Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited (2 page)

“So,
I
was born on November 19, 1987,” I explained. Could she be my twin sister? Her name was very American, “Samantha Futerman,” so she must have been adopted, too. Now that I could see her closely, I could see details that I hadn’t seen before.
Mon Dieu
, she even has the same freckles on her nose as I have! By the time I got off the bus, I was beginning to feel faint.

On the walk to school, I was a wreck. I called my parents to tell them what I had learned. My mother gasped when I told her about the shared birth date. “Do you think she could be your twin sister?” she asked in disbelief.

My dad called back later but he was skeptical. He told
me he wanted to look up “Samantha Futerman” himself to see what he could find. Five minutes later, he called back saying she wasn’t my twin, as he had found a website that indicated she had been born on the first of November, not the nineteenth. He admitted several sites had said “November 19,” but he needed me to be aware that there were other “facts” that contradicted the date I chose to believe. We hung up with him locked into the idea that it wasn’t possible for Samantha Futerman to be my twin.

The day was so strange. I was feeling completely turned around. I think I was in shock, but I just didn’t know it. When I finally settled into the studio and started working on my collection, spreading my fabric out on my worktable, I still kept staring at Samantha’s photo on my laptop as I obsessively reread her IMDB profile. I was impressed to see that she had been in several films, some of them big, including
Memoirs of a Geisha
, an adaptation from a huge international bestselling book, which I had seen with my mother when it came to France when I was seventeen. Samantha played a young Japanese girl named Satsu, the older sister of the lead role. At the time, she did not jump out at me as my doppelgänger. She was heavily made up to look Japanese.

My studio mates were hard at work, but at the risk of being annoying, I simply had to communicate my excitement. “That girl is born the same day as me, and she’s adopted, too!” I’d blurt out whenever the urge hit me. I had no proof she was related to me, but it was making complete sense in my head, and I was compelled to share. People could draw their own conclusions, but I was already convinced.

Things started getting even freakier really fast. Lucas directed me to several more YouTube videos he had discovered that featured Samantha, pointing out that she and I had
the same inflection and delivery in our voices. No video of Samantha’s blew me away more than the one titled “How It Feels to Be Adopted . . . I Am Sam.” It was a humorous three-minute skit of Samantha being questioned about her feelings about adoption. Friends were asking her purposefully naïve questions, such as . . . was she from South or North Korea, how come she didn’t look like the rest of her family, and if she felt sad and alone because her birth parents had given her up. She reveals that she has two American brothers, one of whom we meet in the video. Did this mean I had two American brothers, too? At one point, she dresses up as Little Orphan Annie and belts out the song “Tomorrow.” I found it incredibly amusing, but more important, it was my confirmation that we were twins. Her mannerisms, her voice, even her sense of humor . . . were mine.

I raced home to the safety of my computer, where I started sending the “How It Feels to Be Adopted . . . I Am Sam” video to everyone I could think of. Enlisting friends, I also launched my massive campaign to figure out a way to get in touch with Samantha Futerman, putting all my faith in social media. We were unsuccessful in locating a Facebook page for her, but Kelsang did find her Instagram on his cell phone. We went through all of her pictures, with me feeling a little guilty at the depths of my snooping, but it was so much fun! We found very recent pictures of her on a trip to Korea. One of them had her posing with a woman she identified as her foster mother. She looked very happy to be with her.

Next, we found “Samantha Futerman” on Twitter. She had been tweeting a lot lately, so I got to spy on her back-and-forth conversations. As paradoxical as it sounds, I was discovering her both slowly and quickly, all without her knowledge.
Someone suggested we try working backward to find her Facebook page by finding a relative of hers on her Twitter, then seeing if we could locate that person’s Facebook page. If we were successful, we could hope to find a “Samantha” in that list of “friends.”

We chose a Twitterer named “JoFuterman,” searched the name on Facebook, opened Jo Futerman’s “friends” inventory, and had a match! Someone named “Samantha” was on Jo’s list! I clicked on her name, and up came the same photo we’d seen on her Instagram. I had found her! Most of her information was private, but I would find a way to contact her, no matter what I had to do. Flying to America crossed my mind, but I would save that as a last resort.

I started composing a message with what I thought was just the right tone: not too scary, not too funny, something that would not freak her out and put her off, but would be serious enough to attract her interest.

Finally, I sent a friend request with the following message:

Hey, My name is Anaïs, I am French and live in London. About 2 months ago, my friend was watching one of your videos with Kevjumba on youtube, and he saw you and thought we looked really similar . . . like . . . VERY REALLY SIMILAR . . . we were making jokes, about it etc. (I’m always being violent with people and hitting them too hahaha)

Today, he saw the trailer of 21 & over and told me he saw you again, I then checked your name on the cast, stalked you A BIT, and found out you were born on the 19th of November 1987.

I checked more of your videos (which are hilarious) and then came upon the “how it feels to be adopted” . . . and discovered you were adopted too.

So . . . I don’t want to be too Lindsay Lohan, well . . . but . . . how to put it . . . I was wondering where you were born?

I was born on the 19th of November 1987, in Busan but my papers were made at the Holt Children’s Institute, so “officially” I was born in Seoul. My Korean name is Kim Eun Hwa. I arrived in France the 5th March 1988, so 3 months later.

You can check my Facebook if you want to check the pictures and the videos. It’s more obvious on videos . . .

Let me know . . . don’t freak out . . .

Lots of Love

Anaïs

I absolutely had to get her attention. I needed her to answer me in any fashion she wanted, but I needed her to know I was looking for her.

the day a french girl landed on my lap . . . top

When I got out of bed on February 21, 2013, I believed that my entire day was going to revolve around the premiere of a movie I was in, a major release called
21 & Over
. This was my third year living in Los Angeles, doing the acting/waitressing thing. When I wasn’t in a role or auditioning for one, I worked as a waitress in an upscale brasserie in Beverly Hills. Being cast in films like
21 & Over
was a good reminder that I was progressing in my career and not just chasing an empty dream.

The premiere that night was a red carpet event. Being the total spaz that I am, I don’t really like walking the carpet. I find it completely nerve-wracking and not in the least bit appealing. I know it would be more fascinating if I liked the glamour of galas like this, but the truth is, I get uncomfortable, probably because I feel like it’s crazy that I’m even at these stylish parties, with all the Hollywood heavy hitters. Even when I get dressed up, I feel like I should be on the catering staff, passing hors d’oeuvres, as I do in my financial supporting role of “waitress.” I always find myself eyeing
empty drink glasses, wondering if I should put them on a small round tray and take them to the kitchen.

This was the second red carpet event of my career. My first one, the opening of
Memoirs of a Geisha
, had definitely been an experience—glamorous, thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. I don’t remember many details, except that the food was incredible. I ate and drank myself to the point of delirium and left the party the happier for it.

The premiere of
21 & Over
was being held at the Westwood Village Regency Theatre, which added to the extravagance of it. This grand old movie house, formerly the Fox Theatre, has hosted some of the biggest premieres in the history of Hollywood, including those of the Harry Potter franchise. I was a huge fan of Harry Potter, but I could never be cast in the films—when J. K. Rowling sold the rights to Warner Bros. in 1998, she stipulated that the cast be British, except parts whose nationalities were identified in the books. As she didn’t have any Asian Jewish female characters, that eliminated me. But, just being in the same venue as the opening of such a monumental film series made me look forward to it.

All the stars of
21 & Over
, including Miles Teller, Justin Chon, and Skylar Astin, were going to be in attendance. We had loads of fun filming together. Justin and I even went barhopping after set, tossing back beers while bonding over being Asian-American actors.

Like most mothers today, mine was cursed with contemporary-reference dyslexia and kept getting the name of the film confused. But I know she loves me, and getting the movie’s name right wasn’t the most important thing in the world. She had raised me with love and support, and I honored her for that.

The day of the premiere was also my father’s birthday. He was turning . . . old. Little did I know that on his special day, I would soon be getting a huge gift of my own, one my whole family would enjoy for the rest of our lives.

I woke up early on the twenty-first, “early” generally falling between the hours of eight and ten a.m. I headed over to my girlfriend Lauren’s apartment to have my nails painted. Lauren was a hostess at the restaurant where I waitressed, and we had become close friends with our shared crude senses of humor. Being a Jersey girl, I would be a complete disgrace if I stepped onto the red carpet without a manicure, and Lauren had offered to be my nail artist for the gala. Around eleven, while we were chatting and doing my nails, a Twitter message from someone I didn’t know popped up on my iPhone. “Hey Sam, my friend Anaïs sent you a message on FB, check it [smile] (it might be in the spam box).”

Normally, a stranger contacting me via Twitter or Facebook would creep me out. I had all my Facebook settings set to “private” in order to avoid these strangers reaching me. However, this time for some unknown reason, I pulled up my Facebook page to see what this was all about. I didn’t have a message from an “Anaïs,” so I checked my friend requests. Right there, about one square inch in size, I saw a picture of myself. My first thought was . . . Great, a creepy KevJumba fan saw me on his YouTube channel and made a fake Facebook page of me. Kevin had a massive YouTube following and very dedicated subscribers, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. And with all the “catfishing” out there, who’s to say what the truth was. But I clicked into the picture anyway. That’s when I realized it was not a picture of me. It was an actual . . . girl . . . a real live girl named Anaïs who looked
exactly like me. As I clicked around her profile, I learned that she was twenty-five and lived in London.

I saw that we shared a birth date, but for some reason, it didn’t register as something significant. It was more like, Oh yeah . . . same birthday . . . hmm . . . weird. I showed Anaïs’s friend request to Lauren, who was still painting my nails, but neither of us knew what I should do about it. Finally, again for some inexplicable reason, I decided that Anaïs was legit, and I accepted her friend request.

Just as quickly as I had friended her, I wished I hadn’t. I rarely accepted strangers into my world, and I was already regretting my haste in this decision. Excusing myself from Lauren’s polishing, I went over to her computer and changed my Facebook privacy settings immediately. This way, Anaïs would have only a restricted view of my profile, which made me feel much more secure. Just because she looked like me didn’t mean I had to let my guard down.

A second or two after my settings were fixed, my phone alerted me to a Facebook message from this very Anaïs who I was trying to keep at arm’s length. Anaïs Bordier. Just when I thought I was at a safe distance, here she was again. I felt strangely calm as I decided to see what she had to say. It was almost as if there was some divine intervention guiding me toward someone I was destined to encounter. I had no other explanation.

I didn’t know what to think about the girl’s message. She was awesome, and I loved her “Lindsay Lohan” reference to
The Parent Trap
. In that movie, Lindsay Lohan plays both sisters in a pair of identical twins separated as infants and raised on different continents. I knew Anaïs was implying that somehow we could be identical twin sisters, too,
separated at birth and raised on different continents. Her message seemed too sincere to be a joke. In the pit of my gut, I could feel how possible it was that this could be true.

Now that we were Facebook friends, I had access to her photos and albums, and I got right to examining them. I had to make sure she wasn’t a poser, making up a phony identity. Anaïs was also “secure” in her settings on Facebook, which was a sign that, like me, she took her privacy seriously. Her photos all looked legitimate. What was most impressive about them was that she looked . . . just like me. Not like a cousin, not like a doppelgänger . . . like a mirror image of me.

I started scrolling around her albums for a while. The similarities I was discovering in the pictures were uncanny. In one of them, she was looking at a menu in some restaurant. A commenter had written facetiously, “I want this and this and this,” seeming to indicate that Anaïs always wanted to taste everything. That was just like me. I always want to try every single item on the menu, and announce it in an overly excited manner. Even more bizarre, she had freckles just like me, even though Koreans having freckles is highly unusual. I always thought mine were the result of spending too much time lying in the Jersey Shore sun, working on my Snooki tan. Could my freckles be genetic? In a recent Halloween photo of Anaïs, she was dressed as an amazing black bird with crazy wings, which, according to a comment, she had made herself. I loved Halloween, too, and like Anaïs, I usually chose the funny animal costumes, despite the tendency for women to dress one degree sluttier for trick-or-treating. When I was finished with my cyber-stalking, I took a screenshot of Anaïs’s Facebook page and texted it to Justin Chon, the star of
21 & Over
, for his opinion. “Dude, that’s your twin,” he wrote back. Even though that same thought had slightly grazed my mind,
it hadn’t truly occurred to me. I like to protect myself, so even if I believed it was probably true, I didn’t admit it. Instead, I kept my composure and continued to investigate, and by “investigate,” I mean that I sent the screenshot to all the people I knew, so that I could get their opinions on it. What can I say? I like teamwork.

The opinion I valued most was that of my friend Kanoa. He was one of my best friends in Los Angeles, even though I’d only known him a few months. Justin had introduced us and we became close really fast, sharing our funny stories about acting school and commiserating about having to support ourselves as waiters. He was also an ethnic actor. He was hapa, an ethnically ambiguous blend of Chinese, Caucasian, Hawaiian, and a bunch of other races. Whatever they are, he is gorgeous.

Kanoa’s opinion was really gentle and comforting. He didn’t want to say if he thought I had a twin, but he anticipated that I was likely in shock from being contacted by this French look-alike, so he asked me if I was okay. I really appreciated his sensitivity, especially after Justin’s surprisingly bold yet likely true pronouncement. I wanted other opinions, too, especially those of my two older brothers, Matt and Andrew. I told them not to tell Mom and Dad, thinking that would make the situation too big, but I wanted them to check out the pictures and tell me what they thought. Typical of my brothers, they didn’t give me much. Their responses were, “Wow . . . weird”—they were always so predictably generic.

The thread of texts with my friends that ensued was insane. Justin was particularly relentless in his insistence that Anaïs and I were twins. “Sam, that’s your twin. She has to be. It’s your twin. She’s your twin. Twin. Twin. Twin. Twin.”

Finding a long-lost twin only happens in the movies.
Like in
The Parent Trap
! It didn’t happen in real life. Just that past summer, I had been to Korea on a “roots” tour with my mother, and I had had the opportunity to see my birth records at the adoption agency that handled my case in Seoul. There had been no mention of a twin. According to the official record, I had been born alone, a singleton. The document said that my mother had given birth to a daughter two years earlier, so that might mean I had an older sister, if I believed it. That information had been added to the record at a later date, so it was even more suspect than the other information. Who knew what, if anything, was true?

A few weeks earlier, I had been out with a friend named Robyn. She had gone to Korea to find her birth mother. They had a reunion, and when they did a DNA test, it turned out they weren’t a biological match. The birth search had been wrong, based on incorrect information, so Robyn and the woman had briefly thought they had found each other, only to be wrong. In Korea, very few birth mothers are brave enough to actually come forward, so Robyn had been feeling lucky. I couldn’t even fathom her sadness when they discovered the truth.

From my search, I knew I had a birth mother who had no interest in me making contact with her, so I let it go for now although I still hoped that day would come. Now, me having a twin? That was completely inconceivable. Yet, I couldn’t get rid of the thought. I mean, she could be my twin. She shared my birthday, and we looked exactly alike. Stranger things have happened. But what if she wasn’t a twin or even a relative? My head was spinning.

I had to write back to Anaïs, but how do I respond to a message like the one she had sent me? What to say? “Hey. LOL. This is crazy! [smile]. Ttyl?” I just didn’t have a response.