Learning that I Have Another Illegitimate Cousin

Today I was told that my second uncle had an illegitimate daughter.

I had met the girl before, when I was about three, four years old. She had just learned how to walk. I remember chasing after her, who was always running away in unsteady but amazingly fast steps, and calling, “Sister, sister, com back!” I don’t remember her face. But my mom said that she looked like my uncle. And from the way she always ran without looking at what lay ahead, she was like him.

My memories of her exist now in fragments. They have faded in brightness but survived through the long years as happy memories--until the revelation today. Among them, there is a glimpse of my uncle’s face when he looked at her. I still remember that tenderness and care in his face, and being perplexed when I saw it: he was never a man who loved children; and most of his rarely-seen expression of affection had been directed towards me. Why would he have so much love for that girl, who was “neither a relative nor a close friend”? Now I know that she is his daughter. And my cousin--a “sister” by blood.

I am not extremely surprised. Before, when I questioned my mother with snippets of tabloid news that my uncle had had a secret lover, she replied, “There are a lot of things you don’t know!” Now I know one of them, Mom, and it damn well makes me want to puke my guts out.

Now my dad is the only one of the three boys in his generation who has not produced an illegitimate child. I’m rather grateful, honestly. No matter what he did, he loved my mother and me and never considered a divorce.

But that doesn’t make me feel any better about my uncle.

The existence of the illegitimate child had finally been revealed to his wife last month. My aunt did not talk to him for three days, and that was it. She knew that she was financially dependent on him, so she did not fight. He knew this too, so he did not see any need to apologize.

This is my extended family--a place where money is the only thing that speaks, much like the outside world. Three years ago, when my grandmother died, I had decided that before I give birth to my children, I would severe all relationships with relatives back in China. My parents called me crazy, idiotic, totally out of my mind. But looking back, I think I made the best decision I could with my extended family.

Sure, relatives teach lessons. But in the end, I don’t think that the value of the lessons outweighs the disgust they give me.