FCYU-Feature Story

My Last Name Mystery
Suddenly, my dad is a question mark.

By Natalie Kozakiewicz

In December 2004, I went to my agency to get copies of my parents’ death certificates, which I needed for college financial aid applications. I left there a different person. In a tiny, crowded room, I found out that the angry, drunken man I thought was my father probably wasn’t. And everything I believed about who I was and where I came from was turned upside down.

My “dad” died of cancer when I was 10. Two years later my mom died too, and my sister and I went into foster care. At age 17, I entered a Supervised Independent Living Program (SILP).

It was one of my SILP directors who asked me in my agency that day: “Who was ‘Cywinski?’ Your mom has that as her last name on her death certificate.”

I knew that my mom had once been married to a guy named John Cywinski. But I always assumed she divorced him and married Michael Orbes, the guy who’d been around as long as I could remember and who I thought was my father.

I never really loved him. When I was 4, he threw a can of Budweiser at my mom. The can rolled under her shoe and my mom broke her leg. Officially, my mom died of a heart attack, but it didn’t help that her broken leg never healed.

“Does that mean my mom was always married to John Cywinski and never to Michael Orbes?” I asked my SILP director.

“Most likely, yes,” he said.

This brought up something that I had always wondered about. “Why does my sister have Orbes as a last name and I don’t?” I asked. “Is it possible that Michael Orbes is not my father?”

“There’s more of a chance that Cywinski might be your father than Orbes,” he said.

Who Am I?

When my SILP director said this, I knew it was true. I was shocked, and flooded with all kinds of confusing questions and fears. Could I really have a live father out there somewhere? If Michael wasn’t my dad, did that mean that this guy John Cywinski was my father? Or was somebody else my dad?

And what about my identity as an orphan? I always felt I was different from other kids in the system who were abandoned by their fathers or didn’t even know their fathers’ names. Sure, my mom and dad were alcoholics, but they didn’t abandon me—they died. If my dad had left me, I wasn’t an orphan anymore. I was just another ghetto child in foster care who never knew her father.

So much of my past is a mystery to me because there was never anyone to explain things or answer my questions. When my mother was alive, she was an alcoholic and disabled. Michael was sick, too, missing his hair from cancer and usually locked up in his room drunk. I had to make sense out of things the best I could.

A Disturbing Memory

My mom had told me she’d left Ohio to escape John Cywinski, so right after the meeting I went to a computer and looked up “John Cywinski” in Ohio. There were a lot, and I wrote down some of their locations. Then I thought, “If Cywinski is my father, I might not be so happy.”

My mom told me Cywinski had abused her. When I was about 11 and we were living in Brooklyn, my mom got a threatening call from him that terrified her. She piled chairs in front of the door of the tiny one-bedroom apartment where we lived with my sister and grandmother. My mom grabbed a big kitchen knife and said she’d be ready for him if he came, but he never did. When I think of the name “John Cywinski,” I remember being frightened and feeling, “This is serious.”

What was he after? I didn’t know then, and thought maybe my mom had overreacted. Now I wondered if Cywinski wanted to see me. Could my mom have gotten pregnant by him in Ohio before having me in New York? If he was my dad, did he know I existed? The smack of reality my SILP director gave me left me with lots of questions, but no answers.

Trying to Understand

It was getting late and I decided not to do anything with all the John Cywinskis I found on the Internet. For the moment, I would just leave things alone.

But on the train home that evening, I wrote out possibilities and questions on a little piece of paper. I wanted to understand this mix-up.

This wasn’t the first surprise I had over my identity and name. When I was 10, my Social Security card came in the mail and my mom told me to sign it using the name “Tabitha.” This surprised me, because I grew up being called Natalie, the name on all my school records.

When I asked my mom why I shouldn’t sign my name on my Social Security card, she said Natalie wasn’t my real name! Michael, she explained, didn’t like the name “Tabitha,” so they gave me a new one when I was a baby!

On my birth certificate, there was no name at all under “father.” So who was my father? I was really hype about this mystery and called up my sister, Cynthia, who is 18 months younger than I am. I was talking really hype, too, and started to tell her how I found out we might not have the same fathers.

“No, no that’s not true,” she said. Cynthia got really quiet.

I told her I had my reasons for believing it, but she wouldn’t listen. Then I realized my exciting news might bother her. If Michael wasn’t my dad, she might feel even more alone because she would be the only one to lose both parents. Maybe it upset her to find out she didn’t have a full-blooded sister.

I didn’t think it mattered much since we’ve been there for each other all our lives. Same father or not, Cynthia is still my sister. I love her the same whether we’re related 100%, 50% or 0%! But I couldn’t talk to her about this because she didn’t want to hear it.

My Ideal Dad

I realized that I had a fantasy of who I wanted my father to be. After Michael died, my mom had a boyfriend named Donnie with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes like me. He had a real job, and always helped out with groceries or brought us take-out food during the weekends. He stopped by on our birthdays and went to dinner parties that my mom organized at restaurants. After my mother died, he stayed in touch for while, bringing us presents and visiting. He felt so much more like a father than Michael.

I realized that finding out if I had a father was a really big deal. I thought about steps I could take to find out the truth. For instance, my sister and I have a family friend, Monika, who said she is keeping a secret from Cynthia and me until she feels we’re old enough to understand.

She has dropped a lot of hints about how my sister Cynthia and I don’t look alike. I could ask Monika to tell me something about my dad. She might know because she and my mom used to talk about private, serious things, things my mother never talked to me about.

I could also ask Cynthia to take a DNA test with me to find out if we were full-blooded sisters. But I don’t want to ask her since she wants to ignore the whole thing.

Should I Solve the Mystery...

Not long ago, I thought about all the pros and cons of trying to solve this mystery. The main reason I want to meet my father (if I have one) is to find out more about my mother. I want to know how my father met my mother, and what she was like, because she died before I got to know her well. If I found out I had a living father, he could tell me things about my mom I never knew, like what kind of jobs she held, whether he was in love with her or if he was married to her when I was made.

My father is just a big question mark to me, but I’m curious about my mom because she seems more real and I miss her. I have memories of her cooking us chicken in red sauce in her wheelchair and hugging us before we went to school. She felt chubby and warm when her arms went around me.

If my father turned out to be John Cywinski, I’d want to know about his family background, and his other relatives, who would be my relatives, too. My mom kept a picture of him with his first daughter, who was older than me. If Cywinski was my dad, that girl would be my half-sister.

And if Cywinski wasn’t my dad, maybe I could turn out to have a nice father. I wonder what that might be like.

...Or Leave it Alone?

I don’t think it would bother me if it turns out that my real father is dead. Ever since I was 10 I thought I had a dead father, so that would be nothing new. Even if he turned out to be alive and I didn’t like him, it wouldn’t matter: I have plenty of people who have been there, and are here, for me.

But then I thought of the cons: I don’t want to make my sister feel even more alone because she can’t share the loss of both parents with me anymore. And if Cywinski is my dad and turns out to be alive, he might terrify me like he terrified my mom. Being around a violent man would make my life a lot more complicated. That I don’t need.

Also, I don’t put much stock in biological relationships. I consider two other girls I know my sisters, even though we’re not related. Because Michael was only focused on alcohol, I never really had a father in the first place. I’m so used to not having a dad, I don’t really know what I’d do with one.

Since I had that conversation with my SILP director a few months ago, I’ve realized I’m not so hype about finding out more—not right now at least.

I have more serious priorities, such as my spring semester grades, summer classes and finding a summer job. Maybe in the future, when I get these things done, I’ll see if I really need to know the answer to my last name mystery.