Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I was five when I'd clung to Paul's legs like
Speaker 2: a tree and called him Daddy. I was fifteen when
Speaker 2: the father i'd waited ten years for, the one father
Speaker 2: i'd believed in or thought i'd had a write to,
Speaker 2: abandoned me, just like the others hadn't my other fathers, Gandhi,
Speaker 2: though Frank Robert been building up to this one father
Speaker 2: whose name I shared, who was supposed to stay for good?
Speaker 2: Was I no longer a sky Horse? I was still
Speaker 2: quote unquote Indian closing gearbook signatures the way I had
Speaker 2: in seventh and eighth grades. Quote may the Great Spirit
Speaker 2: guide you end, quote the same signature Paul use in
Speaker 2: his letters. If I wasn't a skyhorse, the only part
Speaker 2: of my identity I felt was quote unquote me. Then
Speaker 2: who was I a Mexican who had no idea what
Speaker 2: being Mexican meant? Pretending to be an American Indian in
Speaker 2: name only, an abandoned son mourning his dead father who
Speaker 2: wasn't dead and wasn't his father.
Speaker 3: That's Brando Skyhorse, writer, Associate professor of English at Indiana University,
Speaker 3: an author of two novels, most recently, My Name is
Speaker 3: Iris and the memoir Take This Man Brando's is a
Speaker 3: story of identity, fantasy, mythmaking, deceit, and, more than anything,
Speaker 3: a life shaped by the profound be longing for a father.
Speaker 3: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 3: that are kept from us, the secret we keep from others,
Speaker 3: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: The landscape of my childhood started in Echo Park, southern California.
Speaker 2: She's a neighborhood adjacent to Dodger Stadium. I was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy three, so it makes me I guess
Speaker 2: gen X. And I was about two or three years
Speaker 2: old when my biological father left my family. And the
Speaker 2: reason I'm hesitating there is because I'd always phrase it
Speaker 2: as him leaving. Later I sort of reframed that understanding
Speaker 2: was perhaps he was kicked out, perhaps there was an
Speaker 2: aggressive move to eject him from our family household. And
Speaker 2: both my biological parents are Mexican American, and my mother
Speaker 2: decided to use that specific incident to essentially reinvent both
Speaker 2: of us as American Indians. She created a persona for herself.
Speaker 2: She created a persona for me. I didn't really know
Speaker 2: that this had happened until I was about twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 2: But that initial landscape, I guess was one of fantasy.
Speaker 2: I suppose I was led to believe that I was
Speaker 2: an American Indian. I was led to believe that I
Speaker 2: was the son of an American Indian chief. You know,
Speaker 2: so three, four or five, six years old, I'd been
Speaker 2: told all of these really fantastical things, and I believe
Speaker 2: them because when you're a child, you believe what your
Speaker 2: parents tell you. My mother had this very specific idea
Speaker 2: of how we, as American Indians were supposed to perform,
Speaker 2: and she gave me this little speech that I was
Speaker 2: supposed to recite, something along the lines of I don't
Speaker 2: remember the exact words, but basically, because of this country's
Speaker 2: treatment of our people, notice of the use of our there,
Speaker 2: I cannot stand. I cannot salute the flag. And I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, going into that classroom and everyone being asked
Speaker 2: to rise with the pledge of allegiance. Because it was
Speaker 2: again the early nineteen eighties, so that was the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that just you know, that happened every day,
Speaker 2: and saying it and sitting down and this is kind
Speaker 2: of like this wave of like anxiety and fear and
Speaker 2: doing it and feeling like in the moment, oh okay,
Speaker 2: well I just sat down and nothing really happened, and
Speaker 2: my teacher really not processing it in a way that
Speaker 2: I guess i'd assumed she would, and her coming over
Speaker 2: to me and laying hands on me and pulling me
Speaker 2: out of my chair and forcing me to physically complete
Speaker 2: the pledge of allegiance and then ejecting me from the classroom.
Speaker 2: So that was first grade. So what yeah, eight years old, seven,
Speaker 2: eight years old something around that.
Speaker 3: And at that time that was still very much your
Speaker 3: belief right that you were American Indian.
Speaker 2: So it was my belief that I was an American Indian.
Speaker 2: I think the idea of outwardly, you know, telling people
Speaker 2: making those kinds of gestures certainly wasn't on my menu
Speaker 2: for these are the things that I want to do
Speaker 2: in a first grade classroom. But the thing that I
Speaker 2: keep returning to is that, you know, essentially, I'm just
Speaker 2: a child that wants to make my mom happy. And
Speaker 2: this was a way that I believed, Oh, if I
Speaker 2: do these things, if I act in these ways, if
Speaker 2: I follow what my mom tells me to do in
Speaker 2: these public spaces. My mom will love me, my mom
Speaker 2: will take care of me. And that was I think
Speaker 2: very important to me, living in a household where I
Speaker 2: had no father figure, no father, no stable father figure,
Speaker 2: and living in a household with just my mom and
Speaker 2: my grandma. So I was very eager to please, very
Speaker 2: very eager to follow what she suggested.
Speaker 3: I do describe your mother a bit, the mother of
Speaker 3: your childhood, the mother of those years.
Speaker 2: The only word I can grasp at is awesome. And
Speaker 2: I mean that in that the larger sense of that word, right,
Speaker 2: just like a force larger than anything else in my life.
Speaker 2: She was hypnotic. She was a fantastic storyteller. She was
Speaker 2: the kind of person that you'd be transfixed, you know,
Speaker 2: she would plant herself in front of you and you
Speaker 2: would have this amazing, phenomenal conversation with her and think,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like that's the most fascinating person that
Speaker 2: I've ever met in my life. She was attractive, She
Speaker 2: had long hair that would go down to her waist,
Speaker 2: and just had this presence about her that, you know,
Speaker 2: people wanted to talk to her. She drew people to
Speaker 2: her and even as a young child, I was in
Speaker 2: awe of her, but I also saw other people in
Speaker 2: awe of her as well, which just adds to that
Speaker 2: idea that, oh, here's this person who whom the world
Speaker 2: is drawn to and circulates around. I think the result
Speaker 2: of that was just giving her that additional credibility that
Speaker 2: when she would tell me these things, was like, well,
Speaker 2: of course they're true, because look at all the people
Speaker 2: around her, look at all the people that are drawn
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The word that kept on coming to me as
Speaker 3: I was reading about your mother was well, there were
Speaker 3: a couple of words, but kind of a fabuloust and
Speaker 3: a fantasist, yes, And the largeness of what she took on,
Speaker 3: what she did by changing not just your name and
Speaker 3: not just her own name, but both of your identity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: her name was Maria Teresa and she was Mexican, and
Speaker 3: she changed her name to Running Deer.
Speaker 2: Yes. It's amazing, isn't it. And it sounds so over
Speaker 2: the top, right, But this was the late seventies, early eighties.
Speaker 2: So this idea that you had this Mexican American woman
Speaker 2: and this Mexican American child living in a predominantly Mexican
Speaker 2: American neighborhood. But of course they're American Indians. And her
Speaker 2: name is Running Deer sky Horse ed. This kid's name
Speaker 2: is Brando s Cars. Of course that's more credible to
Speaker 2: believe than there are actually. Oh, they're just two Mexican
Speaker 2: American people who have adopted these personas. And I think
Speaker 2: again that is a testament to, you know, my mother's
Speaker 2: ability to get people to essentially fall in love with
Speaker 2: her but also fall in love with her narratives.
Speaker 3: In a striking passage from his memoir, Brando writes about
Speaker 3: learning to talk fast and hide the truth. He learned
Speaker 3: to stick to his mother's narrative.
Speaker 2: My father is Paul Skyhorse, my mother is Running Deer Skyhorse.
Speaker 2: They are both full blooded American Indians. My father was
Speaker 2: falsely arrested for killing two FBI agents. My mother was
Speaker 2: a lawyer helping with his defense. I'm the son of
Speaker 2: an Indian chief and will become a chief one day myself.
Speaker 3: Any questions, I mean, it's just it's designed for there
Speaker 3: to be absolutely no questions.
Speaker 2: No, right, you're right, yeah, that's the thing. The idea
Speaker 2: of you know, how much information, right, how much information
Speaker 2: do you need to sell a lie to sell a narrative.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons that I became
Speaker 2: a writer, and one of the reasons that I'm fascinated
Speaker 2: with the idea of how you structure a story, how
Speaker 2: you structure not only a narrative, but one's life, one's
Speaker 2: life's narrative. How do you put that together? What are
Speaker 2: the things that draw people in, and what are the
Speaker 2: things that you can leave out? And everything in that paragraph? Right,
Speaker 2: it's like, wow, this is really all that. Wow a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and you know, kill that behind. Really there's just enough
Speaker 2: of these sorts of like nuggets of fantastical information that
Speaker 2: again it's beyond belief and you feel like, well, who
Speaker 2: would make up something so fantastical? Right, it must be
Speaker 2: true because we've all met those people. So much of
Speaker 2: your story, to my mind, is about longing, longing for
Speaker 2: a father, longing for a father figure. There are many.
Speaker 3: Contenders for this role over the years, quite a few
Speaker 3: of whom fail spectacularly.
Speaker 2: Yes, certainly, But that first.
Speaker 3: Of these is indeed someone named Paul Skyhorse. That's right,
Speaker 3: your mother brings you to see when you're four years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is again that sort of nature of
Speaker 2: how sort of fantastical or beyond belief this is, is
Speaker 2: that in this larger than life experience or this larger
Speaker 2: than life upbringing the idea of like, we're going to
Speaker 2: meet your father, but you know, we're going to meet
Speaker 2: him in this situation that you wouldn't necessarily think it
Speaker 2: would be normal to take a four year old child
Speaker 2: to There are two Paul sky Horses that I met.
Speaker 2: One was in a courtroom or I saw behind glass
Speaker 2: they really meet him. I waived in it, and one
Speaker 2: in prison I get a visitation center, right, And so
Speaker 2: again the way memory works is that you know, it
Speaker 2: took me the longest time to realize, oh, those two
Speaker 2: sky horses. Of course they couldn't have been the same person,
Speaker 2: but there was one Paul sky Horse out in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: one Paul sky Horse in the Midwest, and so as
Speaker 2: a child, it just naturally felt like, oh, well, how
Speaker 2: did this one person get over here? And then six
Speaker 2: or seven months later they were over there? How did
Speaker 2: that sort of like how did that work? And I
Speaker 2: think that my mom was relying very much on the
Speaker 2: fact that I was a child, that I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to remember much that she could basically just shepherd me,
Speaker 2: you know, or shove me in front of whomever she
Speaker 2: was interacting with and say, well, that's Paul Skyhorse and
Speaker 2: that's who your father is, and that I would just
Speaker 2: accept it at face value. So in both of those memories,
Speaker 2: the one in the courtroom and the one in the prison,
Speaker 2: I think that my memory of both those instances is like, oh,
Speaker 2: at last, here's my father, here's someone I'm connected with.
Speaker 2: So I think in both those instances it was that
Speaker 2: sense of relief. It was that sense of like, oh,
Speaker 2: finally this question has been answered for me, when the
Speaker 2: harsh reality of it is that my search was just beginning.
Speaker 2: What do you think motivated your mother? What was she
Speaker 2: hoping to accomplish by shedding this Mexican American identity by
Speaker 2: coming up with these beautiful poetic names, I mean, Brando's Skyhorse.
Speaker 2: I mean what could be more just powerful and musical
Speaker 2: and unforgettable than that? What was she doing by bestowing
Speaker 2: that unto you and unto herself? So let me give
Speaker 2: you the generous years of therapy response to that, because
Speaker 2: I think that's important to keep in mind too. This is,
Speaker 2: you know, I've had a lot of time, I've written
Speaker 2: about this. I've had a lot of opportunities to reflect
Speaker 2: on this, and I think that my mother suffered from
Speaker 2: this idea that she was just some ordinary Mexican kid
Speaker 2: from you know, a neighborhood near East Los Angeles. And
Speaker 2: I think she had this idea that she wanted to
Speaker 2: be more than that. She wanted to be famous, She
Speaker 2: wanted to be a celebrity. She wanted to I guess,
Speaker 2: interact in that world. Again. You know, it's a common story,
Speaker 2: especially to people who live in Los Angeles, the idea
Speaker 2: that you know, Hollywood is not as far from the
Speaker 2: people in La as it is from other people who
Speaker 2: you know, have been drawn to Southern California, drawn to
Speaker 2: the idea of like stardom and movies, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so I think there was this sense that she could
Speaker 2: reinvent herself and infiltrate this world of I guess political activism,
Speaker 2: because that's the other thing too. In the seventies, in particular,
Speaker 2: the world of American Indian activism drew a lot of
Speaker 2: stars Marlon Brando. There was the Skyhorse Mohawk murder trial
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles in the mid to late seventies, and
Speaker 2: I know that a number of you know, prominent Hollywood
Speaker 2: celebrities came out for benefits and other such things. And
Speaker 2: I think my mom saw, I guess in a certain way,
Speaker 2: a way into that world, a way that she could
Speaker 2: be more than who she was. And if I am
Speaker 2: being really, really generous, I can say that she assumed,
Speaker 2: by inventing this narrative, inventing this name for me, that
Speaker 2: I would transcend my status as you know, just another
Speaker 2: ordinary Mexican kid from LA I would be more than
Speaker 2: when again, the reality is that if we had lived
Speaker 2: in another part of the country, if we had lived
Speaker 2: in say, Oklahoma, where there are stereotypes associated with American Indians,
Speaker 2: it would have been a vastly different enterprise. So I
Speaker 2: think there is a sense of I want to transcend
Speaker 2: my own station, and I want the same thing to
Speaker 2: happen for my son too. That's the most generous interpretation
Speaker 2: I can offer.
Speaker 3: Brando's in his last year of elementary school, when he
Speaker 3: learns quite abruptly that Paul Skyhorse is not his father,
Speaker 3: his mother just kind of drops it into casual conversation
Speaker 3: and proceeds to tell him the name of the man
Speaker 3: who is his biological father.
Speaker 2: It was roughly around, you know, when I was twelve
Speaker 2: or thirteen, And you know, maybe it's because she felt
Speaker 2: like I was getting older, I was getting more inquisitive
Speaker 2: and really wasn't taking no for an answer, that she decided, Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: now's the time in which I can acknowledge these things
Speaker 2: that happened, which were that you know, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: you are actually the son of this Mexican American and
Speaker 2: you know we had a brief marriage and it didn't
Speaker 2: work out for a variety of reasons, and he's actually
Speaker 2: your father. And she was very specific that he abandoned us.
Speaker 2: She was also very specific that he abandoned me. It
Speaker 2: wasn't her he had left, It was me that he
Speaker 2: had left. I think she wanted to hammer that point
Speaker 2: very specifically, because I think even at that point, there
Speaker 2: was this idea of, well, he certainly couldn't have left me,
Speaker 2: given how fantastic an individual I am. So you must
Speaker 2: have been the issue. If you hadn't been here, maybe
Speaker 2: things would have worked out between us. But now that
Speaker 2: you are here, and now that you know the truth,
Speaker 2: you know, I want you to despise him as much
Speaker 2: as I despise him, and I want you to keep
Speaker 2: this a secret. This is a secret. This is something
Speaker 2: that I just told you because you wouldn't leave me alone.
Speaker 2: You kept harassing me about it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: She tells me, you have to be more like the mafia.
Speaker 2: You have to like keep everything together for the family,
Speaker 2: and you can't let other people outside the family know
Speaker 2: our business because this is our business. And so as
Speaker 2: I got that information, there was this pivot to, Okay,
Speaker 2: now you know the truth, but now there's a responsibility
Speaker 2: that comes with knowing that truth, which means you now
Speaker 2: have to keep up the lie with me to whomever
Speaker 2: you meet moving forward. You know, I was twelve, so
Speaker 2: again it's like, oh, well, this is my mom, and
Speaker 2: I guess this is how it is, and so that's
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep up
Speaker 2: the lie because that's what my mom asked me to do.
Speaker 3: During this time, Brando and his mom are living with
Speaker 3: his grandmother, June. Well, June doesn't exactly conform to the
Speaker 3: facade created by Brando's mom. She doesn't discourage it either,
Speaker 3: to some degree, she plays along.
Speaker 2: I suspect that part of the reason that my grandmother
Speaker 2: or didn't really challenge my mother on any of this
Speaker 2: or kind of went along with this, was because there
Speaker 2: was a lot of friction between the two. You know,
Speaker 2: my mother, I've come to realize, had borderline personality disorder.
Speaker 2: She was an incredibly abusive person physically and emotionally, and
Speaker 2: not only was I on the receiving end of it
Speaker 2: on a daily basis, but my grandmother was too. It
Speaker 2: was like trying to fit a triangle in a circle.
Speaker 2: And I think that there were instances where it was
Speaker 2: simply easier to go along with my mom's schemes than
Speaker 2: the challenger, because she just didn't want to deal with
Speaker 2: the aggravation, the headaches, the abuse, the constant arguments, the toxicity.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 3: Brando's childhood and teenage years are rife with fathers, surrogate fathers, stepfathers,
Speaker 3: pseudo fathers, men he was supposed to refer to as fathers.
Speaker 3: First there's Frank, who's the first man Brando thought of
Speaker 3: as a father. Then his mom takes Brando to meet
Speaker 3: the man she tells him is really his father, Paul Skyhorse,
Speaker 3: who is living in a correctional facility in Illinois. Quickly
Speaker 3: Brando's little boy loyalties shift from Frank to this new
Speaker 3: father or father figure, Paul's skyhorse. But that's not quite
Speaker 3: right either. This begins a long period of time which
Speaker 3: Brando's mom refers to as her man hunts. She simply
Speaker 3: cannot be without a man, and Brando is her sidekick
Speaker 3: in these man hunts.
Speaker 2: It very actively includes me. To me, we had the
Speaker 2: feel of like a seventies detective show. It was like
Speaker 2: we were searching for the man with the one arm
Speaker 2: or so, I know that's the fugitive, right, but like,
Speaker 2: you know, we were like searching for someone. And so
Speaker 2: every week it literally almost did it feel like every
Speaker 2: week there was a new character, There was a new
Speaker 2: person to talk to, There was a new guy who
Speaker 2: could potentially be you know, my father, and traveling around
Speaker 2: the country many times by train, sometimes by plane or
Speaker 2: by bus going out and if you know, I describe
Speaker 2: this to people, it's like, you know, this was the seventies,
Speaker 2: and so again it's like there were no Google searches.
Speaker 2: You couldn't check out like these people. The fact that
Speaker 2: we survived meeting many numerous people just on the basis
Speaker 2: of like here's a photograph here's an address. Oh, we've
Speaker 2: got a phone number, and yeah, maybe that person will
Speaker 2: be there. It's like it's astonishing, it's absolutely astonishing. But
Speaker 2: I think there was this sense that to me, we
Speaker 2: were on an adventure and at a certain point finding
Speaker 2: a father figure, because it's the way she used to
Speaker 2: sell it to me. It's like, well, I'm doing this
Speaker 2: for you. I'm doing this for you, you know, like you
Speaker 2: want a dad, like you know, you want someoneble that's
Speaker 2: someone like Frank of course, who of course was reliable
Speaker 2: and of course was in la and of course would
Speaker 2: have been the obvious solution. Here's an opportunity for us
Speaker 2: to like see the country and spend time together and
Speaker 2: like find the right person. So I felt like, wow,
Speaker 2: how incredible a situation this is. To be included, to
Speaker 2: be trusted, to be given the responsibility to make this
Speaker 2: decision with my mom, to be essentially a caretaker that
Speaker 2: was something at like five or six, At seven years old,
Speaker 2: it was like, wow, that's something that I want to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, you know, it's reminding me a little bit.
Speaker 3: I wasn't thinking about this when I was reading the book,
Speaker 3: but it's reminded me a little bit of Ryan and
Speaker 3: tatumonial in Paper Moon. Oh right, yeah, that's you know,
Speaker 3: like just the like that's great little sidekick.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's spot on. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: After a series of different father adjacent characters, when Brando
Speaker 3: is around ten or eleven, he has his first live
Speaker 3: in stepfather, Robert. Robert is around for a couple of years,
Speaker 3: and in that time he and Brando play ball together,
Speaker 3: a father son activity if there ever was one. But
Speaker 3: when Robert leaves abruptly, Brando is done with playing ball.
Speaker 3: He never picks up the mit or ball again. At
Speaker 3: one point, grandmother June, almost seventy, having never held a
Speaker 3: baseball in her life, says to him, hey, let's play ball.
Speaker 3: This is the first moment Brando feels seen, even for
Speaker 3: a minute. June notices and witnesses the loss that nobody
Speaker 3: else is seeing.
Speaker 2: She did see that loss. And you know, again, I
Speaker 2: think about sort of the nature of memoir and how
Speaker 2: like it's so important to be as candid as one
Speaker 2: memory allows, and thinking of that memory of like how
Speaker 2: I had this father figure who was certainly not ideal
Speaker 2: for many reasons, for much of his I guess, illegal activity,
Speaker 2: And then he's gone, and I'm disappointed in that. I'm
Speaker 2: heartbroken at that. And then my grandmother sees me. She
Speaker 2: offers to play with me, and I reject her. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? Like,
Speaker 2: you know, just like looking at her, I'm looking at
Speaker 2: her as if she is the most absurd person in
Speaker 2: the world. And again, I was ten. But also the
Speaker 2: only way that moment works if I'm honest about how
Speaker 2: I was in that moment, and you know, thinking about
Speaker 2: this forty years later or so, I wish I could
Speaker 2: go back. I wish I could go back. And it's like,
Speaker 2: you know what, pick up the glove, ma'am, pick up
Speaker 2: the glove, pick up the ball. Have a little catch
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you couldn't because she wasn't a dad, and
Speaker 3: what that whole business was about was throwing a ball.
Speaker 2: As a dad. I think that's right. And understanding the
Speaker 2: nature of just my circumstances to go back, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea of like vetting my mom's boyfriends. I am
Speaker 2: reminded of the fact that she would tell me frequently
Speaker 2: that the primary reason she took me is for security,
Speaker 2: because you know, it must have been a really ten
Speaker 2: year old. But no, the idea is that if we
Speaker 2: had somehow run into someone who would want to harm us,
Speaker 2: because again, seventies eighties serial killers everywhere, it would take
Speaker 2: a really specially messed up person to want to kill
Speaker 2: a woman and her child. So I guess the logic
Speaker 2: there is like, oh, well, if this person was to
Speaker 2: hurt me, you're there, and he would be much less
Speaker 2: likely to kill two people instead of one. So that's
Speaker 2: my mom in a nutshell.
Speaker 3: Right, speaking of serial killers. At one point, she alludes
Speaker 3: to an encounter that she got away from with Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that was not true, right. I am
Speaker 2: ninety nine point nine percent sure it was a fabrication, correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But there always is that zero point one percent
Speaker 3: right that you kind of have when you're with somebody
Speaker 3: who is really truly a professional at deceit.
Speaker 2: It's always the point one percent right. And I do
Speaker 2: feel like as I've sort of did my sort of
Speaker 2: excavation to my mind mom's stories and like, you know,
Speaker 2: discovering this tiny little kernel of truth that got exploded
Speaker 2: into something massive. Talking about two Paul skyhorses. So there
Speaker 2: was one in La and one in the Midwest, the
Speaker 2: one in LA who was on trial for murder, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was a very prominent trial. When I
Speaker 2: started to do some dick and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, like I think my mom was just one
Speaker 2: of those courtroom junkies, you know, just kind of like
Speaker 2: hung around and like told people, oh, this is Paul
Speaker 2: Skyhorsus Sun, et cetera. I bet their past they ever
Speaker 2: even crossed. And so I did a Freedom of Information
Speaker 2: Act request. Six months later I got this, like basically
Speaker 2: about almost two thousand pages, this massive sheet of documents.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I was looking to find. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I was looking to find like, you know,
Speaker 2: my mom's letters or you know whatever, right like, I
Speaker 2: was looking for something somehow their past must have crossed.
Speaker 2: And on the next to last page, like after hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of pages, I'm not exaggerating, I found a
Speaker 2: visitor sign in sheet from nineteen seventy whatever, and lo
Speaker 2: and behold, there was my mom's name. There was her name,
Speaker 2: there was her signature. So she wasn't exaggerating at least
Speaker 2: about this. They had met, she had visited him, and
Speaker 2: of course, because she was a beautiful young woman, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to visit Paul Scard. Yeah, of course she.
Speaker 2: Of course she made her way in, and of course
Speaker 2: they had a series of conversations, and of course they
Speaker 2: had maybe corresponded or whatever. But it then got blown
Speaker 2: into this much larger, more fantastical narrative when to me,
Speaker 2: just the fact that she decided to reach out to him,
Speaker 2: just that part of the story, that would have been
Speaker 2: more than enough for a really incredible tale, right, But
Speaker 2: not for her, not for her, not for her.
Speaker 3: At one point, Brando's mom takes on a new job,
Speaker 3: a very unconventional job.
Speaker 2: So the way my mom tells it is that we
Speaker 2: were watching the talk show Dona Hue. All right, remember
Speaker 2: Dona Hue, and like you know, always come around the
Speaker 2: same time in the afternoon, and he had a whole
Speaker 2: episode devoted to phone sex operators. So there were these
Speaker 2: you know, women behind like a black screen, and we
Speaker 2: were watching it together. I guess it must have been
Speaker 2: summer time. I was home from school, or maybe I
Speaker 2: was home from school earlier or something, and she said
Speaker 2: that I pointed to the screen and said, you know,
Speaker 2: you could do that because the show had like demonstrated
Speaker 2: to audience. Oh, look, these are people who work from
Speaker 2: home and make large amounts of untaxed money. They kind
Speaker 2: of set their own schedule. I'm like, oh, sounds like
Speaker 2: a good deal. And so supposedly I said to my mom, oh, hey,
Speaker 2: you could do that, and that was something that did
Speaker 2: I actually say that. I'm guessing probably not. I hope
Speaker 2: I didn't say that, because again, ten eleven years old,
Speaker 2: but my mom decided she answered an AD was in
Speaker 2: the classifieds. And she then proceeded to start a career
Speaker 2: as a phone sex operator, initially working for a company
Speaker 2: where basically it was almost kind of like a dispatch service,
Speaker 2: like she would get like a number and then this
Speaker 2: would be a number you would call and it would
Speaker 2: be like, oh, I want someone who looks like this
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah blah, and who has this kind
Speaker 2: of backstory. And then later as the nature of the
Speaker 2: service morphed, she went to working like one nine hundred
Speaker 2: numbers ninety seven six numbers, where it wasn't I hate
Speaker 2: to use the phrase high end, but it was more
Speaker 2: like just random people on the phone, as opposed to
Speaker 2: like catering to people with specific taste, specific desires, et cetera.
Speaker 2: She did that for a number of years long unto
Speaker 2: when I was well into high school, and you know,
Speaker 2: I would have to try to invent stories from my
Speaker 2: high school buddies because you know, my mom was always
Speaker 2: at home. The door was always closed, and you know,
Speaker 2: they'd be like, why is your mom always in there?
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, she's working. It's like what kind of
Speaker 2: works she do? Telemarketing, you know, because I had heard
Speaker 2: that word somewhere. They're all from high school, so it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: kind of weird but whatever. But was like, it's not
Speaker 2: something I could just freely tell people. So it was
Speaker 2: another example of my mother's I guess, fascination with narratives
Speaker 2: and storytelling because that's basically what she was doing.
Speaker 3: Right well, and it may be if you did indeed
Speaker 3: say that, it would be a recognition that she would
Speaker 3: be good at that, at telling stories.
Speaker 2: I really like that interpretation, Danny. I really like that,
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna use that from now. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that must have been what I realized, Like, she's
Speaker 2: a really a storyteller, so she'll just do that. It's
Speaker 2: not for everybody, No, it's for everybody. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: think my mom was only really happy, genuinely happy talking
Speaker 2: to strangers and telling stranger stories in whatever sense of
Speaker 2: that word, because once you've met her, once you knew her,
Speaker 2: then you kind of like lost whatever sort of novelty
Speaker 2: value you had to her.
Speaker 3: There are so many stepfathers who come in and out
Speaker 3: of the picture that Brando in his memoir creates a
Speaker 3: visual chart of sorts, a casting sheet, so the reader
Speaker 3: can keep track all the way through his teenage years
Speaker 3: and well into high school. All these father ish figures,
Speaker 3: their comings and goings set off little nuclear bombs of
Speaker 3: longing in young Brando because there's always the possibility, the
Speaker 3: hope that somebody's going to stick around, or that someone's
Speaker 3: going to keep their promises, but none of them do.
Speaker 3: And what these father thinks gears also have in common
Speaker 3: is that they're often on the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 2: There were five step fathers total, I would say, four
Speaker 2: of whom being on the wrong side of the law
Speaker 2: I think is an apt way to put it. And
Speaker 2: you know, the thing that I would love to be
Speaker 2: able to say is that, oh, you know, I eventually
Speaker 2: outgrew that need, but like, I don't think I ever did.
Speaker 2: I don't think even now, I think there's still this
Speaker 2: desire that I have that you know, whenever I meet
Speaker 2: somebody who's older and kind of gives off that mentor
Speaker 2: kind of vibe, do you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: somebody who has bid around a lot likes to tell
Speaker 2: stories that there's always like kind of a romantic part
Speaker 2: of me.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I wish I had a dad like
Speaker 3: that Berando. That does not surprise me in the slightest.
Speaker 3: I would be surprised if you didn't feel that way,
Speaker 3: because you know, there's there's a moment in your book
Speaker 3: that I underlined and it's just one sentence, but it's
Speaker 3: I'm intact. But the scars are there, of course they are.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a myth to think that scars go away.
Speaker 3: You know, they can be healed over and they can soften,
Speaker 3: but they're there.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: The human spirit's capacity to reach toward the light, like
Speaker 3: a hardy weed pushing its way through a crack in
Speaker 3: a sidewalk never ceases to amaze me. Against the backdrop
Speaker 3: of the sketchy non father figures and his mother's violent,
Speaker 3: mercurial nature, Brando knows he's going to college. And not
Speaker 3: only is he planning to go to college, but he
Speaker 3: quietly applies to some of the best universities in the country,
Speaker 3: telling no one, and he's admitted to Stamford University.
Speaker 2: There's an acquaintance of mine who calls Stamford today the
Speaker 2: no factory because basically, yo, no, you're not getting in.
Speaker 2: So I will say, let's just say, for the sake
Speaker 2: of argument, it was the early nineties, maybe it was
Speaker 2: a little easier for me to get in. I will
Speaker 2: also say, because this is a conversation I've had when
Speaker 2: students asked me about this, It's like, oh, well, what
Speaker 2: did you apply as?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What did you apply as? Because again it was like
Speaker 2: you were living your life as this American Indian. What
Speaker 2: did you apply as? And you know, I'm completely honest,
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well, I was living my life as
Speaker 2: an American Indian, even though I did not know. This
Speaker 2: was like a story. I wasn't supposed to tell people
Speaker 2: that I was actually a Mexican American. So that's what
Speaker 2: I told. That's times like, I'm living my life as
Speaker 2: an American Indian. So I told the Emissions Committee that
Speaker 2: I put in my application I'm an American Indian, but
Speaker 2: also wrote about everything that I've written about in the book,
Speaker 2: which was, you know, meeting this person who I believe
Speaker 2: was my father, all those things. Those things actually happen.
Speaker 2: But you know, the implication under that, of course, is well,
Speaker 2: you really didn't earn your way in, right, you really,
Speaker 2: you know, you were put in the American Indian pile.
Speaker 2: And so what I have to remind people is like, oh,
Speaker 2: so if you're saying I benefited from affirmative action, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm actually Latino, so I probably would have been put
Speaker 2: if that's your argument, I would have been put in
Speaker 2: the same pile, just if we're gonna be honest about this, right.
Speaker 2: But you know, to me, the bigger sense of this
Speaker 2: location is going to a place like Stanford, and because
Speaker 2: I checked American Indian on the box is that I
Speaker 2: was immediately routed to the American Indian students who are there.
Speaker 2: And so I felt like, well, I can't interact with
Speaker 2: these students because somehow that would be unfair, that would
Speaker 2: somehow be unfair to perpetuate this lie to them. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, it's like, well, I'm Latino, but
Speaker 2: I got this name sky Wars, Well, what are the
Speaker 2: Latinos gonna think? You know what I mean? So, like
Speaker 2: it left me in this very funky situation where I
Speaker 2: got in and expected it to be this transformative experience
Speaker 2: and it wasn't. And it wasn't because in part I
Speaker 2: was never able to just have that honest conversation with
Speaker 2: myself and say, this is who I am, this is
Speaker 2: my identity. I didn't choose, it was chosen for me,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to make the best of this situation.
Speaker 2: That's probably a lot to ask of an eighteen year old,
Speaker 2: though I was basically walking around in this dank fog.
Speaker 2: And I remember one of the first meetings I had
Speaker 2: with an advisor if I submitted this paper and it
Speaker 2: was like a three page aside and all Greek nts
Speaker 2: or something or other. And this person was a resident fellow.
Speaker 2: And so at Stanford, like these professors they live in
Speaker 2: the dorms, right, so you can go to their apartment
Speaker 2: and it's meant to create this sort of atmosphere of
Speaker 2: conviviality that like, you can eat dinner with your professors.
Speaker 2: So I remember walking down this hall because I had
Speaker 2: submitted like an eight page paper, I'll blow him out
Speaker 2: of the water. And I remember going into his apartment
Speaker 2: and my paper was on the table and I looked
Speaker 2: at the papers blank, like there's no red marks. I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is going to be easier than
Speaker 2: I thought. And he sits down and he turns to
Speaker 2: me and he says, Okay, did you have problems writing
Speaker 2: in high school? And it was like one of those
Speaker 2: like telescopic moments in a movie where it's just like
Speaker 2: everything is shattered. It's like, oh wow, I'm really terrible
Speaker 2: at this. I'm trouble now. How do I figure this out?
Speaker 2: And every week I was there, there is this sense
Speaker 2: of I'm a fraud. I don't belong here. I should leave,
Speaker 2: and getting that message reafferred by my mother, who had
Speaker 2: a I mean possible time letting me go and was
Speaker 2: constantly on the phone with me saying just come on home,
Speaker 2: come on home, you know, like there's no shame in this,
Speaker 2: just you don't belong there. And so, yeah, that first
Speaker 2: quarter was a really really challenging time, the first couple
Speaker 2: of quarters of particular.
Speaker 3: What do you think kept you from doing just that? So,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: I stuck around fall quarter I came back home and Danny,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've had this experience where, perhaps you know,
Speaker 2: going back to a childhood home and just everything seemed
Speaker 2: so much smaller, almost like a miniature version of things.
Speaker 2: And I remember leaving that September and just feeling like, oh,
Speaker 2: this was my home. What am I doing? Every sort
Speaker 2: of like attachment in the world is here, and then
Speaker 2: coming back and feeling like I'm like an actor on
Speaker 2: a stage, almost like this is completely foreign to me,
Speaker 2: these connections, this house, everything felt like shrunk down, and
Speaker 2: there was this realization was like, oh, I'm gonna move
Speaker 2: back into this. This doesn't feel right. So I went
Speaker 2: back that winter semester, and again i'd had a different professor,
Speaker 2: somebody who I think was aware of where my interests
Speaker 2: were and perhaps where my talents were and worked with
Speaker 2: me in a way that helped me get over that hump.
Speaker 2: By the time I got to nearly the end of
Speaker 2: winter quarter, I was turning excellent work, not just for me,
Speaker 2: work that was acknowledged by my Stanford professors like oh,
Speaker 2: this is really great, believe provocative thesis. And I think
Speaker 2: it was just that acknowledgment that I know what's down
Speaker 2: that road. I know that my mom and my grandmother,
Speaker 2: having lived in that house for many, many, many years,
Speaker 2: I know what's down that road. It's me taking my
Speaker 2: place in that house alongside them. And I knew that
Speaker 2: wasn't what I wanted, and so I just had to
Speaker 2: dig out. I just had to dig out and just
Speaker 2: hunker down and hang in there. And I know it
Speaker 2: sounds incredibly cliche, but time time to I guess acknowledge.
Speaker 2: This is not going to be something that happens overnight.
Speaker 2: My integration into this world is going to take work
Speaker 2: and it's going to take time, but that I owe
Speaker 2: myself the benefit of both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's beautiful. It reminds me of I saw a
Speaker 3: play recently, really good play on Broadway called The Hills
Speaker 3: of California, and there's this moment where there's this one character,
Speaker 3: this daughter, who has never left home, and you know
Speaker 3: they're all adults, and one of the sisters turns to
Speaker 3: her and says, you just could never find the door. Hmm.
Speaker 2: Well, I love that.
Speaker 3: Growing up reading had been Brando's refuge. Reading had been
Speaker 3: his escape into narrative, and interestingly enough, away from narrative too,
Speaker 3: away from the stories. Spun by his mother, and as
Speaker 3: he moves through college he discovers he's not only a reader,
Speaker 3: but a writer. After finishing undergrad he goes directly into
Speaker 3: the academically rigorous MFA program at Irvine University of California.
Speaker 3: This is a big move found his door.
Speaker 2: So the idea, I think was either find a way
Speaker 2: to write for a living or become an entertainment lawyer.
Speaker 2: And I think maybe that's because I watched a lot
Speaker 2: of LA law growing up. Maybe that was it. I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure. I was really like drawn to those
Speaker 2: big houses and fancy cars. But I had this wonderful
Speaker 2: associate instructor named Ray. He was a Stagner fellow, and
Speaker 2: I was talking to him about applying to law school,
Speaker 2: applying to you know, MFA programs, because I really want
Speaker 2: to write. And he's like, look, if you go to
Speaker 2: law school, you're gonna get in a lot of debt.
Speaker 2: So find an MFA program that will give you, you know,
Speaker 2: a fully funded degree, and go do that because you
Speaker 2: can always go do law school afterwards. And he had
Speaker 2: like it was another person. You know, there are always
Speaker 2: these people along the way who are like, oh, hey,
Speaker 2: I really like what you're doing, keep at it. You know,
Speaker 2: I think this is something that you could probably make
Speaker 2: a living at. I think maybe he even mentioned the
Speaker 2: fact that Irvine had a program, because you know, this
Speaker 2: wasn't something that I was very knowledgeable about, and so
Speaker 2: I think the idea is like, oh, I can do this,
Speaker 2: and it's only going to be two year and let's
Speaker 2: see what comes of it. So getting to Irvine and
Speaker 2: then hitting the ground running and realizing oh, this is
Speaker 2: something that you know, I really enjoy doing and really
Speaker 2: appreciate doing it just felt like there was a piece
Speaker 2: that I felt in myself. Because again this is before
Speaker 2: therapy and for everything else, there was a piece that
Speaker 2: I felt in myself when I was writing, and it's
Speaker 2: still every time I sit down, every time I turn
Speaker 2: off all the distractions and it's just me and the work.
Speaker 2: Everything else disappears, and there's this enormous sense of peace
Speaker 2: and tranquility that happens. It's like going almost into a
Speaker 2: fugue state, and it feels very comforting, it feels very protective,
Speaker 2: it feels like tons of possibility. And then of course
Speaker 2: obviously when you finish writing, like in the revision and
Speaker 2: all that other stuff, it's like, oh, you know, like
Speaker 2: if I could just skip all of this part right,
Speaker 2: But I think, to me, the reason why I write,
Speaker 2: it's that sense of possibility and comfort and protection.
Speaker 3: That's why I write. After graduating from the MFA program
Speaker 3: at Irvine, Brando and his girlfriend move east to Jersey City.
Speaker 3: They're just settling into their new place when Brando receives
Speaker 3: a message from his latest stepfather with some very intense news.
Speaker 2: I get the call and it's a stepfather number five
Speaker 2: who tells me that my mom had passed, and it
Speaker 2: was sudden. My mother had gained a lot of weight
Speaker 2: over the years and had become fixated with trying to
Speaker 2: lose that weight. Tried a number of these ridiculous powders
Speaker 2: and all the other stuffers the eighties and nineties zero
Speaker 2: were just awash and all of these infomercials, and unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to me, she had started taking drugs to lose that weight.
Speaker 2: She started taking speed, which she had dabbled with, you know,
Speaker 2: throughout much of her life, and then she also started
Speaker 2: taking fen fenn. This was before was off the market,
Speaker 2: Forest taken off the market, and she start to cocktailing
Speaker 2: the two a very very dangerous combination, and her heart
Speaker 2: just gave out when she was fifty years old. I
Speaker 2: didn't handle it well, I remember at the time, just
Speaker 2: not really processing it, just kind of like robotically saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: my mom passed away, hanging up the phone. I didn't
Speaker 2: go back for the funeral because I had this sense,
Speaker 2: because I was on the East coast now, that if
Speaker 2: I went back, I would end up, you know, to
Speaker 2: use the language you describe, I would end up back
Speaker 2: in that house, not finding the door. I would end
Speaker 2: up back in the house taking my mom's place. I
Speaker 2: just knew that's what would happen, and it terrified me.
Speaker 2: Should have gone back for the funeral, didn't go back,
Speaker 2: and spent many many years basically trying to process this,
Speaker 2: trying to process our relationship, trying to essentially figure out
Speaker 2: an ending for my mother and I because I think
Speaker 2: I believed at a certain point, you reach a certain age, oh,
Speaker 2: my mom and I are going to come to some
Speaker 2: sort of reconciliation, right, There's going to be some sort
Speaker 2: of movement or some sort of whatever. And it just
Speaker 2: was like cutting off a tree, Bram. She was just like, basically,
Speaker 2: my mom is forever frozen as a fifty year old
Speaker 2: like I'm now older than she is, and so there
Speaker 2: is that sense of what could have been, what would
Speaker 2: have happened. Would we have found a way to reach
Speaker 2: some sort of understanding between us? And I hate to
Speaker 2: be cruel about it, but it's like, I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's possible, and maybe in a certain way for me,
Speaker 2: you know, her passing, her sudden passing, allowed me to
Speaker 2: do the work without additional damage being added on top
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: What year did your mother die?
Speaker 2: She died in nineteen ninety eight. January sixth, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: says If I needed other reasons to remember that day today,
Speaker 2: I'd never forget. And my grandmother passed away a year
Speaker 2: after that in ninety nine. About a year and a
Speaker 2: half after that.
Speaker 3: In twenty ten, Brando finds and contacts his biological father,
Speaker 3: another father, the og Father. His name is Candy Uyoa.
Speaker 2: I reached out to him for the best of reasons,
Speaker 2: which was I had a book contract to write a memoir,
Speaker 2: So what better time, right, you know, writers, writers, man?
Speaker 2: So I just published my first novel, which I think
Speaker 2: went well. I was pleased with the experience. It was
Speaker 2: a two book deal, and I was putting together the
Speaker 2: sort of the outline for this book, and I had
Speaker 2: trouble beginning it. And again, you know, I'm assuming you
Speaker 2: understand as somebody who's written many wonderful, beautiful memoirs yourself.
Speaker 2: For me, as far as this memoir, I just didn't
Speaker 2: know where to begin. It seems so massive, the story
Speaker 2: seems so overwhelming. It's like, what's the door in? How
Speaker 2: do you walk into this story? Because there's just so
Speaker 2: many twists and turns. And my ex girlfriend, the one
Speaker 2: who actually I moved out with to the East Coast,
Speaker 2: we were still in contact. She's like, Yo, why don't
Speaker 2: you see if you can find Gabby though? And I'm like,
Speaker 2: come on, you know what I mean? Like girls, I
Speaker 2: was thinking, like the movies, I can't afford a private
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hire like what Barnaby Jones or something like
Speaker 2: I don't know why all my references are seventies and
Speaker 2: it's maybe that's where my head is. But she was like, no, like,
Speaker 2: you know, just use the internet see if you could,
Speaker 2: like maybe you know, find somebody who could do some
Speaker 2: online research for you or something. And so I figured like, okay,
Speaker 2: that seems like a reasonable idea, and I thought I
Speaker 2: would write about my inability to find him. That was
Speaker 2: the ankle. That was how I was going to structure
Speaker 2: because I was like, that seems like an interesting way, right,
Speaker 2: empty computer screen or whatever, So I'm gonna have to
Speaker 2: white pages. Dot Com typed in his name and I said, oh,
Speaker 2: we have a result, but you have to pay ten
Speaker 2: bucks ord or whatever. It's like, okay, let's see who
Speaker 2: this non person is. And it was his name complete
Speaker 2: GANI though Garcia Yoa and it had an address in California,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, all right, well, let's get this a shot.
Speaker 2: I wrote him a letter, a simple one page letter,
Speaker 2: and I had my friend translated into Spanish, because again,
Speaker 2: having been raised as a Mexican American, it's one of
Speaker 2: the things that I lost, and people think about passing
Speaker 2: right now. It's passes an American Indian. People think about, oh,
Speaker 2: you gained this, or you gained that. Nobody thinks about
Speaker 2: what you lost. I lost this whole identity of mine.
Speaker 2: I should know Spanish, I should be able to speak
Speaker 2: Spanish better than I do. So I had a friend
Speaker 2: translated for me, and I included a couple of photos
Speaker 2: color zeroxis of some photos. I'm like, I think you're
Speaker 2: my father. Here's a letter, and he received it and
Speaker 2: his wife had already known about my existence, but his
Speaker 2: children didn't. And so when the letter arrived, his wife,
Speaker 2: a wonderful woman named Dorora, went to him and said,
Speaker 2: your son is looking for you. Here's his letter. You're
Speaker 2: going to contact him. And when she said are you
Speaker 2: going to it really wasn't a question, it was a statement, like,
Speaker 2: you're going to contact him? And a week later I
Speaker 2: got a message on my voicemail short message with a number,
Speaker 2: called him back and he immediately started speaking to me
Speaker 2: in Spanish and I'm like, no, no, that somebody else
Speaker 2: wrote that letter. I don't understand what you're saying. And
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, you know, Spanish was so well written.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm the man you're looking for. Didn't say
Speaker 2: it was my father said I'm the man you're looking for.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things I think about about writing memoir,
Speaker 3: writing creative nonfiction when it's personal and therefore scary, that
Speaker 3: there's also this way in which I'm curious what you think,
Speaker 3: because I know for me, I think that it has
Speaker 3: given me the permission to be brave and write the
Speaker 3: letter or make the phone call in a way that
Speaker 3: I don't think I would have dared to do in
Speaker 3: any other way. But because it was for my book,
Speaker 3: for my job, because it was for the story, it
Speaker 3: allowed me to push past my own fear, you know,
Speaker 3: because you're framing it, and maybe it's true for you,
Speaker 3: but you're framing it as you know, well, writers, we
Speaker 3: want what we want if it's good for a story,
Speaker 3: which I also think you know is very valid and
Speaker 3: certainly for me in other ways. But I wonder whether
Speaker 3: you think you ever would have done that regardless.
Speaker 2: So I really like the way you frame it, in
Speaker 2: part first because it's much less cynical, but my take,
Speaker 2: which is a very very cynical take, right, But more specifically, yeah,
Speaker 2: this rationalization that hey, like, I have permission to knock
Speaker 2: on doors and do a little gumshoe sleuthing and figuring
Speaker 2: things out because this is what I do. It's for
Speaker 2: the project, it's for the book. It's a sense of
Speaker 2: I'm giving myself permission because I think that given the
Speaker 2: way that you have told me you venerate books and
Speaker 2: the way that I venerate books, right, like books save
Speaker 2: my life, right, And here's a chance to create a book,
Speaker 2: to create a narrative that might impact someone's life in
Speaker 2: a positive way. That somebody might have this crazy upbringing
Speaker 2: and they read my book and they're like, oh wow,
Speaker 2: like maybe I feel less alone. It's like that sense
Speaker 2: of oh, I have permission to go and knock on
Speaker 2: this door. I have permission to send this letter.
Speaker 3: When Brando connects with Candy, he also learns something extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Not only has he finally met his biological thoughts, but
Speaker 3: he also has three sisters.
Speaker 2: Growing up, I think I had often long for siblings,
Speaker 2: but for a very selfish reason, and that there would
Speaker 2: be multiple people to absorb my mother's abuse, in my
Speaker 2: mother's my mother's anger, there would be like, you know,
Speaker 2: more bodies, I guess, to go around. But also I
Speaker 2: think the sense that having siblings would have validated that
Speaker 2: experience so much more, the idea of like, hey, wasn't
Speaker 2: that crazy what she just did? Or wasn't that crazy
Speaker 2: what she just said? I would have had much less
Speaker 2: of this, the sense of that I was experiencing and
Speaker 2: absorbing all of this trauma on my own. But to me,
Speaker 2: the wonderful thing about having these sisters and these siblings
Speaker 2: is well twofold, you know. Number one, just knowing that
Speaker 2: there are people out there like me who are just
Speaker 2: kind of experiencing the world to me again, like I
Speaker 2: still marvel at that. That's still amazing to me. But
Speaker 2: the fact that after a single conversation, one conversation where
Speaker 2: essentially my eldest sister asked me like, okay, well, who
Speaker 2: the heck are you? I met them in La like
Speaker 2: who are you? What are you doing here? Right? And
Speaker 2: once I explained to them what I've just told you,
Speaker 2: once they understood the situation, they're like, oh, okay, well
Speaker 2: you're our brother, simple as that. So we don't even
Speaker 2: use the half designations like oh well technically, oh he's
Speaker 2: a half brother. Half they're my sisters and I'm their brother.
Speaker 2: And the fact that one of the conversations I had
Speaker 2: with Frank after I discovered them is that, you know,
Speaker 2: he said, they were clearly waiting for you. They were
Speaker 2: waiting for you. They somehow they didn't know you existed,
Speaker 2: but they were waiting for you. And that's your family.
Speaker 2: It's not how all families work, but this is how
Speaker 2: your family works.
Speaker 3: Well, and Candy also lets you know that he did
Speaker 3: not leave you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wanted to make that clear, that that narrative
Speaker 2: that I'd had drilled into me for years and years
Speaker 2: and years, that he wanted to stay, he wanted to
Speaker 2: find a way to make this work and that. But
Speaker 2: you know, essentially I was never far from his thoughts.
Speaker 2: I don't think he would say that he acted perfectly
Speaker 2: in all of the subsequent situations. But when I took
Speaker 2: him out to lunch, this was a few years ago. Now,
Speaker 2: he tells me, oh, I'm getting a new email address,
Speaker 2: and this is the first time in as many many
Speaker 2: years that you know, he had an email address. It
Speaker 2: would have to check into a computer and they say, well,
Speaker 2: you're going to need a password, and you know the
Speaker 2: password is obviously, that's the one word you never give anyone.
Speaker 2: That's the one Never share your password, never tell anyone
Speaker 2: what that password is. And he looks at me very earnestly,
Speaker 2: and he says, my password is Brando, And somehow that
Speaker 2: seems wholly appropriate.
Speaker 3: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Zaccor is the
Speaker 3: story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
Speaker 3: you have a family secret, you'd like to share, Please
Speaker 3: leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
Speaker 3: an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Speaker 3: Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 3: me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like
Speaker 3: to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.
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