Reconstructing the Deconstruction

Disclaimer: This is a work of creative nonfiction. While all the events are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

I

lived disconnected from any blood relations for the first 35 years of my life. For the same amount of time, I have checked “unknown” or “other” on applications, and when there was space, wrote in “Mixed Race.” Having bat-black hair and cocoa-nib brown eyes, while knowing I was born to a white birth mother with strawberry-blonde hair and light eyes, it seemed phenotypically evident my birth father was a man of colour.

In December of 2022, facts about my biology—after spending the entirety of my adult life searching—emerged when I’d all but given up on connecting myself to any birth relatives on either side of my bloodline. The answers found their way to me, perhaps through the materialization of hard work and digging, or a manifestation from determined hoping, or maybe through the maternal meditation of quietly reflecting on the possibilities of my birth mother's life. The history of who and where I come from, which my consciousness has been lengthily separated from, finally materialized.

Since receiving my redacted records as a ward of the state of Texas, I have been confirming some of my theories about my birth mother and our history as certifiable facts—which long masqueraded as speculations. Within weeks of writing letters to my birth mother, or the spirit of her (I still have not confirmed whether she is alive or dead)—words I would say to her if ever I found her, I received 23andMe results that I’d reluctantly submitted after disappointment with the vague results from three other DNA tests over the last decade. Despite my frustration with previous DNA databases and results highlighting all of East Asia, the Pacific Islands, Madagascar, and even parts of Alaska, with no specific indications to which of these countries, regions, or peoples I might be part of, I felt compelled to give 23andMe a chance when they extended their Black Friday sale. My sense of isolation from feeling half-blank—from looking in the mirror and not recognizing my own face—was boiling inside me again, and that ambiguity took my psyche to dangerously dark places. As I sent my test off, I tried to expect nothing but also hoped to avoid the previous disappointments from the Ancestry.com and National Geographic Helix tests.

The closest the spit I sent to Ancestry.com—submitted over a decade before—had gotten me were fourth and fifth cousin matches. In the last year, two closer paternal cousins—third cousins—popped up on my matches. With those loosely connected relatives, I reactivated my Facebook account in a last-ditch effort to find my birth father, or at least my race, my people. I typed my barely related third cousins’ names into Facebook and compared the pictures to those on their Ancestry.com profiles. I found Azizzah and Mustufa, who each kindly responded to my messages almost immediately.

“I’m Chăm,” they said synchronously but in separate message boxes. They didn’t know one another. Both were born to at least one refugee parent from Châu Đốc in the An Giang Province of Việt Nam, bordering Cambodia in the Mekong Delta.

“There aren’t many people who know about us outside our own community,” Mustafa said. “Welcome to your roots! Take pride in being from the Chămpa.”

We expressed frustration with Ancestry.com labeling us as “Việt Namese” and “Cambodian” despite surviving those groups, not being from or of them.

Despite myself, I secretly hoped that the test would give me his name—the name of my birth father. And with that name, I’d take my rookie investigative skills, find him, look him in the eyes, and reclaim the part of him that was me.

I hoped that with 23andMe, I might find more paternal relatives—even if they were mere fourth, fifth, and hundredth cousins—to confirm that I was of such a specific people, the Chăm. Despite myself, I secretly hoped that the test would give me his name—the name of my birth father. And with that name, I’d take my rookie investigative skills, find him, look him in the eyes, and reclaim the part of him that was me. I imagine that dream would only end up an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s poem:

A (wo)man said to the universe (her biological father):

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe (her biological father),

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

I would tell Chăm Dad whatever might convince him to let me stand in front of his door a little longer: you have no obligation to me. You don’t have to claim me. I need only to know you know you have a daughter. I’d salute him and say, “Sir, I exist!” I would try not to blurt out, “Also, I’ve carried and felt you ancestors—our ancestors—my whole life. I have dreams of catching carp and catfish in a pink river with kindly men. I have nightmares about them being boiled alive from the toes up.”

While my existence changes nothing in the everyday lives of my Chăm relatives, I learn what I can about the people I come from—seeing many parallels to the Native communities I have worked with—feeling urgency as I see the losses at stake for the people I share blood with: manuscripts and cultural artefacts dispossessed, stolen, destroyed; oral histories, traditions, and language dying with elders; family units and rituals threatened; and in our Indigenous homeland, governments still oppressing and disenfranchising ethnic Chăm in their villages. Knowing it was centuries of war—particularly the genocides of Pol Pot and the ravages of the Vietnam War—that brought our people to this country.

Since the day Mustafa, Azzizah, and I messaged for hours, I’ve been exercising my research muscles, digging up articles and theses on the Chăm. I filter out articles about reggae dancehaller Baby Cham and myriad non-profits with the acronym “CHAM” (i.e., the Children's Hospital at Montefiore), getting to essays and testimonials by Chăm refugees and artists living in America, minority and refugee rights groups, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, and Critical Refugees Studies Collective. The common thread each article or thesis emphasizes is that the Chăm are not extinct—an assertion repeated as a symptom of our hyper-invisibility, bearing multiple identities in a world that’s easier—but not necessarily better—through singularities and binaries.

No, the Chăm are not extinct, despite some figures estimating 40 percent of Chăm people were exterminated (only after being tortured and humiliated for being Muslim and Hindu) under the Khmer Rouge—and these were the descended survivors of annihilation after annihilation, including 60,000 Chăm massacred by the Vietnamese in 1471. A scholar from UC Berkeley told me several stones at Angkor Wat depicting battles are of Chăm warriors, not Cambodian fighters, as many guides tell tourists.

I want to be part of our Chăm community. I’m not Muslim, although I’ve never liked pork and dress quite conservatively because I don’t like people looking at me. I want to be enough for my birth father and my paternal relatives—even though I am mixed blood, removed and raised completely outside of the traditions and language through no fault of my own—a circumstance of the pain of two people finding relief in a moment of pleasure.

When I got the email from 23andMe on Christmas Eve, hope sparred with dread in my belly. I envisioned the chasm between my paternity and myself closing and rupturing forevermore. Despite avoiding most forms of structured exercise, I used the positive visualization exercises I’d heard my husband use with his high school runners to envision my birth father on top of the list as the closest match among a clan of close matches. As I visualized a box with a close paternal match, I momentarily evaporated all my biological daddy issues; although, nothing eradicated that one daddy didn’t know I existed and the hope the adopted one could forget me. That I could forget how my Pops had touched me. What is touched cannot be untouched. A daughter isn’t a wife. But I’d do almost anything to be in my birth father’s life—anything to meet him in the flesh.

I logged into 23andMe, somehow remembering my password on the first try—in an attempt to keep others out, I often keep myself from getting what I need. Thankfully this wasn’t the case with 23andMe on Christmas Eve. I clicked on “relatives” and noticed closer DNA matches than Ancestry.com’s registry. I looked at the paternal matches first—a first cousin, Mohammad. There was no picture, just a purple circle with his initials, M.A. and nothing in his profile except his location in “Seattle, WA.” Directly below him was another paternal match, a first cousin once removed, Mo, short for another Mohammad, I presumed, also located in Seattle. I drafted a brief message explaining myself as looking for my birth relatives, particularly my birth father. If they responded, it seemed easy enough to find out which of their uncles was (is) my birth father.

I’d moved to New Mexico, finally finding a place where I felt the ground beneath my feet—the first place I let out my breath after years of holding it in, where I could walk around and see others who at least resembled me.

In the excitement of seeing such close matches on the paternal side, I’d missed my closest DNA match at first-glance—a half-sister, Clementine, also located in Seattle. Even though my paternal and maternal relatives are in no way connected, it seemed more than a coincidence that all these close relatives were located in Seattle. I wondered if I was conceived in the Pacific Northwest and incidentally wound up a ward of the state of Texas. I’d only ever felt like an outsider growing up in Texas. I left the state as soon as it made financial sense, as soon as I graduated college. I’d moved to New Mexico, finally finding a place where I felt the ground beneath my feet—the first place I let out my breath after years of holding it in, where I could walk around and see others who at least resembled me.

Interestingly, I’ve long said if I didn’t live in the deserts of New Mexico, or if I could afford to live in two places, I’d live closer to the Pacific Ocean in the Northwest Coast—having had many a daydream of inhabiting Vancouver Island, Washington, or Oregon. The Pacific Northwest’s verdant woods, moss, and saltwater are the yin to the aridity and sepia aesthetics of the Southwest’s yang. I get up to Seattle about once a year—the only adopted cousin I am close to lives in Vancouver, and one of my best friends, Margot, was born and raised in Seattle. I’d just driven up there in May to see her and her family—including meeting her second baby boy, born January BC (before Corona) for the first time. I’d gone alone to see Sigur Rós play the Paramount Theater downtown, where I knew I could meditate and sit alone in the darkness, listening to Icelandic ambient post-rock. Sitting alone in a bath of that band’s tempos and textures surrounded by their synchronized, gentle lighting, was a case study in safety and comfort for me—medicine I knew I needed. Maybe one of these relatives was at that concert. Maybe I’d seen my sister or cousins on the streets walking to the Orca, and I hadn’t even known it. I couldn’t believe I’d been so close to all these relatives every time I’d visited Seattle.

In Clementine’s profile photo, she has curly, dark hair with a few locks framing a face slightly more oval than mine. She looks as racially ambiguous as I do, and I don’t see an immediate resemblance in her face to mine. My hair is as straight as hers is curly. We are both 49.9 percent European—our shared white mother. We are both a little more brown than white; although, 3 percent of her European make-up is Spanish and Portuguese, which is not in my spit specifications at all. The test alleges I have twice as much French and German from our maternal ancestors, but Clementine has 10 percent more of the British and Irish in her blood. Her paternal side is made up of Arab, Egyptian, and Levantine; more specifically, it looks like the database has pinpointed Yemen for her ancestors. As a predominantly Muslim country, it seems that while this half-sister I have never met and I do not share the same father, but we share the same patrilineal religious descent. It seems our birth mother might have hung around a mosque to find her clients.

“You both have the same eyes,” my husband and my friend say when they see Clemintine’s profile picture. All eyes lack right angles and are therefore similar, but otherwise, to me, our eyes are like almonds fallen from different trees.

Her face is perfectly painted, hair artistically in an updo while still framing her features. Her profile states she is looking to find her race and birth father. This led me to believe she has not been raised by our birth mother and that she, too, is adopted. Even though we have been thousands of miles apart our entire lives, we have inherited the same void in every way, despite having different fathers. It’s obvious she’s not all white, like me, and that she, too, has lived her life with the “What are you?” question slapped ignorantly in her face.

I immediately searched for her through people-search databases and Facebook, and even though I got some hits, all of the addresses are dated, and I find no working phone number for her. I searched more broadly, Googling her name. She’s a nail and hair stylist. I saw pictures of the intricate, Escher-like designs she does on people’s finger and toe nails. I’ve never been able to colour in the lines, much less paint even a single colour on a fingernail without making a mess of the whole thing. I considered booking an online appointment with her and flying up to Seattle immediately, but figured showing up at someone’s job and saying, “Hello, I’m your half-sister. We share the same mother. You know, the prostitute with a $180-a-day coke habit,” is not ideal for a reunion.

Her 23andMe profile also shows that she has not logged in for four years, but I sent her a message anyway. I grew impatient almost immediately and put my private investigator hat on, determined to make contact. She’s the closest connection I know of on this planet, and I figured, even if I couldn’t find my birth mother or father—because I can’t find them, they don’t want to be found, or they’ve passed on already—at least I’ll have someone linking me more closely to this world: my mother’s other daughter, my half-sister.

I found a divorce record for Clementine’s adopted family, listing names for two women as her parents. I immediately wished I’d been raised by lesbians in Seattle with my half-sister. I then found one of those moms, Linda, on Facebook. I sent her a message stating my purpose: that her daughter might be my sister, and I’d like to connect with her. At the beginning, end, and at least three times in the body of the message, I told her, “No pressure or obligation to respond.”

She responded the next day, and addressed me as “Marsha” instead of “Marasha,” possibly a symptom of autocorrect, or an oversight of my first given name—a name no one has addressed me by since my adoption was legalized when I was around two. My adopted father told me the mispronunciation of “Marasha” was the reason for changing my name, but I once overheard him saying my birth mother, LaDonna, had given me a “Black name.” I don’t know where LaDonna got the name Marasha; sometimes, I think she wanted our names to have the same number of syllables and rhythm. Whatever the reason, I have long wanted to be “Marasha” again. Like everything I was born with, it both is and is not a part of me.

In Linda’s message, she unknowingly confirms many of my hypotheses I have formed based on the redacted files I have obtained from the state of Texas in the last few months. She shared more reliable, factual information about my birth and birth mother than I’d ever been given.

She was told LaDonna DePew grew up in Idaho and ran away from home around 13 due to sexual and physical abuse. Linda and her then-wife were told LaDonna had given birth to a child, but doctors had said she couldn’t get pregnant after that child (me!) was born. Linda wrote, “We worked with our caseworker to find you, so you and Clem would grow up together, but were told you couldn’t be located.” Eventually, they found out I was a girl and was located in Texas—Baby Girl DePew. Based on when Clementine was born—17 months after me—I know the Love family was just beginning the process to adopt me after fostering me. Maybe the caseworkers thought, inaccurately, the Loves were an ideal family, or maybe it was sheer laziness, or an aversion to lesbians adopting, but Child Protective Services in Texas was never held accountable for keeping two sisters separated, even if its website claims its mission is “family preservation.”

Linda said she never met LaDonna, and after giving birth to her, she didn’t want to meet Clementine. Linda saw LaDonna from behind for a moment walking down the hospital hallway. As the only first-hand account of my birth mother’s physicality, I read Linda’s message and I saw LaDonna from behind for a moment—walking alone into the world where no one waits for her after she has given birth for the second time in less than two years. Linda wrote that LaDonna left Washington when Clementine was a few days old, but LaDonna called to make sure Clementine was still with her new mothers a few months later, stating the baby would be safer in a home without men.

I thanked Linda for so willingly sharing what she knew with me. She responded by expressing her sadness at not being able to get me from Texas. I know that quantum physics reality could send me into a black hole of possibilities, and that version of me—the one with my half–sister—would erase every experience of this-here reality, so I mostly avoid dreaming and regretting what could have been.

I asked Linda if she knew whether or not LaDonna was HIV-positive, since my redacted files show multiple requests for HIV-testing by my adopted parents before they moved forward with the process. Linda confirms LaDonna’s status because Clementine was born HIV-positive. She was placed with Linda and her wife specifically because Linda cared for the first-known child, Jonathan, born with AIDS in Washington at the time. Linda told me my sister was born ten months to the day after Jonathan died. He died two days after his third birthday.

“We were called because no one could tell us if Clementine would end up with AIDS too,” Linda explained. “I had done a fair amount of research on pediatric HIV and hoped and prayed she would eventually test HIV negative. At 18 months old, she was negative by PCR.”

Linda then identified herself as a trauma therapist, “not by choice,” she said but just that she “ended up treating so many people who experienced horrific trauma.” She told me to be gentle with myself and apologized for the trauma LaDonna inflicted on me. She and I both know that’s an unavoidable part of the cycle of physical and sexual abuse. I can’t speak from personal experience, but we humans don’t usually aspire to sell our bodies for money. If my birth mother ran away at 13 because of abuse, she was a girl without a home with limited options. When our dignity is taken through abuse, the line between what’s safe, risky, and necessary blurs. I also know we can still be agents of light when we walk in the darkest of places.

Linda told me I most likely was tested for HIV: “It was routine to test cord blood at that time for HIV. Lots of fears about HIV. It was a way to further marginalize poor women,” Linda wrote. She added that the caseworker told her LaDonna was informed that if she was arrested in Washington for prostitution, she’d be charged with “attempted murder.” I imagine they didn’t offer LaDonna free classes or job training, and I wonder if they threatened the men pimping the prostitutes with the same charges? Linda concluded by saying, “Clementine is so beautiful and so special. She asked to see a picture of her birth mother when she was in her early teens. She wanted to know if she looked like LaDonna. I was never able to find a picture for her.”

I asked Linda to please connect me to Clementine since, amidst all Linda’s responsiveness, she still hadn’t offered any way to contact Clementine—and I didn’t want to push too hard and scare Linda or Clementine away. I was simply waiting for Linda to make the hand-off, or perhaps Linda had, and Clementine hadn’t wanted to respond quickly or at all. I also told Linda I had two pictures of LaDonna, which I’ve acquired in my years of searching. I didn’t tell her those two pictures have pulled me out of the dark spaces on more occasions than I can recall, that I’ve lost track of time looking at every detail in LaDonna’s mugshot and at the Polaroid of her holding me when I am (maybe) a few months old. I found that Polaroid in my adopted mother’s underwear drawer after she died—the social worker who most likely took it may or may not have known that photo would be the only version of a visual memory I have of being with my birth mother, that we touched one another even after I was born. I know my sister, too, has longed for this woman and has wondered who her birth father is, and while I cannot soothe her aching any more than my own, I can offer her the only tether to our ancestors I have.

When Clementine finally made contact, she texted. With emojis and complete sentences, she struck a warm tone. She ended by saying, “I kind of gave up finding any close relatives. I’d love to see a picture of LaDonna if you have one. Do you know if she’s still alive? Let’s connect soon. Love ya.”

I took a picture of the two pictures of LaDonna I had and texted them immediately. And in reading Clem’s text, I couldn’t wait to get to Seattle. Despite being a patient person, urgency moved me to meet the first blood relative in my life—a sister, no less.

“I’ll be up in Seattle in a few weeks … would love to meet,” I texted after sending the pictures. I’d made zero plans, booked no tickets to get to the Emerald City at that point, but knew I could count on Margot to let me stay with her. I do much better connecting with my friends in person, so even if Clem didn’t want to see me after all, the time would be well spent. At the same time, I didn’t want to scare Clem by making my visit solely about meeting her, and it honestly wasn’t. Not just because I planned on spending quality time with Margot and her family—I needed to somehow connect with my Chăm relatives, who had been radio-silent on 23andMe and Facebook.

“Sure, just let me know the deats,” Clem had responded, followed by multiple cute emojis. I thought she’d misspelled “dates” but realized the word was pronounced like my favourite character from Lonesome Dove, “Deets.” I was already looking forward to her teaching me shorthand like “deats” and how to paint my nails without getting the polish all over my fingers.

As soon as I booked my flight to Seattle for MLK weekend, I sent both cousin Mohammads messages on 23andMe again. I’d try finding Mo, my first cousin once removed, on Facebook, since he had a picture on his 23andMe profile—he looked like a more Asian, more male version of me, donning a wide-brimmed baseball cap—but he had not other discernible features, and there were so many Mos and Mohammads with the same last name in Seattle. My best chance was simply to wait for a response or fly with a banner through the sky when I got to Seattle.

The week I was set to fly, MLK weekend 2023, I got COVID for the first time. I had to text Clem and Margot I wouldn’t be making it, but I was able to change my reservation, at no charge, to President’s Day weekend. The day after I should have returned from MLK weekend in Seattle, I received a message from Mo, my first cousin once removed. With his help, I found him on Facebook and we messaged there.

I knew one of his uncles was my birth father, but even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t connect me to that man, I hoped Mo could introduce me to our people and the refugee community the Chăm had built in Seattle. He told me he didn’t associate with the Cham community in Seattle much, but that he would see if one of his nieces, who was more involved, might be willing to meet with me. He also sent me several Instagram links to Cham artists and community members in the Seattle area. “I’m not very close to my family. I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like I fit in,” he said.

“Of course,” I replied, and let him know I understood not fitting in and not being close to family.

It felt as though we were two of the only souls awake in Seattle at three a.m. on Saturday of President’s Day weekend 2023.

Once I got to Seattle, I set myself up in Margot’s basement, and amidst spending time with her and her family, I arranged a time to meet with my sister in two days. I messaged Mo, and he responded around midnight my first night in; we messaged into the wee hours of the morning. He worked long shifts during the day at Boeing, and I am a recovering insomniac, so it felt as though we were two of the only souls awake in Seattle at three a.m. on Saturday of President’s Day weekend 2023. Mo’s English was excellent, but it was also his second (or third or fourth?) language. He told me how he didn’t feel at home in America, but he didn’t feel at home in Asia either. He said he was lucky compared to me, though, because he had family in both places.

So do I, I wanted to respond. Instead, I rambled about being good with yourself regardless of others’ perceptions of us. Then, his niece (my relative—also my niece?), Yuhaniz, texted and offered to meet up, and half-jokingly added that I was probably an over-thinker.

Suddenly, I was messaging two Chăm relatives—my relatives—at three a.m. in my friend’s basement in Seattle. We made jokes about growing up in poverty, parents, not sleeping, Western culture, and how I should convert to Islam. Many emojis were used. While Mo and I couldn’t find a time to meet up amidst his work schedule, Yuhaniz and I honed in on a time and place, and I finally signed off, knowing I had to rest, even if I couldn’t sleep. It was the first night I’d stayed up all night chatting with my relatives.