Carmen Rita Wong - Blue Genes

 

So, I was born in uptown Manhattan in the 1970s to a Chinese father and a Dominican mother. Now, there was no mistaking that my mother was my mother, Guadalupe Otagracias Gomez de Reyes, [audience laughter] aka Lupe. She was the constant in my life and very much my Latin mama. 

 

Now, when I was a toddler though, she divorced my Chinese father, Papi Wong, as I call him. But my older brother and I still saw him on the weekends, and here and there. We loved it, because he would take us to Chinatown shopping or to our favorite restaurants. I loved the ones that had the fancy chopsticks that we went click-click. And even though he did not live with us, I was raised as his daughter. I was raised as a Wong. 

 

Now, my mother did not stay single long. She remarried, and we picked up and moved from Harlem to New Hampshire. [audience laughter] Now, I got to say, my stepfather, my new dad, Charlie, he was like a dad out of the Golden Books when you were kids, right? He was a white guy, wore a suit and tie, carried a briefcase to work every day, and came home at the same time Monday through Friday to dinner on the table. Well, little Carmen thought she had hit the American Daddy Jackpot. [audience chuckle] 

 

But here is the thing. The best thing he gave me were my four little sisters, who I loved and adored, pains in the butts. But I loved them so much. I wanted to be a part of that family. I wanted him to be my daddy too. But he wasn’t. And so, I grew up always feeling like an outsider, like an other. And you better believe in 1980s New Hampshire, I was an other. [audience chuckle] I might as well have been an alien that landed there, an unwelcome alien in a place that was supposed to be my home. 

 

The little kids would make fun of me, pulling up their eyes or bucking their teeth, or all these new creative slurs were thrown my way for being brown. Every once in a while, the grown-ups would get on that train. When I was in fourth grade, at a parent-teacher conference, Sister Rachel said to my mother, my Latin mother, mind you, that the reason why I was getting all these straight A's, well, it was because “It’s Carmen’s Chinese side.” [audience laughter] Now, I may have been only nine years old, but I knew enough to be insulted and embarrassed for my mother and me.

 

I liked Sister Rachel a lot less after that. Because here is the thing. Even though my mother was not the Asian parent, she was what some people would call a tiger mom, right? Lupe expected excellence from me at all times. If I dared to bring home anything but an A, she would say, [in Chinese accent] “Well, are you an A or are you a B?” [audience laughter] Lupe saw education as a way of escaping her fate. Working full-time at 15 years old to help support her family, married off by her father at 19, and there at that conference night, in her 30s, pregnant with her fifth child, she wanted more from me. 

 

So, in the car ride home from that parent-teacher conference though, I was still pissed. I just had to ask. I just had to say, “Mommy. Mommy. Sister Rachel said I am smart because of Poppy, because I am Chinese.” And my mother, the parent who was actually present, the one who would kick my butt if I did not do well in school, she just kept her eyes straight on the road, and there was a little smile. She shrugged and she said, “That’s okay.” And in that smile, which was more of a smirk, I realized there were a lot of things my mother was not telling me. 

 

See, Mommy came from a world of secrets. In the 1950s, 1960s Dominican Republic, this was a place where speaking your mind or telling the truth could get you beaten, or killed or kidnapped in the middle of the night, like my grandfather, who was tortured, but then who later escaped the hospital dressed as a woman by his sisters. [audience laughter] I mean, this is talk about secrets. This is cloak and dagger on a family level. This was my mother’s normal. 

 

By the time I was in my 30s, my mother received a devastating cancer diagnosis. And for the first time in her life, she was about to lose control of the narrative. My stepfather, Charlie, called me months after we found out that she was sick and said, he needed to see me urgently and alone. A couple weeks later, I am sitting across the kitchen table from him, and he says to me, “Carmen, Papi Wong is not your father. I am.” The first thing that came to my mind was, “Ai ya... I’m not Chinese anymore?” [audience laughter] And two, “Damn you two.” All these years that I had so much wanted to be a part of that family, that picture book American family, his family, and they both knew. It was painful.

 

Now, I had to confirm this story, of course, with my mother, who I then told. She confirmed it, pretty much, with a lot more dramatic flair. She was mostly just upset that he had gotten to me before she did. But Mommy, you have stage four colon cancer, how long were you going to wait, right? So, there were many tears and questions and blame, but I made peace with my mother before she passed the following year. My relationship with Charlie, however, unfortunately, has never been exactly the same. How could it be? Well, years go by, and now we are living in a time when genetic testing is available to everybody, to the public, and affordable. There is one thing my family loves, it’s a sale. [audience laughter] So, last holiday season, we all bought up a bunch of 23andMe and took the test at the same time.

 

Now, I got my results back first. I am opening that app. What I am expecting to see is, I am expecting to see a confirmation of this family secret, right? I am expecting to see that I am half Charlie, which is Italian, and then half my mother, which would be African and Spanish. Well, that is not what I saw. Portuguese. It says I am half Portuguese. I frantically texted my sister Nina. She texted right back. She said, “Oh, do not worry about it, okay? Relax. Once we all get our results back and we connect, right? Because once we see our relationships and we connect our data, then we will know what is right, right?” 

 

So, I pick up the phone and call my brother. He says pretty much the same thing. He says, “Do not worry about it. You know what? Maybe it is a mix-up. Once we connect and see our relationships and we are all linked up, then you will see. Plus, Italy and Portugal are kind of close to each other.” [audience laughter] So, no. No, that is not what happened. Once we all connected-- Now, remember my sister Nina, my baby sisters, I am supposed to be the same as her. I was supposed to be full siblings and there it was in large, extra-large font, half-sister. There was a third father. Six kids in my family, and I did not share a father with any of them. I felt so alone. But damn it, I was going to solve this mystery. 

 

So, I went digging in the past and I dug up my godmother, who I had not spoken to in 20 years. I tracked her down, and I called her up and I said, “Pimpa.” This is her nickname. We called her Pimpa. I said, “We all took this genetic test and we found out that I have a different father from everybody.” She was really surprised, because Pimpa, she thought she knew all my mother’s secrets. She was my mother’s best friend. She lived down the hall from us growing up. And she was a scholar now. She was a dual PhD. She looked at historical records to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean. My godmother was a treasure hunter. [audience laughter] That’s what I wanted right now. That’s what I needed. 

 

But she was surprised. Because even though she knew as well, it seems like everybody knew, that Papi Wong was not my father, she also thought that it had been Charlie. I said, “No. Pimpa. Says I am Portuguese.” “Oh, [audience laughter] the Argentinian optometrist on Delancey Street.” “What? [audience laughter] What was his name?” “Ay, mija, how can I remember his name? That was almost 50 years ago. Listen, your mother—don’t judge your mother. She was lonely. Papi was already kicked out of the house. And so, she was dating. I was babysitting your brother when the dates would come and pick her up. So, yeah, there was Charlie and then the optometrist. She had a part-time job at an optician on Delancey Street. But he is dead.” 

 

My heart could barely take it. You know, have people really thought about the fact that with genetic testing, we are looking at the end of family secrets? You are looking at a member of probably the last generation whose parents could futz around about their futzing around? [audience laughter] Really? Here is the thing. My origin story, as I like to call it, or mystery, is still happening to this day. But here is what I do know. I know that Lupe did everything she could, and came so far and did so much to give me options. 

 

I know that Charlie, I used to talk with him about the stock market to bond and I ended up hosting my own finance daily TV show on CNBC. And Papi Wong, well, he taught me the street hustle that helped get me there. I got a good deal. But I rail at my mother’s ghost sometimes, Lupe, for leaving out this incredibly important little detail of my life. I ask her to visit me in my dreams, to drop me a hint or a clue as to who it is I am looking at when I look in the mirror. 

 

The morning after I talked to Pimpa, I called my sister Nina. I said, “Nina, what if I never find out who this man is?” And Nina, who is super Zen, said, “You know, does it really matter, girl? Because you know who you are. You know who you are.” She is right. Thank you.