In 1835, the French chemist Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier noticed that when he opened a container of liquid carbon dioxide, a solid ice which evaporates without melting had formed at the bottom. This solid form of CO2 would later become known as dry ice. Among its many uses, from refrigeration to theater smoke, dry ice made it possible for the long-term storage of specimens in cryobanks which help aspiring parents conceive children outside traditional methods.
My mother chose my biological father from the online catalog on a cryobank website. At the time he became an anonymous donor, he was in medical school. In the report from the cryobank, the staff called him a “young George Clooney” and “the complete package,” with looks and a charming personality. He gave me thick brows, long lashes, and dark brown hair.
Through him, I also inherited his mother’s singing voice. However, it turned out the cryobank had missed some things about him.
Before my mother and five-year-old me moved to the Bay Area to live with my maternal grandmother, we lived in an LA apartment complex near the medical center where she was completing her residency. There was a pool in the back which was open during the summer. My mother would lay me on my back in the water and hold me up. Overstimulated, my hands would flap and I would squeal.
In elementary school, I developed an eye twitch, repetitive hand-flexing, and impulsive deep breathing. When my mother and the mothers of my half siblings reported to the cryobank their children had been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, the cryobank restricted my donor’s donations.
Every year of elementary school, my mother explained to my teacher not to take offense when I rolled my eyes or made a squealing sound in the middle of class. Of course, that didn’t stop the stares or questions from my classmates.
On Father’s Day, while everyone else was writing letters to their fathers, my teachers allowed me to do whatever I wanted. Usually, I wrote about a life I had dreamed up for him. Sometimes he was a movie star, other times he was the king of a fictional kingdom, or Santa Claus.
In third or fourth grade, a teacher recommended to my mother I get treatment for Tourette’s because my tics were disruptive during class. Mom took me to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In CBT, I was split. On one side, the silence of the impulses I spent hours dutifully tallying in a little blue notebook my therapist gave me. On the other side, the praises from my mother and the therapist whenever I used the responses I was learning to beat down my impulses. One, two, three, four blinks per impulse. One, two, three, four breaths per impulse.
“You are so close to overcoming Tourette’s,” the therapist would say. My chest would swell with pride.
On one side, my anonymous donor and his family, a white vapor like dry ice when it evaporates. On the other side, my mother’s family, the constant presence who has raised me.
His name dropped into the private Facebook group for the parents of his offspring. The group had grown over the years, and so far, I knew of at least thirty of my half siblings. I had only met a couple of them in awkward video calls. Unlike the cryobank’s description of my donor, I am not very good at socializing. To my surprise, the man who turned out to be my donor is also not very good at socializing. I do not know how the mothers of my half siblings found him. All I know is this: He is a doctor in Nevada, somewhere around Las Vegas. People describe him as superficial. He hasn’t been in touch with his family for years. He has Tourette’s syndrome. And he doesn’t want contact with any of his offspring.
By that time in seventh grade, already burrowed into me was the idea fighting Tourette’s was a feat of resilience, and a way to correct how my family and others were wronged. Learning the “complete package” was only half full, I was only more determined to be unlike him in every possible way.
My family and I boarded a plane to Las Vegas for my great aunt’s 90th birthday. I was thirteen, and it was my first time leaving California. I was too ecstatic to notice the rips in the seats or complain about the bitter airplane coffee. I sat on my hands so they wouldn’t flap and devoured the view from the oval window.
Mountains emerged from the haze. Compact, identical houses spanned for miles. Las Vegas was a blur of tans, browns, and subtle red. On the outskirts of the airport, palm trees stood against the barren sky. My ears popped as the plane touched down on the runway, speeding towards the terminal. For a split second I thought we would crash through The Strip. From a distance, the casinos looked like cardboard cut-outs from a children’s book. Among the towers stood an immobile Ferris wheel, painted white.
Upon exiting the plane, video slot machines flashed in our faces, promising million-dollar jackpots. They jingled, chimed, and whirred. Wheels of fortune spun on screens. A store near our gate overflowed with baskets of candies in thin paper wrappers and the smell of caramel popcorn. People in hijabs, turbans, and cowboy hats milled around, speaking with foreign accents.
As we continued to baggage claim, we passed billboards showing women in bikinis lounging on beach chairs, a bare-chested man staring down his enemy in a boxing ring, and a magical card deck spread out on a table. Everything was vying for my attention. Nothing could keep my attention for very long. My hands flapped and my mouth opened. A couple people glanced over at me. I stuffed one hand in my jacket pocket, and the other I put over my mouth as if to cover a yawn.
We left the airport and followed a line along the curb to wait for a taxi. My eyes watered as the fumes of cigarette smoke blew in my face with the desert breeze. A taxi pulled up to the curb in front of us. My mother explained to the driver where we were going. He frowned and said he didn’t know that area. The couple behind us in line told him they were on their way to a resort. The driver smiled and opened the door of his vehicle for them.
We waited a couple more minutes in the heat and smoke before a Desert Cab pulled up in front of us. My mother repeated what she’d said to the previous driver. This one, a broad- shouldered, fifty-something Japanese man wearing a T-shirt which said FIERCE, nodded in comprehension. Soon I was in the backseat of the taxi rumbling across a freeway leading straight into the mountains.
Our driver, Robert Takahashi, had been working at his job for ten years. “The only constant thing in Las Vegas is change,” he said, as we passed fast food drive-thrus and rows of modern tan square houses. “The city is always reinventing itself.”
“What are those mountains called?” I asked.
“Those are the Spring Mountains. The jagged ones are relatively new. The rounded ones are older. That red tint comes from iron. You can see the layers that have built up after thousands of years. During winter they are capped with snow. But it isn’t cold enough, so they melt pretty quickly. Lots of coyotes and mountain lions live there.”
I could not imagine living creatures dwelling somewhere with no trees, no depths to take refuge from the heat, not even prickly cacti. “How?”
“There’s a forest way up there, on the other side.”
He dropped us off in front of the senior home, a flat building overlooking a golf course. The jagged mountains did little to shield it from the sun. My mother took out her credit card to pay Robert, muttering under her breath that we were five minutes late. I decided it was the wrong time to ask her about the stop I wanted to make on the way back to the airport that evening.
My great aunt’s party took place in the dining room. The walls were decked with framed black-and-white photographs of young men and women, likely movie-stars at their prime when my grandparents were teenagers. Round tables and velvet-seated chairs were positioned in a semi-circle, allowing a view of a screen broadcasting a slideshow with photographs of my great aunt throughout her life. Some I recognized. They stood on the mantel at home, above the fireplace my family did not use.
Most of the people in attendance were aunts, uncles, first and second cousins.
People I’d grown up sharing dishes with at restaurants. People who had received birthday cards from me, who had given me birthday cards.
While many of my characteristics obviously came from my paternal side, I share a lot with my maternal side. The majority of the women at the gathering did not surpass a height of 5’3”. I am 5’0”, and that was the year I stopped growing. We have slight Devil’s peaks on our foreheads. We are life-long readers.
Even with all those similarities, I still felt distant from the people I had known all my life. I imagined an alternate dining room, in which my donor, his brothers, and his parents sat around these tables. I saw myself laughing at something my donor said, and desperately wanted to know the inside joke imaginary-me and my donor found so funny.
After answering my family’s questions about school, I sank into a chair in the corner of the dining room, watching my mother in conversation with my grandmother and my great aunt. Their laughter at old-time family stories stretched out the minutes before the buffet opened and Mom migrated to my table.
As I rose to get food, I slid her the crinkled map directions to the medical center which had come up when I Googled my donor’s name. When I returned with my omelet, she was chatting with our cousins at another table. The map was folded neatly and set on my napkin.
Our taxi stopped in front of a squat rectangular building at the side of the road the same color as the desert, made distinct only by the sign outside that declared it was a medical center.
Sensing me, the glass doors of the medical center split open. The women at the front desk of the lobby smiled sympathetically when I told her I would like to go to the ER. “What’s wrong, dear?”
I gave her a story about how one of the doctors had saved my aunt. Then I said his name aloud, thrice, because the first two times were muffled. She typed something on her keyboard. I rubbed my hands together, trying to get rid of the sweat. My eyelids tingled with the impulse to stretch out. I fought it. One, two, three, four blinks.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name here. Maybe he works somewhere else?” Her voice sounded like one of those slot machines at the airport, which produce the same cheerful music regardless of whether you’ve won or lost.
“Oh, thank you.” I turned on my burning heels and left the medical center. I wondered why my donor wanted to work in a place of constant change and heat, and yet so cold in the way one could create a distance between themself and the world just by going from one place to the next.
I met twenty of my half siblings on Zoom at the height of the pandemic. Although I’d already seen some of their photos on Facebook, I did a double take as their faces popped up with the digital sound effect of a doorbell ringing. I was one of the youngest siblings; most of them were already in high school. We shared some of the same features, even the same interests like writing and music. Like kids at a summer camp, we went through icebreakers. Would-you- rather, what would you do if you won a lottery, what would you take to a desert island?
We met only three times that summer, but it was enough to make me start questioning the ableism I had been internalizing for years. Here were people who share half of my genetic material. They’re smart, funny, and work hard at what they love to do. And some of them, like me, have Tourette’s. So what?
I asked my mother for the report about my donor from the cryobank. She printed it out at her office, and I flipped through it. On the second page was a questionnaire. My mother dug up a disc and inserted it into the music player in the living room. I lay on my back on the couch, listening to my donor’s husky voice reading his answers.
A sense of self-worth, he said, when asked what advice he would give to his future children. People with a sense of worth have integrity because they don’t need to misrepresent themselves or their abilities. But it all starts early.
The recording halted as though it had slammed into a block of ice.
I was struck by the irony. If my donor had acted like his reserved self and reported his Tourette’s, he would have been rejected by the cryobank. My half siblings and I wouldn’t exist. And so, he misrepresented his personality and abilities.
Or, rather, his disabilities.
I felt like Thilorier, opening a container and finding a new substance inside which defied everything I had known about how I came to be.
But it all starts early. Those last words, a regret.
My mother removed the disc from the music player. I reached my hand out. She handed it to me and drew open the curtains like she did every night before dinner.
As my hands flapped and I didn’t stop them, the disc in my arms soaked in the newborn twilight.
