FAMILY REUNION
I
stared at the photo of the little boy—a little
boy I had never seen before. When I was a
little girl, I loved looking at old photographs.
I would thumb through the pages of my
family’s photo albums, fascinated by the
scenes of the “old days.”
One day as I sat in the living room looking
at the captured memories of the past, I came across photos of
a little boy. I didn’t recognize him. Or maybe I had just never
noticed his photo before. Maybe the photos were tucked away
and forgotten but this day had decided to slip out of their hiding place. Was he a member of our family? He reminded me of
my cousin Anthony. Like Anthony he was “light-skinned” as
black folks called African Americans of a lighter complexion.
His hair was not extra curly and puffy like mine before my
mother applied the straightening comb to it. It was black, thick
and wavy. Was that another picture of him with a white woman
in the snow? Maybe that’s why he was so light. Was that his
mother?
“Who is this?” I asked my mother.
“Your brother,” she said nonchalantly without any explana-
about this mysterious brother. Where was he now? Why didn’t
he live with us? I wanted to meet him. But from the fact that I
was just finding out I had a brother and the fact that his photos
were not displayed and he was not talked about, even in my
childlike understanding I knew it was probably a touchy subject. A family secret.
But I vowed in my mind that day, that one day I would meet
my brother.
The Letters
Like the photos tucked away in the photo album, across the
ocean, a box of letters was hidden away in a closet.
In the 50s, my father was stationed in Germany. He met
Margot, a young German woman who was a single mother.
They became friends and lovers. He received his orders to return to the United States. She told him she was pregnant before he left. In Germany at that time, if a child was born out of
wedlock, the child became a ward of the state and was often
sent to an orphanage. In post World War II there were horrific
stories about what would happen to babies in orphanages, es-
ers brings a father and son together
tion, as if this was something that I should know or had always
known.
My brother?
Another brother. It was the first time I had ever heard of my
brother. To that point the only brother that I knew of was my
brother who was six years my elder, Kenneth Edward. How
could this be possible?
Obviously, this brother had to be from another mother. I
believe my mother gave me a brief explanation later. My father
had a child when he was a soldier stationed in Germany. He
was born before my parents were married. His name was Walter.
Walter. Walter. He looked like such a sweet boy with a shy,
kind smile.
I was excited. I had another brother. Another family member. We had our perfect American family. Two parents. Two
kids. A son and a daughter. But now I had a brother in Germany that I had never seen before. I wanted to learn more
pecially “Brown Babies” the offspring of African-American
servicemen.
“Brown Babies" were the children born to black soldiers and
white European women during and after World War II.
Known as "Mischlingskinder" in German, by 1955 AfricanAmerican soldiers had fathered about 5,000 mischlingskinder
in Occupied Germany, according to some estimates.
My father left a letter stating he was the father of Margot’s
child so that when the child was born there would be proof
that he had a father. When Walter was born in November
1955, my father’s name was on the birth certificate that Margot
sent him.
“She was exp