“You are not my father!” I screamed and stormed up the steps.

Along the halls of the stairs hung family pictures: pictures of my little brother and I as babies, pictures of my two older step brothers, pictures of all of us children with my mother and my step-father. There was not a single picture of my blood father on that wall. There were no pictures of a loving father holding his newborn infant in his arms.

“I am your father now!” My step-father screamed after me, his fists shaking in the air.

I ran to my bedroom, slammed the door and flopped onto the bed and cried.

As a young girl, I lived with my mother and my step-father in a 3 bedroom home in a suburban neighborhood. My family owned five cars, one of which was a cherry red 1989 corvette. I was always fed. I had a roof over my head. I had a Macintosh Classic with a printer. I should have been happy, right? I should have been content, right? I should have counted my blessings, right? Wrong. People often fail to see how important it is to a young girl to know her father: her biological father. I spent many a day holed up in my bedroom trying to imagine what my father looked like, what he talked like, if he would love me if we ever met.

The door to my bedroom opened while my mother lightly knocked on the door. That is the nature of mothers; they knock while they open the door because they know if they wait for you to respond to their knock, you’ll tell them to go away. My mother looked nothing at all like me. She was tall, 5’7”, with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and freckled white skin. She had a long, thin face to go with the rest of her long thin body. She sat next to me on my bed and petted my long brown hair. I am short. Today, I extend only five feet tall. I’ve always had a round face and figure with full breasts even back then at the age of twelve.

“You have upset your father,” my mother said in a sweet tone.

“He’s not my father, “ I said into my pillow.

My mother did not raise her voice. “Kim, he has been your father since you were four.”

“Where did my father go, then? Why isn’t he here now?” I sat up and held in my sobs by clenching my stomach muscles.

“I don’t know, Kim, I don’t know.” My mother looked down at her hands and fumbled with her clunky gold and diamond wedding ring.

The only memory I had of my father was a day at the park. I was five years old and it was my birthday. He gave me a Barbie doll – I couldn’t remember which one in that closet was the one he had given me. I couldn’t see his face any longer: just that dumb hot pink box and a grassy hill.

“What does he look like, mom?”

“He looks a lot like you. He has dark hair and dark eyes. His complexion is a bit darker than yours.” She looked at me. “You look so much like your father.” She looked ready to cry. “Kim, listen: he’s not a good person. He has a drinking problem and a drug problem. He ran off and left you behind. Kim, he isn’t the great man you want him to be.”

I looked my mother dead in the eyes. For years, she had told me that he had moved shortly after my fifth birthday and we had not gotten his address. I should have questioned her. Yet, I loved my mother and thoroughly believed she had my best interest in mind. I believed at that moment, that she had lied to me all those years about the address because my father had left us, run from us and his own mother, too. It made the best sense to me, then.

“You know that your father and I love you very much,” she placed her hand on my shoulder.

I just looked blankly at her. There was nothing more for me to do or to say. She pulled me in for a long hug and then left the room. She shut the door behind her and I laid back on to my bed and stared at the ceiling. I stared at a stucco blob that looked like Bert and Ernie. There was one next to it that looked like a Victorian woman holding a parasol.

I heard the door creak open. I turned my head sideways and saw my little brother standing in the doorway. He was only a year younger than I. We had grown up very close to one another, almost as twins. Furthermore, we were always best friends. He looked nothing like me either. He had blond hair that I always thought came from my mother. He was very thin and had freckled skin as well. He looked at me with a question in his eyes. I had no answers for him. I wanted to say “I love you”, but we were both too old for those sentiments now. I turned back to Bert and Ernie and Victorian lady on the ceiling and he left the room.

The next morning, I awoke at six – much earlier than the rest of the family on a Saturday. I walked down the stairs, avoiding the plastic lining on the stairs by walking with my feet on the edge between the plastic and the wall where a small amount of carpet escaped entrapment. I wanted to be sure not to wake anyone. I slipped into the kitchen and made myself a cup of instant French vanilla flavored coffee. On the top shelf of what would be a pantry if we didn’t store so much junk in it were many old family albums. There were so many there that I don’t think I had ever gone through all of them before this moment. I grabbed every one of them and put them on the dining room table.

I drank cup after cup of coffee while rifling through those albums. There were pictures of people that I had never seen before jammed in there. After about an hour of looking, I found what I was looking for. There was picture of my little brother in diapers looking at a handsome man who was asleep with his head rested on a bean bag. The man had dark hair like mine. He had a round visage just like mine. This was my father, I knew it. I took the picture out of the album and looked at it more closely. Yes, this was indeed my father. I put all of the photo albums back, rinsed out my coffee cup and snuck back up to my room with my treasure in hand. I had a picture of my father. I stared at that picture for a long while and then placed it in a drawer so filled with clutter no one could ever find the picture but me.

The next thing was to find the man. I was determined but I had no idea of how to go about it. I was twelve years old. I watched T.V. talk shows in which the host was able to find a person by calling a private detective. I thought perhaps if I saved my allowance, I could hire a private detective. Later that day I had a chance to do some research of my own. My parents and my three brothers left the house which left me able to get my hands on a phone book. I didn’t realize that it was odd of my parents to deny me access to the phone book until I got my hands on it. I opened up the white pages and looked for my last name. There it was. Two instances of the name were staring at me. One of them had “Loretta and Robert” after it and the other just a “K”.

Having never met my father’s relatives, I had no idea who these people were. I was afraid to call them and say “I’m looking for my father.” I couldn’t put myself through this.