My Uncle Howard was supposedly at the wedding. It was September 15, 1923. Mother was three months pregnant at the time, but she returned to Providence eleven months later, when the family doctor was finally forced to induce labor (at 9:15am, on August 7, 1924.) If "the aunts" ever detected a whiff of impropriety, it was certainly not discussed publicly. Since we remained cloistered in Aunt Lillian's attic until her death in 1932, only Uncle Howard knew the truth behind my origins.

 

My birth weight was ten pounds, and I had teeth. While most newborns usually can't lift their heads, I could crawl. (The family doctor used to tease me in later years, saying that he'd never before seen a child born three months old. Then he'd laugh, and say I'd probably still be in there if he hadn't come to get me out.)

 

Mother had always told me that our last name, "B'han du'Lai," was Swahili for "Child of the Forest." I didn't realize she had taken our name from an actual person until many years later. Uncle Howard had always told me that she was using the phrase to cover up my True Father's identy, by politely referencing a description of where I was conceived.

 

Uncle Howard also helped direct my early occult literary interests. He returned to stay with us at Aunt Lillian's Providence home for most of my youth. I remember he always seemed to fear the darkness more than the rest of us; perhaps with good reason. Once, when I was fourteen, he showed me a manuscript supposedly based on Mother's wedding. Called "Child of the Forest," it seems to have been lost, or destroyed, or possibly buried with him at Swan Point. Reading it was my first introducion to nightmares.

 

Mother didn't show me these wedding pictures until I was nineteen. For the first time I understood why she had tolerated my strange quests; for example, she made birthday contributions to my collection of shrunken heads, and generally covered for me when the neighborhood parents would complain that I had tied up my play friends and cast out their evil spirits with primitive dances, chanting of wordless incantations, and the shaking of rattles. Not to mention the occassional sacrificial offerings.

 

Of course, I had already adopted my current hair style by that time; so the picture of dad in his wedding clothing only helped to support my theory that personal style is a purely genetic trait. The nature of fashion is to reflect the self.