He had jumped into the job feet first, and was apologizing for clocking in late.
“Doesn’t matter,” he huffed, crossing his arms. “It’s my job to protect you.”
I scoffed, rolled my eyes. Made a silly joke. I can’t recall exactly what I said, but I remember the tension eased. I realized there was nobody on earth who understood what I was going through better than him—except for Tyler, our other brother. Maybe our childhood memories weren’t spent together, but their substance was the same.
I don’t think I loved him immediately, not on sight, but I did in that moment. When I realized the missing years didn’t matter to him. I wouldn’t have to work to earn the title of “sister.” It was mine the moment he knew me.
So when I tell our story, even the party version, the condensed version, there is never any hesitation. I don’t say my father; he is ours, even if he doesn’t claim all of us, we claim him. We claim each other.
I have no half-brothers. Only brothers.
And maybe our dad is right, maybe some higher power had a hand in this.
Maybe the word for meeting someone who should have been there all along is: miracle.
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