Switched singletons have even less of a chance of being discovered, although some are, like Manon Serrano. Two Russian mothers mistakenly received the wrong baby boy when the only nurse on duty mixed up the two children. The error wasn’t uncovered until their sons turned two and one of the mothers, Zarema Taisumova, was looking through some baby memorabilia and noticed another mother’s name on her baby’s identification tag. Following a court ruling that the children must be returned to their biological families, both sets of parents struggled terribly with the unbearable task of giving up a child they loved and learning to love their new child all over again.25
* * *
I often marvel at the ordinary events that lead to the amazing discovery that one twin was switched for another. These events include enrolling a child in a different school, joining a college club, taking a youngster to a medical appointment, or walking into a shopping mall. Hundreds of people do these things every day without consequence. But every once in a while such ordinary acts become extraordinary, rewriting lives beyond recognition.
Seven of the nine switched-twin pairs involved an exchange of one identical twin and one unrelated singleton. I keep asking myself: What are the chances that an identical twin would be swapped with another identical twin, as happened in Bogotá? Identical twins comprise only a fraction of births worldwide, and preemie nurseries are the first home to scores of nontwin newborns. I couldn’t begin to calculate the odds.
* * *
Carnes Finas de Colombia turned out to be the scene of the triggering event for William and Wilber. What happened in the butcher shop one day in summer 2013—“confusion at the counter”—also triggered a dramatic turn of events for another set of accidental brothers, Jorge and Carlos, who lived on the other side of Bogotá.
Chapter 2
Familiar Strangers
Brothers from Bogotá
Carlos had been repeating falsehoods all his life. He said that he was born in Bogotá on December 22, that his mother’s name was Luz, and that he had an older sister named Diana and a fraternal twin brother named Jorge. He also told people that he had never been to Vélez, a city in Santander. But Carlos was not a liar—he was only telling the truth as he knew it. He had no way of knowing that his real twin brother, Wilber, was living the life both should have had in an isolated farm area with no modern amenities. And Wilber had no way of knowing he was growing up with an unrelated, accidental brother, the sensitive William, who had taken Carlos’s place.
Luz, the mother of Jorge and Carlos, had delivered twins and brought two babies home. But sometime between the arrival of her twins and their discharge from the hospital, one of her twins changed places with another newborn. This twist of fate turned Carlos into Luz’s accidental son, as well as Jorge’s accidental twin and Diana’s accidental little brother. The switch also transformed Carlos into an unintended nephew, grandson, and cousin. He also became an accidental uncle to Jorge’s young son, Santiago (“Santi”). Santi lives with his mother, Jorge’s former girlfriend, and grandmother just down the street from the apartment Jorge and Carlos share, making it easy for father and uncle to see the boy often.
* * *
Jorge and Carlos grew up believing they were twins, but they inhabited separate interior worlds. Why? One of the great psychological insights of the late-twentieth century was that living with someone does not make you alike. My findings on virtual twins—individuals of the same age raised together from birth, but who are unrelated genetically—provide striking examples of how shared environments do not produce shared behaviors. Most of these pairs include two children adopted into the same family within the first year of life, while some pairs include one adopted child and one biological child born just before or just after a couple’s decision to adopt.1 Couples experiencing infertility can either adopt children or try to have biological children by one of several assisted reproductive technologies (ART). But adoption agencies sometimes have two children in need of a home, instantly transforming their clients into larger-than-expected families. Some couples try adoption and ART—and end up with one adoptee and one biological child. Parents without partners who decide to live and raise their kids together, adoption plus embryo donation, and adoption plus surrogacy have created other more exotic virtual twin pairs. Virtual twins generally turn out to be different in general intelligence, specific mental skills, peer networks, and body size, and they become less alike with time.2
When related family members are “chips off the old block”—meaning they are similar in some personality traits or personal habits—these similarities come about because they share genes, not because they share environments. As a young child the actor Skandar Keynes, the great-great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, looked a lot like the famous founder of modern evolutionary theory.3 Different gene combinations that may or may not be passed down intact to future generations influence most physical features, such as jawline and nose shape. This explains why some grandparents and grandchildren vary in how much they look alike and in what ways.
Family resemblances are not limited to physical traits. Identical twins raised apart usually find that they were acting the same way and doing the same things in their parallel universes. The firefighter twins from New Jersey, Mark Newman and Jerry Levey, were fighting flames in different cities and flinging good-natured insults at their friends. Barbara and Daphne, the British reared-apart pair known as the “giggle twins,” found humor in just about anything, laughing uncontrollably when they were together but with no one else. These identical twins showed little interest in politics; drank their coffee cold, black, and without sugar; and had suffered a miscarriage in their first pregnancy before each produced two boys and a girl. They were also the proud co-creators of Twin Sin, a drink made of vodka, blue curaçao, crème de cacao, and cream. Both Samantha Futerman and Anaïs Bordier, identical reared-apart Korean twins, were ignoring their lactose intolerance while they continued to consume cheese in their respective Los Angeles and Paris kitchens. Both twins were also scratching at hives and rashes.4 These twins’ similarities, expressed miles apart, were largely reflections of their common genes. All these twins exemplify “gene-environment interaction,” or the expression of the same genes in different settings.
But, of course, genes aren’t everything because not all the behaviors of these twins matched perfectly. Different environments can also interact with the same genes to produce different outcomes. Samantha was more outgoing than her twin sister, perhaps because she grew up in an ethnically diverse community that included people of Asian descent, whereas Anaïs was raised in a homogeneous Paris suburb where people would mistake her for a maid. Samantha also had two older brothers who adored and protected her, whereas Anaïs was an only child.5
The environments that set us apart from our family members in personality and outlook are those that we do not share with our relatives, such as taking an around-the-world voyage, having an influential professor, or taking up a challenging sport. Jorge and Carlos had many individual academic and athletic experiences that the other did not have because they preferred different things. Like all of us, their genes predisposed them to certain activities and events and away from others.
* * *
Jorge and Carlos were the second and third children of thirty-six-year-old Luz Marina Castro Chavez and forty-six-year-old Norman Enrique Bernal Triviño. Although Luz’s doctor told her to expect identical twins, her sons were clearly not identical. Assuming they were a fraternal pair, Luz and everyone else figured that they had inherited different sets of genes. But the boys’ differences in appearance and behavior had a simpler explanation—they were not genetically related, a truth that went undiscovered for twenty-five years. Meanwhile, Jorge and Carlos withstood the stares, jokes, and comments that inevitably surfaced when they told people that they were twins.
Jorge’s and Carlos’s interests diverged most dramatically during childhood. Carlos was the more serious and focused student, a mind-set that is
still evident today as he pursues his professional career in accounting and finance. Bogotá’s educational and cultural opportunities gave expression to Carlos’s natural drive and inclinations to achieve in his chosen field. As such his unintended city proved to be a good match, allowing him to pursue his interests and talents at school and at work. In this respect he is quite different from Wilber, his identical twin, who has never been interested in continuing his education. It is impossible to know whether Wilber would have been more interested in education if he had been the twin who grew up in Bogotá—he has the same mathematical interests as his reared-apart twin, but never had the chance to explore his abilities to the fullest. It is also impossible to know whether Carlos, like his real brother, would have written off education had he grown up in the country, but it is certainly possible.
Different rearing environments seem to have had some varying influences on the true twins Jorge and William. Drive and desire are Jorge’s hallmarks. In Bogotá he was pursuing a career in engineering while working part time in his field developing methods for gas and water transportation. Admittedly, he is often sidetracked by his love of football, which takes him to competitions across the country and around the world. However, events beyond his control, such as Colombia’s plummeting oil prices, have also delayed his progress because he was laid off from his job.
William, his identical counterpart raised in La Paz, can also count drive and desire among his finer attributes, but the limited opportunities and financial constraints of his family meant he could not pursue his education, no matter how determined he was. He eventually was able to express these tendencies, which are partly genetically based, when he moved to Bogotá, and especially after he met his twin and received the assistance and support he clearly craved and required.
* * *
Reaching his goal of earning specialized credits and owning his own financial consulting business is within Carlos’s reach. He is closer to fulfilling his goals than Jorge is to becoming an engineer. Jorge, always a serious, but more casual, laid-back pupil, is progressing more slowly, not yet certain of the specific path he wants to pursue. He has not thought this through, partly because he follows his favorite football team, Atlético Nacional, wherever it plays, even traveling to Japan to watch the team compete for the 2016 World Cup. He cannot afford to do this, but he borrows money from close friends who trust him to pay them back. Jorge’s love affair with football began in the seventh grade when a classmate introduced him to the game. His near obsession with this sport irks his brothers, but passion is a trait he shares with William, who has become a consummate weight trainer. The same genes inhabit the cells of these twins, but their different environments guided their expression.
In high school Jorge preferred rock to Carlos’s taste for hip-hop and rap. Their clothing styles were also different. Jorge dressed in jeans and T-shirts, while Carlos wore the baggy pants and oversized tops of the hip-hop set—and both styles infuriated their mother, Luz. Their sister, Diana, recalls that Carlos looked funny in big clothes but “came to his senses” when he started studying accounting—then he chose more fashionable and traditional attire, paying particular attention to his hair, paralleling his twin’s attention to fashion in La Paz. Jorge also thought about his hair, but he let it grow to his waist and pulled it together in a long ponytail, another point of contention with his mother. But to the relief of Luz and her sisters, neither Jorge nor Carlos used drugs or associated with classmates who used them. “They both have excellent values,” observed their elegant aunt Leonor.
Growing up in Bogotá, with its many educational and recreational opportunities and events, allowed Jorge and Carlos to be themselves, doing what came naturally. “They were not typical twins,” observed another of their five aunts, Maria Teresa. Hers was an astute—prescient, really—observation, because Jorge and Carlos weren’t twins at all.
* * *
By the time Luz was pregnant with her twins, she had lost her job as a seamstress, so she couldn’t afford an ultrasound, an important procedure for managing high-risk pregnancies. Once the twins were born, to make ends meet Luz cleaned houses, washed clothes, and ran errands to give her children the best future that she could. Their father, Norman, was variously employed in wood, carpentry, and machinery businesses; worked for a while in a restaurant; and drove a private car—“he was a man of all trades,” according to Jorge. But Norman was rarely around and showed little interest in, or affection toward, the children he had had with Luz. Regardless, Jorge and Carlos were loved and well cared for. They were raised in an all-female household, where everyone doted on them. Their pretty sister, Diana Carolina, older by four years, adored them, jumping up and down when they finally arrived at the family’s two-story home. They were also cherished by their grandmother, Leonor Chavez, and the two aunts, Maria Teresa and Blanca Cecilia, who lived with them; Blanca Cecilia considers herself their second mother. Maria Teresa’s daughter, Gloria Andrea, lived with them as well—Gloria was the same age as Diana, but she played mostly with Carlos.
* * *
Luz had three other sisters—Leonor, Ana Rosa, and Maria Esther (Blanca Cecilia’s fraternal twin)—who lived in Bogotá and were always around for the children’s birthdays, communions, and graduations. Leonor, always bedecked in jewelry and wrapped in a stylish suit, acknowledged that Luz had had a difficult life and had worked hard to support three children on her own. Luz had insisted that they receive a good education so they could advance socioeconomically—she could read and write, but had gone only as far as the eighth grade. Luz’s sister Ana Rosa had paid for her niece and nephews’ high school education, but the assistance was never really enough. Jorge estimated that his mother’s yearly earnings amounted to US$2,520, much less than what she had previously earned as a seamstress.
The family of eight lived in a modest five-bedroom house in a lower-middle-class area of Barrio Quiroga, far from the center of the city—housing costs and neighborhood quality generally dip as travel time to the heart of Bogotá increases. The house, now occupied by their aunt Maria Teresa and cousin Gloria, looks badly out of place on their quiet street—it is essentially a brown brick box dwarfed by two much larger structures on either side. A brick wall inlaid with white metalwork surrounds the entrance, but provides little security because even a child could easily hop over it. The house has a living room, kitchen, hallway, and bathroom on the ground floor. Stairs lead to the second floor, where Jorge, Carlos, and Diana had shared a large room for sleeping; other family members used other small spaces on that floor for bedrooms. The house sounds large but was cramped for four adults and four lively children, although it is similar in quality to most other homes in their working-class neighborhood. Jorge and Carlos lived there for the first nineteen years of their lives.
Their childhood home had a television, tape recorder, musical instruments, and a refrigerator. They played with store-bought toys and rode their bikes around the neighborhood. But the family was not wealthy—Jorge would have liked to have had a better bike, Carlos wished the family could have had a washing machine, and both would have enjoyed working with a computer. Their La Paz counterparts, William and Wilber, didn’t have a refrigerator or a washing machine, but it never occurred to them to wish for these things. Both William and Wilber had wanted bicycles, but finding a place to ride them would have been difficult, if not impossible, because there were no roads nearby. Both brothers would also have liked to have had a TV, but virtually no one in their area had one because they also didn’t have electricity. Indeed, neither brother listed electricity as something he would have wanted in their childhood home, perhaps because none of their friends had it.
Catholicism was important to Luz and she attended services frequently. “She always forced us to go to church,” Jorge said. Neither brother was seriously religious when they were growing up, although both have turned toward religion in their own way since learning about their twins, probably because learning of the switch has made them t
hink more deeply about who they are and why. Aside from Luz’s insistence that her children attend church, she was a fairly lax disciplinarian. The children always exploded in laughter when she charged at them with a soft slipper. Luz scolded her sons on occasion but never really punished them, in the belief that reasoning with children has a greater influence on their behavior.
Although Jorge and Carlos were rather different children—Jorge was people-oriented and playful; Carlos was self-reliant and serious—they sometimes played together, usually in groups with other children. This is typical, because many fraternal twins and siblings are less inclined than identical twins to do things together in the absence of other children. (As a young fraternal twin I sometimes complained to my mother that I had “no one to play with,” even when my sister was sitting in the next room.) Young Jorge and Carlos and their friends once had great fun walking along the main street of their neighborhood and throwing paper inside buses that had stopped. The kids did this for three days. When Luz learned what they were up to, she wanted to ground her sons but relented—too soon, apparently, because they continued to do this until one day a bus driver started to chase them. The children ran seven blocks to a park and hid, but then the driver, “this big guy,” got out of the bus and came after them. When the driver tripped and hurt his arm, Carlos stopped running and the guy grabbed him, put him on the bus, and drove him home.
Luz was furious, scolded Carlos, and threatened to spank Jorge when he came home. But in the middle of her anger, Luz tripped and fell, and they all just laughed. Jorge admitted to his mother that when the driver lost his balance, he ran back and hid in a store. “Why did you run back?” Luz asked him. “You should have run forward so you wouldn’t get caught.” Her words seem surprising for a religious, conscientious mother who was determined to raise her children the right way—she was not into punishment, but she was into protection. Many incidents like these triggered the slipper attacks, but the children only pretended to cry, and when Luz left the room they would start laughing. This would bring her back and the fake crying would begin again.
Accidental Brothers Page 6