December 11, 2024 • 46 mins
Introducing Betrayal: Weekly. In this episode, a deathbed confession altered Carmen’s sense of identity. But that revelation was just the beginning. Carmen Rita Wong’s memoir Why Didn’t You Tell Me? is available now.
New episodes of Betrayal: Weekly are out on Thursdays.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, It's Nancy Glass, host of Burden of Guilt. As
the year comes to an end, I wanted to share
a new series my team at Glass podcast launched this year,
Betrayal Weekly. Betrayal, our popular podcast, is now a weekly series.
It's about the people we trust the most and the
deceptions that change everything we thought we knew about them.
(00:24):
Every week, Betrayal will share first hand accounts of broken trust,
shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind.
Today I'm sharing the story of a woman named Carmen,
who questioned her entire identity after receiving a deathbed confession.
Like Tracy Riquel, a family secret revealed later in life
(00:46):
turned Carmen's life upside down, but that revelation was only
the beginning of a long journey to uncover the truth.
If you enjoy Betrayal Weekly, please search for it wherever
you live. Listen to your podcasts and you'll find all
the episodes that have made Betrayal one of the most
listened to podcasts of the year, and be sure to
(01:08):
subscribe to the show and leave a review. Lik Star
rating goes a long way, so thank you. In advance.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
New episodes of Betrayal Weekly will be dropping in twenty
twenty five every Thursday on the iHeart app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want
to listen to episodes of Betrayal one week early and
ad free, you can sign up for iHeart True Crime
Plus exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So here's Carmen's story on Betrayal.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I wanted her love so bad, and she couldn't love
me enough to tell me the truth even before she died.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Carmen Rita Wong grew up in New York
in the seventies. Her earliest memories are of her mom, Lupe.
Lupe was glamorous.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
She was always dressed to the ninth and the red lipstick. She,
along with my grandmother Mayabuela, both from the Dominican Republic,
were seamstresses for Oscar de la Rena, who was Dominican
and employed a lot of the Dominican women immigrants to
New York City.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Oscar de la Renta was one of the most expensive
and exclusive designers in the world. First ladies and movie
stars wore his designs.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And they dressed up to be seamstresses. Mayabuela as well,
always in an Oscar suit that she had probably made
with her own hands.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Carmen was raised in Harlem, and she's proud of where
she came from.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
The neighborhood we lived in was mostly Dominican immigrants, Puerto
Rican basically of all colors. So for me going to
day care, being around my cousins lived across the street,
My grandfather's cleaners was on the corner, and we all
just coexisted in a very great supportive way. Colorful, texture, smells,
(03:35):
just the richness of it all, not money but life.
It's something that even now I look back on with nostalgia.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Carmen's parents were separated. She lived with her mom and
spent the weekends with her dad in Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We call him Poppy Poppy Wong.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
She thought he was the epitome of cool.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He was like a Chinese Johnny Cash, That's what he
looked like to me, with a black leather jacket and
slick black pants. Senec pompadour.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Carmen and her older brother Alex cherished these weekends with
Poppy in his neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
He loved to take us to these very fancy Chinese
restaurants where his boss would be like sitting on a
higher level in the restaurant for more important people, for
the VIPs.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
She didn't know what her father did for work, but
whatever it was, it was important.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
We'd be snaking through the restaurant and he'd be saying
hi to everybody and bring us up and introduce us
to his boss and the people and show us off.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
But in Chinatown, Carmen stood out. She and Alex looked
more Dominican than Chinese.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
We got stared at a little bit, but we very
much felt like we were walks. This is where we belonged.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Even though Poppy wasn't around every day, he supported Carmen
and Alex financially.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
He would show up with a wad of bills and
he would love to tease my brother and I and say,
you know, do you want one hundred dollars? You want
two hundred dollars? You know, how many dollars do you want?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
When the weekend was over, Poppy would bring the kids
back up town.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
My mother and Poppy were cordial I think what I
saw was my mother smiling and being cordial because she
wanted him to support us and help support his children.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Their parents' separation forged a strong bond between Carmen and
her brother Alex.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Because my mother was working, because Poppy wasn't living with us,
and we were shuttled in between people during the day.
My big brother was my protector. He was the only
constant in my life.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
They hung out after school watching Godzilla and Kung Fu
movies on the floor their aunts, cousins and friends living rooms.
But then one day Carmen and Alex found themselves in
an apartment they didn't recognize.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I remember one day my mother bringing us to a
man's apartment. He was a white man. He had a
mustache and this big seventies kind of curly hair, in
glasses and smoked a pipe and you know, seemed very educated.
The two of us were thinking at the same time,
(06:32):
something's happening. What is happening.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
She and her brother started sleeping over at this man's apartment.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I remember the first time this man call him Marty.
In the morning woke up and made us breakfast, which
we'd never seen a man in the kitchen before woke
up and made us eggs soggy eggs and then offered
ketchup with the egg and my brother was horrified and
refused to eat anything. And I remember just looking at
(07:01):
this guy and looking at the way my mother looked
at him, and I realized I needed him to like me,
So I was like, okay to the ketchup on the eggs.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Marty and Lupey's relationship moved very quickly. They started dating
and then marriage.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It was that sudden. It was boom, boom boom. It
almost felt as if there was no time in between.
It could have been in the matter of a couple
of months.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Without warning, Lupe and Marty decided to move the family
to New Hampshire, away.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
From all of our family, away from everybody and everything
we knew, to a place that was completely might as
well have been Mars.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
The marriage and the move to New Hampshire was a
big adjustment. Even just getting around town was a new experience.
Carmen's mom lived in New York City for her entire
adult light and didn't know how to drive a car.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
So my stepfather, Marty, had to teach her how to drive,
and the only time he could do. That was after work,
and it was dark, and we're in our little neighborhood
and we get pulled over on our street. My brother
and I in the back seat, and I don't know
what's happening. This is terrifying, And a police officer says
(08:26):
to my stepfather, we got a report of some Puerto
Ricans in the neighborhood. And thankfully my stepfather, of course,
you know, as a white man, was just like no officer.
We lived right you know, and his driver's license had
our eye dress. We lived right down the street.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
This was the first time she realized that she could
be judged by the color of her skin.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So to all of a sudden be told that we
looked bad therefore were bad, bad enough to call the.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Police on our own street. That message stuck with me forever,
and the culture shock didn't end there.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
When I started grade school there, my brother and I
were just in for the shock of our lives. We
were the only brown, black nation people around. Her.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Mother taught her that being a good student was a
way to blend in, to assimilate.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
My mother was constantly drilling into my head education was
the way to make it in this country. She was
a very smart woman who had to leave her country
and leave school at the age of fifteen, so she
channeled all of her ambition into me. And I wanted
my mother's love, so I had to get those a's
(10:00):
because she loved me. When I got a's, I just
became the model student.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Loupe enrolled Carmen in Catholic school for her teachers were Nuns.
One night at a parent teacher conference.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Sister Rita, I'll never forget, says to my mother, Carmen's
so smart and she's doing so great. It's because she's Chinese.
It's the Chinese in her. I was proud for a
split second because I was a Wong, so I'm you know,
I was proud of being a Wong so her split second.
(10:36):
But then I looked at my mother's face and I
realized she was not the Wong. In the car ride home,
I wanted to assess my mother because I felt like
she might have been hurt by that comment, and so
I said, you know, mommy, sister Rita said I was
(10:56):
smart because I was Chinese, and my mother just did
a Mona Lisa smile and that was it. But I
knew she was not only okay, but she somehow had
something one up on this nun.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Not only did Carmen feel like an outsider at school,
but she began feeling that way in her own family,
especially as her mom and Marty started having children of
their own.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
By the time I was eleven years old, there were
four children under the age of six in the house,
my sisters. They had a different last name and having
a white father, they were treated differently, so I felt
like an orbiting moon, like I didn't belong. I begged
(11:48):
my stepfather to adopt me, for me to change my name.
I so wanted to be part of this new family,
but they kept telling me no.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Blubey reminded Carmen and Alex that they already had a
father back in New York and that he was the
one supporting them financially.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
She explained to me from very young age that anything
that was mine and my brother's, whether it was tuition,
clothing expenses, anything, was paid for by Poppy, and that
my stepfather, besides the roof over our head and the
food at the dinner table, was not contributing to my
(12:29):
brother and I at all.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
She missed Poppy and their weekends together in Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I went from seeing him a lot to barely seeing
him only a few times a year. So I was
looking for her dad.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Marty, even though he was distant, was the closest thing
she had, so she started to call him dad.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It was another plea to just be a part of
this family, and I had four little sisters who called
him dad.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
She and Marty developed their own kind of bond.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
My way of getting close to Marty was involving myself
in whatever he was doing, whether it was changing a
tire or fixing the car, chopping wood, or grilling a
burger or reading the Wall Street Journal. I became this
surrogate boy of his.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
It went on this way well into her teenage years,
especially when Alex graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
My brother left for college, which broke my heart. I
missed him so much.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He'd been the only person Carmen felt like was truly hers,
the only one who really understood her. Poppy was financing
Alex's education at an elite college, and in the summers he.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Would go work with Poppy to earn basically extra money
for college.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
One summer, Alex was helping Poppy at his job delivering
boxes of costume jewelry around New York.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
And then one night my mother comes to my room.
I'm studying, and she does that thing when the parents
want to talk to about something serious, they sit next
to you in the bed. I'm like, what's up, mom,
and she says, Poppy and your brother have been arrested.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
It turned out those deliveries Poppy was making well underneath
the jewelry in the boxes.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Was heroin.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
While she was in high school, Carmen Rita Wong's father
was arrested for trafficking heroine. Poppy had always been mysterious
and constantly had.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Lots of cash, but she had no idea what he
really did for work, and it turned out neither did
her older brother, Alex, who'd been making deliveries with their dad.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I'm in shock. I can't even fathom what's happening. My
brother was the most straight and narrow, straight a never
got in trouble. Was not like a party or drink
or nothing, full on nerd. I was stunned.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
The cops figured out pretty quickly that Alex was oblivious
to poppy scheme.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
And my mother told me, thank God, Grasia s adios.
She would say, my brother lost it, so badly. He's
crying and begging, absolutely having a mental breakdown. The cops
were like, there is no way that you knew what
was going on.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
She was relieved for Alex, but also furious at Poppy
for putting him in that situation. Ultimately, Poppy was sentenced
to ten years in prison.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
My mother because she was so strident about making it
in this country, doing something that would get you arrested.
You know, you're dead. To me, he was undeserving of mention.
But my mother said, here's the big news for you.
(16:24):
There's no more money. There's nobody paying for your college
because Marty is not going to contribute.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Around the same time, Marty lost his job.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
And he was not able to find work for years.
So all of a sudden, my mother and my four
sisters were living off of his savings.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
When she graduated high school, Carmen was on her own.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
My mother her basic mantras, you're old enough, go.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Work, and that's what Carmen did. She moved back to
New York City where she worked and put herself through college.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
And I was just all full steam ahead. I had
to succeed. In her twenties, Carmen began her career. She'd
always wanted to be a writer, and she was offered
a job and they said, okay, well there's an opening
and the Time Life Building, which is legendary. I was excited.
I wanted to work at Time or People and they said, oh,
(17:26):
it's Money magazine, and I said, well, even in my
twenties I knew get your foot in the door, sister,
get your foot in the door. And I ended up
at Money magazine.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Carmen was finding her independence, solidifying her sense of self. Meanwhile,
things back in New Hampshire were falling apart. Marty never
recovered financially after he lost his job.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
My mother's white Knight had fallen off his horse and
wasn't getting back on it, and she was wildly disappointed.
She felt like she had gave birth to all these
kids and given them this fantasy and he was disappointing
her and their marriage did not survive.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
She wasn't surprised to hear the news about Lupe and
Marty's divorce, but for Carmen, life in New Hampshire was
in the rear view mirror. She and her brother Alex
had both settled in New York and as adults it
became closer than ever.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
I have my midtown job, and I had my own
apartment back up town with my Dominican people up in
Washington Heights, and I get a call from my brother
and we talked a lot, but this call was later
than usual and his tone was different, and I was like, well,
what's up? And oh I talked to mom? Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
After her divorce, Lupey threw herself into religion. Part of
that process for her meant reconciling decisions she'd made in
the past. So she called Alex to make a kind
of confession. Lupey told Alex she had leminated pregnancies both
before Carmen and after, and.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
We both kind of just stood there on the line
in silence. That just seems odd, right, Like why would you?
Why was I?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Why had Loupe chosen to keep Carmen. The confession brought
up those same feelings Carmen had for a long time,
the sense that she was missing something, that she didn't
have all the information.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I couldn't put my finger on it, and I just
could not shake this nagging feeling that something was wrong.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Carmen was well into adulthood now, she wondered how much
did she really know about her own story? Was there
something her mother wasn't telling her? There was a story.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
About me, the story that she was not telling any
of us, and it didn't jive with who I was.
I was getting close to thirty, and it was a
big mystery.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
But just as she began to ask those questions.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I get a call from my sister from the hospital saying,
I'm in the hospital with mom. She has calling cancer
stage four, stage four. I said, how do they know
it's stage four? You just got to the emergency room.
They had just tried to change her into a gown
(20:32):
and they could see all the tumors everywhere all over
her body.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Loupe was dying and if Carmen wanted the truth, she
was running out of time. That's when she got an
unexpected call from Marty. By this point, he was divorced
from Lupe and living in Rhode.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Island, so when he called me, I was pretty shocked.
I automatically was like, something's wrong. I was like, what's
going on? Are you okay? And he said, I need
you to come visit me. He wouldn't tell me, but
I knew it was serious.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
So she made the trip to see.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Him, and we're at the kitchen table and he says
to me, I gotta tell you, Poppy's not your father.
Every cell in my body was just angry. I said, Okay,
(21:34):
who is? And I knew what he was going to say,
but I wanted to hear him say it. And he said,
I am. I burst into tears, burning angry tears, could
not stop crying.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Marty had known all along.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
So I'm thirty years old and I'm hearing for the
first time that my parents, the first people you're supposed
to trust in the world, the first people that you
supposed to learn what trust is, lied to me. I
was so angry, especially since I had begged so hard
(22:16):
to be a part of this family. And then there
was this this whole idea of how Marty was not
allowed to financially support me.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Carmen had been explicitly told for decades that Marty wasn't
her dad, and because of that, Pappy Wong supported them financially.
The lie was like a wall that had been built
in her family, and Carmen was left on the outside.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
My sisters didn't have to struggle so much. They were
taken care of financially, but I was left to flail.
What was that all about? So you're saying, now I'm yours,
but you didn't take care of me. You didn't you know?
I had no safety net? Where were you?
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Carmen left Marty's house enraged and in shock.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
When I got back to New York, my apartment was
decorated with this wonderful framed Chinese silk screen print that
had gotten in Chinatown.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It was in that moment that she asked herself a
bigger question.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Was I Chinese anymore?
Speaker 4 (23:22):
She felt like she was being stripped of her identity
as a Chinese Dominican woman. It was an identity she
loved and had proudly carried for thirty years.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
How do I feel authentic as a human being? Like,
if your whole story is a lie, how do you
feel authentic as a person?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
As angry as she was at Marty, she knew who
was actually behind this story.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I just saw in all of this the machinations of
my mother, who ruled the roost in the sense of
what gets told and what doesn't get told.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
She needed to talk to her mom directly.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
She had only been given months to live, and I
had to know if it was true.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
So Carmen went to visit her mom in person.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I saw her and her emaciated frame and hugged her
and we cried. But I still was strident inside because
I knew that I was there to confront her about something.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It was a horrible position to be in, confronting her
mother about a lie at the very end of her life.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
What made me very, very sad was that this had
to come out right before she was dying. And what
made me triply sad was that she was going to
die without telling me.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
This was Carmen's last chance to get the truth from
her mom.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
And I told her what Marty told me.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
At first, Lupey was defensive.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
She did her typical Loupe thing, Wow, dare he tell
you something that that was mine? It was my secret,
it was my truth. And I reminded her, no, it
was mine. Okay what happened?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
And so lou Bay broke down and told Carmen the
full story. It started well before Alex and Carmen were born.
She explained that her marriage to Poppy was never a
love marriage. It was arranged by Lupe's father.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
He married off my mother and her sister to essentially
Chinese gangsters for money. They had their paperwork, and my
mother and her sister didn't, so my grandfather arranged their
marriages ages of like nineteen and eighteen.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Marrying Poppy Want had been Lupe's pathway to American citizenship.
That's why she cared so much about assimilation, about Carmen
making it in this country. But Lupay was never in
love with Poppy. He was a means to an end,
and Marty, in his own way, was too.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
She was like, I need to get us the best odds.
That's the reason why she married an Anglo American.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Marrying Marty might have been opportunistic, but Lupey had actually
loved him. She'd been seeing him on the side while
in her arranged marriage to Poppy, and even gotten pregnant
with Marty multiple times. She and Marty weren't going to
have children of their own while Lubay was still legally
married to another man. When Lupe found out she was
(26:46):
pregnant with Carmen.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Her story was she was in the car with her sister,
was driving, pulling up into the clinic, and Poppy Wong
showed up. Poppy showed up and said, no, don't do it.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Pappy was certain this baby was his. Poppy vowed to
take care of the baby, to support her, and that
was enough for Lube.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She said that because Marty didn't want me, that he
had no right to me. But because Poppy wanted me,
I was his child, that was my father. He had
the right to me. And she was going to live
the rest of her life and go to her grave
(27:32):
with this truth of hers and sitting in my own
anger and pain, I also looked at her with nothing
but eyes of a skeptical detective.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Carmen felt like she finally had the full story, the truth.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
It was my mother's truth. I tell you.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Lupe's deathbed confession was the last time Carmen talked to
her mother about her origin story.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I never brought up that confrontation again. I knew I
guess what I needed to know, and I knew that
I probably wasn't gonna be able to find out anything else,
and so we just focused on keeping her comfortable until
she passed away.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
After Lupa passed, Carmen began processing all this new information.
It meant that she and Alex were technically half siblings.
It was heartbreaking, but it only brought them closer. She
leaned on Alex to help her make a big decision
if she should tell Poppy, because all of these years
(28:50):
Poppy believed both Alex and Carmen were his I called.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
My brother and I mentioned Poppy, and I was like, well,
I gotta tell, and I gotta And he just said,
in his very quiet way, because he was always very quiet,
please don't tell Poppy. Don't tell Poppy. I said why,
because I was this big, like the truth must be known.
(29:17):
And he said to me, look, Poppy doesn't have anybody.
How much more did we need him to feel alone?
Would it have just been a punishment? What would have
done besides make me feel better? And would it have
made me feel better?
Speaker 4 (29:34):
After all, Poppy had been there for her for her
entire childhood in ways Marty hadn't. So she decided.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Pobby was the father I had.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
She made a promise to Alex that she wouldn't tell Poppy.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I remained acting as Poppy's child, including taking care of
him as he grew increasingly sick, until he died. The
day popp passed away, I took care of his cremation
and everything, and I never said a word.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Life moved on for Carmen, she'd been a magazine editor,
an advice columnist, and had hosted a national TV news show.
She had made it. Loupe would have been proud.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I was in New York. I now was, you know,
an editor at a national magazine and paying all my bills.
And I got married, divorce, had a wonderful daughter of
my own. My brother ended up in a house full
of girls, and I had my own, and one Christmas,
we decided to get genetic tests.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
They saw the tests as a novelty. Carmen, Alex, and
one sister all took the test. They wanted to know
more about their heritage.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And we found it to be this more kind of
like how fun, how cool, how crazy.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
It had been over a decade since Lope passed away.
Carmen already knew who her biological father was, so she
was prepared to see that she was half Italian from
Marty's side.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
So I was expecting to see that very disappointingly, I
was not Chinese, but that I was going to be
full siblings with my sisters, and that I was somehow
half Italian. Well, the results come and I'm on my phone.
I'm at the gym, and I had to sit down
(31:31):
because that's not what it said.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
The first result to come in was the heritage portion.
It revealed she wasn't half Italian like Marty, she was
half Spanish.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I can't tell you how much your physical body reacts
to news. Breath knocked out of it. I had to
sit headspinning, called my brother what the hell.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
The familial DNA was still processing, so she couldn't see
the family trait, and he was like.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Well, you know Europe. You know Italy is close to
Spain and they're close to each other, and you ever
know my sister. I talked to her and she was
like the same thing, like don't worry about it, Like, well,
let's wait until my results come in. We all match up.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
When the DNA came in, she and Alex's family got
on a FaceTime call to check the results together.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Let's check. Let's check the results. Nina says her tests
are in. Right, we click and we're all seeing the
same screen. And all you hear is us going it says,
I'm half siblings to all of them.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Neither Poppy nor Marty were Carmen's biological father. Her mother
had lied on her deathbed the whole story she gave
Carmen was not true. She'd lied to Carmen, to Marty,
and to Poppy.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
I couldn't help but marvel at the life she led
to put me in that moment.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Her mother was gone, and she'd taken the full story
with her. Even when Carmen demanded the truth, her mother
hadn't given it to her, And now Carmen was nowhere
close to finding the real answer. The test told her
who her father wasn't, but it didn't reveal who her
biological father could be.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I didn't have anything beyond third and fourth cousins on
this genetic test, so that started my quest. Wow, I
had to find out who this guy was my father,
my real biological father.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Her brother Alex was a going to let Carmen go
it alone, so he became her right hand on this journey.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
He felt very much that it was his responsibility as
an older sibling, to make sure that I found this
other family.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
They got to work their first s up Miami to
visit their mother's lifelong best friend.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
She was aging and ill, but he was like, you've
got to ask her. She may have answers nothing, So
I asked my godmother in the Dominican nothing. Everyone said.
Loupe was always quiet and protective. You know, she held
things very tightly. She didn't share much. We don't know.
(34:41):
I hired a genealogist, Steven no Look.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Carmen and Alex spent months researching and investigating to get answers,
but they kept coming up short. It was frustrating. A
few months into this process.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I got that dreaded phone call like I got about
my mother, this time for my sister in law about
my brother. He had a cough that was lingering and
wouldn't go away. He had stage four non smoking lung cancer.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
It only furthered his resolve to help his sister.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
I think as he got this diagnosis, he realized that
I would be very much alone.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
He stayed committed to helping Carman find answers right up
until the end.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
And I said to him on those last few days,
as I was holding his hand in the hospital, I
was just like, man, you've got to go up there.
You've got to talk to mom. You've gotta find me answers.
And unfortunately, my brother passed away a year to the
(35:53):
day of his diagnosis. The biggest devastation in my life
is the loss of him.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
In the wake of this loss, Carmen was left asking
herself so many questions.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
I just wanted to get at the bottom of it.
And frankly, though it was very important for me to
find who my biological father was, more importantly in some
ways was figuring out why my mother kept the secret.
Why didn't she tell me?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
She had so much pain, confusion, and anger. At this point,
Carmen was thriving in her career as a professional writer,
so she decided to use her writing skills to process
these big questions, questions that might go unanswered forever. She
got a book deal at Penguin Random House. It would
be a memoir called why Didn't You Tell Me?
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So I write the book. I handed my first edits.
I hadn't checked my genetic sites in a while because
I felt very just discouraged. I mean, there's only so much.
You can only wait until the right person takes a test,
and maybe that never would happen.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I couldn't pin my hopes on it anymore. Shortly after
she turned in the first draft of the book, I.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Just hit refresh, and it happened. The right person took
the test. My niece my paternal niece took the test
right away.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
She sent her a message, and.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I sent just a nice, kind of basic note saying,
here's who I am. And I understand if you don't
want to know me, or you don't know who I am,
or I understand if you don't have anything to do
with me. I just want to know who he was.
I got a response within hours. I got an email
(37:50):
from my real biological passister the next day.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And just like that, Carmen got the answer she'd been
waiting for who her biological father was, and to her surprise,
it was a man she'd never heard of. He was
from the Canary Islands, and this whole time he'd been
much closer than she imagined.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
He lived right up the street, right up the street
from when I was a kid in Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
She racked her brain for any memory of this man,
but she didn't have one, so she asked her newfound
half sister if there was any way she could meet him.
That's when she.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Learned, unfortunately, my biological father passed away many years ago.
I cried as if my father died. That's what it
felt like in that moment, like I got the news
my father was dead, another father, a father I never knew,
but it still was my father died.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
If she couldn't meet him, she wanted to find out
anything she could about his family. She learned her father
was one eleven and the youngest her name is Carmen.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Even though my mother said that I was named after
my godmother, whose name is Carmen, I highly suspect I
was named after this youngest sibling. My middle name is
the same middle name as my stepfather, Marty's sister, and
my last name is Wong. My three names are literally
(39:28):
three names from the three different fathers.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
At this point, Carmen didn't know if Lupe ever knew
who her father was, let alone if the biological father
ever knew. But then her half sister told her something interesting, So.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
My biological sister knew I existed. From the time that
she was in her twenties.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Carmen's biological father had known she was out there. That's
the most proof she'll ever get about what Lupe really knew.
It was the end of a roller coaster. Men's identity
had been shifting for nearly her entire adult life.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Every decade brought a new father along thirty finding out
that it wasn't Dad number two, forty, then it's Dad
number three, then fifty. We know who he is now,
and it was a wild revelation. Then I needed to
(40:24):
process and write about what this all meant to me,
to have these three fathers.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
She called the editor of her book, the one she'd
just finished, and said, we're.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Going to need an epilogue. It wasn't the ending that
I thought I was going to get. But sometimes the
universe just gives you little gifts.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
It's a unique position to have your fundamental identity shift
multiple times in your adult life. This is what she's
learned from that experience.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
How your genes express themselves is only one part of
your identity. How you were raised and who were your
parents is another part of your identity. I think what's
important is your self identity, the truth of your life.
So for example, now do I say I'm Dominican Chinese,
(41:24):
which I said all my life? No, what I say
is I was raised Dominican Chinese. I also can say
I'm Latina, but I'm a Wong, because that's what's important,
because that was my experience. I am a Wong. I
remain along, I always will be a.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Waw Carmen believes Lupe had a reason for keeping the secret.
She thought back to moments in her childhood, like her
mom's mona Lisa smile when a nun said Carmen must
be smart because she was half Chinese. After all these years,
Karmen has come to an understanding about her mom's choices.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
When you are from a community that's you know, looked
down on or seen as lesser than, any mistake is
magnified greatly, greatly. Everything has to be perfect and clean,
and you know, my gosh, I mean, my socks were
ironed and I wore a slip under my uniform, and
you know my hair was perfectly ironed, and everything has
(42:24):
to be perfect so no one can say a word
against you. It's about understanding, especially if it's a parent.
When you understand and you see them as a separate
human being, so much of the pain stops.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Now in her fifties, she's oriented it herself to who
she is and what family means to her.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Through all of this, I've learned to in many ways
redefine what family is. And for me, family is who
shows up, and that was my brother. He showed up
for me. I'm still a solo moon kind of floating around,
(43:07):
But I don't feel so untethered, and I'm hoping my
daughter has the gift of not feeling untethered and instead
feeling much more belonging than I had.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story?
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Breaking cycles? A big part of it isn't just telling
the truth. A big part of it is there's no
shame in my mother's story. All these things I should
be ashamed of my mother, you know, sleeping around and
all this sort of stuff. No, this is life, and
the shame ends here with me. Because in shame you
(43:55):
only find isolation and pain, and it keeps us, especially
as when and very quiet. It's very oppressive. I was
not going to let that continue. And if my story
can help other people who feel shame about how they
came into this world because their parents, you know, their
(44:15):
mother had an affair, or they didn't tell them this,
or they didn't tell them that, if my story can
make them feel less shame, that is so powerful, because
then they will not cause pain to the people they
love around them.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
On the next episode of Betrayal, she was the best option.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
She was the only option. She was the only person
I had to trust. I said okay, and I signed it.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Pod at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
(45:16):
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard,
also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Melcuriy
(45:39):
and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Jessica Kriintech. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, additional
editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver
Bains music library provided by my Music. And for more
podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
(46:00):
wherever
Speaker 3 (46:01):
You get your podcasts.
Hi, It's Nancy Glass, host of Burden of Guilt. As
the year comes to an end, I wanted to share
a new series my team at Glass podcast launched this year,
Betrayal Weekly. Betrayal, our popular podcast, is now a weekly series.
It's about the people we trust the most and the
deceptions that change everything we thought we knew about them.
(00:24):
Every week, Betrayal will share first hand accounts of broken trust,
shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind.
Today I'm sharing the story of a woman named Carmen,
who questioned her entire identity after receiving a deathbed confession.
Like Tracy Riquel, a family secret revealed later in life
(00:46):
turned Carmen's life upside down, but that revelation was only
the beginning of a long journey to uncover the truth.
If you enjoy Betrayal Weekly, please search for it wherever
you live. Listen to your podcasts and you'll find all
the episodes that have made Betrayal one of the most
listened to podcasts of the year, and be sure to
(01:08):
subscribe to the show and leave a review. Lik Star
rating goes a long way, so thank you. In advance.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
New episodes of Betrayal Weekly will be dropping in twenty
twenty five every Thursday on the iHeart app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want
to listen to episodes of Betrayal one week early and
ad free, you can sign up for iHeart True Crime
Plus exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So here's Carmen's story on Betrayal.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I wanted her love so bad, and she couldn't love
me enough to tell me the truth even before she died.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Carmen Rita Wong grew up in New York
in the seventies. Her earliest memories are of her mom, Lupe.
Lupe was glamorous.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
She was always dressed to the ninth and the red lipstick. She,
along with my grandmother Mayabuela, both from the Dominican Republic,
were seamstresses for Oscar de la Rena, who was Dominican
and employed a lot of the Dominican women immigrants to
New York City.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Oscar de la Renta was one of the most expensive
and exclusive designers in the world. First ladies and movie
stars wore his designs.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And they dressed up to be seamstresses. Mayabuela as well,
always in an Oscar suit that she had probably made
with her own hands.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Carmen was raised in Harlem, and she's proud of where
she came from.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
The neighborhood we lived in was mostly Dominican immigrants, Puerto
Rican basically of all colors. So for me going to
day care, being around my cousins lived across the street,
My grandfather's cleaners was on the corner, and we all
just coexisted in a very great supportive way. Colorful, texture, smells,
(03:35):
just the richness of it all, not money but life.
It's something that even now I look back on with nostalgia.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Carmen's parents were separated. She lived with her mom and
spent the weekends with her dad in Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We call him Poppy Poppy Wong.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
She thought he was the epitome of cool.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He was like a Chinese Johnny Cash, That's what he
looked like to me, with a black leather jacket and
slick black pants. Senec pompadour.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Carmen and her older brother Alex cherished these weekends with
Poppy in his neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
He loved to take us to these very fancy Chinese
restaurants where his boss would be like sitting on a
higher level in the restaurant for more important people, for
the VIPs.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
She didn't know what her father did for work, but
whatever it was, it was important.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
We'd be snaking through the restaurant and he'd be saying
hi to everybody and bring us up and introduce us
to his boss and the people and show us off.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
But in Chinatown, Carmen stood out. She and Alex looked
more Dominican than Chinese.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
We got stared at a little bit, but we very
much felt like we were walks. This is where we belonged.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Even though Poppy wasn't around every day, he supported Carmen
and Alex financially.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
He would show up with a wad of bills and
he would love to tease my brother and I and say,
you know, do you want one hundred dollars? You want
two hundred dollars? You know, how many dollars do you want?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
When the weekend was over, Poppy would bring the kids
back up town.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
My mother and Poppy were cordial I think what I
saw was my mother smiling and being cordial because she
wanted him to support us and help support his children.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Their parents' separation forged a strong bond between Carmen and
her brother Alex.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Because my mother was working, because Poppy wasn't living with us,
and we were shuttled in between people during the day.
My big brother was my protector. He was the only
constant in my life.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
They hung out after school watching Godzilla and Kung Fu
movies on the floor their aunts, cousins and friends living rooms.
But then one day Carmen and Alex found themselves in
an apartment they didn't recognize.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I remember one day my mother bringing us to a
man's apartment. He was a white man. He had a
mustache and this big seventies kind of curly hair, in
glasses and smoked a pipe and you know, seemed very educated.
The two of us were thinking at the same time,
(06:32):
something's happening. What is happening.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
She and her brother started sleeping over at this man's apartment.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I remember the first time this man call him Marty.
In the morning woke up and made us breakfast, which
we'd never seen a man in the kitchen before woke
up and made us eggs soggy eggs and then offered
ketchup with the egg and my brother was horrified and
refused to eat anything. And I remember just looking at
(07:01):
this guy and looking at the way my mother looked
at him, and I realized I needed him to like me,
So I was like, okay to the ketchup on the eggs.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Marty and Lupey's relationship moved very quickly. They started dating
and then marriage.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It was that sudden. It was boom, boom boom. It
almost felt as if there was no time in between.
It could have been in the matter of a couple
of months.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Without warning, Lupe and Marty decided to move the family
to New Hampshire, away.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
From all of our family, away from everybody and everything
we knew, to a place that was completely might as
well have been Mars.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
The marriage and the move to New Hampshire was a
big adjustment. Even just getting around town was a new experience.
Carmen's mom lived in New York City for her entire
adult light and didn't know how to drive a car.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
So my stepfather, Marty, had to teach her how to drive,
and the only time he could do. That was after work,
and it was dark, and we're in our little neighborhood
and we get pulled over on our street. My brother
and I in the back seat, and I don't know
what's happening. This is terrifying, And a police officer says
(08:26):
to my stepfather, we got a report of some Puerto
Ricans in the neighborhood. And thankfully my stepfather, of course,
you know, as a white man, was just like no officer.
We lived right you know, and his driver's license had
our eye dress. We lived right down the street.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
This was the first time she realized that she could
be judged by the color of her skin.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So to all of a sudden be told that we
looked bad therefore were bad, bad enough to call the.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Police on our own street. That message stuck with me forever,
and the culture shock didn't end there.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
When I started grade school there, my brother and I
were just in for the shock of our lives. We
were the only brown, black nation people around. Her.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Mother taught her that being a good student was a
way to blend in, to assimilate.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
My mother was constantly drilling into my head education was
the way to make it in this country. She was
a very smart woman who had to leave her country
and leave school at the age of fifteen, so she
channeled all of her ambition into me. And I wanted
my mother's love, so I had to get those a's
(10:00):
because she loved me. When I got a's, I just
became the model student.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Loupe enrolled Carmen in Catholic school for her teachers were Nuns.
One night at a parent teacher conference.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Sister Rita, I'll never forget, says to my mother, Carmen's
so smart and she's doing so great. It's because she's Chinese.
It's the Chinese in her. I was proud for a
split second because I was a Wong, so I'm you know,
I was proud of being a Wong so her split second.
(10:36):
But then I looked at my mother's face and I
realized she was not the Wong. In the car ride home,
I wanted to assess my mother because I felt like
she might have been hurt by that comment, and so
I said, you know, mommy, sister Rita said I was
(10:56):
smart because I was Chinese, and my mother just did
a Mona Lisa smile and that was it. But I
knew she was not only okay, but she somehow had
something one up on this nun.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Not only did Carmen feel like an outsider at school,
but she began feeling that way in her own family,
especially as her mom and Marty started having children of
their own.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
By the time I was eleven years old, there were
four children under the age of six in the house,
my sisters. They had a different last name and having
a white father, they were treated differently, so I felt
like an orbiting moon, like I didn't belong. I begged
(11:48):
my stepfather to adopt me, for me to change my name.
I so wanted to be part of this new family,
but they kept telling me no.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Blubey reminded Carmen and Alex that they already had a
father back in New York and that he was the
one supporting them financially.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
She explained to me from very young age that anything
that was mine and my brother's, whether it was tuition,
clothing expenses, anything, was paid for by Poppy, and that
my stepfather, besides the roof over our head and the
food at the dinner table, was not contributing to my
(12:29):
brother and I at all.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
She missed Poppy and their weekends together in Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I went from seeing him a lot to barely seeing
him only a few times a year. So I was
looking for her dad.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Marty, even though he was distant, was the closest thing
she had, so she started to call him dad.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It was another plea to just be a part of
this family, and I had four little sisters who called
him dad.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
She and Marty developed their own kind of bond.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
My way of getting close to Marty was involving myself
in whatever he was doing, whether it was changing a
tire or fixing the car, chopping wood, or grilling a
burger or reading the Wall Street Journal. I became this
surrogate boy of his.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
It went on this way well into her teenage years,
especially when Alex graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
My brother left for college, which broke my heart. I
missed him so much.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He'd been the only person Carmen felt like was truly hers,
the only one who really understood her. Poppy was financing
Alex's education at an elite college, and in the summers he.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Would go work with Poppy to earn basically extra money
for college.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
One summer, Alex was helping Poppy at his job delivering
boxes of costume jewelry around New York.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
And then one night my mother comes to my room.
I'm studying, and she does that thing when the parents
want to talk to about something serious, they sit next
to you in the bed. I'm like, what's up, mom,
and she says, Poppy and your brother have been arrested.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
It turned out those deliveries Poppy was making well underneath
the jewelry in the boxes.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Was heroin.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
While she was in high school, Carmen Rita Wong's father
was arrested for trafficking heroine. Poppy had always been mysterious
and constantly had.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Lots of cash, but she had no idea what he
really did for work, and it turned out neither did
her older brother, Alex, who'd been making deliveries with their dad.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I'm in shock. I can't even fathom what's happening. My
brother was the most straight and narrow, straight a never
got in trouble. Was not like a party or drink
or nothing, full on nerd. I was stunned.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
The cops figured out pretty quickly that Alex was oblivious
to poppy scheme.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
And my mother told me, thank God, Grasia s adios.
She would say, my brother lost it, so badly. He's
crying and begging, absolutely having a mental breakdown. The cops
were like, there is no way that you knew what
was going on.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
She was relieved for Alex, but also furious at Poppy
for putting him in that situation. Ultimately, Poppy was sentenced
to ten years in prison.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
My mother because she was so strident about making it
in this country, doing something that would get you arrested.
You know, you're dead. To me, he was undeserving of mention.
But my mother said, here's the big news for you.
(16:24):
There's no more money. There's nobody paying for your college
because Marty is not going to contribute.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Around the same time, Marty lost his job.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
And he was not able to find work for years.
So all of a sudden, my mother and my four
sisters were living off of his savings.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
When she graduated high school, Carmen was on her own.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
My mother her basic mantras, you're old enough, go.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Work, and that's what Carmen did. She moved back to
New York City where she worked and put herself through college.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
And I was just all full steam ahead. I had
to succeed. In her twenties, Carmen began her career. She'd
always wanted to be a writer, and she was offered
a job and they said, okay, well there's an opening
and the Time Life Building, which is legendary. I was excited.
I wanted to work at Time or People and they said, oh,
(17:26):
it's Money magazine, and I said, well, even in my
twenties I knew get your foot in the door, sister,
get your foot in the door. And I ended up
at Money magazine.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Carmen was finding her independence, solidifying her sense of self. Meanwhile,
things back in New Hampshire were falling apart. Marty never
recovered financially after he lost his job.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
My mother's white Knight had fallen off his horse and
wasn't getting back on it, and she was wildly disappointed.
She felt like she had gave birth to all these
kids and given them this fantasy and he was disappointing
her and their marriage did not survive.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
She wasn't surprised to hear the news about Lupe and
Marty's divorce, but for Carmen, life in New Hampshire was
in the rear view mirror. She and her brother Alex
had both settled in New York and as adults it
became closer than ever.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
I have my midtown job, and I had my own
apartment back up town with my Dominican people up in
Washington Heights, and I get a call from my brother
and we talked a lot, but this call was later
than usual and his tone was different, and I was like, well,
what's up? And oh I talked to mom? Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
After her divorce, Lupey threw herself into religion. Part of
that process for her meant reconciling decisions she'd made in
the past. So she called Alex to make a kind
of confession. Lupey told Alex she had leminated pregnancies both
before Carmen and after, and.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
We both kind of just stood there on the line
in silence. That just seems odd, right, Like why would you?
Why was I?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Why had Loupe chosen to keep Carmen. The confession brought
up those same feelings Carmen had for a long time,
the sense that she was missing something, that she didn't
have all the information.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I couldn't put my finger on it, and I just
could not shake this nagging feeling that something was wrong.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Carmen was well into adulthood now, she wondered how much
did she really know about her own story? Was there
something her mother wasn't telling her? There was a story.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
About me, the story that she was not telling any
of us, and it didn't jive with who I was.
I was getting close to thirty, and it was a
big mystery.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
But just as she began to ask those questions.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I get a call from my sister from the hospital saying,
I'm in the hospital with mom. She has calling cancer
stage four, stage four. I said, how do they know
it's stage four? You just got to the emergency room.
They had just tried to change her into a gown
(20:32):
and they could see all the tumors everywhere all over
her body.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Loupe was dying and if Carmen wanted the truth, she
was running out of time. That's when she got an
unexpected call from Marty. By this point, he was divorced
from Lupe and living in Rhode.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Island, so when he called me, I was pretty shocked.
I automatically was like, something's wrong. I was like, what's
going on? Are you okay? And he said, I need
you to come visit me. He wouldn't tell me, but
I knew it was serious.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
So she made the trip to see.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Him, and we're at the kitchen table and he says
to me, I gotta tell you, Poppy's not your father.
Every cell in my body was just angry. I said, Okay,
(21:34):
who is? And I knew what he was going to say,
but I wanted to hear him say it. And he said,
I am. I burst into tears, burning angry tears, could
not stop crying.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Marty had known all along.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
So I'm thirty years old and I'm hearing for the
first time that my parents, the first people you're supposed
to trust in the world, the first people that you
supposed to learn what trust is, lied to me. I
was so angry, especially since I had begged so hard
(22:16):
to be a part of this family. And then there
was this this whole idea of how Marty was not
allowed to financially support me.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Carmen had been explicitly told for decades that Marty wasn't
her dad, and because of that, Pappy Wong supported them financially.
The lie was like a wall that had been built
in her family, and Carmen was left on the outside.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
My sisters didn't have to struggle so much. They were
taken care of financially, but I was left to flail.
What was that all about? So you're saying, now I'm yours,
but you didn't take care of me. You didn't you know?
I had no safety net? Where were you?
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Carmen left Marty's house enraged and in shock.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
When I got back to New York, my apartment was
decorated with this wonderful framed Chinese silk screen print that
had gotten in Chinatown.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It was in that moment that she asked herself a
bigger question.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Was I Chinese anymore?
Speaker 4 (23:22):
She felt like she was being stripped of her identity
as a Chinese Dominican woman. It was an identity she
loved and had proudly carried for thirty years.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
How do I feel authentic as a human being? Like,
if your whole story is a lie, how do you
feel authentic as a person?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
As angry as she was at Marty, she knew who
was actually behind this story.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I just saw in all of this the machinations of
my mother, who ruled the roost in the sense of
what gets told and what doesn't get told.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
She needed to talk to her mom directly.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
She had only been given months to live, and I
had to know if it was true.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
So Carmen went to visit her mom in person.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I saw her and her emaciated frame and hugged her
and we cried. But I still was strident inside because
I knew that I was there to confront her about something.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It was a horrible position to be in, confronting her
mother about a lie at the very end of her life.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
What made me very, very sad was that this had
to come out right before she was dying. And what
made me triply sad was that she was going to
die without telling me.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
This was Carmen's last chance to get the truth from
her mom.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
And I told her what Marty told me.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
At first, Lupey was defensive.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
She did her typical Loupe thing, Wow, dare he tell
you something that that was mine? It was my secret,
it was my truth. And I reminded her, no, it
was mine. Okay what happened?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
And so lou Bay broke down and told Carmen the
full story. It started well before Alex and Carmen were born.
She explained that her marriage to Poppy was never a
love marriage. It was arranged by Lupe's father.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
He married off my mother and her sister to essentially
Chinese gangsters for money. They had their paperwork, and my
mother and her sister didn't, so my grandfather arranged their
marriages ages of like nineteen and eighteen.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Marrying Poppy Want had been Lupe's pathway to American citizenship.
That's why she cared so much about assimilation, about Carmen
making it in this country. But Lupay was never in
love with Poppy. He was a means to an end,
and Marty, in his own way, was too.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
She was like, I need to get us the best odds.
That's the reason why she married an Anglo American.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Marrying Marty might have been opportunistic, but Lupey had actually
loved him. She'd been seeing him on the side while
in her arranged marriage to Poppy, and even gotten pregnant
with Marty multiple times. She and Marty weren't going to
have children of their own while Lubay was still legally
married to another man. When Lupe found out she was
(26:46):
pregnant with Carmen.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Her story was she was in the car with her sister,
was driving, pulling up into the clinic, and Poppy Wong
showed up. Poppy showed up and said, no, don't do it.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Pappy was certain this baby was his. Poppy vowed to
take care of the baby, to support her, and that
was enough for Lube.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She said that because Marty didn't want me, that he
had no right to me. But because Poppy wanted me,
I was his child, that was my father. He had
the right to me. And she was going to live
the rest of her life and go to her grave
(27:32):
with this truth of hers and sitting in my own
anger and pain, I also looked at her with nothing
but eyes of a skeptical detective.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Carmen felt like she finally had the full story, the truth.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
It was my mother's truth. I tell you.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Lupe's deathbed confession was the last time Carmen talked to
her mother about her origin story.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I never brought up that confrontation again. I knew I
guess what I needed to know, and I knew that
I probably wasn't gonna be able to find out anything else,
and so we just focused on keeping her comfortable until
she passed away.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
After Lupa passed, Carmen began processing all this new information.
It meant that she and Alex were technically half siblings.
It was heartbreaking, but it only brought them closer. She
leaned on Alex to help her make a big decision
if she should tell Poppy, because all of these years
(28:50):
Poppy believed both Alex and Carmen were his I called.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
My brother and I mentioned Poppy, and I was like, well,
I gotta tell, and I gotta And he just said,
in his very quiet way, because he was always very quiet,
please don't tell Poppy. Don't tell Poppy. I said why,
because I was this big, like the truth must be known.
(29:17):
And he said to me, look, Poppy doesn't have anybody.
How much more did we need him to feel alone?
Would it have just been a punishment? What would have
done besides make me feel better? And would it have
made me feel better?
Speaker 4 (29:34):
After all, Poppy had been there for her for her
entire childhood in ways Marty hadn't. So she decided.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Pobby was the father I had.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
She made a promise to Alex that she wouldn't tell Poppy.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I remained acting as Poppy's child, including taking care of
him as he grew increasingly sick, until he died. The
day popp passed away, I took care of his cremation
and everything, and I never said a word.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Life moved on for Carmen, she'd been a magazine editor,
an advice columnist, and had hosted a national TV news show.
She had made it. Loupe would have been proud.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I was in New York. I now was, you know,
an editor at a national magazine and paying all my bills.
And I got married, divorce, had a wonderful daughter of
my own. My brother ended up in a house full
of girls, and I had my own, and one Christmas,
we decided to get genetic tests.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
They saw the tests as a novelty. Carmen, Alex, and
one sister all took the test. They wanted to know
more about their heritage.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And we found it to be this more kind of
like how fun, how cool, how crazy.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
It had been over a decade since Lope passed away.
Carmen already knew who her biological father was, so she
was prepared to see that she was half Italian from
Marty's side.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
So I was expecting to see that very disappointingly, I
was not Chinese, but that I was going to be
full siblings with my sisters, and that I was somehow
half Italian. Well, the results come and I'm on my phone.
I'm at the gym, and I had to sit down
(31:31):
because that's not what it said.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
The first result to come in was the heritage portion.
It revealed she wasn't half Italian like Marty, she was
half Spanish.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I can't tell you how much your physical body reacts
to news. Breath knocked out of it. I had to
sit headspinning, called my brother what the hell.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
The familial DNA was still processing, so she couldn't see
the family trait, and he was like.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Well, you know Europe. You know Italy is close to
Spain and they're close to each other, and you ever
know my sister. I talked to her and she was
like the same thing, like don't worry about it, Like, well,
let's wait until my results come in. We all match up.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
When the DNA came in, she and Alex's family got
on a FaceTime call to check the results together.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Let's check. Let's check the results. Nina says her tests
are in. Right, we click and we're all seeing the
same screen. And all you hear is us going it says,
I'm half siblings to all of them.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Neither Poppy nor Marty were Carmen's biological father. Her mother
had lied on her deathbed the whole story she gave
Carmen was not true. She'd lied to Carmen, to Marty,
and to Poppy.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
I couldn't help but marvel at the life she led
to put me in that moment.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Her mother was gone, and she'd taken the full story
with her. Even when Carmen demanded the truth, her mother
hadn't given it to her, And now Carmen was nowhere
close to finding the real answer. The test told her
who her father wasn't, but it didn't reveal who her
biological father could be.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I didn't have anything beyond third and fourth cousins on
this genetic test, so that started my quest. Wow, I
had to find out who this guy was my father,
my real biological father.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Her brother Alex was a going to let Carmen go
it alone, so he became her right hand on this journey.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
He felt very much that it was his responsibility as
an older sibling, to make sure that I found this
other family.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
They got to work their first s up Miami to
visit their mother's lifelong best friend.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
She was aging and ill, but he was like, you've
got to ask her. She may have answers nothing, So
I asked my godmother in the Dominican nothing. Everyone said.
Loupe was always quiet and protective. You know, she held
things very tightly. She didn't share much. We don't know.
(34:41):
I hired a genealogist, Steven no Look.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Carmen and Alex spent months researching and investigating to get answers,
but they kept coming up short. It was frustrating. A
few months into this process.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I got that dreaded phone call like I got about
my mother, this time for my sister in law about
my brother. He had a cough that was lingering and
wouldn't go away. He had stage four non smoking lung cancer.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
It only furthered his resolve to help his sister.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
I think as he got this diagnosis, he realized that
I would be very much alone.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
He stayed committed to helping Carman find answers right up
until the end.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
And I said to him on those last few days,
as I was holding his hand in the hospital, I
was just like, man, you've got to go up there.
You've got to talk to mom. You've gotta find me answers.
And unfortunately, my brother passed away a year to the
(35:53):
day of his diagnosis. The biggest devastation in my life
is the loss of him.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
In the wake of this loss, Carmen was left asking
herself so many questions.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
I just wanted to get at the bottom of it.
And frankly, though it was very important for me to
find who my biological father was, more importantly in some
ways was figuring out why my mother kept the secret.
Why didn't she tell me?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
She had so much pain, confusion, and anger. At this point,
Carmen was thriving in her career as a professional writer,
so she decided to use her writing skills to process
these big questions, questions that might go unanswered forever. She
got a book deal at Penguin Random House. It would
be a memoir called why Didn't You Tell Me?
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So I write the book. I handed my first edits.
I hadn't checked my genetic sites in a while because
I felt very just discouraged. I mean, there's only so much.
You can only wait until the right person takes a test,
and maybe that never would happen.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I couldn't pin my hopes on it anymore. Shortly after
she turned in the first draft of the book, I.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Just hit refresh, and it happened. The right person took
the test. My niece my paternal niece took the test
right away.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
She sent her a message, and.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I sent just a nice, kind of basic note saying,
here's who I am. And I understand if you don't
want to know me, or you don't know who I am,
or I understand if you don't have anything to do
with me. I just want to know who he was.
I got a response within hours. I got an email
(37:50):
from my real biological passister the next day.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And just like that, Carmen got the answer she'd been
waiting for who her biological father was, and to her surprise,
it was a man she'd never heard of. He was
from the Canary Islands, and this whole time he'd been
much closer than she imagined.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
He lived right up the street, right up the street
from when I was a kid in Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
She racked her brain for any memory of this man,
but she didn't have one, so she asked her newfound
half sister if there was any way she could meet him.
That's when she.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Learned, unfortunately, my biological father passed away many years ago.
I cried as if my father died. That's what it
felt like in that moment, like I got the news
my father was dead, another father, a father I never knew,
but it still was my father died.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
If she couldn't meet him, she wanted to find out
anything she could about his family. She learned her father
was one eleven and the youngest her name is Carmen.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Even though my mother said that I was named after
my godmother, whose name is Carmen, I highly suspect I
was named after this youngest sibling. My middle name is
the same middle name as my stepfather, Marty's sister, and
my last name is Wong. My three names are literally
(39:28):
three names from the three different fathers.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
At this point, Carmen didn't know if Lupe ever knew
who her father was, let alone if the biological father
ever knew. But then her half sister told her something interesting, So.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
My biological sister knew I existed. From the time that
she was in her twenties.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Carmen's biological father had known she was out there. That's
the most proof she'll ever get about what Lupe really knew.
It was the end of a roller coaster. Men's identity
had been shifting for nearly her entire adult life.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Every decade brought a new father along thirty finding out
that it wasn't Dad number two, forty, then it's Dad
number three, then fifty. We know who he is now,
and it was a wild revelation. Then I needed to
(40:24):
process and write about what this all meant to me,
to have these three fathers.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
She called the editor of her book, the one she'd
just finished, and said, we're.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Going to need an epilogue. It wasn't the ending that
I thought I was going to get. But sometimes the
universe just gives you little gifts.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
It's a unique position to have your fundamental identity shift
multiple times in your adult life. This is what she's
learned from that experience.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
How your genes express themselves is only one part of
your identity. How you were raised and who were your
parents is another part of your identity. I think what's
important is your self identity, the truth of your life.
So for example, now do I say I'm Dominican Chinese,
(41:24):
which I said all my life? No, what I say
is I was raised Dominican Chinese. I also can say
I'm Latina, but I'm a Wong, because that's what's important,
because that was my experience. I am a Wong. I
remain along, I always will be a.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Waw Carmen believes Lupe had a reason for keeping the secret.
She thought back to moments in her childhood, like her
mom's mona Lisa smile when a nun said Carmen must
be smart because she was half Chinese. After all these years,
Karmen has come to an understanding about her mom's choices.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
When you are from a community that's you know, looked
down on or seen as lesser than, any mistake is
magnified greatly, greatly. Everything has to be perfect and clean,
and you know, my gosh, I mean, my socks were
ironed and I wore a slip under my uniform, and
you know my hair was perfectly ironed, and everything has
(42:24):
to be perfect so no one can say a word
against you. It's about understanding, especially if it's a parent.
When you understand and you see them as a separate
human being, so much of the pain stops.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Now in her fifties, she's oriented it herself to who
she is and what family means to her.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Through all of this, I've learned to in many ways
redefine what family is. And for me, family is who
shows up, and that was my brother. He showed up
for me. I'm still a solo moon kind of floating around,
(43:07):
But I don't feel so untethered, and I'm hoping my
daughter has the gift of not feeling untethered and instead
feeling much more belonging than I had.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
We end all of our weekly episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story?
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Breaking cycles? A big part of it isn't just telling
the truth. A big part of it is there's no
shame in my mother's story. All these things I should
be ashamed of my mother, you know, sleeping around and
all this sort of stuff. No, this is life, and
the shame ends here with me. Because in shame you
(43:55):
only find isolation and pain, and it keeps us, especially
as when and very quiet. It's very oppressive. I was
not going to let that continue. And if my story
can help other people who feel shame about how they
came into this world because their parents, you know, their
(44:15):
mother had an affair, or they didn't tell them this,
or they didn't tell them that, if my story can
make them feel less shame, that is so powerful, because
then they will not cause pain to the people they
love around them.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
On the next episode of Betrayal, she was the best option.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
She was the only option. She was the only person
I had to trust. I said okay, and I signed it.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Pod at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
(45:16):
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard,
also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Melcuriy
(45:39):
and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Jessica Kriintech. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, additional
editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver
Bains music library provided by my Music. And for more
podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
(46:00):
wherever
Speaker 3 (46:01):
You get your podcasts.
Host
Nancy Glass
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.