Profunksticated

The rubber has finally met the road. The ish has hit the fan.

I’ve been sitting on this for six weeks. I texted Hostess about it, and I hinted about it in a comment on A’s blog.

My younger brother, the recent widower, has a baby son by another woman. Yup, old Profunksticated has a half-nephew. Bro told me in late June over the phone while I was in the DMV, in between gigs. I was dumbfounded. He swore me to secrecy.

I can tell you this now because he’s finally told his two sons, 19 and 13, so now the news will travel. The woman, the baby’s mother and a long-time co-worker of my brother’s , came by their house with the child and introduced the little guy to the boys on Tuesday. The 19-year-old, I’m hearing, is quite upset. I don’t know how the 13-year-old took the news.

The kid was born in December, three months before my sis-in-law passed away. My bro says indicated it was an accident, and says he was angry as all get out when he learned the woman was preggers last fall.

I’m not so sure it was an accident. I need to say this: I’m now sorry I made my bro sound like a saint in one of my earlier posts, as the guy who stuck by his sick spouse. (Well, technically he did, but he obviously took some time off).

He’s been dealing with this other woman on the side for a number of years (I’m not gonna say how many), but in the last maybe two-three years, I figured he left her alone because he didn’t talk about her.

When he told me about the baby, I immediately recalled a convo he and I had several years ago in which he told me said woman wanted to have his baby. She promised he wouldn’t have to raise it and that she wouldn’t come after him for child support. Her biological clock was ticking.

I told my bro not to even think such a thing, for the most obvious reason that his wife was alive back then.

Now I’m thinking the woman did it deliberately, but I have no proof, only circumstantial evidence. And by my calculation, the kids conception came a full year before his wife passed on.

Don’t get me wrong, my bro isn’t blameless in all this. He acknowledged he did wrong, but says he cannot change the fact that the kid is here. He said the adults in the family, while sure to be shocked and disappointed, are going to have to deal with it.

What was even more shocking to me is that my bro also indicated he may continue a relationship with this woman, and that she wants to be part of the family. I’m thinking, “Oh my God.”

I told a childhood friend about this today, and he said that he feels for my brother in that he’ll have this cloud hanging over his head. He said men are likely to understand his adultery in the context of his wife having a chronic illness. But women, he said, will look at it completely differently. ” ‘He was out screwing around while his wife was sick,’ ” he said would be the common refrain among women. He said instead of viewing him as the the selfless, devoted husband, they’ll now only see him as just another two-timing n-gga.

My nephew told my wife, and it brought back all kinds of feelings for her, given the admissions I made some years back about my screwing around. I’m now sorry to say that I can’t be sure I don’t have a kid out there. All I can say is that at the very least, no woman has knocked on my door accusing me of being her child’s father. My wife said that as much as she misses our sister-in-law, she’s glad that sis is not here to see this. Sis probably would have killed my bro.

This all said, I still love my bro and will support him. Yes, he’s disappointed me. I feel for the woman, for the holding on to the delusion carrying on a relationship with a married dude is the right thing to do. And I really feel for the baby, the innocent party who may or may not have his father completely in his life.

I can only view this situation as another one of God’s tests of whether humans can forgive.