There was an almost electric feeling of anticipation in the labour room. Emma, my wife, was lying on the hospital bed, clutching my fingers, with a look of excitement mixed with fatigue. The quiet voices of the nurses, the regular beeping of the monitors and the gentle words of the doctor encouraging me created an atmosphere of sleep.
This was it. The time we had been waiting for. Picking out clothes for the baby, feeling light pushes in the middle of the night and nine months of elation. Nine months of wondering if our future baby would have Emma’s golden hair. My angular cheekbones? My inherited dimples? All other sounds in the room were disrupted by a piercing scream. The baby was here.
I looked over and saw the doctor gently lifting our baby girl, her face wrinkled as she took her first breaths, her tiny limbs wriggling. Tears came to my eyes. She was flawless. But Emma’s startled scream, which I hadn’t expected, broke the moment.
‘That’s not my baby!’ The room went quiet. The nurses froze. The doctor stopped half-stepping. I thought my wife would be stunned, perhaps just in shock from the labour. However, there was an expression of disbelief rather than weariness in her eyes.
Trying to keep her composure, one of the nurses chuckled softly. ‘She’s still attached to you,’ she remarked, as if reassuring my wife that everything was fine. Emma, however, gasped and shook her head angrily. ‘That’s not feasible! Never in my life have I ever dated a black man!’
These words hung shrilly and weightily in the air. Everyone didn’t know how to react, and the room remained strangely still. As I turned to face our daughter – a gorgeous newborn baby girl with skin that was significantly darker than each of us – my heart hammered in my ears. Her facial features, however, were definitely ours.
Emma trembled beside me, and I felt like the whole world tilted beneath her. I calmed her down by squeezing her hand and forcing her to look at me. ‘She’s our baby,’ I stated unequivocally in a firm voice. ‘That’s all that matters.’
Emma’s gaze travelled from our daughter to me and back again. When the nurse gently placed the infant in her arms, she gasped. At first she seemed hesitant to touch her, as if she was afraid of something incomprehensible. Something changed, however, as soon as our daughter’s little fingers encircled her little finger.
She relaxed her shoulders. The stiffness on her face was replaced by something softer. She felt a mixture of relief, tiredness, and love, and tears filled her eyes. She let out a shuddering sigh. She muttered: ‘She’s gorgeous.’ It was as if the ward was breathing easier again. The nurses looked at each other but kept working. Nodding, the doctor and I exchanged tacit agreement.
The next few days were a blur. While Emma recovered, I watched our baby non-stop, trying to figure out what was going on. She had my chin, my nose, and even the same tiny frown I’d had as a newborn, so I knew without a doubt that she was mine. Emma, however, continued her tirade.
She wasn’t so convinced because I had any suspicions or doubts about her. Emma was the first to suggest a DNA test. ‘I just need to know,’ she said one evening in a slightly audible, almost embarrassed voice. ‘I love her, don’t I? But I need to understand.
And we did. We waited to send samples. A fortnight later the results came back. Emma opened the letter with trembling hands. My heart raced as I stood behind her back. As she read, she covered her mouth with one hand and gasped.
A record of her ancestry appeared on the screen, confirming in bold letters what we never knew: Emma had several generations of African ancestry. She turned to face me, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t know,’ she murmured. ‘All this time I didn’t know.’
I kissed the top of her head, pulling her to me. I murmured: ‘This doesn’t change anything.’ ‘She belongs to us. She’s always belonged to us. Emma laughed softly. ‘I guess my panic was for nothing.’ I grinned. ‘Well, people experience that during labour.’ She nudged me and rolled her eyes, then turned to face our daughter, who was now sleeping soundly in her cot. After that, there were no more questions. Just love. The world, of course, had its own questions.
Our family members raised eyebrows. In supermarkets, strangers made remarks about the discrepancy. Some even asked, ‘Is she adopted?’. At first Emma didn’t know how to respond to such questions and was embarrassed. But then she smiled and said with complete confidence, ‘No.
She belongs to us. We vowed over the years to raise our baby girl proud of all aspects of her ancestry. We studied the customs, origins and cultures associated with Emma’s DNA as we delved deeper into her newfound lineage. We made sure our little girl never doubted her place in the world by surrounding her with love.
One evening, when she was about five years old, she was playing with her fingers sitting on Emma’s lap. She asked: ‘Mummy?’ ‘How is my skin different from yours?’ Emma brushed a curl away from her forehead and grinned. ‘Because you are unique, my dear. You had a beautiful past that we both shared.’ ‘Like a mixture?’ – she tilted her head questioningly. ‘Exactly,’ I remarked, sitting down beside them. ‘Like the most exquisite painting that has both Mom’s and Dad’s colours in it.’ Satisfied with the answer, she smiled and continued the game.
‘Thanks for reminding me of that day at the hospital,’ Emma murmured, seeking my hand as we watched her sleep that night. ‘To what end?’ ‘That it belonged to us,’ she declared. ‘That’s all that mattered.’ And I knew without a doubt that I would always be there for them, looking at my daughter who was so beautiful and full of love. Through every enquiry, through every obstacle, through everything. Because in this family, looks didn’t matter. It didn’t.
It had to do with love.
