In my novels, the fathers do not get along. They are white supremacist murderers and domestic abusers. They trick their wives into getting pregnant. They have a job. They abandon their families.
My biological father, Albert Coleman Bryan Jr., was 22 years old when I was born. He was a great Air Force pilot who flew out into the big blue sea, leaving me and his mother stranded.
He had curly red hair, freckles and a charming smile. He has a face I don't remember. He's actually seen it. My parents separated around the time I was born.
I grew up experiencing the pain of my father's absence, especially when he sent me expensive gifts at Christmas. My mother handed the books to me without saying a word, and I knew I had to go into the closet to open them.
By then she had remarried. Besides her stepdad, she had a younger brother and sister. Our stockings were full of bananas and oranges but little else.
In my closet, I would open gifts from my father, along with a signed card from his secretary or someone in the store. Among the many gifts he received over the years, he sent me a pearl necklace, a portable typewriter, and a birthstone ring. I would hide it in my closet and never mention it to my siblings.
Decades later, one afternoon in May, I stopped by a shopping mall in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was taking a break from grading term papers. Before I got out of the car, I checked my email and found a note from a woman named Jann. She informs me that she is my adopted half-sister.
“What about my father?” I ask. “Is he still alive?”
Yes, Jann wrote that her father is still alive. He lives at the Floyd E. “Tut” Fann State Veterans Home in Huntsville, Alabama. He is 91 years old. Do you want to meet him?
I agree.
Jann discovered my presence while she was tidying up the house before her father came home. She reached into her pants pocket and found an old wallet. Inside was a tattered photo of me as a first-grader at Church Street Elementary School in Tupelo, Mississippi. On the back was the following text: Dear Dad, I love you, Minrose.
I have never thought of myself as a dirty little secret. My parents were married at First Presbyterian Church. My mother wore a white dress with her long train. There was music and a quiet reception in the church basement, and my grandfather was a teetotaler. I was born two years later.
As soon as my grades come back, I book a flight to Alabama and pack a few clothes into my suitcase. In Birmingham, we rent a car, spend the night in a shabby motel, and then head to Huntsville the next morning. By the time we get to Jann's condo, my head is pounding. I take twice as many blood pressure medications.
The humidity made my shirt stick to my back as Jann led me into the nursing home. She told me I had to say it out loud. My father is almost deaf.
I expect a poignant private encounter with some awkwardness in his room. What I get instead is a crowded restaurant. The sound of trays clanging, voices distorted by age and infirmity, very old men, the stench of urine mixed with the smell of overcooked meat. Jann guides me through the commotion and finds myself hairless and rumpled in a wheelchair.
“dad!” She cheers up. “Your daughter is here to see you. “It’s your daughter Minrose!”
Jann then addresses the entire room. All the older people are white. Young crew, all black. “She’s his daughter, and this is the first time they’ve met!” She is full of passion.
The head rotates. The fork stops in the air. The flight attendants smile.
My father turned towards me as slowly as an old turtle.
“Why are you so late?” he says
Jann and the crew laugh. I don't.
It takes me a while to realize that these are the first words my father ever spoke to me, his 69-year-old daughter. I thought the bitter taste was gone, but now I can taste it on my tongue.
“Why did you leave?” I find myself screaming.
The silence in the room deepens. “It’s not very good,” someone shouts.
I see dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me. My own little personal drama became a soap opera and I realized I was the villain.
My father smiled a toothless smile. “I just think it’s stupid.” he said with a smile. And I start to laugh without even realizing it.
I would later learn that my father had given birth to a baby in Huntsville. Women loved him. In his prime, he was the life of the party: jokester, pilot, dancer, and chef.
During his second marriage, he impregnated two unmarried women. First I was an anesthetist nurse, then a receptionist. They both gave their son up for adoption, meaning I have two half-brothers I've never met.
At the nursing home, I told my father that I had a granddaughter in Dallas. He asks about my mother. I told him she died of ovarian cancer 20 years ago. I also told her that because of her mental illness, I had to admit her against her will to a psychiatric hospital (her good private hospital, but then a grim state institution).
What I don't tell him: I knew early on that something had happened to my mother. Something clicked and turned it off. An old photo shows my curly-haired, round-faced mother looking off into the distance, clutching a stuffed rabbit twice my size.
He shook his head. Then he mutters something.
“Say it, Dad.” Jann commands.
He examines my face. I bent down to hear what he had to say.
He whispers, “Why didn’t you come before?”
He died two weeks later. Jann wrote to me that the Anglican Church was full. I wasn't mentioned in the obituary.
Minrose Gwin is the author of the novels “The Accidentals,” “Promise,” and “The Queen of Palmyra.” Her next novel, 'Beautiful Dreamers', will be published this summer.