He Pushed the Dad Who Raised Him

Jalen Price was seventeen, and he'd been holding it in for three days.

When Gerald came down the hallway that Thursday night and asked, the way he always did, "You eat yet, man?", something in Jalen snapped.

He put both hands on Gerald's chest and shoved.

Hard.

Gerald was fifty-four. He went backward into the wall and slid down it, and his sneaker caught on the edge of the rug, and then he was sitting on the hardwood floor, staring up at the kid he'd taught to ride a bike.

Jalen stood over him, breathing fast.

"I know who you are."

Gerald blinked. "What do you mean by that?"

"You're not my real father. My real father is somewhere else."

For a second, Gerald didn't say anything. Then, quietly, like it hurt to get the words out:

"I know that."

From the kitchen came the sound of a pan hitting the counter. Jalen's mom, Denise, came running down the hall in her socks and jeans, and she dropped to her knees next to Gerald.

"Gerald! Baby, are you okay? Jalen, what did you do?"

Then she looked up at her son, and she saw his face, and she understood.

Something in her face cracked.

"So what if he isn't your real father?"

Jalen's voice shook. "You've hidden the truth from me all these years."

Denise's eyes filled up. She was still on her knees, one hand on Gerald's arm.

"You're talking about the man who never even pretended to be your father, while this man gave you what you needed, stood beside you, and helped make you the man..."

"So what?" Jalen said. "Anyone could have done that."

Gerald got up.

It took him a second. One hand on the wall, one hand on Denise's shoulder. But he got all the way up, and he stood in front of Jalen, and for the first time in seventeen years, Jalen saw something in his face he'd never seen there before.

Not anger. Something worse.

"You were never the son that I thought you were," Gerald said.

Jalen flinched.

"I tried so hard to make sure you didn't become like that man. But you became exactly like him."

Behind him, Denise had both hands pressed over her mouth. Her whole body was shaking.

Gerald didn't look away from Jalen.

"You're making your mother cry."

Jalen's jaw locked. His eyes were burning, but he would've died before he let them see it.

"I don't want to live with you anymore."

He turned and walked toward his bedroom.

"Wait," Denise sobbed. She reached out after him.

Gerald caught her hand.

"Let him go," he said. His voice was flat and tired. "He's just like his father."

Jalen stopped at his bedroom door. He looked back at them over his shoulder. His mother crying. Gerald with his arm around her, standing in the hallway where Jalen's height was still marked in pencil on the door frame. Age three. Age five. Age nine. Age fourteen.

Every single line was in Gerald's handwriting.

Jalen closed the door.

Three days before that, a stranger had sent him a message on Instagram.

The profile picture was a man about forty-five, in a backward cap, grinning. The name was Curtis Lyle. The first message was just a photo.

A hospital nursery. A tiny baby in a striped blanket. A young Denise in a hospital bed, maybe nineteen. And next to her, a young man with that same grin, holding up two fingers.

Then the second message.

Hey Jalen. I know this is crazy. But I'm your father. Your real one. They never told you, did they?

Then a picture of a birth certificate. Jalen's name. His birthday. And under FATHER, in typed letters: CURTIS JAMES LYLE.

Jalen had stared at that birth certificate for six hours.

Over the next three days, Curtis told him everything. That he and Denise were young and in love. That he made some mistakes. That he went away for a while. That when he came back, Gerald was already there, and Gerald "made sure" Curtis never got near his son.

They told you I didn't want you, Curtis wrote. That's a lie. They wouldn't LET me see you. Gerald had money. I didn't. That's the whole story.

Jalen believed every word. Why wouldn't he? They'd lied to him for seventeen years.

But some of Curtis's questions were strange.

What's your blood type, son? You ever had any health problems? Your kidneys okay? You ever been to the hospital?

Jalen had answered all of them. He figured a dad was supposed to worry about that stuff.

And there was one more thing. Curtis had asked, twice, when exactly Jalen's birthday was. Even though it was right there on the birth certificate he'd sent.

October thirty-first. Eighteen.

Three weeks away.

At two in the morning, Jalen climbed out his bedroom window with a backpack.

He didn't know that Gerald was sitting on the floor in the hallway outside his door. He'd been there since midnight. Just sitting with his back against the wall, under the pencil marks, in case Jalen needed something.

Jalen called a ride to the address Curtis had sent him. An apartment complex on the east side, forty minutes away.

Curtis opened the door before he even knocked.

He looked older than his pictures. Thinner. His skin had a gray, dusty look, and there was a white bandage taped to the inside of his left arm. But the grin was the same.

"Look at you," Curtis said. "Look at my boy."

He hugged Jalen. He smelled like cigarettes and hospital soap.

Behind him, in the apartment, a woman sat on the couch in a bathrobe, watching TV. She looked Jalen up and down, slowly, like she was checking out a used car.

Then she said the strangest thing Jalen had ever heard.

"So this is him?" she said. "Is he a match?"