Those Awful Family Trees

HONORABLE MENTION, 2022 ALEX ALBRIGHT CREATIVE NONFICTION PRIZE

by Angela Belcher Epps

One Father’s Day, as a full-grown woman, I reflected deeply about my family composition. My parents separated when I was a toddler. I have no memory of father. So absent was this figure that his name was never mentioned.

I was eight years old and looking through our family album when I thought to ask a young aunt to identify two unfamiliar men. “Those are your uncles,” she told me. Knowing these weren’t her brothers, I was baffled.

“Which uncles?” I asked.

“They’re your father’s brothers,” she explained.

“I have a father?” I literally exclaimed, utterly clueless about my origin, and clearly, about the origin of humans. “Everyone has a father,” she answered. There was a hah! But at the time, it was just another detail added to a list of facts about my life. I didn’t ask her to elaborate about the phantom father, nor did I have a desire to connect with him. I was an only child surrounded by a close-knit extended family that talked and entertained incessantly. We all loved books, playing games, and socializing. We cooked with the regularity of a twenty-fourhour restaurant, both traditional favorites and cookbook recipes. Our house was filled with satisfying scents that invited us indoors

As a high school teacher, I taught my students that context is everything. The meaning of practically anything changes depending on its location and the circumstances surrounding it.

at dinner time and coaxed us from our beds on weekend mornings. If we stayed up late debating or playing cards, we’d make slab bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches at two or three a.m.

The lack of a father-in-the-flesh held about as much importance to me as lack of a llama. My father was already dead before I understood that his absence would, indeed, have an impact.

As a high school teacher, I taught my students that context is everything. The meaning of practically anything changes depending on its location and the circumstances surrounding it.

When I attended elementary school in rural North Carolina, the school year ended in May. Neither our family nor our neighbors paid any attention to that meaningless paternal holiday in the middle of June. Nobody made a special trip to town for a Hallmark card or a gift. On a day of reflecting, I wondered whether Father’s Day had been downplayed during that era in the South because there were so many blurred boundaries lingering from slavery and Jim Crow. Many Southerners could recognize a mixed-race neighbor or relative of questionable or unmentionable parentage. In such cases, it was absolutely best to leave paternity questions alone.

But in fifth grade, I moved permanently to New York City where school was in session till

ANGELA BELCHER EPPS is the author of a novella, Salt in the Sugar Bowl (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her stories and essays have been published by Essence Magazine and Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, among other periodicals. Angela’s essay “Sandhill: A Symphony of Souls” was also an honorable mention recipient of the Alex Albright CNF Prize and was published in NCLR Online 2019. She has also published two grant writing manuals as resources for nonprofit organizations. Angela earned a BA in English/Creative Writing from Hofstra University and an MA in Creative Writing from New York University and is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective. She lives in Raleigh with her husband.

the end of June. I encountered my first catch-22 in my introduction to a schoolhouse ritual: designing the Father’s Day card. Why on earth would I write a poem and draw a picture for a nonexistent figure in my life? Refusing to participate would make me an outlier. If I raised my hand and said my truth, would I have been given an alternate assignment? And what in the world would that have been? So, I made one just like everybody else. Tossed it in the trash at the end of the day. I thought no more of it because the assignment didn’t require the father to show up at school or do anything.

Perhaps, the concept of doing is key. Perhaps, I would have missed a father if there was something that needed doing that went amiss because he wasn’t there. I’m reminded of a family story. My four-year-old first cousin was in a particularly talkative stage when he’d gone to visit his grandfather. He returned with countless grandfather stories that continued for the greater part of the week. At some point, he looked at his younger cousin and said, “You don’t have a grandfather.” He pondered the matter for quite some time before saying, “Wait. Aunt Dessa is your grandfather.”

I understood his logic. His aunt Dessa was my mother. My mom was an industrious landlord, and, on her days off, you would find her cleaning the traps in the basement, mopping the hallway stairs, sweeping debris from the flat roof, and spreading tar on the puckered shingles. He might have concluded that titles were somehow conferred according to the completion of tasks in various domains, in the way that a dry cleaner or a shopkeeper could be any human.

It was not until I was in middle school, old enough to complete forms on my own, that I began to feel a twinge of discord. I repeatedly encountered that line requesting Father’s Name. I knew the name, but there was no reason to include it. There was no logical, subsequent step that followed his identification. He wouldn’t be notified for consent

My introduction to a schoolhouse ritual: designing the Father’s Day card. Why on earth would I write a poem and draw a picture for a nonexistent figure in my life?

or further information. I left it blank. Sometimes though, I’d notice a slice of sadness slithering in my spirit because the blank line signaled that no matter how happy or how satisfied I was within my family unit, a basic requirement for full family status was unmet. I began to covet a different kind of wholeness in my familial picture.

So, in eighth grade, I wrote novellas about relationships in which star-crossed lovers rushed into teenaged marriages and blissfully parented a slew of children. I glorified the dad and dug deep into the characters of these young men who shaped the destinies of a doting wife and offspring. By the time I reached high school, however, that hankering abated and the issue of my paternal parentage went into remission.

Entering the field of education seriously kindled my awareness of the political and social aspects of family structures. For fifteen years I did educational research for grant writing purposes and taught in the public school system for twelve. All my teaching assignments involved case management for students with special needs. This exposed me to situations that cut across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Special education is a territory where some of society’s greatest complexities and challenges converge for the sole purpose of getting children through school.

In the special education arena, I continually witnessed dynamics that led to reconfigured families. A child might be physically fragile and reside in a medically equipped foster setting. Teens with disabilities transitioned from foster homes into group homes. Parents burned out and turned kids over to kinship care or the system. Students with emotional and behavioral issues got banished from their homes and wound up sleeping from couch-to-couch in temporary situations.1 It was

1 Records show that “some 5,000 [youth] reside in group homes, residential treatment facilities, psychiatric institutions, and emergency shelters,” “Congregate Care, Residential Treatment and Group Home State Legislative Enactments 2014-2019,”

National Council of State Legislatures Dec. 2020: web.

common for lines requesting the names of mother and father to be scratched out and replaced with aunt, sibling, grandmother, uncle, cousin, foster parent, stepfather, or guardian.

In those settings, I embraced any caregiver with the utmost respect and excitement. I wanted my students to feel not a hint of trepidation in claiming the adult in charge of their lives and decisions. The “win” was to have someone who cared enough to come.

“Anybody coming?” I’d ask about an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meeting or awards ceremony.

“My foster mom,” he’d answer.

“Awesome!” I’d say. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

“My big sister and her baby are coming.”

“Well, that’s terrific!”

I grew a bit bulldogish and began to cringe and glower at individuals who used terms like “her adopted son” or “his real mother.” I grew increasingly sensitive to the myriad indirect ways that create stigma around the necessary connections made in response to the needs of children.

Two decades ago, my daughter came home from her educational summer day camp with an assignment to complete one of those family tree templates divided into a mother’s side and father’s side. This activity encourages children to learn more about their families as they fill the branches with names, titles, photos, and detailed information. Many teachers still incorporate this activity into their annual cache of “fun things to do.” The sentiment is innocuous, and some kids enjoy it. For other children, however, it invites them to revisit wounds, acknowledge glaring omissions, and dig out skeletons best kept in their proverbial closets.

Instead of getting my daughter set up with the box of old photos, etc., I said, “We’re skipping this project.” I sat down and wrote her counselor. I opened by saying that I understood he was just beginning his educational career and that I wanted to alert him that some children might be needlessly stressed because of the parameters set by that tree:

They may have only one parent and no knowledge of the other side.2

They may be adopted and understand that behind one tree stands another that will remain forever branchless.

They may have come from an assisted conception with a paternal donor of no consequence tied to their existence.

They may belong to same-sex parents who don’t ascribe to all the separating and delineating.

They may live in foster care or group homes.2 I sent the note to camp with her the next day. When I saw the counselor at pick-up, he nodded and said, “I get what you’re saying.” “Yes!” I said.

2 “Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%),” “National Single Parent

Day: March 21, 2022,” U.S. Census Bureau March 2022: web;

“Between 2 and 3.7 million children under age 18 have an LGBTQ parent,” “LGBTQ Family Fact Sheet,” Family Equality Council

Aug. 2017: web; “There are approximately 424,000 foster youth nationwide,” “6 Quick Statistics on the Current State of Foster Care,” iFoster Nov. 2020: web.

An excellent personal essay that makes a compelling and well-crafted argument for overcoming our traditional ways of talking about family. —David S. Cecelski, final judge

Change is slow, however. Not all educators have realized that the status quo is morphing into something other than. We’ve become a This and That society, and some ceremonies that we’re standing on are irrelevant at best and painful at worst.

Not so long ago, I was observing a teacher in a high school classroom. She told her students, “I want you to write a paragraph stating your momma’s opinion about one of the following topics.” She had the list on the board. When a disheveled young man sat idly unfocused, she said loud enough to hear at the end of the hall, “Ray, you got a grandma, don’t you? Ask Grandma.”

For a brief period, two little girls got off the school bus with my daughter. For two weeks, they came to our house for a few hours because their mom’s schedule had shifted. One was a chatty and precocious nine-year-old. She drove me mad with her desire to talk to me as I was busy making my living grant-writing from home. My normal routine was my daughter doing homework and entertaining herself for a couple of hours while I continued to work. The little chatterbox wasn’t having it.

Because this little neighbor loved to read, I gave her the draft of a children’s book I’d worked on featuring a little girl and her siblings who went into foster care, which turned out to be a far better environment for them.

She sat on the front porch steps and dived into the fifteen, typed, double-spaced pages for a good long time. When she finished, I asked, “So, what do you think?”

“It’s too sad,” she answered, her face worried and tense.

“But it has a happy ending,” I said.

“Yeah, but we had another mother,” she said. “She was on drugs.”

Her younger sister came out of nowhere and chastised, “We’re not supposed to talk about that!”

I wrapped up that awkward moment with, “Well, you know that’s what the story’s for – to let kids know all families aren’t the same. And the best families aren’t always the ones we’re born into.”

They were satisfied with that answer, and I was quick to offer extra snacks.

I noted that even though they were thriving under their improved conditions, their reality was cloaked in secrecy. That’s understandable; privacy has its place. But it’s a travesty that children must suffer the burden of shame because someone died, left, or proved to be unfit. Psychological fallout is real, but societal messaging can, indeed, make it so much worse.

Protocols that lead us to pretend we’re all having homogeneous experiences will continue to stick in my craw. I’m certainly not casting aspersions on traditional two-parent units; I simply want society to acknowledge and validate all loving and caring configurations that keep kids safe and emotionally nourished. To be fair, I’ll no longer berate the wellmeaning educators who remain wed to the family tree assignment. Might I suggest, however, that they provide an array of trees from which children can choose to chart their unique journeys. The first that comes to mind is a resiliency tree that highlights all the people who have helped them along their journey. n

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STEPHANIE WHITLOCK DICKEN designed this essay, as well as the Carter, Epps, Hunter, and Martínez essays and the Estrada short story in this issue. She has designed for NCLR since 2000 and served as Art Director 2003–2008.