Switched At Birth: A Review of Cindy Jiban’sThe Probable Son
Cindy Jiban’s debut novel, The Probable Son, is an intriguing, troubling exploration into what it means to trust—and question—your gut as a mother. The novel follows Elsa Vargas, a middle school math teacher in Minnesota who suspects that her eighth-grade son, Bird, may have been switched at birth. Elsa has harbored this suspicion since the first moments after Bird’s delivery. Though she immediately shared her doubts with her husband Ham and sister Krista, both attributed her disbelief to the trauma of grieving for Bird’s older sibling, who was stillborn. Her family’s insistence that her concerns about Bird are a trauma response has caused her to doubt herself for years.
Elsa begins to suspect that one of her own middle school students, Thomas, who shares a birthday with Bird and looks very much like Elsa’s younger son, Garvey, is her actual son. In pursuing the question of whether Thomas is, in fact, her real son, Elsa tests her familial relationships and community standing. Elsa engages in a series of questionable acts, including surveillance and invasions of privacy, to determine whether Thomas is her son, leading to ethical questions about how the pursuit of certain truths may cause more harm than good. The actions of Jiban’s protagonist show the dangers of pursuing a path you believe is correct but that will indubitably leave fresh pain in its wake. The complexity of this inquiry, along with the quick and compelling pace of the novel, make this debut a worthwhile read.
As Elsa investigates whether Thomas might be her real son, she is involved in voicing her concerns in a community conflict about the group Boys of America (BOA), which operates much like the Boy Scouts of America. Garvey, Elsa’s younger son, informs her that to join this organization he would need to espouse a Christian devotion that he doesn’t have. Ham and Elsa rally around Garvey’s point that this isn’t fair or legal. By contrast, Bird suggests that if Garvey wants to be in the group he could lightly pretend to have religious faith. For Elsa, Bird’s misalignment with his parents and brother about how to respond to the BOA becomes yet more evidence that he may have been switched at birth. Jiban writes: “here it was again, that mysterious force that prevented them from clicking into place, as if he were a magnet turned backward.” To complicate matters, the BOA is sponsored by the school’s parent teacher organization (PTO). The family attends a forum on the matter, and Elsa is vocal about it on social media; as a result, the larger community in Minnesota is watching Elsa, which complicates her pursuit of the truth as the novel unfolds. The inclusion of BOA as a plot point is reflective of the tremendous impact when people speak up to disrupt the status quo.
The tension with the BOA links to Elsa’s prodding about whether Thomas is her son since Elsa must ask herself to what extent she is willing to risk disruption on multiple levels—with her children, her marriage, Thomas’s family, at the middle school, and in the community—to get to the truth. For instance, Elsa reflects on whether she would be willing to lose Bird, and how this revelation would affect Garvey. If Elsa is right, then she must also be prepared for the implications with her husband, who didn’t support her in the hospital when she claimed that the baby was switched, and who winces whenever Elsa tries to talk about her continuing suspicions. Thus, Elsa questions how much she can trust her family, specifically her husband. Elsa begins to reason that she is “telling lies and creeping around” for Ham’s benefit and that, once he discovers the truth, he “would get to be the magnanimous one, granting forgiveness” to Elsa for her “covert maneuvers in the dark.” She reflects on how “she had tried telling the truth in that maternity ward, and her own family had let her be drugged into silence.” Still, Elsa knows that if she continues to pursue this line of inquiry with Thomas and Bird, she risks immense conflict in her family and community.
Therefore, much of the novel is about the ripples and disruptions of speaking up in public and private spaces. This is evident as well in subpoints through the novel. One example is the implicit racial conflicts in communities. After Elsa braves the school board meeting to question the PTO’s endorsement of BOA, Aneisha, another teacher and another woman of color, tells Elsa not to make “further trouble.” Aneisha tells Elsa that she too has been put “in a box” and limited by the implicit biases of others. Aneisha counsels Elsa to now “be on [her] best.” That idea connects with Bird’s initial response to the BOA: he would rather that Garvey lie than cause conflict. Further, Elsa’s investigation, comments in public forums, and obvious interest in Thomas at school events cause parents and friends to wonder whether she is being inappropriate as a teacher; some assume, for example, that she is romantically attracted to Thomas, and so she finds herself under scrutiny by school administrators. As Elsa begins to realize, the more committed she becomes to solving this mystery, the more that “all the strings between their families [and in the community] could end up going slack and unlacing.” In moments such as these, Jiban offers the perspective of characters who must protect themselves when they don’t uphold the community norm.
In investigating whether Thomas is her son, then, Jiban conveys the realistic complexity of Elsa’s actions. These actions are simultaneously self-protective and vulnerable while verging into unethical territory. Elsa’s conundrum inspires sympathy, especially as so many clues in the story point to the strong possibility that she is right. Sometimes, she seems like an unreliable narrator; other times, her choices, such as collecting Thomas’s spit for a DNA sample by encouraging her middle school students to gleek, are cringeworthy. Readers will likely have a mixture of responses to this protagonist, just as Elsa herself does. Throughout the novel, Elsa is aware of her possible unreliability and the ways she will be judged as a mother and teacher. This mixture of certainty and self-doubt reflect what so many mothers experience as well as the many deep-seated biases against mothers. The Probable Son is laden with this keen awareness through Elsa’s journey to find the truth.