The birth of this white woman’s daughter was supposed to bring great joy to her and her husband, but it brought big trouble because the baby was black, whereas the couple was white. Several years later, the husband sobbed profusely when the reason behind the baby’s black skin was revealed....CONTINUE READING
Rachel could feel her baby was about to come. It didn’t matter that the doctor said the baby would be due in a week; she was at home by herself, and there was no one around to help her.
Her husband, William, was at work, and he wouldn’t be home for another 5 hours. The girl who helped Rachel with cleaning only came twice a week, and that day wasn’t one of them. Rachel forced herself not to panic; maybe she was overreacting, she reasoned. Maybe the baby really wasn’t coming yet; after all, her water didn’t break yet.
This was Rachel’s first pregnancy, but sometimes she forgot that because she’d spent years waiting to have a child of her own. In those years, she’d read books about pregnancy, watched several videos, visited her friends who had babies or were expecting, and constantly surrounded herself with the possibilities that it would happen soon.
She had read and heard from many women who had babies that right before they went into labor, they just knew it was that some gut feeling that haunted Rachel this very moment.
Unwilling to wait around for it to happen before she called for help, Rachel called a midwife at the hospital she attended prenatal classes at. The midwife treated Rachel’s case as an emergency and rushed over with an ambulance.
Shortly after, they loaded Rachel into the ambulance, and her water broke, intense labor pains gripping her. She had her baby in the ambulance before they arrived at the hospital.
Rachel was drained and sweaty, but she was relieved and full of joy. Her baby looked so pink, but when she was wrapped in a thick shawl and handed to Rachel to hold for the first time, she saw the baby’s dark-tipped ears, dark eyelids, and she was shocked.
She asked the midwife if it was normal for a baby with two white parents to be dark-skinned. The kind midwife shook her head sadly; she could see that Rachel was afraid of how her husband would take the news. There was anxiety and deep worry written all over her face.
To cheer her up, the midwife said that Rachel should celebrate her safe delivery and get some rest at the hospital. She could feed her baby after taking a nap, and her baby would be clean by then.
A few hours later, Rachel was breastfeeding her newborn for the first time when William rushed into the room, looking excited. The midwife called him to inform him of the good news. William kissed Rachel’s forehead affectionately before he looked down at the baby in her arms.
At first, he didn’t notice anything was off, and his face continued to glow with joy. He was happy to hear she was a baby girl; it had always been his dream to have a girl as his firstborn.
However, there was an expression on Rachel’s face that made him pause. He asked what the matter was, and she shook her head, saying it was nothing.
Unwilling to break the bubble of happiness that they were presently wrapped in, William pushed, afraid that Rachel was hiding a health complication she had incurred during labor and childbirth. She hurried to inform him that she was in excellent health, but there was something else.
With trembling hands, Rachel lowered the shawl from around the baby’s head to expose the ears and neck regions, which were tinged dark compared to the rest of the baby’s pale body.
It didn’t click to William what this meant, and he asked if something was wrong with the baby. Rachel shook her head slowly. “Nothing is wrong with her, not in the way you think,” she replied, sending a prayer up to heaven.
Rachel finally broke the news to William that their newborn daughter, Gracie, was black or mixed-race in appearance. William spun with so many questions. How could this happen?
Did it mean that he wasn’t Gracie’s biological father? Was his sweet wife, Rachel, confessing to her infidelity right now? His face fell as pieces of puzzles came together in his mind. He couldn’t deny that something wasn’t right, and that knowledge cut up his insides like a knife.
“Did you cheat on me, Rachel?” he asked, giving voice to the doubts that swirled in his head. With tears in her eyes, Rachel shook her head. “I would never. Why would I when you’re the only man I want?” William didn’t believe her; he felt she was lying to save her skin.
Suddenly, the air in the room felt too thick; it was suffocating, and he pulled at the tie around his neck, unwilling to remain an additional second next to the woman he believed had betrayed his trust. He fled the room and the hospital.
For hours, Rachel didn’t do anything. She forced her mind to stay in the present with her baby. Whenever she thought about William, she sent up a quiet prayer that he would return and could be reasoned with.
Over a day later, there was no word from him. Rachel didn’t understand. Was he all right? Why hadn’t he reached out? She had given him enough space to think about the situation and do some research. He was the sort of person who had always been rational; he wouldn’t change now, would he?
But the longer that William stayed silent, the more concerned she grew. She tried to call him, but her calls went straight to voicemail. She sent numerous texts begging him to come and see her so that they could talk, but every one of them was ignored.
Finally, Rachel sent an email, knowing he wouldn’t miss seeing it. Then he replied, and when Rachel read it, she almost wished he had said nothing at all.
“You’ve broken my trust, and it can never be recovered. You shattered my faith in you. I’ll never be the same, and with your own hands and by your actions, you’ve turned me into someone I can barely recognize. Now you’ll live with the consequences,” the email read.
Goosebumps appeared on Rachel’s skin. She felt a drastic shift in her entire universe. William had chosen to ignore logic and would punish her mercilessly for something she didn’t do. She tightly held Gracie to her chest and murmured to her that no matter what, she would protect her.
Rachel didn’t know how that would be because she was a housewife who hadn’t held a job for a day since marrying William 5 years ago. It pained her that such a long-awaited happy day had turned into terror without any warning whatsoever.
These past 5 years without any child had been joyous for the couple. They were best friends, confidants, and lovers. Everything between them had been peace and bliss. There was no way she could have carried on an extramarital affair under those conditions, especially considering her disability.
Rachel almost wished they remained childless if the mere appearance of a child could cause such disaster. But taking a look at her sweet unassuming baby fast asleep on her breast, Rachel knew she would willingly endure a thousand miserable lives to have, hold, and protect Gracie.
Knowing that William wouldn’t come to take her home,Rachel asked the midwife for help. The kind woman agreed to help and drove Rachel and Gracie home in her car after her shift was over.
It had been 2 days since Rachel gave birth. The house was oddly silent. Rachel assumed that it was because William was still at work.
She slid into her wheelchair and set about putting the house in order. She tried not to do too much so that her strength wouldn’t deplete. As a person living with her condition, she had to be mindful of her health and energy levels all the time.
By the time that William came home from work that day, Gracie was sound asleep, the house was welcoming, and there was food served for him on the table. He ignored everything. Instead, he roused Rachel awake. She was getting some much-needed sleep on the couch in the sitting room, choosing to stay there to wait for him.
Seeing his murderous expression, Rachel was afraid, but she still tried to mask it with a serene look, asking how his day at the office went. In anger, William flipped over the center table that had a glass vase on it. The vase broke into pieces. Rachel winced, but William was unmoved. He was breathing hard, wagging an accusatory finger in her face.
William warned that things would change around the house. He wouldn’t divorce her; the thought had come to him, but he had dismissed it after weighing the pros and cons.
If he chose to divorce her, people would talk and say that he abandoned his defenseless disabled wife who was completely dependent on him.
That wouldn’t look good for him. Also, his office preferred married men over single men as their staff. This culture was old-fashioned, but the corporation paid really well, so people stuck to their culture.
Rachel expected to feel relief when William said he wouldn’t abandon her. It meant that there was still a chance that they could work things out, but she felt trepidation and a deep sense of foreboding.
It was true that she was totally dependent on William. A few weeks before the wedding many years ago, Rachel had been involved in a tragic skiing accident that affected the base of her spine, leading to a paralysis of her legs.
William had felt guilty for that accident because he’d been the one who urged her to ski, even though she’d said that she didn’t want to.
He had also loved her recklessly back then and had been willing to marry her regardless of the paralysis, so they had gotten married and lived well together. There had been no major issues between them in all those years except petty couple squabbles here and there.
Rachel was beautiful; she had always been a stunning woman right from time, and William was aware of this. When she’d gotten paralyzed and had to depend on him, he hadn’t minded so much because it meant that she belonged only to him, and no one else could take her from him.
It was a sting on William’s pride that Rachel’s baby was black. He felt that the love he’d been pouring into her all these years hadn’t been enough for her. She was quite attractive, which was why it was easy for him to believe she found a way to have an affair and have a black baby.
He still loved her, but he hated her at the same time for what he thought she’d done. That was why he couldn’t send her away, but he chose to do everything in his power to frustrate her. From the next day, Rachel started witnessing another part of William that she didn’t know existed.
Whenever he was home, she was visibly scared, and he smirked whenever he saw it. He made her life miserable by doing everything you can think of except hitting her. He rained insults on her, calling her good for nothing.
He broke things without warning, plates, vases, bottles, cups, anything at all. He gathered her clothes randomly and poured dirty water on them for no reason. He often refused to eat whatever she prepared, even flinging them at the wall or to the ground as he pleased.
Gracie wasn’t spared from his hostility. Although she was a baby, he pretended not to hear whenever she cried, yelled at Rachel to keep her quiet, or else he would see to it himself. The statement always terrified Rachel, who would clutch her daughter close and plead with her in tears to stop crying.
As Gracie grew older, her appearance was that of a really light-skinned black woman. It made William treat her worse. He shouted at her, sent her on errands she didn’t have to go to, and even enrolled her in a predominantly white school, although Rachel begged that they send her to a black school.
William didn’t budge. With malice in his eyes, he told Rachel that a white person ought to attend a white person school. Gracie’s life in school was rough. She was constantly confronted with several racist situations bordering on bullying.
There were days she approached her locker and found mocking graffiti drawn on it. Another day, she found her books shredded. They even pushed her from behind a few times, and she fell and hurt herself.
Those who did this to her called her a freak and asked her to go where the other freaks were. Each time she told them that she was fully white because both her parents were white, but they didn’t believe her.
Rachel had told Gracie repeatedly that William was her biological father, although he denied it. Gracie also saw her resemblance to him whenever she looked in the mirror or saw his pictures beside hers. In addition, people said she looked like William more than Rachel, and no one doubted he was her father except William himself.
Rachel managed to save up money and transferred Gracie to a black school. She did it behind William’s back and was prepared to face his wrath whenever he found out. At Gracie’s new school, she decided to assume the role of a full black person, since that was how everyone treated her.
It worked because she enjoyed her school life, where she made a lot of friends, got into theater where she excelled, and eventually, she won a black sponsorship worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to travel the world with a theater company.
Gracie just finished high school when this happened and began traveling the world performing as a black person. Their company was widely successful, and Gracie was happy to finally find the community.
Two years later, Rachel called Gracie to tell her that William had an accident. Fortunately, Gracie was in the next city; she visited the hospital he was admitted to. She did this for her mother’s sake, as she wasn’t fond of William at all because of his treatment of her and Rachel.
While there, there was a shortage of O positive blood, and William needed a lot of it. Gracie spoke up that she was O positive, and they tested her against William’s blood. The match was so accurate that a doctor said it must be because they’re father and daughter. He ran a blood type test that confirmed this.
Gracie and Rachel were shocked. In 20 years, they’d never thought to run any paternity test. They asked the doctor to run a DNA ancestry test on their family. The results came back to show that William had 33% African genes, although he was fully white.
Rachel had 12%, and Gracie, although she looked black, had only 25%. The doctor explained that Gracie was a product of genetic atavism and ancestral throwback.
It meant that she looked like her black great-great-grandparents, who had been forgotten to be part of the ancestral line. When William was fully conscious, the doctor explained this to him, and he burst into tears, sobbing for how blind and cruel he’d been to his own family for these past 20 years.
They’d never had one peaceful day because of him. He pleaded with Gracie and Rachel for forgiveness, but they replied it would take time considering all he’d put them through. He promised to spend every single day for the rest of his life making it up to them…CONTINUE READING>>
