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 Ortagacias Gomosteruiguez 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, and we loved it.
'Cause he'd take us to Chinatown shopping or to our favorite
restaurants.
I love the ones that had the fancy chopsticks
that went click click.
And even though he didn't live with us,
I was raised as his daughter. I was raised as a Wong.
Now my mother didn't stay single long.
She remarried and we picked up and moved from Harlem to
New Hampshire.
(audience laughs)
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,
but here's 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.
And 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,
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.
And every once in a while,
the grownups would get on that train.
When I was in fourth grade at 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, you know,
its Carmen's Chinese side.
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's the thing.
Even though my mother wasn't 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,
well, are you an A or are you a B?
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 thirties,
pregnant with her fifth child.
She wanted more for me.
So in the car ride home from that parent teacher conference
though, I was still pissed.
And I just had to ask, I just had to say, “Mommy, mommy,
Sister Rachel said, I'm smart because
of Papi because I'm Chinese.”
And my mother,
the parent who was actually present,
the one who would kick my butt,
if I didn't 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 was a lot
of things my mother wasn't telling me.
See, mommy came from a 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 laughs)
I mean, this is talk about secrets.
This is cloak and dagger on a family level.
This was my mother's normal.
Wow.
By the time I was in my thirties,
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 of weeks later,
I'm sitting across the kitchen table from him and he says to
me, “Carmen,
“Papi Wong is not your father,
“I am.”
Now, the first thing that came to my mind was,
Aiya I'm not Chinese anymore?
(audience laughs)
And two,
God damn you two.
All of 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,
and she confirmed it pretty much with a lot more
dramatic flare.
She was mostly just upset that he had gotten to me before
she did.
But mommy, you got stage four colon cancer.
How long were you going to wait, right?
So there was 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're living in a time when genetic testing is
available to everybody, to the public, and affordable.
And there's one thing my family loves it's a sale.
(audience laughs)
So last holiday season,
we all bought up a bunch of 23 & Me and took the test at
the same time.
Now,
I got my results back first
and I'm opening that app.
And what I'm expecting to see is I'm expecting to see a
confirmation of this family secret, right?
I'm expecting to see that I'm half Charlie,
which is Italian and then half my mother,
which would be African and Spanish.
Well, that's not what I saw.
Portuguese.
It says I'm half Portuguese.
I frantically texted my sister Nina. She texted right back.
She said, “Oh, don't 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'll know what's right, right?”
Mmmmmm.
So I pick up the phone and call my brother.
He says pretty much the same thing he says,
“Don't worry about it. You know what?
“Maybe it's a mix-up once we connect and see our
“relationships and we're all linked up, then,
“then you'll see, you know,
“plus Italy and Portugal are kind of close to each other.”
(audience laughs)
So no, no, that's not what happened once we all connected.
Now, remember my sister, Nina, my baby sisters.
I'm 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 didn't 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 hadn't spoken to in 20 years,
I tracked her down and I called her up and I said, “Pemba,”
this is her nickname we called her, Pemba.
I said, “We all took this genetic test.
“And we found out that I have a different father from
“Everybody.”
And she was really surprised because Pemba 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.
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 Pemba, it says I'm Portuguese.
“Oh.”
“The Argentinian optometrist on Delancey Street.”
What,
well what was his name?
“I mean, 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, you know,
“and I was babysitting your brother
“when the dates would come and pick her up.
“So yeah, there was Charlie
“and then the optometrist, you know,
“she had a part-time job at an optician on Delancey street.
“But he he's dead.”
(audience laughs)
Hmmmmm.
My heart could barely take it.
You know, have people really thought about the fact that,
you know, with genetic testing, we're,
we're looking at the end of family secrets.
You're looking at the member of probably the last generation
whose parents could futz around about their futzing around.
(audience laughs)
Really.
Here's the thing,
my origin story, as I like to call it,
or mystery,
is still happening to this day.
But here's 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 ghosts,
sometimes, Lupe.
For leaving out this incredibly important
little detail of my life.
And I asked her to visit me in my dreams,
to drop me a hint or a clue as to who it is I'm looking at
when I look in the mirror.
The morning after I talked to Pemba,
I called my sister Nina.
I said, “Nina,
“what if I never find out who this man is?”
And Nina who's super Zen said, “You know,
“does it really matter girl,
“because you know who you are,
“you know who you are.”
She's right.
Thank you.