Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Dubious Double
Brothers from La Paz
Some twins seem to belong together, but others don't. Abby and Becky Moore are fraternal twins, but you would never know it to look at them. Abby's long blonde hair and bangs border her round face and forehead, while Becky's short red hair accentuates her thin face and freckles. At age seven Abby towered nearly five inches over her sister and was eighteen pounds heavier. When the twins attended a birthday party, a friend's mother, who did not realize they were fraternal twins, actually introduced them to one another. But Becky looks a lot like her older brother, Adam.
No one would think that the Spooner-Durrant sisters are twins, but Lauren and Hayleigh are a fraternal pair. Lauren has the complexion of their fair-skinned mother, Alison, while Hayleigh resembles their dark-skinned dad. The twins' physical divergence is striking, but perhaps not surprising since many different genes working in concert significantly affect skin color. Each twin apparently acquired different sets of those genes from each parent. In an unusual quirk of fate several years later, Alison delivered her second set of fraternal female twins, Leah and Miya, who show the same contrasting appearance as their older sisters. Bystanders seeing the family walk through a shopping mall or enjoying a Sunday brunch might easily assume that the different children were either adopted or brought together by their parents' second marriage, but they would be wrong: the children in both pairs are ordinary fraternal twins, conceived naturally like any other pair.
William and Wilber, and Jorge and Carlos, became unwitting members of an extremely rare group of "presumed twins." Such twins may, or may not, show the skin color contrasts of biracial twins like Hayleigh and Lauren, and Leah and Miya, but they hardly look related. In fact, these presumed twins are accidental brothers and sisters, brought together by a random act of fate — the inadvertent switching of two babies in a hospital nursery. But people believed that William and Wilber were fraternal twins — after all, their mother had a multiple pregnancy and two babies came home. People often tease presumed twins and their families because it is hard to imagine how the same couple could produce two such different children. However, most people know that fraternal twins inherit different genes from their parents, sharing an average of 50 percent of their biological relatedness, just like full siblings — and this bit of knowledge helps them reconcile the differences they see. Still, the extremely divergent looks and behaviors of these twins become a constant topic of conversation, more so as they grow older. That is because genetic influence on individual differences, known as heritability, becomes more important over time, emphasizing the twins' differences even more. This happens because as adults we move away from our families and gain greater control over our environment, so our choices are better reflections of our genetic predispositions. Genetic effects are amplified as we age.
A great example of this phenomenon is religiosity (that is, religious interests and activities). Studies of religiosity using highschool juniors living at home found that the similarity of identical and fraternal pairs was about the same. However, when studies used twins who were eighteen and older, genetic effects showed up — the identical pairs, whether reared apart or together, were more alike than the fraternal pairs. Reared-apart identical twins Sharon and Debbie were raised in different faiths, Catholicism and Judaism, respectively. Both twins are heavily involved in religious activities today, although Sharon now identifies as an Evangelical Christian. Most important, both believe they would have fully embraced the other's faith had their adoptive families been reversed. Interestingly, neither of the adoptive siblings raised with them has shown the same high level of religious involvement.
I also got to know reared-apart identical twin firefighters, Mark Newman and Jerry Levey, who grew up in different New Jersey cities about sixty miles apart. The two were occasionally confused with one another — Jerry's relatives were miffed when "Jerry" walked past them on the street without so much as a nod in their direction, and Mark's father was falsely informed that "Mark" had been playing hooky from school one afternoon. The twins finally met when they were thirty-one, after a friend of Mark's spotted Jerry at a volunteer firefighters' convention — he knew it wasn't Mark, but it was someone who looked a lot like him. At that time the twins differed in weight by about eighty pounds, but Mark's fellow firefighters could still see their friend in Jerry's slimmer version.
They had a lovefest at first as these big burly brothers slid effortlessly into a twin culture all their own. Both were six feet, four inches tall, with balding heads, bushy moustaches, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, and prominent noses. Both drank only Budweiser beer and in huge quantities, even positioning their little finger beneath the can for support in exactly the same manner. They craved Chinese takeout, ordered their steaks raw to rare, and showed zero tolerance for inept servers. Sadly, their bond weakened over the years after Jerry married and Mark moved to the Southwest. But they did have differences — Mark listened to rock 'n' roll, while Jerry liked country and western; Mark cheered on the Dallas Cowboys, while Jerry rooted for the Washington Redskins — however, both acknowledged that they liked each other's preferences. Both twins were raised in the Jewish faith and held their separate bar mitzvahs on nearly the same day; while neither twin is religious, both consider themselves Jewish.
Sports participation works exactly the same way as religiosity. Adolescent identical and fraternal twins from the Netherlands did not differ in how often they took part in physical activities. But adult identical twins were much more alike than their fraternal twin counterparts, evidence of genetic effects. Thus we can better understand why both reared-apart identical twins Lucky and Dianne rode and raised horses, Tom and Steve became bodybuilders, and Margaret and Caroline were great walkers — whereas Roger and Tony's preferred sport was eating. And during Olympic years we hear about identical twin competitors, such as the American skiers Phil and Steve Mahre (1984), Slovakian canoers and kayakers Peter and Pavol Hochschorner (2004), and Chinese synchronized swimmers Wenwen and Tingting Jiang (2008).
Fraternal twins compete together less often, largely because of their different physical abilities and motivations. Notable exceptions are the US fraternal twin gymnasts Morgan and Paul Hamm — Paul won the overall gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games, while each won a silver medal in the team competition. Another extraordinary exception is Dominique Moceanu, an elite Olympic gymnast and a member of the "Magnificent Seven" of the US Women's Gymnastics Team at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Although she is not a twin, she learned she had a similarly talented younger biological sister who had been adopted away at birth. Amazingly, her sister, Jen, who was born without legs, became a champion tumbler and performer and had idolized Dominique long before she learned they were sisters. As full siblings the two share the same genetic relationship as fraternal twins.
Twin research and reports such as these made it important to compare the religious leanings and sports interests of the four Colombian brothers. Would the real identical brothers be a greater match than the accidental brothers? As they transitioned from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, their differences were becoming increasingly obvious to everyone around them. Still, no one imagined that the two rather different children they knew, apparently born to a mother who had delivered twins, were biologically unrelated because one twin was accidentally exchanged with another twin in the nursery.
William and Wilber — Lads of La Paz
William and Wilber grew up in La Paz, in the north central part of Colombia, about 150 miles from the nation's capital city of Bogotá. La Paz is largely a farming region in the department, or state, of Santander. William and Wilber spent the first five years of their lives in the tiny area of Landázuri until their family moved to the equally tiny area of Vereda El Recreo.
People had marveled at the physical and temperamental differences between the two ever since they were born. William, slight and dark-complexioned, looks like no one in his family, although some people thought he resembled his paternal grandmother, Germina. In contrast Wilber, robust and light-skinned, looks a lot like his parents and some of his siblings. The brothers' temperaments are also at odds — William is warm and mild mannered, whereas Wilber is reserved and hot tempered. Tendencies toward explosive behavior are characteristic of Santandereans, who alsospeak at amazingly fast clips, making them hard for others to understand. William, however, speaks in a slower, more measured way than Wilber, even though they grew up together. This is not surprising because genes do partly shape our speech and language patterns. I have seen (and actually heard) ample evidence of identical twins' matching speech. The "Jim twins" — Jim Lewis and Jim Springer — who were raised in different Ohio towns spoke in the same low, hurried, and hard-to-understand way when I studied them in Minnesota or listened to their interviews on TV. The religious twins Sharon and Debbie spoke quickly but clearly, and the voices and speech patterns of the famous firefighter twins were indistinguishable unless I was standing in front of them so I could see who was talking.
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As of 2005, when William and Wilber were about seventeen and would have left for military service, La Paz counted a population of 773, although the greater area now counts about three thousand residents. The population of La Paz is actually misleading. The brothers grew up in a farmhouse that stands alone amid the plants and wildlife — festivals and other goings-on are hours away and happen only occasionally. La Paz has several bars and pool halls to choose from, but nothing much changes from week to week — websites that list musical and cultural events in Bogotá do not exist for La Paz.
La Paz now has about one hundred small businesses, such as fruit and vegetable stands, shops for repairing farm equipment, and the bars and pool halls where teenagers like to hang out. The few restaurants, cafes, and markets are often family run and offer the same food, drink, and candy choices. People often lounge on benches at the entrances to these places — older women in long dresses with beautiful gold earrings and young men in high rubber boots and broad-rimmed hats. The bathrooms in these eating establishments are typically tiny, dark, and without toilet paper. Plumbing is uncertain — when we stopped for a bathroom break at perhaps the only shop open late on a Sunday night, the clerk sternly cautioned that we could urinate, nothing else.
To reach these businesses from the brothers' childhood home requires hiking several hours each way, riding a horse, or combining a one-hour walk with a one-hour ride in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. (Roads are finally under construction today, although many people still do not have cars and transportation.) Walking means navigating uneven terrain and either wading through muddy streams or risking a terrifying walk across an aging rope bridge. From an early age children walk these long distances to and from school — the trip to William and Wilber's simple, one-story schoolhouse required a one-hour hike each way. Getting there meant putting on high boots and negotiating long stretches of rough landscape. Paths are poorly defined, and anyone unfamiliar with the area can quickly get lost. Facilities at the school were sparse — a sports field looked more like an abandoned lot than a place to play. The school day lasted from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., and when children returned home in the late afternoon they were expected to help tend crops, care for farm animals, and chop and carry wood.
Homes in the twins' tiny childhood district of Vereda El Recreo lack modern conveniences, such as running water, flush toilets, toilet paper, and electric lights. The twins' home did not even have an outhouse — instead, the bathroom was in the great outdoors, and bushes afforded (and still do) whatever privacy one can find. Their home from ages five to eighteen was an open, three-sided wooden structure with three rooms, or living areas, and a sort of patio out front, set within nine hectares (twenty-two acres) of land. The walls and floors show signs of age, and what looks like red paint on a crumbling wooden stove is actually blood from the cows and other animals that are slaughtered and prepared for meals. Missing planks let in rain, wind, and sun, so the family has little protection from the weather. William said the house was more rudimentary than others in the area, but Wilber (the native son) considered it about average. Thieves could gain easy access to these properties, but no one remembers any such crimes in a place where everyone knows their neighbors. However, guerillas, the terrorist rebels who fought the Colombian militia from 1964 until 2016, had no trouble demanding crops and supplies when they passed through La Paz and surroundings areas. The paramilitary, the peoples' defense against the guerillas, also came through some years later and would take cows or charge taxes for owning cows — the more cows, the higher the taxes.
Each family's relative isolation may partly explain the close relationships that developed among the siblings. William and Wilber have four older siblings. Ancelmo, called "Chelmo" for short, is Wilber and William's second-oldest brother. He is forty or forty-one and was born on March 30, but he is unsure of the year. Lack of attention to time is typical of residents in the Colombian countryside, especially among those with limited literacy. Like other individuals her age, Ana Delina, the mother of this brood, can barely read and write — she completed only the second grade. Their father, Carmelo, who attended school for less than a year and was just "fooling around" while he was there, can do neither. Ana claims to have been married on All Saints' Day, which falls on November 1, but that is debatable — her daughter, Alcira, claims that her parents were married on December 28. Regardless, Ana and Carmelo do not celebrate wedding anniversaries.
All the La Paz siblings left school between the ages of eight and eleven to work on the family farm, although all can read and write. But even William and Wilber have trouble listing the ages of their family members, and their responses often conflict. William says that Ana is seventy-eight, while Wilber says she is seventy — it turned out that Wilber is correct, because Ana was forty-five when she had her twins. And Alcira claims to be two years younger than she really is.
Birth dates are printed on drivers' licenses (licencias de conduccion, or pases), but the family never had any real need for a car because the area lacked roads. Of course, date of birth, as well as name, photograph, thumbprint, blood type, security holograms, and ID number are printed on Colombian government-issued identity cards (cédulas) that citizens must carry at all times. However, La Paz residents rarely use the card in their secluded town where everyone knows everyone else. No one has credit cards and crops often take the place of cash.
Set of Six: Three Brothers, One Sister, and So-Called Twins
Chelmo is Wilber's older biological brother and William's accidental one. Chelmo is lean and tan from laboring on the farm that he loves, growing cocoa and corn and raising cows. His short dark hair and imposing moustache are his most distinctive outward features. He wears the uniform of the town — a nondescript button-down shirt, faded blue jeans, brown belt, and brown work shoes. Chelmo looks older than forty (or forty-one), perhaps because of his hard work, constant sun exposure, and infrequent medical visits. He now lives in the house he grew up in along with his partner and children, including a nineteen-year-old son, Stevenson, and sixteen-year-old identical twin boys, Brian and Wilmer — the aging Ana and Carmelo no longer live there, having moved to a location that is closer to shops, but a three-hour walk from the house where they raised their family. Like all the brothers in the La Paz family, Chelmo is an avid football (fútbol) fan and supporter of the team Atlético Nacional. (Football in Colombia and other Latin American countries is the same as soccer in the United States and some other western nations.) Like most rural inhabitants, he speaks quickly, sounding like an answering machine on fast-forward — people from Bogotá (rolos), who speak more slowly, have a hard time understanding him and other people from nonurban areas. The rolos inhabit a city rich with cultural and educational offerings that some have called the "Athens of South America." Rolos are conscious of speech, dress, manners, family names, and other social conventions that define their urban life. On the rare occasions that they go to the city, Chelmo and his siblings feel like outsiders.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Accidental Brothers"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Nancy L. Segal and Yesika S. Montoya..
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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