At about 2:00 p.m. William was feeling hungry and left for lunch, climbing the two flights of stairs from the store to the apartment he shared with his brother. Yaneth phoned him just after he got there, and by the end of their conversation he knew that Carlos, the baby from La Paz, had been brought to the same hospital where Jorge, and presumably he, William, had been born. This, then, was the indisputable evidence that William had feared would prove that the parents who had raised him were not his parents, his twin brother was not his twin, and his three older brothers and older sister were someone else’s siblings. Even his cousin Brian, with whom he had been so close for so many years, was not his cousin. Brian recalled William’s expression as he descended the stairs: “Dead serious.” When Brian asked what had happened, William was silent except to say that there was nothing left to confirm, then sat down, held his head in his hand, and cried.
After a short time William called his then girlfriend, Alejandra, who arrived to hug him and try to console him, but he just “cried and cried and cried.” Suddenly he stood up, said there was nothing more to be done, and reminded everyone that there was plenty of work to do. The butcher shop was serving customers for another six hours, until 8:00 p.m. that evening. But he had to meet Jorge, the guy who looked so much like him in pictures.
Reunion
Laura gave Jorge’s cell phone number to William so the two could arrange to meet that night since Jorge said he felt weird about sending him the phone number himself. Who was William, anyway? Was he a good person? Laura said he was, but she had only met him once, fourteen months earlier, at the butcher shop.
Jorge was attending a night class at the Universidad Las Libertadores when the call came through. Seeing William’s name pop up on his cell phone screen made him anxious—seeing photos of his look-alike was one thing, but meeting him in person gave the situation a reality that it didn’t have before. Meeting this stranger could change his life and his brother’s life in ways that he could not begin to imagine or comprehend, and it scared Jorge.
Jorge suggested that they meet at 9:30 that evening at the Lourdes Plaza, a large square surrounding the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes (Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes). The church, an impressive neogothic structure completed in 1875, is a popular attraction and meeting place for Bogotá’s tourists and residents. His other reason for choosing that location was that a police station is located there and could provide a safe haven if something untoward happened at their meeting. Both Jorge and William originally intended to go alone, but William called Jorge back to say he was bringing Yaneth, Brian, and Carlos’s look-alike. No doubt, William was feeling the same last-minute anxiety that was taking hold of Jorge. Hearing that William would not be alone, Jorge felt even more grateful for the police presence, and when he ran into a college friend on the way to the meeting, he convinced him to come along.
En route, Jorge kept reminding himself that William was a good person. And he had been impressed with the humility and deference William had shown toward him during their brief phone conversation. His use of “yes, sir” and “no, sir” signaled respect for others and is characteristic of people raised in Colombia’s rural regions.
Earlier that day Jorge had asked Laura how he would recognize William when he got to the plaza. “Silly boy!” she said. Most people meeting for the first time agree not only on a time and place but also share details about their appearance, such as their height, hair color, or what they will be wearing so they will be more easily recognized. But identical reared-apart twins need only find someone with their own face. When the separated identical Chinese twins Sarah Heath and Celena Kopinski first met in their late twenties at a New York restaurant, they laughed about how easy it was to find each other.7
* * *
The look-alike pictures Carlos had seen on the Internet had upset him so much that he refused to come to the meeting at the church plaza, saying he had a date with a girlfriend. Whether the date was really an excuse is uncertain, but it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with the situation or anyone involved.
Across town a similar scenario was playing out for Wilber, Carlos’s identical other. He knew nothing of the communications between his brother and everyone else during the previous forty-eight hours. It seems astonishing that William shared his incredible news with some family members but kept it from his brother, who might be more directly and more seriously affected than the others. Although William wanted to gather all the facts before involving Wilber, social distance and detachment were typical of their relationship. William finally phoned Wilber and told him to come home early on the pretext that they needed to run some errands together. When his brother arrived and saw the photographs, he reacted almost exactly like Carlos had—he didn’t want to pursue it. And true to his hot-tempered Santanderean nature, Wilber became angry, actually furious. Leaving things alone was best, he argued, because, even if there had been a switch twenty-five years before, nothing could be done about it now. “We drank from the same breast,” he told William, meaning that they were, and would always be, brothers. Later, Wilber did not remember saying these words, suggesting that William only believed he had said them. But he conceded that people say things in the moment that they fail to recall.
In the end Wilber agreed to attend the meeting, probably because he was secure knowing that he had been raised in the right home, enabling him to act on his curiosity without fear. Carlos did not have these luxuries; although his initial urge to leave the situation alone was similar to Wilber’s, his reaction had different and terrifying roots.
* * *
When Jorge and his friend arrived at Lourdes Plaza, they didn’t see William at first because it was dark and the plaza was packed with visitors. Then William called Jorge’s phone and said they were there. Suddenly Jorge’s friend spotted them and announced that “you” are coming toward us. The friend had seen William, and he looked and walked exactly like Jorge. The two look-alikes studied each other intensely for a bit before exchanging a few words. They laughed nervously, then Jorge hid his face in his hands as though to ease the intensity of the moment.
I have witnessed such reactions between separated identical twins who are meeting for the first time. They show a mix of emotions, including disbelief, elation, amazement, relief, surprise, and regret, and Jorge and William displayed all but one. They were not elated because elation is outside the switched-at-birth twins’ reunion experience—none of the other switched twins I have known took pleasure in learning that they were part of another pair and another family. This is understandable because the members of this unique class of reared-apart twins turn into accidental brothers and sisters, separated because of a careless act that edited their life stories beyond recognition.
Jorge, too, was overwhelmed at the sight and sound of Wilber, who looked and laughed so much like his brother. Their only significant difference was the way they wore their hair—Wilber’s was longer and more styled, whereas Carlos’s was cut close to his head. But they had the same dark eyes, shaped eyebrows, and full lips, and Wilber swayed slightly side to side as he walked, just like Carlos. “You are the same,” he said to Wilber, and they burst out laughing. “Marica!” he then shouted to Wilber; the word literally means “sissy” but also an effeminate male or a gay man. Jorge said it in a joking and familiar way, like he did with his brother and his close friends, probably because he felt that he already knew this young man. Friends’ and siblings’ shared understanding frees them to say such things in the ways that they do.
They all spent the next hour at a nearby coffee shop. Jorge and William continued to talk, feeling a kind of personal chemistry percolating between them, one they did not share with the brothers with whom they were raised. William learned that their mother, now deceased, had been a fighter who had raised her sons and daughter well as a single parent. And he learned about their father, also deceased, who had abandoned his family. William said that his parents were good people, farmers living to the north in
the Colombian countryside. Jorge talked about his studies at the university, and William described his job at the butcher shop. Everyone talked about the apparent switch, wondering how it had happened. Then, taking the leadership role he would continue in the future, Jorge decided that all four twins should meet that night and called his brother to say that they would be coming to the apartment shortly. The three twins got into a cab.
* * *
Carlos wouldn’t open the door at first, perhaps because the dark reality that he dreaded waited on the other side. When he finally undid the lock, Jorge entered first, followed by William, and their resemblance shocked him. Wilber came in last and that was when Carlos wanted to hold his head and curse because this mirror image reinforced what seemed so clear: that he belonged with another twin in another family. But like other twins meeting for the first time, the two stared at one another, laughed in the same nervous way, then turned their backs toward each other as though their resemblance was too hard to handle. Most reunited twins search for similarities as a way of affirming and celebrating their newfound relationship, but Carlos looked for differences, reasoning that if he found some, perhaps he and Wilber weren’t twins after all. Wilber’s hands were much rougher than Carlos’s, but that was easy to explain—Wilber had labored on his family’s farm for many years and was now using his hands to clean, cut, and lift large racks of meat, as well as move equipment. In contrast Carlos had always gone to school or worked in offices, mostly using his hands to write and type—the most arduous use of his hands involved tossing a basketball. He was running out of differences.
William looked longingly at the framed photo of Luz Marina on a table in the living room, visibly saddened and shaken by the sight of the biological mother he would never know. He could see his own facial contours, dark eyes, and wavy hair captured in her image. Mother and son had spent less than a day together, nearly twenty-six years earlier, but he would visit her grave when he could. As agonizing as this was, it was not the only heartache that lay ahead: William would have to tell his parents, Ana and Carmelo, that he was not their son, and he would have to tell his older siblings that he was not related to them, not a natural member of their close-knit family. How he would manage to convey these terrible truths while assuring them that he loved them, would always love them, and would always be their son and brother was not immediately apparent, but he was determined to find a way.
Aftermath
It was getting late and everyone had to be at work or school the next day. William and Wilber waited for a taxi to take them back to their apartment. The brothers’ first meeting was over, but their separate lives were just starting to converge. They took their first group photograph together.
The experience of that night, while shared by the four brothers, affected each of them profoundly but in different ways. Everyone was changed, some more than others, and some of those changes would not be known for some time. But for the moment Jorge and William saw the conclusion to a long mystery that had begun as a joke. Ever the optimist, Jorge didn’t cry that night but identified a bright side to the situation—everyone had gained a twin without losing a brother. Most likely, being raised in the right home, albeit with the wrong twin, afforded him the luxury of staying positive. He slept well.
Carlos couldn’t sleep at all. He cried all night, tortured by the now unavoidable reality that nearly everything about his life was untrue. His beloved mother, Luz, had not given birth to him, Diana was not his older sister, and Jorge was not his twin brother. The large company of aunts who had helped raised him and loved him so deeply should have nurtured another nephew. The opportunity to climb the professional ladder belonged to another young man, while he, Carlos, had been destined for a life of farm labor in the remote Colombian countryside. As if to salvage a part of his unraveling sense of self, he reasoned that with his interests and drive, he would have become the financial analyst he was, even in La Paz. But that was unrealistic thinking because he had never been to that region and did not yet know the insurmountable hardships and struggles he would have faced. In fact, he might not have known what a financial analyst was. Perhaps the only real solace he could derive from this total rewriting of his life was that Norman, the father who had abandoned his family, turned out not to be his father at all. As he dragged himself out of bed the next morning, his eyes were puffy and surrounded by dark circles. “I want to be your brother,” he told Jorge, who assured him that he always would be. It was a rare exchange of affection between these two brothers, who were usually at each other’s throats.
Not long after that Jorge asked Carlos for a picture of himself, a request that struck Carlos as odd and unexpected, but the reason eventually became clear. Several weeks later, as a profound act of brotherly loyalty, Jorge had the picture tattooed on his chest next to the one of their mother. The words MI SAGRADA FAMILIA (My Holy Family) appear beneath them. Tattoos mean a great deal to Jorge, something Carlos knew well, and tattoos are permanent. This gesture came at the perfect time, in the early stages of everyone’s attempts to cope with the shock of the switch and its ramifications. In the future some decisions made by one of the twins might reverberate throughout the group, so they would have to be made collectively. But above all, the tattoo that adorned Jorge’s chest would be a constant reminder that family ties go beyond just blood, born largely of the shared time and investment that shape our common memories.
* * *
Wilber was raised in the right place with the right parents and siblings, except for his actual twin. Aside from his initial shock and anger, he took a relatively laid-back view. “If they [their families] changed us, they changed us” captured his feelings well. Perhaps he would have felt differently if his brother had rejected him after twenty-five years, but he knew that was not in William’s nature. In fact, when Wilber finally learned about the emails, phone calls, and WhatsApp discussions that had been flying around, he focused more on meeting his look-alike, “the other one,” than on William’s not being his twin brother.
William didn’t sleep well the night before that first reunion or for the next several nights. He hardly ate, resisting his favorite dish, mute Santandereano, a soup made with pork, corn, and vegetables, that his godmother, Ana Liria, thoughtfully prepared for him. She and her husband were in utter disbelief when they examined the photos of the two pairs of accidental brothers, so different within sets, but so identical between them. Their reaction this time was a huge departure from their previous amusement at seeing their godson’s look-alike alone in a single frame. But Ana Liria had no intention of abandoning the godchild she loved, and making his favorite meal was her way to show this.
* * *
The job in the butcher shop kept William’s mind occupied for the next ten days, and for that he was grateful, but his unhappy state lasted longer than that, as some family members later acknowledged. William believed his ability to cope with this personal disaster attested to his inner strength, and he was right—children and parents who are less grounded have succumbed to alcohol, drugs, or depression when they learn of a baby exchange. In Gran Canaria the isolation and depression of the unrelated “twin” Beatriz led her to resume an old smoking habit. And now in his seventies, Philippe Joye, the Swiss twin raised in the right home, still feels the intense anger, grief, and loss that the return of his switched-twin brother caused his family.8
William, focused on being upbeat, uploaded the photo of the four brothers to his Facebook page within twenty-four hours of their first meeting. He wrote, “God knows how to do his stuff—after twenty-five years, we found the true identical twins.” Ever the optimist, just like his identical twin.
* * *
Many of us have been told that we look “just like” someone else, but, like the Colombian brothers, we tend to joke about it and dismiss the topic. But what fraction of these seemingly random encounters involves unsuspecting twins, brothers or sisters waiting to be discovered? We will never know for sure. Some people act on these curiou
s confusions, while others leave them alone.
Several chance factors played key roles in the eventual meeting of the four Colombian brothers. Jorge had cut his long hair short just before the incident in the butcher shop—from the age of thirteen his hair had reached nearly to his waist. He had actually cut his hair twice, the first time to appease his mother and the second time to placate his clients, just one short month before Laura walked into the butcher shop. Had he not cut it the second time, she may not have mistaken William for Jorge; in fact, Jorge’s other friends hadn’t recognized him at first without his long ponytail. And what if the twins mistaken for each other had been Carlos and Wilber instead of Jorge and William? Both Carlos and Wilber were reluctant to explore the unusual situation further, raising the not unlikely possibility that the separated twins may never have met.
There was also Yaneth’s casual comment and question that rekindled the friends’ interest in the striking resemblance between William and Jorge, a topic that had been dormant during the previous six months. And one more thing: had Laura heeded her husband’s warnings to drop the investigation entirely, her mistaking of a butcher for a coworker would have become nothing more than a joke, one that would have eventually lost its punch. “A good lesson: do not listen to your husband,” she said.
Chapter 5
Revelations
Telling Their Families
A new reality was taking over. Sitting in their little apartment over the butcher shop, the La Paz brothers faced the daunting task before them: telling their four older siblings that William was not their younger brother and that Wilber had an identical twin living someplace else. They also had to tell their parents that William wasn’t their son and that another woman had raised their natural-born child.
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