There’s one other thing I’d like to know, Dad said. Your principal told me this boy has a history of being picked on, and that the other boys tease him all the time because of his weight. He wouldn’t tell me much else about him. But I want to know—was he taller than you? Was he?
I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. There were times I hated being burdened with height. All through elementary and middle school, teachers and coaches were always sizing me up and commenting on how fast I was growing and making assumptions about my athletic prowess, and then acting disappointed when I failed to develop as a basketball or volleyball player. It was true I was always in the top row of every class picture I’d been in as far back as kindergarten. But adults forget how toughness gets started in the heart of a child, and how easily a tall boy can turn soft if he’s not vigilant, and how meanwhile the short boys are all turning into Mexican dogs, just waiting to sink their teeth into the neck of the first tall thing that crosses them. And then the tall ones have to make the choice to become tough, and to keep the toughness in their hearts all the time, and reflect on it day by day like the faithful reflect on their religion.
I’m not hearing a response, Dad said. You will answer me, though. Even if we have to sit here together all night.
He wasn’t, I said. He wasn’t taller than me.
He was shorter than you?
Yes.
You lost a fight against a boy who was younger, fatter, and shorter than you?
Yes.
I could hear Dad’s breath passing in and out of his nostrils. He seemed calm. He seemed calm even as he pushed his chair out from the table and stood and pulled the jangling keys from his pocket. I think it’s time we went for a drive, he said.
It had been more than a year since I’d ridden in a car with Dad. It was a Sunday afternoon and he drove all of us to a Chinese restaurant on the far side of Visalia. Sebastian and I were in the backseat while Mom sat up front with Mark on her lap, trying to keep him quiet enough not to irritate Dad. The car he was driving then seemed small to me for some reason, or maybe it was the feeling of having the whole family packed together in the same vehicle for the first time in forever. In any case, this time he had me sit in the front seat right next to him. No where to go to escape his gaze. True, he kept his eyes on the road the whole time, but it still felt like he was watching me, keeping me in suspense over what he was thinking and where we were going and what he was going to do to me when we got there.
We drove through town and out of it again and then turned onto the fresh black road that stretched for miles through dusty nothingness until dead-ending right in front of the county ag bureau and a few other government buildings. Dad took us about half the distance to the bureau before pulling into the parking lot of a general medicine clinic with the blue and green emblem of the national health insurance emblazoned on the main wall facing the road. Dad parked in the most deserted corner of the lot and shut off the engine. He motioned for me to get out with him.
I’m a responsible man, he said. I don’t shirk my obligations, least of all when it comes to my own flesh and blood. But that’s just the thing. Blood is blood. That’s all there is. It’s what binds us together, and without it, all that’s left are empty words and disappointment. That’s why we’re going to find out right here and now whether your failures are really my own, or if some treacherous slut has been making a fool out of me for fifteen years.
He popped the trunk and reached down deep inside. The nylon bag he took out was about the size of a beer can with a thin zipper running the full length of one side from seam to seam. He unzipped the bag and removed a clear plastic tube with a cap on one end and a strip of masking tape holding the cap in place. I peered into the tube and saw that it contained nothing but a plain cotton swab attached to a wooden handle that was almost as long as the tube itself. Dad held the strange container in front of my face and shook it from side to side.
Do you know how a paternity test works? he asked.
Instead of answering him, I pressed my lips together as tight as I could, like I was trying to form an impenetrable seal across my face.
It’s very simple. I’m going to use this swab to collect saliva from the inside of your cheek. That’s the DNA sample. The staff in there already has my DNA, and they’re going to run some tests to see if we’re a match. It takes about two days for the results to come in. I’ll wait at the house with you and your mother until then. If, at the end of two days, the tests come back negative, if they show that I’m not and never have been your father, then I’ll know who it is who really deserves to be punished. I’ll finally know who to blame.
Tears came to my eyes without my realizing. It was too late to try to force them down, so I let them flow freely down my face. I thought about Mom alone in the house with my brothers, walking through the kitchen with bare feet and straining through the burden of her condition, and all the while trying to get Sebastian and Mark to settle down and give her a break. I didn’t know much about her life or the kind of woman she was before she met Dad. But I knew she was a God-fearing woman, and that she wouldn’t lie to me about where I came from, or about whose blood it was that every second of the day was coursing through my heart and flesh. I dropped to my knees right there in the parking lot.
I’m your son, I said. I know I am. I have to be.
He tore the cap off the cylinder and pinched the bare end of the swab between his huge fingers. You may be right, he said. But it’s time we know for certain. Now open your mouth.
I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe, but somehow I still managed to talk. Please don’t. I’m certain. I’m already certain you’re my father.
You can’t know for sure. You weren’t even born. Now open up.
As I spoke, I tried to shrink my mouth to a point no wider than a needle, in case he tried to get the swab into me by force, which seemed to be the direction he was headed. I have your eyes, I said. That proves it. My eyes are the same as the ones you’re looking at me with.
He stepped back and looked at me like he’d never taken the time to notice the color of my eyes before. Anyone can have blue eyes, he said. That doesn’t prove anything.
I feel it, though. I know that I’m a part of you. Mom wouldn’t betray you like that. She wouldn’t break a Commandment.
Dad shook his head and smiled mercilessly, turning his wrist so that the swab swirled like a magic wand in the hand of a birthday party magician. They say that sometimes our blood can work through us without us even realizing it, he said. Cellular memory. That’s what they call it. Seems to me that if you were really my son it would be so much more difficult for you to do things that embarrass the family name. So maybe you were never meant to carry my name. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to tell me and you don’t even know it.
I clutched his pant legs in my fists. My knees were already sore from kneeling on the asphalt, but at that moment I wouldn’t have stood for anything in Heaven or Earth unless he ordered me to. I’m your son, I said, though I could barely speak through the grip of the invisible hand on my throat. I am your son. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Forgive me.
I looked up at him again and saw that his face was blank above the protruding rim of his beard. He held the swab suspended above me and I didn’t move and didn’t try to get away.