They Will Never Know the Truth
Two nights ago, my dad opened up to me about possibly the most messed-up thing to ever happen in my family, and that’s saying a lot considering my dad’s side is literally the messiest of them all. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I can’t speak about it to other family members.
The secret he told me has the potential to ruin everything. So my grandmother is the oldest of 10 siblings. She grew up under the care of my gambling-addicted great-grandmother, who also had two “marriages” and anywhere between four to five different baby-daddies.
She often left for weeks at a time to go on promiscuous gambling excursions while leaving her children to fend for and feed themselves. Sometimes, she’d even come home pregnant. My grandmother essentially raised herself and grew up in the poor neighborhoods of Detroit of all places.
In the late ’60s, she met my grandfather, and they eventually got married and had my dad and my aunt. Unfortunately, my grandfather decided to partake in a bunch of shady activities and went out of the picture.
My grandmother’s second ex-husband, Harold, came into their lives in the late ’70s when my dad was 10 and my aunt, Victoria, was 8. Together, they had my dad’s younger half-brother, Harry. This is where it starts to get really twisted.
When Victoria was a teenager, she kept a deep, dark secret—she began having a relationship with her stepdad, Harold. When my grandmother found out that they had been sleeping together for a few years, she immediately divorced Harold and my family cut Victoria out of their lives.
I did not know about my aunt Victoria and her three sons until I was 10, the year my aunt and grandmother made up after over a decade of silence. Victoria’s relationship with her current husband is turbulent, but they are both still together. They might not be after this.
Apparently, her oldest child Carl is actually the son of Harold. Yep, my aunt accidentally conceived a child with her stepdad. But that’s not even the worst part. My dad was the only person who knew about this secret. Carl does not know the truth and certainly has no notion of that being a reality.
In fact, Carl is named after his presumed “father” and they are referred to as big Carl and little Carl. Harold ended up passing away in 2011. As I’ve gotten older, my dad has begun opening up to me about dark family secrets.
Take my word that my dad is an extremely private and secretive person—he detests the drama in his ginormous family and disassociates with the majority of them, actively avoiding family and social events. My dad wishes to live in solitude and peace, so he has no reason to say something untrue.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since. I have been comparing pictures of little Carl and Harold. The details are chilling. The resemblance between little Carl and Harold is both uncanny and shocking. They share facial, height, weight, and hair similarities.
Even when I was a child and first met them, I remember telling my dad how Carl didn’t look like his “dad” at all. I can only imagine what my dad thought and how hard it was for him to keep his mouth shut for a whole decade. This means that little Carl never knew or met his true father, Harold, nor his half-brothers.
Worst of all, he, unfortunately, has the DNA of both of my grandmother’s lousy ex-husbands. Surprisingly, little Carl is actually a quiet, kind-hearted, and hard-working individual who heavily loves and respects our grandmother.
I feel so bad that I know this and little Carl doesn’t. I don’t think it’s my place to tell him in any capacity and I have no idea how he would react or what would happen to their family.
I’m sure they all know that their mom slept with her stepdad since that’s why she wasn’t in contact with their grandmother for most of their life. But this is a rotten cherry on top of this horrible story. It gets more messed up. The youngest brother, Alex, is over 10 years younger than his brothers Carl and Rico.
According to my dad, Alex is actually the son of big Carl’s younger brother. I don’t know who big Carl’s brother is or what he looks like though. Again, none of them except my aunt, my dad, and I know this now. Holy cow, I feel bad for my cousins for the fact that they will probably never know the truth.