Becoming Shayla's Father
For years, he denied he had a daughter. Now she was 18, and pregnant. Was it too late to learn to love each other?

By A. Scott Bolden
Sunday, December 16, 2007

FROM MY LUXURY HOTEL SUITE, THE PHILADELPHIA SKY SEEMS FORLORN, as though waiting for the sun to brighten its outlook. I, too, am brooding and waiting as I pace to the window and back again, hoping for the best, yet steeling myself. I pause to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the buffet. Have I chosen the right suit? I button and then unbutton my black jacket. Early in my career, when I was a prosecutor, I learned that how a lawyer dresses is at least as important as his verbal command in the courtroom. I chalk up my obsession with clothes to that, at least in part. I briefly consider the navy blue pinstripe suit hanging in the closet. But what if she arrives as I am changing?

I glance at the two bouquets of white roses on the mahogany dining room table, reaching for one bunch to check the petals for brown spots, and touch the top of a gold box of Godiva chocolate. Flowers and candy were my calling cards as a young single man -- I've always had a penchant for white calla lilies. But I am neither the player of my youth, nor the Renaissance man I once thought myself to be. I am afraid.

What should I do once I open the door? Should I wait until she speaks, or charge ahead with the verve and charm that have helped get me so far in life? Maybe I should be the Compliment Man? There once was a guy in the District, where I live, who gave himself that name. He spent his days and nights on the 18th Street strip in Adams Morgan, flattering people for money instead of begging. Who doesn't enjoy a compliment? In my case, giving one is certainly better than begging forgiveness. But what if she thinks I'm full of myself? (Never mind the truth.)

My hands are sweating, so I hurry to the bathroom and thrust them under the faucet, lathering and rinsing, lathering and rinsing. Then I wipe them dry and nervously coat them with too much lotion.

There is a knock at the door.

THE CALL CAME ONE AFTERNOON JUST BEFORE THANKSGIVING IN 2001, as I was straightening up papers on my desk at the downtown law offices of Reed Smith LLP, where I have been a partner for a decade. A woman. No hello, no how are you. A familiar voice, but I couldn't quite place it.

Scott, our daughter is 18 now, and she needs you, the woman said.

I remembered. Years ago, when we both were students in Atlanta -- she at Spelman College, and me at Morehouse College -- living carefree and equally careless lives, she told me she was pregnant. The baby wasn't mine, I was sure of that. We'd dated on and off for about six months, but we never belonged to each other, which is to say we dated others. Years later, I'd understand the other sex well enough to sense the damage a man does to a woman's self-respect and dignity when he asks: "You sure it's mine?" But, back then, denial seemed like the best approach. Eventually, I extended my wallet to help, never suggesting toward what, all the while reiterating that the child couldn't possibly be mine. I think I believed it, too.

She declined my assistance. I just thought you should know, she said. We have been great friends. I want us to stay friends. She left. I went back to my life: wine, women, song and education, perhaps in that order.

Later that summer, while I was at home in Joliet, Ill., a couple of her pals called to inform me that she planned to keep the baby. I cut the conversations short. Back at Morehouse, there were rumors that my "girlfriend" had claimed that someone other than I was the father. I felt relieved.

She left school. About seven years later, she called me to say she was thinking about marrying someone who wanted to adopt Shayla, and they needed my permission. I asked how I could give consent when I wasn't even sure Shayla was my daughter. She replied that my name was on the birth certificate. I told her I needed more than that and suggested a paternity test. She agreed. Her marriage plans fell through, though, and neither of us called the other back.

I got married in 1988 at the age of 26 and eventually moved to Washington from Manhattan, where I had been a prosecutor. I went to work as counsel for the D.C. Council's judiciary committee and then was hired by Reed Smith in 1991. My twin girls were born in 1995; my wife and I separated in 1999; and the divorce was finalized in January 2001.

The next Thanksgiving, Shayla's mother called.

What are you talking about? I asked.

I've done the best I could. It's time for you to step up, she said.

It was already a tumultuous time in my life. I was facing the prospect of losing daily contact with my twin daughters, who were 6 years old then. I had been left with a mountain of debt from the divorce and from living beyond my means. How, I wondered, how could this have happened? I had become a partner in a prestigious law firm -- one of the first African Americans in Reed Smith's history -- in record time; had been head of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce; and had the trappings of wealth -- luxury cars, an expensive home in Georgetown and a seat at the best tables for some of the most important functions in Washington. But hindsight would reveal just how unbalanced my priorities had become. Money, power and political ambition were my holy trinity, my amen and hallelujah chorus. Although I fancied myself a family man -- working to provide for my wife and children -- I was also serving my own interests. And before it was all over, Shayla's arrival would shine an even brighter spotlight on the mess I had made of my life.

I was a long-lapsed Catholic, and, like so many people when things go wrong, I found myself suddenly praying to God. I begged Him to make me a better, deeper and more loving person. This might invite skepticism, but I am certain now, as I write this, that Shayla was God's response. But when Shayla's mother called, I felt wronged and depressed. My lawyers advised me first to demand a paternity test. If the child was mine, they suggested that I should make arrangements to pay Shayla's college tuition and other expenses. They thought I should include a confidentiality clause asking Shayla not to divulge that I was her father. I wasn't looking at a small sum of money. But the cash didn't really matter. If Shayla were indeed my daughter, the money was the least of it. How could I forsake my own flesh and blood? While I had been a father to my twins for only six years, that was long enough for me to measure their importance in my life and mine in theirs. And I imagined how bereft my life would be without them, and what they would miss without me. I'd read the stories -- girls who grow up without fathers often have low self-esteem and a hard time trusting men. They're at greater risk of dropping out of school and getting pregnant out of wedlock.

I thought of all the school plays and dances I had missed. I wondered how Shayla explained my absence. I thought of the boys she must have brought home, without a father to look them over. The paternity test could do more than determine whether I was the father. It could make me a villain. I did not look forward to it.

The envelope with the results was waiting for me one day after work. I sat down on my bed, alone, to open it. Here it was, my moment of truth. Glancing down at the paper, my eyes fixed on one phrase: 99 percent. There was a 99 percent probability that Shayla was my biological child.

Eighteen years ago, I had become a father, and my denials all these years had done nothing to erase that fact. My heart raced. What kind of man was I? And what kind of man was I going to be?

I couldn't find it in me to follow my lawyers' advice. There would be no signed agreements. Instead, I called the one person in my life who would love me no matter what and tell me the truth. I called my father. We talked for a long time. In the end, he didn't argue with me, he didn't judge me, he simply declared: "Bolden men don't leave their children."

I PAUSE TO STEADY MYSELF AND REACH FOR THE DOORKNOB.

I had told Shayla's mother that I wanted to meet my daughter, who planned to study nursing at a community college in Trenton, N.J. We had scheduled a meeting, but they postponed. Shayla's mother finally confided that Shayla was pregnant -- and unmarried. I would soon become a grandfather. My father would be a great-grand-father, and the twins were going to be aunts.

So, what I'd read about girls with absent fathers was true, I thought to myself then. We chose to meet in Philadelphia because I had planned to be there with some friends for the NBA all-star game.

I open the door, and my daughter walks in first. She is wearing a black leather jacket, and I can see her red maternity top peeking through, and I glimpse the mound underneath. Her shoulder-length dark brown hair is perfectly styled. She smiles widely. She has my eyes, my mouth and my smile. Her mother follows Shayla in and puts her arm around her daughter, as if to hold her up. Shayla says nothing, her expression gentle, observing. She moves forward and hugs me.

Daddy, I've been waiting to meet you for a long time, she says.

When my twin daughters were born, as I stood in the delivery room, something came over my entire body. I feel the same emotion and energy charging through me now. Baby girl, I say, my face wet with tears, me and your momma have not done a very good job of this, but I am here now, and I want to be in your life, for the rest of your life, if you will have me.

I'd like that, Daddy, she replies.

We move to the suite's sitting room, and I sit in the wingback chair, while Shayla and her mother sit down on the couch near me.

You're just as beautiful as your pictures, I tell Shayla. I know I've not been there for you for 18 years, and I'm sorry that we can't have those days back. But I'm going to be there for you for the next 19 years and many more, but we have years ahead of us. I am Compliment Man, but I also mean it.

Who's the baby's father? I ask.

She tells me his name, that they've been dating for a number of years and that she's in love with him. She says she met him in high school and that he was now working on his GED. She says she's not sure she's going to marry him.

I struggle to say the right thing, in just the right way. I am thinking that I want more for my daughter, that he is not the right one, not smart enough, not rich enough, not good enough, and that he won't be there for her. I feel compelled to counsel her, but it's far too late for that. How do I counsel my daughter about marriage within minutes of meeting her? I have no credibility. So I just listen.

She tells me what it was like growing up in Trenton without me around. Her mother had told her that her father was living in Washington, D.C., with his family and couldn't be there with her. She didn't give a reason. Her mother even shared newspaper clippings with her -- from my days as a prosecutor, when I made partner at Reed Smith and other career highlights. And it was true that Shayla's mother never asked me to take a DNA test, had never asked that I pay child support, had never berated me for not being there. Maybe she gave birth to Shayla for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Whatever the reason for her mother's lack of rancor, Shayla appears to have adopted it. She says she missed me on career days, at daddy-daughter dances, and that she still doesn't understand why I wasn't around. But she is not angry. I imagine you might think that we're just avoiding the past, but I think somehow we both realize there's no resolution there. It is what it is.

SHAYLA CALLS ME FROM THE HOSPITAL THAT JUNE to tell me my grandbaby has been born. I drop my work and rush down to Atlanta, where Shayla has since moved to be close to her mother's family, and stride into her hospital room.

Where's my baby? Where's my grandbaby? I say, somehow overlooking the lump swaddled in a white blanket on Shayla's chest. She turns the lump and shows me the baby's face. She is one fine baby girl, all sleepy, her mouth working noiselessly. I pick her up and hold her against my chest, where I can feel the beating of her tiny heart. I am here, I am thinking. I am being Shayla's father.

A year or so later, I stand next to Shayla at the courthouse in Atlanta, as she marries her boyfriend. Meanwhile, I've co-signed their apartment lease and outfitted the nursery. Shayla didn't ask me to do these things, and in fact she gives me a hard time for offering to buy her and the baby expensive clothes instead of going to Target.

As the years go by, the take-charge lawyer in me comes out. When my granddaughter, Ashanti, is 4, I tell Shayla I want her to pursue child support from the baby's father, from whom she is now separated. I also tell her I want her to stop smoking because it's bad for her and the baby's health. I'm asserting my values.

I don't smoke that much or around the baby, she tells me, and her husband doesn't have anything to get.

He may at some point, and that's why you should protect Ashanti's interests, I tell her. I make what I think is a joke. I have insisted on paying Ashanti's preschool tuition, but I say I'm not going to keep helping out until Shayla agrees to seek child support. I remember us laughing it off, or maybe that was just me laughing.

She stops sending me the e-mails I've requested that she send to remind me about the payments. When I notice, I call her and ask why I'm not getting the e-mails.

Because you told me you weren't going to pay, she says.

I was just joking, I reply.

You didn't sound like you were joking, she says. I went and got a second job.

You didn't have to get another job, I tell her. She's an assistant manager at a document production company.

Yes, I did, because I don't want to be handled that way, she says. She's wearing the patch to quit smoking and trying to decide how to deal with her husband. Clearly, she'll do it on her terms.

At work, I charge a very high billable rate for my advice, but here it's not wanted, and I can't force it. Shayla holds the trump card. At any moment, I fear she will say, "It's nice you're giving me advice, but don't you think you're a little late?"

She never says it, but we both know she could. She has my mouth and my smile, but she also has my stubborn outspokenness.

I VISIT SHAYLA AND THE TWINS, McKenzie and McKay, who moved there last year, a couple times a month in Atlanta and indulge her and my granddaughter on special occasions. It's the least I can do. And I hold back on the advice. Maybe that's the least I can do, too. But although I might not have played the kind of formative father role with Shayla that results in parental entitlement, we're creating a history together now. I keep thinking back to when I took her to meet my father in Joliet, the Thanksgiving of 2002. My granddaughter was 5 months old, and, by this point, I had told my twin girls about their older sister. They were so curious, asking if I had been married before, and, if I hadn't been married, how I could have a child. As I explained, they looked at me as if I had done something wrong. I had. Then, they asked who their sister's mother was. I explained the relationship. They concluded that my oldest daughter was only their half sister. If she is our half sister, does that make her mother your half wife, they asked. I chuckled.

She is not your half sister, I said . She is your sister, and we are all one family. I had decided to move Shayla and her daughter from the margins to the center of my life.

We had all flown to Illinois, my four girls and I, getting into O'Hare in the wee hours and renting an SUV for the 45-minute trip to Joliet. My father greeted us at the door and looked my eldest daughter up and down. And then he looked at me.

I don't know why you ever needed a test, son. She's definitely yours. And she's mine, he said. He touched the baby's foot. And she's mine, too.

Ya'll all mine, he declared, loud enough to awaken a neighbor or two.

I thought to myself: This Bolden man may have just met his child, but it's not too late to bring her home.

A. Scott Bolden, who lives in the District, can be reached at abolden@reedsmith.com.