739: Sisters

Bim Adewunmi

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Bim Adewunmi, sitting in for Ira Glass. Not too long ago, a few of us here on the show were talking about families, and how everybody has a role to play in theirs. And whatever your role is, it sort of becomes your identity. Like, this one's insular and really into books, or that one's the sensitive one who's quick to anger, or the little one's the sweetheart-- that sort of thing.

And the longer we talked about it, the more we began to notice a pattern. Sisters, in particular, often have very specific, very pithy elevator pitches about themselves and each other-- like my colleague on the show, Emanuele Berry.

Bim Adewunmi

And when it comes to Emanuele's role, she said this thing, partly being funny, but also sort of seriously.

OK, so they didn't immediately say she was their favorite. But she doesn't mind. Instead, what struck Emanuele in these conversations was how it seemed like they all were telling the same stories, but with different entrance points, like a low-stakes Rashomon.

Bim Adewunmi

Unlike Emanuele, I only have one sister. But if I had to define myself-- like, if someone asked me about the foundational underpinning of my identity, among all the many things I could say-- that I think in paragraphs, or that I tend to cheerfulness over melancholy-- before all of that, the thing that I would say is that I'm Ade's little sister. She's three years older than me, the kindest person I know, my best friend. I love her like she's me.

And when I was small, I wanted more than to be like her. I kind of wanted to eat her up, just consume her. I was obsessed with her, but like, in a healthy way.

We created this dense, self-contained world together as kids. One example of it was Funky Funky Funky Radio, a radio station universe that we made up and recorded onto cassettes that we lost years ago. We did news, and current affairs, and human interest stories, and sports-- specifically horse racing, with a twist that in this world, the horses could talk, and they all had very different personalities. My sister was basically the station manager. She directed our work like she directed my life at that age.

Funky Funky Funky Radio was completely for us. We'd play it back to ourselves, and give notes on what we could do better next time. Sometimes, we played it to our dad, but it wasn't for him. It was an exercise in sisterly world building.

Being a younger sister is how I move through the world. I'm the second one, the younger one, the littler one. I'm aware of all the cliches-- that they're annoying, attention hogs, the ones who get to mess up-- a whole box of behaviors. Even so, with the noted exceptions of Amy March and Lydia Bennett, I reserve my biggest love for almost every literary or pop culture little sister-- Serena over Venus, Marianne Dashwood over Elinor, Sasha Obama over Malia.

I'm the second of four, so that means I'm a big sister, too, to two brothers whom I love very much, Demola and Dapo. But that fact, the fact that I am also two other people's older sister, is so secondary to that first, fundamental identity that I have. I'm the little sister.

Maybe it's because my sister knew me before I really knew myself. I got to meet my brothers when they arrived in this world. But Ade, she was already a fact.

She's the most constant thing in my life. I've never known a world without her. I can't imagine it, and I don't want to.

Today's show is about that world that can exist between only sisters-- the worlds they build together, and the things that could knock those worlds off their axis. We have two stories today about the bonds between sisters, and how they get broken and fixed, or not. Stay with us.

Bim Adewunmi

Sister Act One: Cindy and Dayana. We start today with sisters Cindy and Dayana Carcamo. They're close, but recently, they've been struggling with this thing that happened when they were very young. For the first part of their childhood, they didn't know each other at all. Here's Cindy.

Cindy Carcamo

My family is from Guatemala. My sister Dayana was born there. She lived there for years, far away from me and my parents. I was born in LA. When we were little, Dayana believed that explained one difference between us.

Cindy Carcamo

What she means by American-looking is that I looked white.

Cindy Carcamo

In Guatemala, like a lot of places, whiter skin is considered prettier. My lighter skin became a thing for us growing up. Like, one time, a family friend, Ricardo, came to visit. He looked like the famous '80s singer, El Puma.

Cindy Carcamo

To me, she was always so beautiful and great, so quick-witted, so good at managing everything, at reading a room. She always knew what to say.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be like her. She was the responsible one, I was a space cadet. She was the neat one, I was the messy one. At one point, she put tape down the middle of the bedroom and told me to keep my mess on my side.

All those things, I always thought that's just who she is, how she is-- rigidly organized, high achieving, her obsession with being perfect, always wanting to please. But while we were talking, it dawned on me for the first time that I had it all wrong. A lot of those traits had to do with her being separated from our parents.

Cindy Carcamo

By sent back, she's talking about being sent to Guatemala. My mom and dad came to the US when Dayana was just a baby. My mom was a teenager. They were crossing illegally, and she worried it was too dangerous to bring her. It seemed irresponsible.

So they left Dayana with her grandmother, Chita. It was a cushy setup-- they had a housekeeper who basically waited on Dayana. They lived in a nice neighborhood.

And anyway, my parents assumed they'd be back for her soon. She wouldn't end up joining them for years. It's only now that I'm beginning to put together a more complete picture of why that was, and how much it shaped Dayana and our family.

For a long time, I knew the basic facts-- Dayana lived the first years of her life in Guatemala without my parents, and then she came home. But I never knew the full story. What was it really like for her? How did it affect her? What did she imagine about her life in LA?

Sometimes, you can be so close to people, but this is the kind of thing you don't ask about.

Cindy Carcamo

Dayana told me that, during the years apart, she would imagine what it would be like when she finally joined us.

Cindy Carcamo

My parents did miss Dayana desperately. While Dayana was in Guatemala, they sent her boxes full of toys, clothes, and American candy like Snickers bars and Wrigley's chewing gum-- stuff that was pricey or hard to find back then. My mom told me after they were separated, she kept having this dream where Dayana was on a mountain that she couldn't reach.

She became deeply depressed. It runs in our family. But it's hard to know whether mom's started because of the separation, or if it was there all along, and the separation made it worse.

The first time my mom was able to visit Guatemala after the separation, Dayana was two or three. She hadn't seen her for over a year. Now, she was meeting her as a toddler. This was before I was born.

My mom showed up with a suitcase full of outfits and toys for Dayana. And when she got to the house, Dayana sort of ignored her. She'd rather hang out with Chita, or her Aunt Estella, or Uncle Yembi. At one point, my mom scolded her for something, and Dayana responded with, tu no me creaste-- you didn't raise me. But she couldn't pronounce her R's, so the way the story's always told in my family, she said, tu no me cli-aste.

My mom felt rejected. She says, looking back, she knows she shouldn't have felt that way. But she was so young. She was only 20.

Meanwhile, her mom, Chita, was emphatic that Dayana should stay. She cried. She told my mom, I'm attached to her now. Don't take her away.

By the end of the visit, my mom decided she couldn't tear Dayana away from Chita and a family she did know. So she came back to the US alone, without Dayana. She left the suitcase full of toys behind.

That scene-- mom going to get Dayana, Dayana staying in Guatemala-- that turned into something that happened over and over. It happened so many times that both Dayana and my mom have lost track. It was always the same-- mom would come with the intention of bringing Dayana back with her, Dayana didn't really want to be with her, Chita would cry, and mom couldn't bear to take Dayana away from her.

I'd heard that story a lot growing up. The back-and-forth tormented my mom for years. I asked her to talk to me for the story, but she said no. She can't talk about this without crying, and that embarrasses her.

Until now, it never occurred to me to ask Dayana how all this felt to her. Dayana told me the constant thing she remembers is my parents would come to take her, and the adults would start arguing. And it was really confusing. She wanted to go with mom and dad, but she didn't want to leave Chita behind, either.

And the adults around her weren't helping. One day, they'd tell her, you're leaving. And then they'd tell her, never mind, you're staying. That was the kind of detail about Dayana's childhood that I didn't know most of my life.

And I didn't know this part, either. At one point, my parents turned to Dayana and asked her point blank, so how about it? Do you want to come live with us in the US? And Dayana was like, sure. She was around four.

Cindy Carcamo

To this day-- this comes up in my family, by the way, that Dayana said she wanted to stay. My parents bring it up whenever Dayana asks, why didn't you bring me? It's become this ongoing refrain.

They'll say, you said no. We asked you, remember? It's gone on for years.

As a reporter, I've covered family separations. I've covered US immigration policy for more than a decade, most recently for the Los Angeles Times. And in my job, I've covered their reunifications-- families in airports or at the border hugging each other and crying, teenagers and moms, dads and toddlers, with toddlers looking stoic and distant-- the whole range. I'm the reporter who goes up to them and asks them how they're feeling.

For a lot of people, I think these scenes look like an ending, the conclusion of these stories. But I know they're not. They're just the beginning.

This moment, when a child is returned to their parents, I'm always thinking, the next part, that's the hard part. My sister still remembers the exact date that she finally joined my parents in the United States-- December 7, 1982. She was eight, I was three. My parents were legal residents by then.

Dayana came with Chita-- mom thought it would be easier that way-- and they came for a long visit. At the end, the plan was, Dayana stays. And this time, Chita relented. Dayana was finally here for good.

Until I started asking her about this recently, I'd always imagined the years of separation were the hardest part for Dayana. But that wasn't true at all.

Cindy Carcamo

Back in Guatemala, Dayana grew up with aunties and cousins who lived steps away-- a whole network of people who doted on her. There was a refrigerator full of homemade ice cream, and Chita would let Dayana grab what she wanted. It must have been so weird for her, having to navigate a whole new set of rules and ways of living, having to decipher everything, and all of us.

Cindy Carcamo

This is the first time I heard this. And it crushed me. It's hard for me to hear this, to hear Dayana dealing with this in such a little kid way.

She never seemed like a kid to me when we were little. She was so competent. She was so good at school-- straight A's, always so practical.

She didn't like to play. I had an imaginary friend growing up, and she very rationally was like, that doesn't make sense. I've always felt she was a grown-up from the beginning, but of course, she wasn't.

She felt insecure, like an outsider. So she made a plan to try to fit in, to make herself indispensable to our family. Here's what she did every day-- she made her bed and mine, she dressed me in the morning, she made our lunch for school, she helped me with my homework, she washed dishes after dinner, and on the weekends, she helped my mom clean the bathroom. This was the stuff Toya did back in Guatemala-- the housekeeper.

Dayana did all of this because, in her mind, the stakes were so high. She really did think she'd be sent back. I had no idea. And this wasn't just some little kid thought she had. She told me that the adults warned her that might happen.

Cindy Carcamo

Dayana says she heard this from our Chita, too. My mom was always the hardest relationship for Dayana to figure out. It didn't help that her mom's depression continued and went undiagnosed for years. So life with mom could be unpredictable.

Anything would set her off. My mom was so fragile. She seemed constantly aggravated and anxious. And she was usually unsatisfied with anything Dayana did.

They'd argue over the temperature of the dish water, or the settings on the dryer, Dayana being a little late when she picked her up from school. Always hanging around was the hurt my mom felt from when Dayana had refused to come to the US back when she was little.

Cindy Carcamo

I had no idea my mom had said those things. It felt to me like that was just a harsh thing to say to a kid here, holding something against Dayana, this thing she said when she was so little. But I also realized how much of a scar that was for my mom.

When we were teenagers, Dayana was always so busy. I never got as much time as I wanted. It still is sort of that way. I have to book her in advance just to hang out with her.

I never really understood it, but it makes more sense now, how Dayana kind of turned away from home and started throwing herself into work. She got her first job at 15 so she could pay her own way more and help the household. When she was in high school, it seemed like all she did was study. College, too-- she had a full load of courses and a couple of jobs.

Cindy Carcamo

When Dayana said, I got here late, it just cut me apart. It's like she's blaming herself-- like she had an appointment, and she messed it all up, and showed up late. I've always known my sister and I had different experiences, but I'm only now realizing just how different.

Recently, I noticed, for example, that my mom has always used with me the less formal and more intimate form of vos. Dayana, instead, has always been addressed as usted, which automatically puts a distance between them. I talked with my mom about this, and she said she didn't consciously do it.

I believe it, but looking back, she also said, maybe she did that because ever since the separation, she's felt Dayana no longer belonged to her. Also, in almost every sibling squabble, my mom took my side, which turned the three of us into this uncomfortable little triangle. The two of them would fight so much, I'd get anxious and try to play the peacemaker. It didn't always work.

They yelled at each other, got mad at me for taking the other side, and I'd end up feeling like I let them both down in some way. The older we got, the worse it felt. As we were talking, my producer, Nadia Reiman, asked Dayana if she could think of examples of how she and I were treated differently. She had a hard time deciding where to start.

Cindy Carcamo

My mom says if Dayana remembers it that way, she must be right, though my parents did help her with grad school. And I know it's easy for some of this to sound like normal sibling stuff-- older kid, little sister stuff. But one of the hardest parts of this is that it's hard for Dayana and me to tell what was about her separation and what wasn't.

It would have been so easy for Dayana to resent me, to be so mad at how I was treated versus how she was treated, but that didn't happen. Instead, she doubled down on being my greatest protector and advocate. She didn't like it when anyone said anything mean about me, or when the neighborhood kids didn't want to play with me. And in turn, I'd follow her around like a puppy dog.

When we talked about this recently, I kept asking her, really? You never resented me? But in this very reasonable Dayana way, she said, no, it wasn't you. You were just a kid-- but so was she.

The way the separation-- our beginning-- has shaped the rest of our lives, sometimes, we forget about it. Sometimes, we're caught off guard by it. But it never goes away.

11 years ago, Dayana had a son, Pablo. Soon after Dayana gave birth to him, mom came to stay with Dayana to help her out. Things felt different, like the separation was finally fading.

My mom was treating her depression, and was in a much better place. She and Dayana had been able to build a relationship. They'd gotten close.

One day, my mom was changing Pablo's diaper.

Cindy Carcamo

That was the hope, anyway-- Pablo would help them finally repair this 30-year-old hurt. And then Pablo turned eight.

Cindy Carcamo

When Dayana had Pablo, she had a hard time leaving him with his nanny, or even his grandparents. She didn't like being away from him. When Pablo was a toddler, she told me she was looking at getting him microchipped, just to be sure they wouldn't be separated.

I was taken aback, and sort of teased her. I was like, he's not a dog, Dayana. Isn't that illegal?

Cindy Carcamo

Dayana is type A in general, but it's hard not to draw a line between her being left behind and this fear that she has of ever being separated from Pablo. I brought it up to her. To my surprise, it was like a light bulb went off. She'd never connected those things. And it made sense to her, the idea that all of this was now shaping Pablo's life, too, a whole generation later.

Two years ago, there was something of a reckoning in my family, at my birthday. It started out as an argument about family history, like about my paternal grandmother's politics. But it became about all of this.

Everything Dayana was feeling exploded. She finally told my mom how she felt, how she hadn't been treated fairly since she was little. She talked about feeling lonely. She said she still felt like she needed to please mom, and never could.

My mom apologized. She asked for forgiveness, but Dayana was so angry. Things haven't been the same since.

Cindy Carcamo

At that birthday, during that fight, I did something I really hadn't done before-- I changed my role. Finding our way through all of this, I'd always tried to stay neutral, an intermediary. But in this case, I switched. I stood up for Dayana.

I stepped in-between them, not as a neutral peacekeeper, but to defend my sister. I've been doing that more and more, lately. Recently, I was reporting and talking to a bunch of moms at the border in Tijuana. They worried they'd be separated from their kids.

I got really upset, and kept thinking about Dayana, about how she was left behind for so long. So I called her. I felt compelled to tell her what I'd seen.

She said she just felt awful for those mothers and their kids. Then, I called my mom. She told me she thought it was irresponsible for these mothers to bring their children with them. It was dangerous, she said, and she insinuated that some of the women were lying about why they were leaving, that this was all a trick to bring kids on a journey they shouldn't be on-- which, because of my reporting, I knew it wasn't true.

It kind of infuriated me. And so I said, but mom, these women don't want to leave their kids behind. You had to make a similar choice when you left Dayana, and I don't think it worked out all that great. As soon as I said it, I felt badly. I still do.

Mom was silent. She said, that's completely different. I knew it was a hard thing for mom to hear, but I said it anyway. I felt I needed to-- to stand up for Dayana, in a way, for what she'd been through.

My sister and I made a promise to each other recently, that we're going to be there for each other, no matter what. While we try to fix things with our mom, we're also making a new version of our relationship where now, I'm the one looking out for my big sister, Dayana, protecting her as much as she always did for me.

Bim Adewunmi

Cindy Carcamo is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times. Coming up, dee dee dah, pa joo wah-- we translate from Sister to English for you. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Bim Adewunmi

It's the BBC News Hour. I'm Bim Adewunmi. Kidding-- it's This American Life. I'm sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's program, "Sisters"-- stories about the worlds sisters create together, and what happens when those worlds are unmade. We've arrived at Sister Act Two: Megan and Sybil.

There's this thing that I read years ago that I think about quite often, and it came up a lot as we were putting together this show. It's a Toni Morrison interview from 2015. And the interviewer, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, asked Miss Morrison about her sister, Lois. Were they close? She asked.

And apparently, Toni Morrison gave her an eye roll that she described as, "so sharp it chopped down the question and me." After a long pause, she gave her answer-- my sister? I need her. I think about it because the language is so simple, yet so grand. I get it-- the person you need to that degree that it defines so much of who you are.

The first act of our show was about someone who had spent decades trying to close the gap with her sister because they were apart until she was eight years old. This next story is the reverse-- these sisters, Megan and Sybil Neuringer, were together up through eight. Their separation started when they were nine. Lilly Sullivan has the story.

Lilly Sullivan

The sisters in this story are Megan and Sybil. They're twins-- identical. And when you ask Megan to describe her childhood, ages zero through nine, she doesn't hesitate. She told me it felt like heaven.

Lilly Sullivan

Sybil died when they were nine years old. And it's only recently that Megan's really started talking about Sybil at all. For decades, it's been too hard. It wasn't only that she died, it was also the way that they were separated.

It was really sudden. She told me it was September, the beginning of fifth grade. The school day had just ended. They were walking with a group of kids, and stopped at a hot dog stand.

Lilly Sullivan

The ambulance took Sybil to the hospital. Megan went home and waited, alone. She desperately wanted to see Sybil, but her parents didn't let her. So she never saw Sybil again.

Megan remembers when her mom told her they were going to unplug Sybil, how angry she was, and how she begged them not to.

Lilly Sullivan

Without Sybil, Megan really didn't know who she was or who she should be. So she started inventing ways to keep Sibyl around.

Lilly Sullivan

She became disciplined. She also started doing all the things Sybil was no longer doing-- the things Sybil loved, like her ballet classes. Sybil had loved ballet. Megan had quit years earlier-- too strict. The leotards were too girly for her, and it bugged her how the teacher would always be telling her to pull her tush in.

Lilly Sullivan

Sybil had written poetry, so Megan started writing poetry, too. That one, she liked, though-- sitting at her desk in their room, composing in her journal the way Sybil had.

Lilly Sullivan

Making it meant if there was any opportunity to achieve, she owed it to Sybil to excel. So a few months after Sybil died, there was this thing at school-- the Presidential Fitness Award, one of those national fitness tests they made lots of kids do back in the '80s that everyone seems to remember with a sense of shame and failure-- how long could you hold the sitting V, dangling in front of your classmates in gym, trying to do a pull-up?

Lilly Sullivan

That first year after Sybil died, Megan doesn't remember letting herself cry about Sybil. She didn't talk about her. She felt like if she started crying, she'd never stop. She'd cry so much that she'd end up in a mental hospital.

As she got older, she'd get stuck on certain thoughts-- that she should have been the one who died, that Sybil was the better twin. She often thought about killing herself, but thought, what an insult to Sybil. Her parents weren't much help with any of this.

They talked about sending her to a therapist, but Megan didn't want to go, and they didn't force her. So they just never talked about any of it.

Lilly Sullivan

She made a point of trying to act like everything was fine, to hold it together. And as she got into high school, she got even more intense, doing this thing she sometimes calls double living-- living a life that's not just the best, but twice as good as a normal life, for Sybil.

Lilly Sullivan

By the time she's an adult, that voice in her head putting pressure on her, it just kind of became Megan's personality, how she thought about herself.

Lilly Sullivan

It's only recently that Megan's started trying to sort out who she is outside of Sybil. This began a few years ago, when her mom was dying of cancer. Megan was with her the whole time, through hospice, and all those days when her mom was in and out of consciousness, on morphine, in that middle place between living and dying.

Lilly Sullivan

Megan had thought that if she could do the right things, then she might start feeling less dead, but it wasn't working. So just in the past few years, she's started to let go of this project to live for Sybil. It hasn't been easy, but she feels more like herself.

She's put down some of that anger she's always had about the injustice of Sybil's death. And that's cleared the way for her to feel more like she did when they were together. It surprised her, she said. She feels close to Sybil again. She loves her.

Bim Adewunmi

Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. Before we go, there's this passage from Housekeeping, a novel about two sisters written by Marilynne Robinson, published in 1980. It nails something about sisters that I just really identify with-- the kind of inadvertent performance sisters sometimes put on that people notice and are drawn to.

She writes, "Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades.

If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it. Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug. And it is the smugness, as much as the comfort and safety, that lonely people covet and admire."

Bim Adewunmi

Our show today was produced by Laura Starecheski and Lilly Sullivan. The people who put together today's show include Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Damien Graef, Chana Joffe-Walt, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Ari Saperstein, Alissa Shipp, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman, senior editor David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Cindy and Dayana Carcamo's mother, Reed Johnson, Luz Paz, Cora, Nick Fainbarg, Sylvie and Brian Malamet, Maggie and Lila Margulies, Noga Newberg, and my big sister, Ade Adewunmi. Fact checking by Andrea López-Cruzado and Christopher Swetala.

Our website-- thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 700 episodes for absolutely free. And there's videos, and lists of favorite shows, and tons of other stuff there, too. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Special thanks to our regular host, Ira Glass. He's got this ritual before every interview-- he goes to the bathroom, looks straight in the mirror, and has a pep talk conversation with himself-- oh, it's a good thing you're smart. I'm glad you're smart. Yeah, I am smart.

I'm Bim Adewunmi. We'll be back next week with more stories of This American Life.