Background Check

 The other day, Amanda posted on Facebook an article about an Irish woman in America who took one of those DNA ancestry tests. Basically, you swab the insides of your mouth with a cotton bud and send it off to a lab somewhere Singapore Airlines wouldn’t dream of flying to, and clever people in white lab coats analyse the saliva and then tell you all about your ancestors.

            So, this Irish woman sent her swab off, fully expecting it to come back confirming she was Irish. Turned out she and her siblings were all half-Jewish which made no sense, since both her parents were full-blown Irish. She started testing the rest of her family. Her mother, who was still alive, and her side of the family were all Irish. Her father was dead, but his siblings all had Irish stock, which could only mean that her father was the one who carried the Jewish strain.

            To cut a long story short, it turned out that her father had been born to a Jewish family and at the hospital, he’d been mixed up with another baby, and given to the wrong (Irish) family.

            “He didn’t look like his other siblings,” this Irish woman said of her father. Meanwhile, the other (Irish) baby had been sent home with the wrong (Jewish) family.

            “Can you imagine that happening?” Saffy said later that evening. “You think you’re family, but actually, you are compete strangers just because a nurse mixed up your identity tag.”

            “If that sort of thing doesn’t make you neurotic in the hospital, I don’t know what would,” Amanda sighed. “They should just make the mother slip the name tag on the kid as soon she pops it out! That way, there’s absolutely no doubt as to whose kid it is!”

            Meanwhile, my sister, who has long suspected that this very baby swap thing happened to her, says, she, for one, will be getting a DNA swab test.

            “Really?” I asked her on FaceTime. “You want to risk it? But you’re my sister! I can’t suddenly not have a sister!”

            Michelle’s fuzzy image shifted a few seconds behind real time. “Well, I don’t think relationships are based necessarily on blood ties,” she sniffed. “You’ll always be my brother, regardless of the results. I mean, what if I’m really the daughter of the King of Cambodia?”

            When my mother heard about Michelle’s plans, she said, “And what if she’s really the daughter of Jasmine Poon? Jasmine was in the hospital ward next to me when Michelle was born, and Jasmine was giving birth to Ophelia, that dreadful woman, and I can assure you that there’s a much higher probability that your ungrateful sister is Jasmine’s daughter than she is a Sihanouk! Let’s see how she would like being a Poon! God,” Mother said as a thought occurred to her. “If our babies really were swapped, that means Ophelia is your sister!”

            I literally yelped. Because Ophelia Poon was awful as a child, and she’s even worse now as a grown up. Everyone hates the woman. Especially her four ex-husbands. And her Filipino maid who recently reported her to the Ministry of Manpower for not paying her for the past eight months.

            “And who’s this Jasmine Poon?” Amanda asked.

            “A ghastly socialite contemporary of my mother’s,” I told her. “Her first husband left her when Ophelia was six and became a drag queen. Her stage name was Chantelle Lash. And Jasmine’s second husband liked to wear women’s underwear under his three-piece Turnbull & Asser suits!”

            “God, you had such interesting family friends!” Saffy moaned.

            Of course, I immediately called Michelle and reported our Mother’s inexpert forensic opinion. She gasped. “Oh my God, I could be a Poon?!”

            “I really don’t think you should open this can of worms. You’re much better off being a Hahn,” I told her earnestly. “And really, I can’t bear the idea of Ophelia Poon being my sister!”

            “Surely, those can’t be my only options,” Michelle said. “Mother or Jasmine! Who else was in the hospital the day I was born?”

            “This cannot end well,” I predicted. When we ended the call, Michelle had said she was going to meditate on it. “Ignorance is bliss!” I assured her.

            “You sound like one of those Instagram memes!” Amanda told me.

            “Can you imagine having Ophelia Poon as my sister?” I repeated for what must have been the eighteenth time that day.

            Saffy says the possibilities are enthralling. “What if Gong Li was your sister?” she asked. “How fab would that be?”

            Mother says sometimes she wishes she’d been a nun and had never had children.