To my third father,
You never asked me why. Almost three years ago, I announced on the phone, “I’m changing my last name,” while tracking sweaty footprints in my Austin condo. I told you I submitted the court filings, $360.12, and my fingerprints; I emphasized the finality of my decision. If you had asked why, I wonder if I would have told you the truth.
At twenty-seven, I hated how I sounded eleven again, at the elementary school nurse’s office, Dad, I don’t feel good, knowing you’d say, Okay, Tiffster, I’ll be right there. We fit so perfectly together when I wanted you like that. Our edges were seamless when I pretended you had been my father all along.
I loved the version of my story where you were my real dad, as you liked to say, but I couldn’t lie to myself when my Arizona birth certificate—with your name next to mom’s, my birthplace listed as Jakarta—redefined time and genetics and distance, my history made anew.
What I wanted, once, was our storybook ending—beautiful and grand. You married Mom and made her daughters, me and Laura, your family. At twelve, I became a U.S. citizen and your daughter. I believed I chose you. My lips to a microphone the size of a jumbo blueberry, the judge adorned in robes. I said yes in my kitten heels at the podium because I wanted to be adopted. Yet, I didn’t understand consent, the formal severance of me and my biological father. Like magic, my past dissipated.
You said, “Okay, that’s okay, if it’s what you want.” Your voice echoed against your tall-ceilinged bedroom with permission I neither needed nor requested. I wanted you to try. To call me Tiffster, to ask questions, to understand how your Caucasian name blanketed my Chinese Indonesian heritage, erasing my origin and ancestry. I wanted to remind you of the previous last names on my court filings: yours and my biological father’s, not my first stepfather’s because his name was never legally mine.
Here is your chance, I am asking because you haven’t. Tiffster, why did you change your name?
I changed my name because I didn’t want yours.
This is what I’d say for your anger to flicker. I am lying, I am telling the truth. “You look like me and your sister looks like mom,” you loved to tell me this, fingertips on the speckled granite countertop. “Your big eyes are just like mine.” My crescent eyes took after your European ovals, your coworkers said so. I wanted to be biologically yours too. I didn’t remember the truth: I existed before you were my father.
I don’t know when your last name started to feel misshapen on my tongue. Work colleagues, restaurant hostesses, and hotel concierges identified me, and I’d be recognized and mistaken at once. Did anyone hear how the syllables of my names collided? How strange Tiffany sounded a breath before your last name?
I changed my name because I didn’t recognize myself.
My memories reappeared, though. I don’t know where they migrated and how they knew when to return. Everything landed at the same time. Two strangers for fathers. Jakarta and Singapore, Tennessee and Arizona. Four elementary schools. The native language I lost, Bahasa Indonesia. Five years of sibling separation. Laura in Jakarta, me and mom in America. What else would resurface as memory?
The person who could help was Mom—she’s the only family I’ve never separated from. You know this. I interviewed mom about my biological father and their divorce. She showed me the photo albums from the top shelf of the closet you share, faded photographs of my first nuclear family. I learned to fry bakwan jagung udang until golden, photographing mom’s visual measurements of minced green onion, chopped shrimp, corn, flour, and egg.
You stayed on the other side of the house for every moment.
The more interest I had in my heritage, the less interest you showed in me. I think you love Tiffster. Tiffster loved the two-laned road to Albertson’s, Old Bay hamburgers, and your one-armed hugs. Tiffster loved your name. Tiffster is the person who existed in relation to you.
When we spoke, I had already stopped calling you and the landline. I only called Mom. The space between us had expanded every year, like the tick marks inside my childhood closet where you measured my height with a ruler and scraggly pencil markings until I hit 5’ 2” forever. My truth shouldn’t threaten our relationship.
I didn’t change my name to hurt you—I changed my name to choose myself.
This is what I wanted to tell you on the phone: the story of my name. Mom explained it like this: my maternal great-grandparents embedded their Chinese name, Yo, in Sulistojo. It’s hidden where everyone can hear it. The J smooths into a Y, exposing our roots to the air—Sulisto-yo.
Yo encapsulates every version of me. Yo embodies my Chinese Indonesian heritage, and it’s the last name I want to wear. Now you know. Please don’t make me choose between me and you—you know who I’ll pick.
This name is mine,
Tiffany Yo
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Rumpus original art by Liam Golden
