ACCORDING TO MY MOTHER

At thirty-three years old, I thought I knew the basic facts about myself.

My name was Camille Bennett.

I was the youngest of five.

My birthday was November first.

And I knew who my daddy was.

These are not things you expect to be up for debate.

Then my mother called a family meeting.

Not Sunday dinner.

Not somebody's birthday.

Not come over here because I cooked too much food and need y'all to take some of this shit home.

A meeting.

My brother, my sisters, and I were all told to show up.

Nobody knew why.

And when we got there, Mama was sitting at the head of the dining-room table like Tony fucking Soprano.

That should've been my first warning.

There were five of us.

Vanessa was the oldest. She had a different father.

She was the oldest-sister referee—the one who could watch the rest of us argue like fools and somehow know exactly when to jump in and when to let us destroy ourselves.

Then came Marcus, our only brother.

Marcus could pretty much get along with everybody, mostly because he'd mastered the ancient art of minding his own damn business until something got funny.

Then Simone.

Simone was loud.

Bossy.

And when Mama wasn't home, Simone apparently believed she'd been promoted from sister to fucking plantation supervisor.

She bullied the rest of us like somebody had left her written instructions.

“Go get me this.”

“Go do that.”

“Clean this up.”

“Bring me that.”

Ma'am, we have the same mother. Why the fuck am I working for you?

Simone didn't need a reason to take over a room. She'd appoint herself in charge and dare somebody to challenge the promotion.

If Mama left the house, Simone became management before Mama's car had cleared the driveway.

We weren't siblings anymore.

Apparently we were staff.

Unpaid staff.

Then Tasha.

Simone and Tasha were only about eleven months apart and had spent most of their lives being mistaken for twins.

They were close, too, which meant sometimes dealing with one of them felt like accidentally activating both.

Marcus, Simone, and Tasha all had the same father.

Curtis.

Then there was me.

Camille.

Cami.

The baby.

Tasha and I weren't close.

According to family history, she had been perfectly happy being the baby until Mama came home with me.

Apparently my birth was her first experience with betrayal.

I hadn't even learned to hold my own head up and already had an enemy.

As far as I knew, Marcus, Simone, Tasha, and I all had the same father.

Curtis.

I didn't think Curtis was my father.

I didn't assume Curtis was my father.

Curtis was my father.

The same way November first was my birthday.

Those were facts.

At least they were when I walked into Mama's house.

And Mama?

Mama knew everybody's business.

Apparently more than any of us realized.

That afternoon, we sat around her dining-room table looking at each other, trying to figure out why we'd been summoned.

Vanessa finally asked.

“Mama, is somebody sick?”

“No.”

“Somebody in trouble?”

“No.”

Marcus frowned.

“Then what's going on?”

Mama folded her hands.

That's when I knew we were fucked.

Any Black mother who folds her hands on the table before speaking to her children has come prepared to ruin somebody's afternoon.

Possibly everybody's.

“There are some things I need to tell y'all.”

Simone looked around.

“What things?”

“Family things.”

That didn't answer shit.

Then Mama started going around the table.

One by one.

Everybody got something.

I'm not telling their secrets.

Those belong to them.

But nobody at that table knew what anybody else's secret was.

There was no everybody knew except Cami.

No.

Mama was the vault.

And apparently she'd woken up that morning and decided:

Fuck it. Open the vault.

Then she got to me.

“Your birthday isn't November first.”

I waited.

Surely there was another sentence coming.

Maybe one that made sense.

There wasn't.

I laughed.

“Mama, what?”

“You weren't born November first.”

“Yes, Tf I was.”

“No. You were born October thirty-first.”

I looked around the table.

Everybody looked just as confused as I felt.

“My birthday is November first.”

“I know what your birthday says.”

That sentence bothered me.

“What do you mean, what it says?”

“You were born at 11:58 p.m. on October thirty-first.”

“Mama, my birth certificate says November first.”

“I know.”

“What time?”

“12:01.”

I stared at her.

“So somebody moved my birthday three minutes?”

Marcus leaned forward.

“Wait. What?”

Exactly.

“How the hell do you move somebody's birthday?”

“It was 1978.”

I blinked.

“What does that mean? Y'all could just freestyle birth certificates in 1978?”

“Cami.”

“No, I'm asking. Did somebody have White-Out at the hospital? What kind of operation were y'all running?”

Marcus laughed.

Mama shot him a look.

“I've been celebrating November first for thirty-three years.”

Tasha shrugged.

“It's only one day.”

I looked at her.

“Then give me yours.”

She shut up.

Mama sighed.

“There was a reason.”

Oh, hell.

Nothing good has ever followed the words there was a reason.

“What reason?”

“The night you were born, Curtis was gambling.”

Now that part I knew.

Sort of.

Curtis had been in a wheelchair for as long as I could remember.

I'd always known there had been an accident. He'd been pushed from a third-floor window, his back was broken, and he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

What I didn't know was when it happened.

Halloween.

The night I was born.

According to Mama, Curtis had been out gambling. There was some kind of altercation, and at some point he went out of a third-floor window.

While all that was happening, Mama was giving birth to me.

At 11:58 p.m.

On October thirty-first.

“He thought you were bad luck,” Mama said.

I stared at her.

“Me?”

“He was superstitious.”

“Wait a minute.”

I held up my hand.

“This grown man was out gambling, got into some shit, got pushed out of a third-floor window, and somehow the newborn baby at the hospital was responsible?”

Marcus put his hand over his mouth.

“Mama, I wasn't even three minutes old and this man already had beef with me?”

“Cami.”

“No, seriously. Did I push him?”

Marcus lost it.

Even Vanessa laughed.

Mama didn't.

“He connected what happened to him with you being born on Halloween.”

“So he thought I was evil?”

“He thought it meant something.”

“Apparently it meant he should've stayed his ass home.”

“Cami!”

“What? I was in the hospital minding my newborn business.”

Marcus started laughing again.

Mama waited.

Then she explained the part I'd never known.

Curtis didn't change my birthday that night.

He couldn't.

He'd just been pushed from a third-floor window.

He was seriously injured.

It was days later, after he woke up and learned I'd been born on Halloween, that he became convinced the date meant something bad.

That I meant something bad.

Bad luck.

An evil child.

Whatever supernatural bullshit made sense to a man who had just survived being pushed out of a building.

And after he woke up, somehow my birthday got changed.

October 31 at 11:58 p.m.

Became November 1 at 12:01 a.m.

Three minutes.

Apparently Curtis woke up from a catastrophic accident, assessed the situation and decided:

First order of business: move that damn baby's birthday.

Forget rehabilitation.

Forget finding out who pushed your ass out the window.

Forget the gambling.

No.

We have paperwork to falsify because the newborn is clearly the problem.

I sat back.

“So my actual birthday is Halloween.”

“Yes.”

“And it's been wrong my whole life.”

“Yes.”

Fine.

I could process that.

Eventually.

Halloween wasn't a terrible birthday.

Hell, at least this secret came with candy.

Then Mama said:

“There's something else.”

I looked at her.

“I'm sorry, is my name not Camille either?”

Marcus started laughing again.

Mama gave me the look.

I shut up.

Mostly.

“What?”

She paused.

“Curtis wasn't your biological father.”

The room went silent.

I looked at her.

“What?”

“Curtis wasn't your father.”

I looked at Marcus.

Then Simone.

Then Tasha.

These were the three siblings I'd spent my entire life believing I shared a father with.

Nobody said anything.

Nobody had that Oh, she finally knows expression.

They were finding out with me.

I turned back to Mama.

“Then who the hell is my father?”

She looked directly at me.

“Leon.”

And suddenly I wasn't thirty-three anymore.

I was sixteen.

Standing in a garage.

With Betty.

And a whole lot of weed smoke.

Betty was visiting from Rhode Island.

At sixteen, I knew her as Leon's sister.

Leon was Mama's boyfriend.

Mama and Curtis had divorced, and Leon had been around for years.

I knew Mama and Leon had a past..

They'd known each other since they were kids..

That's all it was to me.

Old history.

Leon was Mama's boyfriend.

Betty was Leon's sister.

One afternoon I came home from school and found Betty in the garage smoking weed.

Betty smoked.

A lot.

I don't remember what we were talking about before she said it.

I don't remember what I was wearing.

I don't remember the weather.

But I remember her words.

“Leon is your daddy.”

I looked at her.

Leon?

Mama's boyfriend?

That Leon?

“What?”

“Leon is your father.”

At sixteen, when somebody tells you the man you've known as your mother's boyfriend is actually your biological father, you tend to have questions.

Especially when the person delivering this information is dropping smoke clouds filled with weed and secrets in the garage like she's announcing tomorrow's forecast.

Cloudy with a hundred percent chance your mama has some explaining to do.

I went straight to Mama.

“Aunt Betty said Leon is my daddy.”

Mama dismissed it.

Betty had been smoking.

Betty smoked too much weed.

Don't believe everything Betty says when she's high.

Then Leon backed Mama up.

Same basic message.

Betty was high.

Don't listen to everything she says.

So I didn't.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

I was sixteen.

The woman smoking weed in the garage told me something crazy.

I took it to the two adults who would know whether it was true.

Both of them gave me every reason not to believe her.

Case closed.

For seventeen years.

Until Mama sat at that dining-room table and said:

Leon.

I stared at her.

“Betty told me that.”

“I know.”

“You knew she told me?”

“Yes.”

“You told me she was lying.”

“I didn't say Betty was lying.”

“Mama.”

“I said Betty was high.”

“That's the same fucking thing!”

“Watch your mouth.”

Oh, absolutely not.

You cannot change my birthday, replace my daddy, resurrect a conversation from seventeen years ago and then start monitoring my vocabulary.

Pick a crisis.

“You told me not to believe her!”

“I told you not to believe nothing Betty said when she'd been High.”

“ABOUT THIS!”

Mama crossed her arms.

“You already knew.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I heard it. That's not the same thing.”

“She told you.”

“And you made me believe it wasn't true!”

“I never told you Leon wasn't your father.”

I stared at her.

Now that was some lawyer-level bullshit.

“You told me the woman saying he was my father was high and shouldn't be believed.”

“She was high.”

“Mama!”

“What?”

“Being high doesn't make somebody wrong!”

And apparently it didn't, because Betty had been high as hell and still had the most accurate information in the entire damn family.

I looked around the table.

“Did any of y'all know?”

My brother and sisters shook their heads.

Nobody had.

Just Mama.

Leon.

And Betty.

That's when another piece clicked into place.

Betty wasn't just Leon's sister anymore.

If Leon was my father, Betty was my aunt.

My actual biological aunt.

The woman sitting in that garage smoking weed had been telling her niece the truth.

I just didn't know I was her niece.

“So Betty knew this whole time?”

Mama nodded.

“She knew about me and Leon.”

Mama and Leon went way back.

Before marriages.

Before children.

Before all of us.

They'd known each other as kids. That puppy-love, first-love type of shit.

Then life happened.

Mama married Curtis.

Leon married someone else.

And apparently neither one of them ever mastered the art of leaving the other one the hell alone.

They had an affair.

Betty knew.

And eventually, here my ass came.

I didn't need dates.

I didn't need a calendar.

I damn sure didn't need a reenactment.

I understood enough.

After the meeting, I went to Leon's house.

I needed to hear it from him.

No Mama.

No siblings.

No Betty.

Just me and the man whose entire role in my life had changed in one afternoon.

“Are you my father?”

Leon looked at me.

He didn't look surprised.

That pissed me off before he even opened his mouth.

Then he said:

“Look at you.”

I frowned.

“What?”

“Look at your face.”

“What about it?”

“You look just like me.”

Motherfucker.

Apparently my face had known who my daddy was for thirty-three years and neglected to inform me.

“So that's your answer?”

“Cami, I've always known.”

That hurt.

More than I expected.

I wasn't a little girl looking for somebody to teach me how to ride a bike.

I was grown.

But there's something strange about standing in front of a man who has known something about you since the day you were born while you're finding it out that afternoon.

“You've always known?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn't you tell me?”

Mama was married.

He was married.

There were families involved.

Consequences.

It was complicated.

Of course it was.

Adults love the word complicated when they've had decades to get comfortable with something you just found out.

Then I asked him about Betty.

“She told me when I was sixteen.”

“I know.”

“You told me not to believe her.”

“Betty shouldn't have told you like that.”

“But she was telling the truth.”

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

“You let me think she was lying.”

“You were young.”

There it was.

You were young.

Everybody remembered protecting me.

Nobody remembered deceiving me.

Mama and I would argue about it for years.

Her position never changed: Betty told me at sixteen, so I knew.

Mine didn't either: if I took that information straight to Mama and Leon and both of them convinced me Betty couldn't be trusted, then no, I didn't fucking know.

I had heard the truth.

I just hadn't been allowed to believe it.

And somehow that wasn't even the strangest disappearing act a truth had pulled in my family.

Because there was Simone.

And Leon.

My sister.

And my biological father.

Remember, Simone and I share a mother.

We do not share a father.

Years before that family meeting, Simone and Leon became the center of a family explosion.

They had some type of relationship together.

They was Fuckin and money was exchanged...

That's how I remember it.

And back then, it wasn't treated like some rumor floating around the family.

There were admissions.

From both of them.

There was fallout.

Mama was furious.

There were arguments.

Phone calls.

People taking sides.

It was a whole fucking situation.

This wasn't one of those family rumors where Cousin Whoever heard something from somebody at the beauty shop who heard it from somebody's neighbor.

No.

This shit had a cast.

Then time passed.

And somehow the story started changing.

First:

That's not exactly what happened.

Then:

People misunderstood.

Then:

Some things got exaggerated.

And eventually:

That never happened.

The first time Simone said that to me, I thought she was joking.

“That never happened.”

I stared at her.

“Bitch.....What!?!?”

“You keep saying that like it's true.”

“Because it is.”

“No, Cami.”

“Simone, you admitted it.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes. You did.”

“That's what you remember.”

I hate that sentence.

That's what you remember.

Because there's almost no defense against it.

Of course that's what I remember.

That's why we're arguing.

“I was there.”

“So was I.”

Well, shit.

There it was.

Two people.

Same family.

Same history.

Two completely different versions.

And this was Simone.

The same sister who used to become assistant warden the second Mama went to work.

This woman could remember every chore she ordered me to do in 1989, but apparently this particular chapter had vanished from the archives.

I remember an admission.

She remembers no admission.

I remember a family losing its collective shit over something that happened.

Now it's treated like some family Mandela effect.

Maybe she's protecting herself.

Maybe time changed the story.

Maybe there's something I'm missing.

I don't know.

But I know what I remember.

And apparently, so does she.

I wish Vanessa were here for some of those conversations.

She's the only one of us who's gone.

My oldest sister.

Not because Vanessa knew every secret.

She didn't.

None of us did.

But she was around for enough of the aftermath.

Enough arguments.

Enough phone calls.

Enough whispered conversations after somebody stormed out of a room.

There are questions you don't know you should've asked until the person you wanted to ask isn't here anymore.

Marcus remembers pieces.

Tasha has her version.

Simone has hers.

I have mine.

And Mama?

Mama has Alzheimer's now.

She's still here.

She's still Mama.

But memory means something different in our family these days.

Some days she can reach back decades and pull out a detail so specific it'll stop you in your tracks.

Other days something much closer slips away.

So I don't put her on trial anymore.

I don't sit across from her demanding:

“When did you tell me?”

“Why did you let me believe Betty was lying?”

We had those arguments before Alzheimer's.

Plenty of them.

I know Mama's answer.

You already knew.

And she knows mine.

No, I didn't.

These days, I don't need to win.

What the hell would I win?

Sometimes I still picture that dining room.

Mama at the head of the table.

Vanessa alive.

Marcus there.

Simone.

Tasha.

Me.

My brother and sisters sitting around that table, all of us waiting to find out what the hell Mama had been keeping.

Then she opened the vault.

I walked into Mama's house with a November first birthday and a father named Curtis.

By the time I left, I'd been born on Halloween and Leon was my father.

Hell of an afternoon.

Most people leave a family gathering with leftovers.

I left with a new birthday and a new daddy.

And Betty the woman everybody told me not to listen to because she'd been smoking weed had been right seventeen years earlier.

High?

Absolutely.

Wrong?

Not even a little bit.

Maybe Mama truly believed I already knew.

Maybe Simone truly remembers something different from what I remember.

Maybe that's the strangest thing about family secrets.

Eventually, you don't just argue about what happened.

You argue about whether it happened at all.

I know what I remember.

They know what they remember.

And somewhere in the middle is probably the truth.

But knowing my family?

The truth probably has a different daddy too.

A Note from the Author...

Every story I write carries a little truth....

Some I lived. Some I witnessed. Some were trusted to me. Others were born from imagination but inspired by something real. Names may change, circumstances may shift, and creativity may take the story somewhere unexpected but somewhere between the first word and the last, there is always a piece of truth, and this story has a lot.....