Accidental Brothers

by Dr. Nancy L. Segal

  * * *

  At twenty-six William has retained his sweet, sensitive nature. His small, slim build belies the sturdiness and strength he acquired from heavy farm labor during his childhood and adolescence. His short, dark hair scatters across his head in all directions, although several stray locks look carefully positioned over his forehead. His dark eyes, slightly bumpy nose, and even teeth are less distinctive than his ears, which angle sharply away from his head. His impish grin gives him an endearing, boyish quality, tempered by a goatee that adds a bit of maturity to his otherwise youngish face. William usually prefers to dress in casual shirts, shapeless sweatshirts, and pants. He remains a formidable opponent in arm-wrestling matches, bringing many able arms crashing to the surface in seconds. But when he was in school, he avoided the fights that sometimes erupted between classmates because he didn’t think such combat was right.

  * * *

  Wilber is taller than William and has a more solid, athletic build. Like his real twin, Wilber looks like he should be stronger than his accidental brother, but he isn’t—and he is less driven than William, which may partly explain their difference in strength. The two also part ways when it comes to hair and clothing. Wilber is appearance conscious—he piles his dark hair fashionably high on his head and has always liked stylish clothes, including tapered shirts, tailored jeans, and leather jackets with lots of zippers. He regularly goes for manicures and eyebrow waxing, indulgences he sees as important and necessary. All this seems unusual for someone born and raised in a remote farming region. Around his neck Wilber wears a charm of the Virgen del Carmen, the patron saint of vehicles, because he likes the way it looks.

  Wilber grew up in the right place with the right parents and siblings, but alongside the wrong twin. As a child he was never bothered by the greater affection his mother, Ana Delina, had for warm, sweet William, probably because Wilber was his father’s favorite. In fact, Carmelo defended Wilber in twin-twin conflicts and other matters—Carmelo knew Wilber was bad tempered and did nothing to curb it. In part, Carmelo thought Wilber’s hot-headed outbursts stemmed from being thrown from a horse as a child, because the fall changed the shape of a bone in his head, making it “curvy.” So when Ana complained about Wilber’s behavior, Carmelo would say, “Don’t bother that kid—he’s a little bit cuckoo, so to speak.” Perhaps Carmelo felt responsible for not physically protecting his young son, and so stood by him in his adult years when he needed help. But a more likely explanation is that Carmelo saw parts of his own personality and beliefs in this son. Both become crabby, cross, and exceedingly annoyed when provoked, behavior that escalates easily. Neither father nor son has the affectionate, loving side that defines William, which he unfailingly showed to his mother. (William fell off the horse along with Wilber, but was not injured.)

  When he was growing up, William supported Ana when his parents fought, whereas his brother took a more evenhanded approach. When Ana left Carmelo alone on the farm in the heat of an argument, William advised her to stay away and let Carmelo cook for himself. This sounds out of character for a normally mild-mannered child, but he was insightful—perhaps Ana’s absence would make Carmelo’s heart (if not his stomach) grow fonder and set their relationship back on a positive track. In contrast, Wilber believed it was better for both parents if Ana returned because his father’s cooking skills were so questionable. Wilber chose an immediate, but short-term solution that favored his father at the expense of his mother.

  The people of Santander have a reputation for being hot-headed. Although he generally is quiet and reserved, Wilber occasionally succumbs to sudden expressions of anger and irritation when tensions reach a certain threshold. William’s constant teasing can unleash such behavior, but William does not back off. William’s sweetness and sensitivity seem to vanish when it comes to Wilber, especially because William is aware of his brother’s volatility.

  WILLIAM: When I’m not [in the store], I want him to be the one who is more responsible.

  WILBER: But he fights with me when everybody is there.… When I’m in charge of the business, everything is OK.

  WILLIAM: If I make jokes he immediately gets mad. And then I try to tease him or whatever and he’s, like, OK, leave me alone. I say, OK, don’t get mad about such a simple thing. And then I would tease him some more. Because he gets mad at such simple little things.

  WILBER: I don’t like that when I’m working—they start joking with me and teasing me.… I say, hey, cooperate and let’s finish this [work] first. He starts to make jokes and makes fun of it. And that’s what makes me mad.

  William’s pride and pleasure in getting along with others may reinforce Wilber’s premium preference for privacy and independence. William’s teasing may be partly an attempt to get his brother to become more open. Where William is quick to express friendly feelings toward others, Wilber is more likely to convey his love and devotion in extreme situations, such as a military march. During the time we spent with the twins, Wilber was less forthcoming than William about how he felt when he learned about the switch or how he reacted to meeting his identical twin. This does not mean that Wilber was not affected by these events, only that he is unwilling, uncomfortable, or unable to effectively describe his feelings to others.

  Consistent with Wilber’s preference for privacy is his refusal to use email, although he text-messages and maintains a Facebook page. This arrangement seems inconsistent—either you are part of social media or you are not—but it may be less complicated and less expensive to rely on texting than to also use email, and Facebook privacy settings can be controlled, preventing views from unknown visitors. Just for fun, Wilber chose “Wilbert Alberto” as his Facebook name; he was unaware that Alberto is the middle name of his real twin, Carlos. Food and women rank high among Wilber’s recreational priorities. As a teenager living with his family or on a nearby farm, he made weekend hikes to La Paz in pursuit of women, frequenting its bars and pool halls—places his brother rarely visited. No such entertainment was available closer to home, and even neighbors had to travel considerable distances to share a drink or a meal.

  The brothers do agree on one thing: both are devoted fans of Colombia’s football team, Atlético Nacional, but only Wilber’s bedroom is heavily decorated with banners displaying the team’s distinctive crest. Both Wilber and William developed their taste for football when they were ten, hiking an hour up a mountain to their cousin’s home to watch the sport on TV.

  Although he prides himself on his maturity, Wilber bends to the will of others, walks away from confrontations, or erupts in bursts of emotion. And he doesn’t give himself credit for his talents—for example, he is a natural dancer who is fun to watch, but complains that he isn’t good enough. Not surprisingly, like his real twin, Carlos, Wilber moves freely and effortlessly—they are those lucky people whose bodies look good no matter what they do. Wilber performs the same beautiful undulating moves as Carlos, but does so with less abandon and confidence.

  After fulfilling his obligations to the Colombian army, Wilber trained as a communications technician, installing Internet, telephone, and television systems. Never an eager student, he still has no interest in furthering his education—instead, he wants to own several businesses, although he is not specific about which ones or how or when he might accomplish these goals. He is task oriented and wants to get work done, but sees no need to add fun or zest to the job at hand. William is just the opposite, engaging friends, customers, and family (except for Wilber) with his charm.

  Some people seem bigger physically than they really are, almost filling a room when you first meet them. Wilber is that way, but his quiet character and serious demeanor give way to William’s lively personality and affectionate manner when the two are together. As a child Wilber did not fight back when his brother was quick to physically attack him, a curious difference from their adult behaviors. Perhaps Wilber felt threatened by William’s greater agility, but he can hold his own in their verbal battles.

>   While William is good at reading others people’s thoughts and feelings, he is less understanding of Wilber, whereas other people, like Wilber’s newly found twin, Carlos, understand him much better. The real reared-apart twins share an understanding without explanation, the finest kind there is. I have seen many examples of the immediate rapport that develops between reunited identical twins. One of the firefighter twins put it best when he said that meeting his twin was like coming back after a vacation—the basis for the relationship was there and he had only to fill in the details. Paula, a female twin in another reared-apart pair, approached her first meeting with her sister, Elyse, with some trepidation. “I wondered what we would talk about,” she told me. Instead, they ended up sitting together in the Café Mogador in New York’s Greenwich Village for several delightful hours, drinking a fruity Spanish wine from the vineyard Marqués de Riscal. They felt like they were seeing different versions of themselves, with their long fingers, delicate wrists, and similar faces that drew attention from a server. The sisters share a love of art films, especially The Piano, Breaking the Waves, and Wings of Desire. As they sat in a cab at the end of the evening, they held each other tightly, reluctant to let go.17

  * * *

  According to the psychologist Steven Pinker, researchers have largely neglected the role of chance in shaping the people we become.18 In fact, chance played a huge role in the person William would become and is still becoming. Born in Bogotá, he was mistakenly taken to La Paz when he was just a week old—thus William became the accidental son of a farmer, Carmelo, and his wife, Ana Delina, as well as the accidental twin of Wilber. The boys’ toys were cars and trucks made from sardine cans, and their wading ponds and swimming pools were local streams. William, Wilber, and their friends fought faux wars, taking sides as the Colombian militia versus the terrorist guerillas. Sticks, boxes, and even guava were their playthings. Their free time was a quick hour after dinner, just before bedtime—they had no television to watch or computer to use to surf the Internet. Neither William nor Wilber used a computer until his late teens, when both entered the military, but as young kids both learned to use guns for hunting and target practice.

  William’s life had changed a lot by July 2016 after the twins’ true identities came to light. Meeting his twin and knowing that his personal destiny had taken an extraordinary detour answered many questions he’d had about why he always felt so different from those around him. This new knowledge was energizing, like taking a great vacation when one is feeling uninspired and overburdened. He enjoys his law school classes and has completed one semester with good grades. “I’m not among the best, but I’m not one of the worst, either,” William said. “Even though I had not gone to school for such a long time, I picked up the pace slowly.” The new apartment he bought with money he saved managing the butcher shop is still being built, but he is crafting plans for making money from it, such as by renting out space. He thinks of himself as knowledgeable about business, not shrewd but always alert to opportunities.

  William gained a lot of weight after 2015 by working out regularly at the gym and consuming high-protein concoctions. He now wears more stylish, form-fitting clothes that show off his new physique, and he finds that women are more attracted to him. “I’m yummy now,” he says. William is not a braggart, but his growing closeness to Jorge and more buff appearance may have given him a new kind of confidence.

  William enjoys the spotlight, but he seems a little too trusting of people, perhaps because he grew up far from the city in a place where everyone knows everyone else. In fact, trust played a critical role in the first meeting of the real twins, William and Jorge. If not for them, Wilber and Carlos might never have met. “This is all God’s doing,” William said. “He made it perfect for me to be out there for twenty-five years and to make us meet again.”

  Manon Serrano, who was accidentally switched at birth with another infant girl in Grasse, France, says, “I tend to never leave anything to chance. Now I even try to anticipate the unthinkable.”19 Perhaps learning he was switched at birth will make William more vigilant in the future, especially when he is about to become a father. George Holmes, one of the switched-at-birth twins from Canada, insists that he will bring a video camera into the delivery room when he has his first child, and it would not be surprising if William does the same.20 Some hospitals inform prospective parents about the procedures they follow to safeguard against accidental baby switching, but because such events are reported infrequently, many families may not take such possibilities seriously. Perhaps they should.

  Twins Switched at Birth

  Being called the wrong name by somebody you do not know—particularly by someone who is certain that he or she knows you—is sometimes more than a case of confusion. This may be especially true when you have lived your whole life as a fraternal twin. That was how Begoña and Beatriz, the fraternal twins from Gran Canaria, Spain, learned that they were not sisters at all.21 Before meeting Begoña’s look-alike at the shopping mall, neither sister was especially concerned about being confused for someone else, believing that the similarities the clerk saw in the two young women were simply coincidental. But thinking back, Begoña realized she had been confused twice before with someone named Delia—once by a young man at a bus stop who called her by the wrong name, and once by her neighbor who was certain she had seen Begoña at a coffee shop she had never been to. And Beatriz remembered that she was mistaken for someone else whenever she visited the northern area of the island—that person turned out to be Delia’s sister, Gara.22

  * * *

  Of course, not all fraternal twins called by the wrong name turn out to have an identical brother or sister who was switched at birth. Alex, a somewhat olive-skinned, Latin-looking man in his forties, calls himself a “visibly very fraternal twin.” His appearance contrasts sharply with that of his fair-complexioned, red-headed brother, Bob, so much so that the two were used to being teased about how different they look. But something happened to Alex at a tennis match that bothered him for nearly a decade, and he finally brought it to my attention in an email message, having read Someone Else’s Twin, my book about the switched twins from Gran Canaria. As he was walking past the refreshment stand on his way to the restroom, a woman shouted out a name (not his), so Alex assumed she was calling out to someone else. Later he returned to the refreshment stand and heard the woman call out the same name once again. Realizing that she was speaking to him, the surprised and confused Alex turned around to face her. She said, “Hey, you’re Steven!” He told her he was not Steven. Then she asked if he was a twin and he said he was. She also asked if he was from Kansas. Alex didn’t live in Kansas at that time, but he had been born there. He saw the woman’s expression grow strange—but she never apologized and, according to Alex, did not seem convinced by his replies to her questions. The encounter had upset him. Alex had been mistaken for other people before—could he have an identical twin, and could he have been switched with a nontwin infant in Kansas?

  In such cases the recommended test compares the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of two suspected twins or siblings. Mitochondrial DNA exists outside the cell nucleus and is involved in several cellular processes, such as energy production and cell division.23 Because it is passed down intact from mothers to all their children, it is a way to determine whether twins or siblings could have the same mother. It turned out that Alex and Bob could have the same mother because their mtDNA samples matched, and their mother had delivered twin boys. However, this test does not prove shared maternity because first cousins related on their mother’s side of the family could also have the same mtDNA. That is, children born to a woman and her sister would have the same mtDNA because the sisters would have inherited it from their common mother, making the children cousins.

  Alex has fathered fraternal twin girls. As a father he can only imagine the pain that a parent might feel upon learning that a child you have loved and raised is not really yours and that someone else has been raising
your child all along. He was relieved to have the mtDNA results in hand showing that he and his twin brother matched, mostly to spare his parents the emotional turmoil of finding out that one of their twin sons was not really theirs. It can be painful but can sometimes deepen the love.

  * * *

  Only nine cases of switched-at-birth twins, including the two Colombian pairs, are in the record books. But I am certain that more are out there because we learn only about the ones that are found. Moreover, independent findings from two medical companies specializing in infant products and services suggest that baby switches are more common than we realize. Those studies estimate that twenty to twenty-three thousand mother-baby mismatches occur each year in US hospitals (e.g., taking an infant to the wrong room), but are quickly discovered and corrected before the babies go home.24 However, it is quite likely that some mistakes are never detected so we only think that baby switches are rare. In fact, every one of the documented switched-twin cases was uncovered because someone mistook one of the switched identical twins for the other. But if some switched infants are fraternal twins—and there must be some—they would be far less likely to be mistaken for one another because of their different looks, leaving their true identities forever unknown.