Have you ever been asked by your
younger sibling if he/she is a real (biological) child of your
parents? As for me, I was. It happened one sunny morning last summer
when my sister and me were alone at home. She wore a downcasted look
while we ate our no-rice breakfast. With a very serious voice, she
asked me (originally in Cebuano), “Ate, I'm aching to ask you this
question a long time now. Please don't lie to me. After I've known
the truth about kuya, I think there's a lot of things about this
family that I don't know.. Am I just adopted?” After listening to
her speech, I couldn't help but laughed and I said to myself, “ Oh
heaven's gate! Where did she get that?” It was for me the stupidest
question she ever said because I know without a slightest doubt that
she's pa's and ma's biological daughter. I told her, “No! They are
your real parents. Come on! Why did you think that they're not?”
She got one and only evidence, a thing that my father said to her few
years ago. His statement to my sister was this, “Your surname is
supposed to be Mapalo and not Gulles”. And that sentence only means
one thing for her, she's an adopted one.
The problem with her is that she didn't
ask why. She just received the fact without asking for an explanation
from my father. She created her own, unfortunately, a wrong one.
Another problem is that my father relayed the fact to her differently
compared to how he said it to me when I was in Grade 4: “Our last
name is supposed to be Mapalo.” Papa used 'our' but he switched it
to 'you' when he talked to Joy. So my sister was kind of freaked out
because papa's usage of 'you' apparently meant one thing, she's the
only one in the family whose surname is supposed to be Mapalo.
Nevertheless, she should have asked which will clear things up. Yes,
we could've brought with us a Mapalo surname which I thank my great
grandmother for she didn't let it happen. You see, Mapalo in Cebuano
means big head, so I'm spared being bullied by my last name (no
offense to all Mapalos out there). Grandfather's mother is Gulles so
that's my great grandmother. Great grandmother was just a mistress or
you know, not a legal wife to a Mapalo great grandfather. Since she
was not a legal wife, she has the choice to name his son a Mapalo or
a Gulles. Maybe she was mad that time with my great grandfather
because she used her last name to her son (now, I'm making a story to
explain why she eventually used Gulles. Hehe). That's just it.
There's no adoption issue to my sister.
It really was funny for me that my
sister did doubt if we are her real family. I myself can prove to her
that she is ours because I can still remember the days my mother was
conceiving, expecting, then delivering her to the world. I can also
remember the time mama surprised me and my brother that she was
pregrant. We were totally happy. Yet brother wanted it to be a baby
boy while me, well obviously, wanted it to be a girl. When my mama
was sent to the hospital because her stomach with a 9-month old baby
inside was already aching, me and my kuya were left at home. Did my
sister even know that we tasted our first and last painful, really
excruciating beating from papa by using his belt on the date she was
born? Papa was really mad at us because he knew from my tactless
auntie that we left our house opened inviting burglary to play with
our neighbor. What made him more angry was he left a big amount of
money there .. It wasn't stolen though. Still we weren't saved from
his rage. And we received all that pak! Pak! Pak! While we were
kneeling, crying and begging papa to stop. Mama said she was worried
while she was still confined in the hospital because she saw us the
next day filled with bruises especially on our legs. I think little
sister never knew I remember a lot of things while we were expecting
her to come out from mama's womb, because if she did she wouldn't
question where she really came from.
Jessa Joy is my real sister and it is
one of the few things I am surest about in this world. I was there
you know and I remember it vividly though I was only a four-year-old
kid. But crazy things could happen. I think about it and there's a 2%
chance that she's right that she's not my real sister if and only
if these 3 wild scenarios happened:
- I call this scenario as the Mara Clara-like Incident. Like the famous Filipino teleserye, Mara Clara, Joy-Joy might not be mama's child because there's this lunatic person who switched my real sister to Joy. Then what would be his reasons? I don't know, maybe he was just a crazy person who escaped from a mental hospital.
- My real sister might have been dead right after she was born. Then mama was in unaffable depression that the nurse felt pity towards her that she offered to give to my parents a baby who was left in the hospital by her clueless mother. My parents then accepted and they didn't tell the truth to me because it will just make me sad. Plus they don't want that the child would grow up being bullied by us just because she's not our real sibling.
- A young relative of ours got pregnant out of wedlock or this, a relative of ours who has many children got pregnant again, went to my mama and asked for her help to adopt her child in her womb. Mama got excited about rearing the child and she wanted that people will never know that she's just adopted. So she pretended even to me that she's pregnant and put something on her stomach to make it bulge just like how pregnant moms look. If this kind of scenario happened, I would say that mother made an excellent act. She looked like one and the object she put between her stomach and her dress never did fall or looked awry.
Those three scenarios could happen no
matter how close it is to rarity. Yet I don't buy any of them.
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