I was five years old when my dad died. I don’t remember much about him, just small things. But I remember the day everything changed.

After he died, people started talking. Everywhere I went, adults would whisper. They would stop talking when I walked into a room. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew it was about me. They said things like “that’s not her real father” and “her uncle is her father.” I was too young to understand, but I felt it. Kids always feel when something is wrong.

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My mum didn’t say anything. She just let me live with all these questions in my head.

When I was eight, my mum decided we should leave that place. We moved away, and my grandmother raised me. It was quieter there. No one was whispering anymore. For a few years, I just tried to be a normal kid.

But in 2007, we came back home. And the stories started again.

This time, I was old enough to ask. I looked at my mum and asked her straight, “Who is my father? Why won’t anyone tell me?” But she didn’t answer. She just stayed quiet, like she always did.

We left again in 2009. By then I was seventeen and tired of asking.

In 2010, I met a man and we had a thing going on By 2012, I was pregnant. We tried to make it work, but it didn’t. In 2014, I knew I had to leave him. I went back to my mum because I had nowhere else to go.

That’s when she finally told me the truth.

She said she had met someone, and that man was my real father. She told me they were going to get married. When I asked him if it was true, he said yes. So after all these years of not knowing, I finally had an answer.

But knowing didn’t feel good. It didn’t make me happy. It just made me feel more lost.

I grew up thinking my hometown was where I belonged. It was my home, my place, my roots. Even when I was far away, I knew I could always go back there. It made me feel like I knew who I was.

But now everything is mixed up.

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The man I thought was my father? He’s not. He’s just a name in my past now. And the man who is my real father? I don’t know him. He married my mum, and now they want me to call him Dad. But how can I? He’s a stranger.

Now I have big problems to think about. In our culture, when someone wants to marry me, they pay bride price to my family. But which family? Do I take them to the man I grew up thinking was my dad? Do I take them to my real father? I don’t know.

And my child. My child is asking questions too. What do I tell them about where they come from? Do I tell them that their mother didn’t know who she was? Do I tell them that family is confusing?

—Grace

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