By Sherrie L. Kappa
My biological mother met my biological father in Alexandria, Virginia. I was told she met him after she had locked her keys in her car and he was a local fireman who came to help her.
I was born in 1961 in West Virginia and adopted by a family that had a 9-year-old biological daughter. My adoptive father was a coal miner and a pastor of a church, and my adoptive mother did not work.
They had not planned to disclose my adoption to me, but I learned about it by accident when I was 13 years old and found a letter my adoptive mother had written to another pastor’s wife in which she stated she had two adopted children—a teen daughter and a young son. My best friend was there with me and she confirmed that I was adopted and that everyone knew but me. Too scared to ask my often abusive, narcissistic mother, I waited until my father came home from work. He verified that it was true. He was a sweet man and hated lies. I think it was a relief to him.
That weekend he took me to meet my biological mother. He said he’d met her when she was only a few months pregnant. She was a waitress in a bar, and he was at the bar, he said, trying to save souls. He told her that she should be taking better care of herself, and she told him that she didn’t want the child and that he could have it when it was born. He gave her his phone number. In September of that year, she called and told him I had come early and was sick. I’d been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, and the doctors transfused my blood. My biological mother signed the forms to relinquish me for adoption and left the hospital before my adoptive parents arrived to pay the hospital bill and bring me home.
Several months after I found out about being adopted, I ran away to my biological mother’s home and met three half siblings. I learned that she’d also relinquished a 6-year-old son the same year I was born. My birthmother called my adoptive father to come pick me up and also called police to scare me into not coming back. Needless to say, I did not have any further contact with my birthmother until my older brother came looking for me when I was 16.
My adoptive father had a heart attack and died that same year, after which my adoptive mother decided I needed to work to pay rent, so I attended high school during the day and worked a full-time job at night at the local hospital. On my days off, I cleaned for her. She took my entire check every month. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless you’ve lived through it. She informed me that I would not be going to college; she wasn’t going to pay for a child that was not her blood.
I graduated high school when I was 17, immediately married my brother’s best friend, and got out. About six months later, we moved to the same town in which my biological mother and her family lived. My biological mother adored my husband, and this paved the way for me to try to be a part of her life. I lived right up the street from her house for four years, and although she never once visited me, I was invited to her home on the rare occasion. I believe I valued those visits much more than she did
I asked my birthmother who my father was. She said his name was Bennie H., he lived in Mockingbird, Texas, and worked for Bekins Transportation. She said he had blue eyes and his wife was Chinese, but she didn’t know much else. She’d told him she was pregnant, and he took off. For many years I tried to find Bennie H. I called Bekins. I found out there is no Mockingbird, Texas, so called Information for towns all over the state. Most of the operators were kind; they would give me five numbers and five addresses at a time. I wrote nearly 100 letters. And when I had the money, I called as many numbers as I could.
In the early 1980s, along came the Internet, and I wrote or called every Bennie H. I could find, without luck. Lots of Google searches, lots of Yahoo searches. I couldn’t find any Bennie H. in Texas.
My life often interrupted my search, but I never gave up. I worked full time, divorced, re-married, and raised a son. I went back to school to obtain a degree, often working two jobs.
Along came Facebook. Same searches. Nothing new.
In 2016, my best friend and I discussed her search. She was looking for a grandfather, and she suggested I join a Facebook group for people using DNA to search for family; she also suggested several DNA testing sites that she was using. I sent my test to Ancestry and found a group on Facebook that had “search angels.” They pointed me toward several adoption registries, and I signed up with all of them.
About three days later, I got an email that one of the Angels had found a Bennie H. in an old 1961 Dallas city registry. And there he was, listed as living on Mockingbird Lane. As it turned out, this was actually the address of Bekins, his employer. He lied to my mother so she wouldn’t track him down. The “angel” also gave me information on a Bennie in Kansas and one in North Carolina.
I called the number in North Carolina. It was the right one. I talked with his brother, and Bennie had been there all along, about a three-hour drive from my front door. He had died just eight months before my call. I talked to an aunt and uncle who told me about two sisters on the east coast and two in Texas, but they didn’t want to give me any other information. But I stalked, and within two days I had the married names and the telephone number of all four sisters.
I called and I wrote to each of them. We talked and texted and became friends. A few months later, I met two of them and the uncle on the east coast, and we made plans for all five sisters to get together. They shared pictures of Bennie, and although he didn’t look like me, I tried really hard in my head to make my blue eyes look just like his. And the curl in my hair to match his. And in my mind, his father, my grandfather, looked so much like my son.
I obtained his military records and learned that he has O+ blood, which I’m pretty sure my biological mother has as well. I am A negative—slightly rare, though not enormously so. So I called my maternal half-sister and asked if she thought our mother has type A blood. “Oh sure”, she says, “she does.”
I’d been asking the eldest paternal sister to do take an Ancestry DNA test so I could see “sister” come up on my computer screen. While waiting on my own DNA test results, I built an extensive Ancestry tree, tracing Bennie all the way back to 1040, to the original “H.”
Nine months into this journey, the eldest sister finally took the test.
In the middle of this madness, I received my DNA test results and saw those Hs. Among my matches was a second cousin, Leslie, who contacted me. She wasn’t from the H family, she said. “We’re the C family and you are my cousin.” We puzzled back and forth about this for several months, but we couldn’t seem to agree on how we were related so I let it go.
When my new paternal sister’s DNA results came in, they showed that we are not a match. They were Bennie’s children. I was not his child. We share cousins approximately six to eight generations back. We connect to the same H ancestors I observed among the 1,500 or so DNA matches. I cried. My new “not my sisters” cried. I have been looking for these girls all my life. I’d become attached. I loved them.
But they don’t belong to me at all. They are not family. They told me it didn’t matter, but oh boy, it sure does.
My mother at that point was old and sick so I didn’t call her directly to ask again who my biological father was. Instead, I called my maternal half-sister. She asked my mother, and my mother once again lied, insisting that Bennie H. was my father. She said the DNA was wrong and I was lying. I upset my mother, and my sister told me never to contact them again—any of them. A few cousins still talk to me on Facebook, but I won’t be getting any invitations to the family reunions.
After crying on the phone to an Ancestry representative for nearly an hour, asking if my DNA results could somehow be wrong, the representative explained to me that DNA does not lie. With her help, I started over with my Ancestry DNA tree. My new tree had only two leaves—one for me and one for my biological mother. Within a day, new half-sister, Lisa, turned up in my matches. I contacted her, and she said it was possible that we were sisters, that her father had many extramarital affairs. But, she said, he was mean, an alcoholic, and a pedophile, and the four living siblings didn’t want anything to do with me. I cried more. My new family didn’t want to talk to me at all. They were ashamed that I was alive. Two others are already dead and don’t get an opinion. She gave me that one day in which to ask questions, which she answered, and then she blocked me on Ancestry and on Facebook, as did all her (my) other siblings and their children.
I pull up my bootstraps and keep going on in this mad world.
But I have my father’s name—the real one—William C. And pictures shared on Ancestry. In them is my face, my son’s face. There’s no denying this DNA. By gosh, I actually look like someone.
I am one of 12 children between these two biological parents, and none other than my younger maternal half-brother wants me. He tries, but he has his own very full life with not a lot of time for a sister four hours away. He doesn’t want to get in between all the madness of my relationship with my maternal siblings and my biological mother, who don’t want me in their lives, but he and I do talk, and he is my one and only lifeline.
My adoptive siblings, a brother and a sister, now no longer talk to me either. They told me years ago that I should not have tried looking for biological family, that I should have been happy with the one I had. They say that they know I never wanted to be in their family. (They’re most certainly right about that one.) So I’ve had to let them go as well.
As for my friends and cousins, I wish they’d stop saying, “But at least you had a good family to raise you.” They only see what I have allowed them to see. I’ve gone through the gamut of emotions over this: anger—lots and lots of anger; grief over of losing someone I never met, over losing someone I looked for 40 years, over losing sisters that were not my sisters. I feel disconnected every single day.
I’m not putting all this out here so anyone will feel sorry for me. My story is much nicer than that of many I have read. I now know my truth. I have a wonderful husband. He works hard, he loves me, and is my best friend. I have the very best son. He’s much like his dad—he works hard and he loves his momma. He has a hard time with relationships though; he’s had no family around him growing up—no aunts, uncles, cousins, or siblings. No one. Much like me. All alone, always. He doesn’t want children. And his aloneness makes me saddest of all.
Sherrie L. Kappa lives in North Carolina with her husband and fur baby. She’s a medical staff professional and volunteers with a DNA research group. To date, she’s helped 34 individuals find and connect with their biological family.
