1986

There’s no pretty way to say it – so I won’t try.

I was born out of trauma. Conceived through brutal sexual assault. My biological mother was young, scared, and broke. My biological father was 21 and, by all accounts, a predator. A man with a growing record of violations, whispers of violence, and accusations that never stuck. The kind of man who haunted, and more than likely hunted, more than one woman in the 1980s. The kind that got away with it – again and again.

When she found out she was pregnant, she made a decision. She would give me up. But not just to anyone. A friend of hers knew a wealthy couple, my parents, through a shared religious circle. A well-known, charismatic couple who couldn’t have children. They had money. Influence. And a desperate longing for a baby. She saw a way out.

They saw a miracle.

But no one factored in my biological father’s parents. They wanted rights. Not out of love, but power. Control. Legacy, maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is they paid a shady attorney in San Antonio, someone whose name was passed around quietly in the corners of courtrooms for making “impossible” things happen. And that attorney turned my adoption into a war. I found the blue folder, which contained the entire deposition, when I was 18 years old.

My parents were dragged into the courtroom, a place of judgment and harsh realities. My biological father, a man who never desired to have me in his life, stood at the center of this storm, while his parents, my grandparents, desperately wanted to claim me as their own. Yet, they were powerless as grandparents, for the laws of the state at that time offered them no leverage. Their determination led them to an insidious scheme: they coerced their son to fight for custody, even going so far as to line his pockets. It was just another layer of manipulation, another adult using my existence for their own selfish ends.

The deposition was a chilling revelation. Four women bravely stepped forward, one of them his estranged wife, though she was barely seventeen. Their courage exposed the dark underbelly of his past. These women recounted harrowing tales of both physical and sexual abuse, stories that unfolded at the now-historical, and closed, Windsor Mall. It was there that he pursued them like prey, charming them into relationships that quickly turned into months of terror and violence. One woman, whom I connected with in my late twenties, had never even dated him. She merely worked at a pub in the mall he frequented. He stalked her, cornering her behind the store, where he forced himself upon her. She went to school with him, and had dated him previously, and as the only woman who actually reported him, no one believed her.

My mother, my biological mother, was another thread in this tapestry of pain. She worked at a shoe store next to his place of employment. Fresh out of high school and struggling to get by, she was captivated by his tall, blonde, and handsome appearance. His charm, his sea-blue eyes, lured her in. He convinced her to accept a date. She had her own apartment by then, and he offered to pick her up. He came bearing roses and rope. The date never transpired, but I became a consequence of that fateful encounter.

None of these women had approached the police, silenced by fear and the belief that they had no voice. That changed when the adoption process brought my parents’ attorney, a formidable Houston lawyer, into the fray. With the estranged teenage wife’s assistance, they tracked down most of the women, aided by my bio-mother and the whispers that floated around the mall. My biological grandparents were not blind to the testimonies. They knew the man their son had become, yet they still chose to back him, hoping he would emerge victorious.

And inexplicably, he did.

He was awarded partial custody. Showed up once. Never paid child support. Never came back.

But the damage was done.

My mom said she was terrified. She installed bars on the windows. Slept with one eye open. Watched the news like it was a crime blotter waiting to come home. And still, no one protected us. Not really.

I lived my childhood with the knowledge that a man with violent hands had once fought to own me, like a possession. Then forgot I existed.

Until I turned twenty. Then at 36, I found out I had a brother, only a few months older than me, conceived by the same evil. The damage ingrained in both of our spirits. Products of rape. Deceit. Not love, like most.

But that’s a story for another day.

I used to wonder how different my life could’ve been if things had gone another way, if he hadn’t fought for me, if she hadn’t sold me, if someone, anyone, had just done the right thing. But the truth is, either path was probably a loss. Just a different kind. Some lives don’t fork at right or wrong, they just split between damaged and broken.