Genetic Driftwood

If Pappaw hadn't been murdered, I wouldn't even consider doing this test. Yet, here I am. Against my better judgment, I spit into the plastic tube then check to see if I've reached the fill line. Not even close. I suck the inside of my cheeks to produce more saliva and spit again and again until the tube is full. I check the directions, cap it as instructed, then pack it back into the box with the address label affixed. I set it on the table. Do I really want to do this?

Despite the popularity of consumer DNA tests, I've never been interested. I can tell by my fair, freckled skin, strawberry blond hair, and light blue eyes that my ancestors hail from some British isle, and I don't care which one. I know enough history to understand that whoever they were, they came here under duress, perhaps escaping a famine or war, a debt or prison.

Mostly, though, I don't need scientific evidence that many of the people I've loved and called family aren't related by blood. I come from a long line of orphaned children. My family tree looks like a pile of driftwood.

My husband still can't keep my family straight. We've been together for nearly a decade, and when I tell a story, he'll ask me to draw a diagram so he can map out the relationships.

Take my great-grandmother Martha, who smelled like ceramic paints and Benson and Hedges, and shouted whether she was angry or joking or actually happy. Martha's mother had too many mouths to feed and gave Martha to her childless sister. When the sister left her husband and took off down south with a preacher on the Methodist circuit, she took Martha with her. Martha never forgave her mother for giving her away, which I think might be why she smoked and shouted so much. I remember the shouting and the smoking, but I also remember the polka-dotted ceramic bunny she made for me. How she always called me doll and let me win at spades.

Martha's first husband was a son-of-a-bitch drunk who beat her and their three kids. He got mad at the kids once for some infraction nobody remembers and shot their dog dead in front of them. Martha finally hauled off and left him, moved her kids across the county, then across the country to New York City, then back to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she met Russel.

Russel adopted the three kids—George, Jamie, and Susie—after he married Martha, though I don't think George really appreciated the favor. He was twelve when they married, too old to renegotiate the term "father," too full of resentment. To accept Russel unconditionally would be to deny all that had come before. But Jamie and Susie loved Russel and always called him dad. Soon after, Jamie, who was named for his biological father, insisted on changing his name to Sam. He hated the man so much that he couldn't even stand his own name.

I always called my grandfather Jamie by another name anyway, Bub. It was one of the first syllables I ever uttered and it stuck. Bub taught me to windsurf, to plant my legs and balance on the waves, to heave the sail from the water, to catch the wind and pull against it, to use my own strength to move.

Bub's wife, my grandmother Geege, was raised by her grandparents after her father was crushed when a coal mine collapsed and her mother went off to find work (and a new husband). As soon as Bub finished college, he and Geege took their infant son as far away from East Tennessee and family as they could get: Shreveport, Louisiana. That's where my dad became an Eagle Scout, started using, met my mother, had me, went to jail, and eventually killed himself. I never really knew him, except in stories.

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Bub and Geege took me to Martha and Russel's...