Speaker 1: I wanted her love so bad, and she couldn't love
Speaker 1: me enough to tell me the truth even before she died.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything. Carmen Rita Wong grew up in New York
Speaker 2: in the seventies. Her earliest memories are of her mom, Lupe.
Speaker 2: Lupe was glamorous.
Speaker 1: She was always dressed to the nines and the red lipstick. She,
Speaker 1: along with my grandmother Maya Bola, both from the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 1: were seamstresses for Oscar de la Rena, who was Dominican
Speaker 1: and employed a lot of the Dominican and immigrants to
Speaker 1: New York City.
Speaker 2: Oscar dal la Renta was one of the most expensive
Speaker 2: and exclusive designers in the world. First ladies and movie
Speaker 2: stars wore his designs.
Speaker 1: And they dressed up to be seamstress's Maaguila as well,
Speaker 1: always in an Oscar suit that she had probably made
Speaker 1: with her own hands.
Speaker 2: Carmen was raised in Harlem, and she's proud of where
Speaker 2: she came from.
Speaker 1: The neighborhood we lived in was mostly Dominican immigrants. Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican basically of all colors. So for me going to
Speaker 1: day care, being around my cousins lived across the street,
Speaker 1: My grandfather's cleaners was on the corner, and we all
Speaker 1: just coexisted in a very great supportive way. Colorful, texture, smells,
Speaker 1: just the richness of it.
Speaker 3: All, not money but life, thing that even now I
Speaker 3: look back on with nostalgia.
Speaker 2: Carmen's parents were separated. She lived with her mom and
Speaker 2: spent the weekends with her dad in Chinatown.
Speaker 1: We call him Poppy, Poppy Wong.
Speaker 2: She thought he was the epitome of cool.
Speaker 1: He was like a Chinese Johnny Cash, That's what he
Speaker 1: looked like to me, with a black leather jacket and
Speaker 1: slick black pants. Senec pompadour.
Speaker 2: Carmen and her older brother Alex cherished these weekends with
Speaker 2: Poppy in his neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He loved to take us to these very fancy Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurants where his boss would be like sitting on a
Speaker 1: higher level in the restaurant for more important people, for
Speaker 1: the VIPs.
Speaker 2: She didn't know what her father did for work, but
Speaker 2: whatever it was, it was important.
Speaker 1: We'd be snaking through the restaurant and he'd be saying
Speaker 1: Hi to everybody and bring us up and introduce us
Speaker 1: to his and the people and show us off.
Speaker 2: But in Chinatown, Carmen stood out. She and Alex looked
Speaker 2: more Dominican than Chinese.
Speaker 1: We got stared at a little bit, but we very
Speaker 1: much felt like we were wongs. This is where we belonged.
Speaker 2: Even though Poppy wasn't around every day, he supported Carmen
Speaker 2: and Alex financially.
Speaker 1: He would show up with a wad of bills and
Speaker 1: he would love to tease my brother and I and say,
Speaker 1: you know, do you want one hundred dollars? You want
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars? You know how many dollars do you want?
Speaker 1: When the weekend was over, Poppy would bring the kids
Speaker 1: back up town. My mother and Poppy were cordial. I
Speaker 1: think what I saw was my mother smiling and being
Speaker 1: cordial because she wanted him to support us and help
Speaker 1: support his children.
Speaker 2: Their parents' separation forged a strong bond between Carmen and
Speaker 2: her brother Alex.
Speaker 1: Because my mother was working, because Poppy wasn't living with us,
Speaker 1: and we were shuttled in between people during the day.
Speaker 1: My big brother was my protector. He was the only
Speaker 1: constant in my life.
Speaker 2: They hung out after school watching Godzilla and Kung Fu
Speaker 2: movies on the floor of their aunts, cousins and friends
Speaker 2: living rooms. But then one day Carmen and Alex found
Speaker 2: themselves in an apartment they didn't recognize.
Speaker 1: I remember one day my mother bringing us to a
Speaker 1: man's apartment. He was a white man. He had a
Speaker 1: mustache and this big seventies kind of curly hair, and
Speaker 1: glasses and smoked a pipe and you seemed very educated.
Speaker 1: The two of us were thinking at the same time,
Speaker 1: something's happening, What is happening.
Speaker 2: She and her brother started sleeping over at this man's apartment.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time this man call him Marty.
Speaker 1: In the morning, woke up and made us breakfast, which
Speaker 1: we'd never seen a man in the kitchen before. Woke
Speaker 1: up and made us eggs, soggy eggs, and then offered
Speaker 1: ketchup with the egg and my brother was horrified and
Speaker 1: refused to eat anything. And I remember just looking at
Speaker 1: this guy and looking at the way my mother looked
Speaker 1: at him, and I realized I needed him to like me.
Speaker 1: So I was like, okay to the ketchup on the eggs.
Speaker 2: Marty and Loupe's relationship moved very quickly. They started dating
Speaker 2: and then marriage.
Speaker 1: It was that sudden. It was boom, boom boom. It
Speaker 1: almost felt as if there was no time in between.
Speaker 1: It could have been in the matter of a couple
Speaker 1: of months.
Speaker 2: Without warning, Lupe and Marty decided to move the family
Speaker 2: to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Away from all of our family, away from Egg, everybody
Speaker 1: and everything we knew, to a place that was completely
Speaker 1: might as well have been Mars.
Speaker 2: The marriage and the move to New Hampshire was a
Speaker 2: big adjustment. Even just getting around town was a new experience.
Speaker 2: Carmen's mom lived in New York City for her entire
Speaker 2: adult life and didn't know how to drive a car.
Speaker 1: So my stepfather, Marty, had to teach her how to drive.
Speaker 1: And the only time he could do that was after work,
Speaker 1: and it was dark and we were in our little
Speaker 1: neighborhood and we get pulled over on our street, my
Speaker 1: brother and I in the back seat, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what's happening. This is terrifying, And a police officer
Speaker 1: says to my stepfather, we got a report of some
Speaker 1: Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood. And thankfully my stepfather, of course,
Speaker 1: you know as a white man was just like no officer.
Speaker 1: We lived right you know, and his driver's license had
Speaker 1: our address. We lived right down the street.
Speaker 2: This was the first time she realized that she could
Speaker 2: be judged by the color of her skin.
Speaker 1: So to all of a sudden be told that we
Speaker 1: looked bad therefore were bad, bad enough to call the
Speaker 1: police on our own street. That message stuck with me.
Speaker 2: Forever, and the culture shock didn't end there.
Speaker 1: When I started grade school there, my brother and I
Speaker 1: were just in for the shock of our lives. We
Speaker 1: were the only brown, black nation people around her.
Speaker 2: Mother taught her that being a good student was a
Speaker 2: way to blend in, to assimilate.
Speaker 1: My mother was constantly drilling into my head education was
Speaker 1: the way to make it in this country. She was
Speaker 1: a very smart woman who had to leave her country
Speaker 1: and leave school at the age of fifteen, so she
Speaker 1: channeled all of her ambition into me. And I wanted
Speaker 1: my mother's love, so I had to get those a's
Speaker 1: because she loved me. When I got a's, I just
Speaker 1: became the model student.
Speaker 2: Loupe enrolled Carmen in Catholic school or her teachers were nuns.
Speaker 2: One night at a parent teacher conference.
Speaker 1: Sister Rita, I'll never forget, says to my mother, Carmen's
Speaker 1: so smart and she's doing so great. It's because she's Chinese.
Speaker 1: It's the Chinese in her. I was proud for a
Speaker 1: split second because I was a Wong, so I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I was proud of being a wom was her split second.
Speaker 1: But then I looked at my mother's face and I
Speaker 1: realized she was not the Wong. In the car ride home,
Speaker 1: I wanted to assess my mother because I felt like
Speaker 1: she might have been hurt by that comment, and so
Speaker 1: I said, you know, mommy sister Rita said I was
Speaker 1: smart because I was Chinese, and my mother just did
Speaker 1: a Mona Lisa smile and that was it. But I
Speaker 1: knew she was not only okay, but she somehow had
Speaker 1: something one up on this nun.
Speaker 2: Not only did Carmen feel like an outsider at school,
Speaker 2: but she began feeling that way in her own family,
Speaker 2: especially as her mom and Marty started having children of
Speaker 2: their own.
Speaker 1: By the time I was eleven years old, there were
Speaker 1: four children under the age of six in the house
Speaker 1: my sisters. They had a different last name and having
Speaker 1: a white father, they were treated differently, so I felt
Speaker 1: like an orbiting moon, like I didn't belong. I begged
Speaker 1: my stepfather to adopt me, for me to change my name.
Speaker 1: I so wanted to be part of this new family,
Speaker 1: but they kept telling me no.
Speaker 2: Lupey reminded Carmen and Alex that they already had a
Speaker 2: father back in New York and that he was the
Speaker 2: one supporting them financially.
Speaker 1: She explained to me from very young age that anything
Speaker 1: that was mine and my brother's, whether it was tuition,
Speaker 1: clothing expenses, anything was paid for by Poppy, and that
Speaker 1: my stepfather, besides the roof over our head and the
Speaker 1: food at the dinner table, was not contributing to my
Speaker 1: brother and I at all.
Speaker 2: She missed Poppy and their weekends together in Chinatown.
Speaker 1: I went from seeing him a lot to barely seeing
Speaker 1: him only a few times a year. So I was
Speaker 1: looking for her Dad.
Speaker 2: Marty, even though he was distant, was the closest thing
Speaker 2: she had, so she started to call him dad.
Speaker 1: It was another plea to just be a part of
Speaker 1: this family, and I had four little sisters who called
Speaker 1: him dad.
Speaker 2: She and Marty developed their own kind of bond.
Speaker 1: My way of getting close to Marty was involving myself
Speaker 1: in whatever he was doing, whether it was changing a
Speaker 1: tire or fixing the car, chopping wood or grilling a
Speaker 1: burger or reading the Wall Street Journal. I became this
Speaker 1: surrogate boy of his.
Speaker 2: It went on this way well into her teenage years,
Speaker 2: especially when Alex graduated from high school.
Speaker 1: My brother left for college, which broke my heart. I
Speaker 1: missed him so much.
Speaker 2: He'd been the only person Carmen felt like was truly hers,
Speaker 2: the only one who really under stood her. Poppy was
Speaker 2: financing Alex's education at an elite college, and in the
Speaker 2: summers he.
Speaker 1: Would go work with Poppy to earn basically extra money
Speaker 1: for college.
Speaker 2: One summer, Alex was helping Poppy at his job delivering
Speaker 2: boxes of costume jewelry around New York.
Speaker 1: And then one night, my mother comes to my room.
Speaker 1: I'm studying, and she does that thing when the parents
Speaker 1: want to talk to about something serious. They sit next
Speaker 1: to you in the bed. I'm like, what's up, mom,
Speaker 1: and she says, Poppy and your brother have been arrested.
Speaker 2: It turned out those deliveries Poppy was making well, Underneath
Speaker 2: the jewelry in the boxes.
Speaker 1: Was heroin.
Speaker 2: While she was in high school, Carmen Rita Wong's father
Speaker 2: was arrested for trafficking heroine. Poppy had always been mysterious
Speaker 2: and constantly had lots of cash, but she had no
Speaker 2: idea what he really did for work, and it turned
Speaker 2: out neither did her older brother, Alex, who'd been making
Speaker 2: deliveries with their dad.
Speaker 1: I'm in shock. I can't even fathom what's happening. My
Speaker 1: brother was the most straight and narrow straight a never
Speaker 1: got in trouble. Was not like a party or drink
Speaker 1: or nothing, full on nerd. I was stunned.
Speaker 2: The cops figured out pretty quickly that Alex was oblivious to.
Speaker 1: Poppy scheme, and my mother told me, thank God, gracias adios.
Speaker 1: She would say, my brother lost it so badly, crying
Speaker 1: and begging, absolutely having a mental breakdown. The cops were like,
Speaker 1: there is no way that you knew what was going on.
Speaker 2: She was relieved for Alex, but also furious at Poppy
Speaker 2: for putting him in that situation. Ultimately, Poppy was sentenced
Speaker 2: to ten years in prison.
Speaker 1: My mother because she was so strident about making it
Speaker 1: in this country, doing something that would get you arrested,
Speaker 1: you know, you're dead to me, he was undeserving of mention.
Speaker 1: But my mother said, here's the big news for you.
Speaker 1: There's no more money. There's nobody paying for your college
Speaker 1: because Marty is not going to contribute.
Speaker 2: Around the same time, Marty lost his.
Speaker 1: Job and he was not able to find work for years.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, my mother and my four
Speaker 1: sisters were living off of his savings.
Speaker 2: When she graduated high school, Carmen was on her own.
Speaker 1: My mother her basic mantras, you're old enough, go.
Speaker 2: Work, and that's what Carmen did. She moved back to
Speaker 2: New York City, where she worked and put herself through college.
Speaker 1: And I was just all full steam ahead. I had
Speaker 1: to succeed.
Speaker 2: In her twenties, Carmen began her career. She'd always wanted
Speaker 2: to be a writer, and she was offered a.
Speaker 1: Job and they said, okay, well there's an opening and
Speaker 1: the Time Life Building, which is legendary. I was excited.
Speaker 1: I wanted to work at Time or People, and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's Money magazine, and I said, well, even in my twenties,
Speaker 1: I knew get your foot in the door, sister, get
Speaker 1: your foot in the door. And I ended up at
Speaker 1: Money magazine.
Speaker 2: Carmen was finding her independence, solidifying her sense of self. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: things back in New Hampshire were falling apart. Marty never
Speaker 2: recovered financially after he lost his job.
Speaker 1: My mother's white Knight had fallen off his horse and
Speaker 1: wasn't getting back on it, and she was wildly disappointed.
Speaker 1: She felt like she had gave birth to all these
Speaker 1: kids and given them this fantasy, and he was disappointing
Speaker 1: her and their marriage did not survive.
Speaker 2: She wasn't surprised to hear the news about Lupe and
Speaker 2: Marty's divorce, but for Carmen, life in New Hampshire was
Speaker 2: in the rear view mirror. She and her brother Alex
Speaker 2: had both settled in New York and as adults it
Speaker 2: became closer than ever.
Speaker 1: I have my midtown job and I had my own
Speaker 1: apartment back up town with my Dominican people up in
Speaker 1: Washington Heights, and I get a call from my brother
Speaker 1: and we talked a lot. But this call was later
Speaker 1: than usual, and his tone was different, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what's up, and say oh I talked to mom okay.
Speaker 2: After her divorce, Lupe threw herself into religion part of
Speaker 2: that process for her meant reconciling decisions she'd made in
Speaker 2: the past. So she called Alex to make a kind
Speaker 2: of confession. Lupey told Alex she had terminated pregnancies both
Speaker 2: before Carmen and after, and.
Speaker 1: We both kind of just stood there on the line
Speaker 1: in silence. That just seems odd, right, Like why would you?
Speaker 1: Why was I.
Speaker 2: Why had lupe chosen to keep Carmen. The confession brought
Speaker 2: up those same feelings Carmen had for a long time,
Speaker 2: the sense that she was missing something, that she didn't
Speaker 2: have all the information.
Speaker 1: I couldn't put my finger on it, and I just
Speaker 1: could not shake this nagging feeling that something was wrong.
Speaker 2: Carmen was well into adulthood now she wondered how much
Speaker 2: did she really know about her own story? Was there
Speaker 2: something her mother wasn't telling her? There was a story.
Speaker 1: About me, the story that she was not telling any
Speaker 1: of us, and it didn't jibe with who I was.
Speaker 1: I was getting close to thirty, and it was a
Speaker 1: big mystery. But just as she began to ask those questions,
Speaker 1: I get a call from my sister from the hospital
Speaker 1: saying I'm in the hospital with mom. She has calling
Speaker 1: cancer stage four, stage four. I said, how do they
Speaker 1: know it's stage four? You just got to the emergency room.
Speaker 1: They had just tried to change her into a gown
Speaker 1: and they could see all the tumors everywhere, all over
Speaker 1: her body.
Speaker 2: Loupe was dying and if Carmen wanted the truth, she
Speaker 2: was running out of time. That's when she got an
Speaker 2: unexpected call from Marty. By this point, he was divorced
Speaker 2: from Lupe and living in Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: So when he called me, I was pretty shocked. I
Speaker 1: automatically was like, something's wrong. I was like, what's going on?
Speaker 1: Are you okay? And he said, I need you to
Speaker 1: come visit me. He wouldn't tell me, but I knew
Speaker 1: it was serious.
Speaker 2: So she made the trip to see.
Speaker 1: Him, and we're at the kitchen table and he says
Speaker 1: to me, I gotta tell you, Poppy's not your father.
Speaker 1: Every cell in my body was just angry. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: who is? And I knew what he was going to say,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to hear him say it. And he
Speaker 1: said I am. I burst into tears, burning angry tears,
Speaker 1: could not stop crying.
Speaker 2: Marty had known all along.
Speaker 1: So I'm thirty years old, and I'm hearing for the
Speaker 1: first time that my parents, the first people you're supposed
Speaker 1: to trust in the world, the first people that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to learn what trust is, lied to me. I
Speaker 1: was so angry, especially since I had begged so hard
Speaker 1: to be a part of this family. And then there
Speaker 1: was this this whole idea of how Marty was not
Speaker 1: allowed to financially support me.
Speaker 2: Carmen had been explicitly told for decades that Marty wasn't
Speaker 2: her dad, and because of that, Pappy Wong supported them financially.
Speaker 2: The lie was like a wall that had been built
Speaker 2: in her family, and Carmen was left on the outside.
Speaker 1: My sisters didn't have to struggle so much. They were
Speaker 1: taken care of financially, but I was left to flail.
Speaker 1: What was that all about? So you're saying, now I'm yours,
Speaker 1: but you didn't take care of me. You didn't you know?
Speaker 1: I have no safety net? Where were you?
Speaker 2: Carmen left Marty's house, enraged and in shock.
Speaker 1: When I got back to New York, my apartment was
Speaker 1: decorated with this wonderful framed Chinese silk screen print that
Speaker 1: had gotten in Chinatown.
Speaker 2: It was in that moment that she asked herself a
Speaker 2: bigger question.
Speaker 1: Was I Chinese anymore?
Speaker 2: She felt like she was being stripped of her identity
Speaker 2: as a Chinese Dominican woman. It was an identity she
Speaker 2: loved and had proudly carried for thirty years.
Speaker 1: How do I feel authentic as a human being? Like
Speaker 1: if your whole story is a lie, how do you
Speaker 1: feel authentic as a person.
Speaker 2: As angry as she was at Marty, she knew who
Speaker 2: was actually behind this story.
Speaker 1: I just saw in all of this the machinations of
Speaker 1: my mother, who ruled the roost in the sense of
Speaker 1: what gets told and what doesn't get told. She needed
Speaker 1: to talk to her mom directly. She had only been
Speaker 1: given months to live, and I had to know if
Speaker 1: it was true.
Speaker 2: So Carmen went to visit her mom in person.
Speaker 1: I saw her and her emaciated frame and hugged her
Speaker 1: and we cried. But I still was strident inside because
Speaker 1: I knew that I was there to confront her about something.
Speaker 2: It was a horrible position to be in, confronting her
Speaker 2: mother about a lie at the very end of her life.
Speaker 1: What made me very, very sad was that this had
Speaker 1: to come out right before she was dying, and what
Speaker 1: made me triply sad was that she was going to
Speaker 1: die without telling me.
Speaker 2: This was Carmen's last chance to get the truth from
Speaker 2: her mom.
Speaker 1: And I told her what Marty told me.
Speaker 2: At first, Lupey was defensive.
Speaker 1: She did her typical Loupe thing, Wow, dare he tell
Speaker 1: you something that that was mine? It was my secret,
Speaker 1: it was my truth. And I reminded her, no, it
Speaker 1: was mine. Okay what happened?
Speaker 2: And so lou Bay broke down and told Carmen the
Speaker 2: full story. It started well before Alex and Carmen were born.
Speaker 2: She explained that her marriage to Poppy was never a
Speaker 2: love marriage. It was arranged by Lupey's father.
Speaker 1: He married off my mother and her sister to essentially
Speaker 1: Chinese gangsters for money. They had their paperwork and my
Speaker 1: mother and her sister didn't, so my grandfather arranged their
Speaker 1: marriages ages of like nineteen and eighteen.
Speaker 2: Marrying Poppy Wong had been Lupe's pathway to American citizenship.
Speaker 2: That's why she cared so much about assimilation, about Carmen
Speaker 2: making it in this country. But Lupey was never in
Speaker 2: love with Poppy. He was a means to an end,
Speaker 2: and Marty, in his own way, was too. She was like,
Speaker 2: I need to get us the best odds. That's the
Speaker 2: reason why she married an Anglo American. Marrying Marty might
Speaker 2: have been opportunistic, but Lupey had actually loved him. She'd
Speaker 2: been seeing him on the side while in her arranged
Speaker 2: marriage to Poppy, and even gotten pregnant with Marty multiple times.
Speaker 2: She and Marty weren't going to have children of their
Speaker 2: own while Lubay was still legally married to another man.
Speaker 2: When Lupe found out she was pregnant with Carmen.
Speaker 1: Her story was she was in the car with her sister,
Speaker 1: was driving, pulling up into the clinic, and Poppy Wong
Speaker 1: showed up. Poppy showed up and said, no, don't do it.
Speaker 2: Poppy was certain this baby was his. Poppy val to
Speaker 2: take care of the baby, to support her, and that
Speaker 2: was enough for Lubey.
Speaker 1: She said that because Marty didn't want me, that he
Speaker 1: had no right to me. But because Poppy wanted me,
Speaker 1: I was his child, that was my father. He had
Speaker 1: the right to me. And she was going to live
Speaker 1: the rest of her life and go to her grave
Speaker 1: with this truth of hers and sitting in my own
Speaker 1: anger and pain. I also looked at her with nothing
Speaker 1: but eyes of a skeptical detective.
Speaker 2: Carmen felt like she finally had the full story, the truth.
Speaker 1: It was my mother's truth. I tell you.
Speaker 2: Lupe's deathbed confession was the last time Carmen talked to
Speaker 2: her mother about her origin story.
Speaker 1: I never brought up that confrontation again. I knew I
Speaker 1: guess what I needed to know, and I knew that
Speaker 1: I probably wasn't gonna be able to find out anything else,
Speaker 1: and so we just focused on keeping her comfortable until
Speaker 1: she passed away.
Speaker 2: After Lupa passed, Carmen began processing all this new information.
Speaker 2: It meant that she and Alex were technically half siblings.
Speaker 2: It was heartbreaking, but it only brought them closer. She
Speaker 2: leaned Alex to help her make a big decision if
Speaker 2: she should tell Poppy, because all of these years, Poppy
Speaker 2: believed both Alex and Carmen were his.
Speaker 1: I called my brother and I mentioned Poppy, and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I gotta tell him, and I gottad
Speaker 1: and he just said, in his very quiet way, because
Speaker 1: he was always very quiet, please don't tell Poppy. Don't
Speaker 1: tell Mobby. I said, why because I was this big,
Speaker 1: like the truth must be known. And he said to me, look,
Speaker 1: Poppy doesn't have anybody. How much more did we need
Speaker 1: him to feel alone? Would it have just been a punishment?
Speaker 1: What would have done besides make me feel better? And
Speaker 1: would it have made me feel better? After all, Poppy
Speaker 1: had been there for her for her entire childhood in
Speaker 1: ways Marty hadn't. So she decided Poby was the father
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: She made a promise to Alex that she wouldn't tell Poppy.
Speaker 1: I remained acting as Poppy's child, including taking care of
Speaker 1: him as he grew increasingly sick, until he died. The
Speaker 1: day Poppy passed away, I took care of his cremation
Speaker 1: and everything, and I never said a word.
Speaker 2: Life moved on for Carmen, she'd been a magazine editor,
Speaker 2: an advice columnist, and had hosted a national TV news show.
Speaker 2: She had made it. Loupe would have been proud.
Speaker 1: I was in New York. I now was, you know,
Speaker 1: an editor at a national magazine and paying all my bills.
Speaker 1: And I got married, divorce, had a wonderful daughter of
Speaker 1: my own. My brother ended up in a house full
Speaker 1: of girls, and I had my own and one Christmas
Speaker 1: we decided to get genetic tests. They saw the tests
Speaker 1: as a novel. Carmen, Alex, and one sister all took
Speaker 1: the test. They wanted to know more about their heritage,
Speaker 1: and we found it to be this more kind of
Speaker 1: like how fun, how cool, how crazy. It had been
Speaker 1: over a decade since Slupe passed away. Carmen already knew
Speaker 1: who her biological father was, so she was prepared to
Speaker 1: see that she was half Italian from Marty's side. So
Speaker 1: I was expecting to see that very disappointingly, I was
Speaker 1: not Chinese, but that I was going to be full
Speaker 1: siblings with my sisters, and that I was somehow half Italian. Well,
Speaker 1: the results come and I'm on my phone. I'm at
Speaker 1: the gym, and I had to sit down because that's
Speaker 1: not what it said.
Speaker 2: The first result to come in was the heritage portion.
Speaker 2: It revealed she wasn't half Italian like Marty, she was
Speaker 2: half Spanish.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how much your physical body reacts
Speaker 1: to news. Breath knocked out of it. I had to sit,
Speaker 1: head spinning, called my brother what the hell.
Speaker 2: The familial DNA was still processing, so she couldn't see
Speaker 2: the family trait, and he.
Speaker 1: Was like, well, you know Europe. You know Italy is
Speaker 1: close to Spain and they're close to each other, and
Speaker 1: you ever know my sister. I talked to her and
Speaker 1: she was like the same thing, like don't worry about it, Like, well,
Speaker 1: let's wait until my results come in. We all match up.
Speaker 2: When the DNA came in, she and Alex's family got
Speaker 2: on a FaceTime call to check the results together. Let's check.
Speaker 1: Let's check the results. Nina says her tests are in. Right,
Speaker 1: we click and we're all seeing the same screen. And
Speaker 1: all you hear is us going on. It says, I'm
Speaker 1: half siblings to all of them.
Speaker 2: Neither Poppy nor Marty were Carmen's biological father. Her mother
Speaker 2: had lied on her deathbed. The whole story she gave
Speaker 2: Carmen was not true. She'd lied to Carmen, to Marty
Speaker 2: and to Poppy.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but marvel at the life she led
Speaker 1: to put me in that moment.
Speaker 2: Her mother was gone, and she'd taken the full story
Speaker 2: with her. Even when Carmen demanded the truth, her mother
Speaker 2: hadn't given it to her. And now Carmen was nowhere
Speaker 2: close to finding the real answer. The test told her
Speaker 2: who her father wasn't, but it didn't reveal who her
Speaker 2: biological father could be.
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything beyond third and fourth cousins on
Speaker 1: this genetic test, so that started my quest. Wow, I
Speaker 1: had to find out who this guy was my father,
Speaker 1: my real biological father.
Speaker 2: Her brother Alex wasn't going to let Carmen go it alone,
Speaker 2: so he became her right hand on this journey.
Speaker 1: He felt very much that it was his responsibility as
Speaker 1: an older sibling, to make sure that I found this
Speaker 1: other family.
Speaker 2: They got to work their first s up Miami to
Speaker 2: visit their mother's lifelong best friend.
Speaker 1: She was aging and ill, but he was like, you've
Speaker 1: got to ask her. She may have answers. Nothing. So
Speaker 1: I asked my godmother in the Dominican nothing. Everyone said.
Speaker 1: Loupe was always quiet and protective. You know, she held
Speaker 1: things very tightly. She didn't share much. We don't know.
Speaker 1: I hired a genealogist, Steven no Look.
Speaker 2: Carmen and Alex spent months researching and investigating to get answers,
Speaker 2: but they kept coming up short. It was frustrating. A
Speaker 2: few months into this process.
Speaker 1: I got that dreaded phone call like I got about
Speaker 1: my mother, this time for my sister in law about
Speaker 1: my brother. He had a cough that was lingering and
Speaker 1: wouldn't go away. He had stage four non smoking lung cancer.
Speaker 1: It only furthered his resolve to help his sister. I
Speaker 1: think as he got this diagnosis, he realized that I
Speaker 1: would be very much alone. He stayed committed to helping
Speaker 1: Carmen find answers right up until the end. And I
Speaker 1: said to him on those last few days, as I
Speaker 1: was holding his hand in the hospital, I was just like, man,
Speaker 1: you've got to go up there. You've got to talk
Speaker 1: to mom. You gotta find the answers. And unfortunately, my
Speaker 1: brother passed away a year to the day of his diagnosis.
Speaker 1: The biggest devastation in my life is the loss of him.
Speaker 2: In the wake of this loss, Carmen was left asking
Speaker 2: herself so many questions.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get at the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: and frankly, though it was very important for me to
Speaker 1: find who my biological father was, more importantly in some
Speaker 1: ways was figuring out why my mother kept the secret.
Speaker 1: Why didn't she tell me?
Speaker 2: She had so much pain, confusion, and anger At this
Speaker 2: point Carmen was thriving in her career as a professional writer,
Speaker 2: so she decided to use her writing skills to process
Speaker 2: these big questions, questions that might go unanswered forever. She
Speaker 2: got a book deal at Penguin Random House. It would
Speaker 2: be a memoir called Why Didn't You Tell Me?
Speaker 1: So I write the book. I hand in my first edits.
Speaker 1: I hadn't checked my genetic sites in a while because
Speaker 1: I felt very just discouraged. I mean, there's only so much.
Speaker 1: You can only wait until the right person takes a test,
Speaker 1: and maybe that never would happen. I couldn't pin my
Speaker 1: hopes on it anymore. Shortly after she turned in the
Speaker 1: first draft of the book, I just hit refresh, and
Speaker 1: it happened. The right person took the test. My niece,
Speaker 1: my paternal niece, took the.
Speaker 2: Test right away. She sent her a message, and.
Speaker 1: I sent just a nice kind of basic note saying,
Speaker 1: here's who I am, and I understand if you don't
Speaker 1: want to know me, or you don't know who I am,
Speaker 1: or I understand if you don't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with me. I just want to know who he was.
Speaker 1: I got a response within hours. I got an email
Speaker 1: from my real biological past sister. The next day, and
Speaker 1: just like that, Carmen got the answer she'd been waiting
Speaker 1: for who her biological father was, And to her surprise,
Speaker 1: it was a man she'd never heard of.
Speaker 2: He was from the Canary Islands, and this whole time,
Speaker 2: he'd been much closer than she imagined.
Speaker 1: He lived right up the street, right up the street
Speaker 1: from when I was a kid in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: She racked her brain for any memory of this man,
Speaker 2: but she didn't have one, so she asked her newfound
Speaker 2: half sister if there was any way she could meet him.
Speaker 2: That's when she.
Speaker 1: Learned, Unfortunately, my biological father passed away many years ago.
Speaker 1: I cried as if my father died. That's what it
Speaker 1: felt like in that moment, like I got the news
Speaker 1: my father was dead, another father, a father I never knew,
Speaker 1: but it still was my father died.
Speaker 2: If she couldn't meet him, she wanted to find out
Speaker 2: anything she could about his family. She learned her father
Speaker 2: was one of eleven and the youngest.
Speaker 1: Her name is Carmen. Even though my mother said that
Speaker 1: I was named after my godmother, whose name is Carmen,
Speaker 1: I highly suspect I was named after this youngest sibling.
Speaker 1: My middle name is the same middle name as my stepfather,
Speaker 1: Marty's sister, and my last name is Wong. My three
Speaker 1: names are literally three names from the three different fathers.
Speaker 2: At this point, Carmen didn't know if Lupe ever knew
Speaker 2: who her father was, let alone if the biological father
Speaker 2: ever knew. But then her half sister told her something interesting.
Speaker 1: So my biological sister knew I existed. From the time
Speaker 1: that she was in her twenties.
Speaker 2: Carmen's biological father had known she was out there. That's
Speaker 2: the most proof she'll ever get about what Lupe really knew.
Speaker 2: It was the end of a roller coaster. Carmen's identity
Speaker 2: had been shifting for nearly her entire adult life.
Speaker 1: Every decade brought a new father along thirty finding out
Speaker 1: that it wasn't Dad number two, forty, then it's Dad
Speaker 1: number three, then fifty. We know who he is now,
Speaker 1: and it was a wild revelation. Then I needed to
Speaker 1: process and write about what this all meant to me,
Speaker 1: to have these three fathers.
Speaker 2: She called the editor of her book, the one she'd
Speaker 2: just finished, and said, we're going to need an epilogue.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the ending that I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to get, But sometimes the universe just gives you little gifts.
Speaker 2: It's a unique position to have your fundamental identity shift
Speaker 2: multiple times in your adult life. This is what she's
Speaker 2: learned from that experience.
Speaker 1: How your genes express themselves is only one part of
Speaker 1: your identity. How you were raised and who were your
Speaker 1: parents is another part of your identity. I think what's
Speaker 1: important is your self identity, the truth of your life.
Speaker 1: So for example, now do I say I'm Dominican Chinese,
Speaker 1: which I said all my life? No, what I say
Speaker 1: is I was raised Dominican Chinese. I also can say
Speaker 1: I'm Latina, but I'm a Wong because that's what's important,
Speaker 1: because that was my experience. I am a Wong. I
Speaker 1: remain along, I always will be a Wam.
Speaker 2: Carmen believes Lupe had a reason for keeping the secret.
Speaker 2: She thought back to moments in her childhood, like her
Speaker 2: mom's mona Lisa smile when a nun said Carmen must
Speaker 2: be smart because she was half Chinese. After all these years,
Speaker 2: Carmen has come to an understanding about her mom's choices.
Speaker 1: When you are from a community that's you know, looked
Speaker 1: down on or seen as lesser than. Any mistake is
Speaker 1: magnified greatly, greatly. Everything has to be perfect and clean,
Speaker 1: and you know, my gosh, I mean, my socks were
Speaker 1: ironed and I wore a slip under my uniform, and
Speaker 1: you know my hair was perfectly ironed. And everything has
Speaker 1: to be perfect so no one can say a word
Speaker 1: against you. It's about understanding, especially if it's a parent.
Speaker 1: When you understand and you see them as a separate
Speaker 1: human being, so much of the pain stops.
Speaker 2: Now in her fifties, she's oriented at herself to who
Speaker 2: she is and what family means to her.
Speaker 1: Through all of this, I've learned to in many ways
Speaker 1: redefine what family is. And for me, family is who
Speaker 1: shows up, and that was my brother. He showed up
Speaker 1: for me. I'm still a solo moon kind of floating around,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel so untethered, and I'm hoping my
Speaker 1: daughter has the gift of not feeling untethered and instead
Speaker 1: feeling much more belonging than I had.
Speaker 2: We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
Speaker 2: why did you want to tell your story?
Speaker 1: Breaking cycles? A big part of it isn't just telling
Speaker 1: the truth A big part of it is there's no
Speaker 1: shame in my mother's story. All these things I should
Speaker 1: be ashamed of my mother, you know, sleeping around and
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff. No, oh, this is life,
Speaker 1: and the shame ends here with me. Because in shame
Speaker 1: you only find isolation and pain, and it keeps us,
Speaker 1: especially as women, very quiet. It's very oppressive. I was
Speaker 1: not going to let that continue. And if my story
Speaker 1: can help other people who feel shame about how they
Speaker 1: came into this world because their parents, you know, their
Speaker 1: mother had an affair, or if they didn't tell them this,
Speaker 1: or they didn't tell them that, if my story can
Speaker 1: make them feel less shame, that is so powerful, because
Speaker 1: then they will not cause pain.
Speaker 4: To the people they love around them. On the next
Speaker 4: episode of Betrayal, she was the best option.
Speaker 5: She was the only option. She was the only person
Speaker 5: I had to trust. I said okay, and I signed it.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
Speaker 2: team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email
Speaker 2: us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
Speaker 2: way to show support is by subscribing to our show
Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 2: Betrayal five star reviews, Go a long way, a big
Speaker 2: thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
Speaker 2: production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
Speaker 2: and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
Speaker 2: by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also
Speaker 2: produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and
Speaker 2: Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica
Speaker 2: Krinchech Audio editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional
Speaker 2: editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver
Speaker 2: Bain's music library provided by mybe Music and For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts.