May 29, 2025 • 50 mins
Brando’s father is an American Indian incarcerated political activist. Or is he? His mother tells a lot of stories. It’s almost impossible to know what’s true and what isn’t.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I was five when I'd clung to Paul's legs like
a tree and called him Daddy. I was fifteen when
the father i'd waited ten years for, the one father
i'd believed in or thought i'd had a write to,
abandoned me, just like the others hadn't my other fathers, Gandhi,
(00:25):
though Frank Robert been building up to this one father
whose name I shared, who was supposed to stay for good?
Was I no longer a sky Horse? I was still
quote unquote Indian closing gearbook signatures the way I had
in seventh and eighth grades. Quote may the Great Spirit
(00:47):
guide you end, quote the same signature Paul use in
his letters. If I wasn't a skyhorse, the only part
of my identity I felt was quote unquote me. Then
who was I a Mexican who had no idea what
being Mexican meant? Pretending to be an American Indian in
(01:09):
name only, an abandoned son mourning his dead father who
wasn't dead and wasn't his father.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
That's Brando Skyhorse, writer, Associate professor of English at Indiana University,
an author of two novels, most recently, My Name is
Iris and the memoir Take This Man Brando's is a
story of identity, fantasy, mythmaking, deceit, and, more than anything,
a life shaped by the profound be longing for a father.
(01:54):
I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
that are kept from us, the secret we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The landscape of my childhood started in Echo Park, southern California.
She's a neighborhood adjacent to Dodger Stadium. I was born
in nineteen seventy three, so it makes me I guess
gen X. And I was about two or three years
old when my biological father left my family. And the
(02:31):
reason I'm hesitating there is because I'd always phrase it
as him leaving. Later I sort of reframed that understanding
was perhaps he was kicked out, perhaps there was an
aggressive move to eject him from our family household. And
both my biological parents are Mexican American, and my mother
decided to use that specific incident to essentially reinvent both
(02:53):
of us as American Indians. She created a persona for herself.
She created a persona for me. I didn't really know
that this had happened until I was about twelve or thirteen.
But that initial landscape, I guess was one of fantasy.
I suppose I was led to believe that I was
an American Indian. I was led to believe that I
was the son of an American Indian chief. You know,
(03:16):
so three, four or five, six years old, I'd been
told all of these really fantastical things, and I believe
them because when you're a child, you believe what your
parents tell you. My mother had this very specific idea
of how we, as American Indians were supposed to perform,
and she gave me this little speech that I was
(03:37):
supposed to recite, something along the lines of I don't
remember the exact words, but basically, because of this country's
treatment of our people, notice of the use of our there,
I cannot stand. I cannot salute the flag. And I remember,
you know, going into that classroom and everyone being asked
to rise with the pledge of allegiance. Because it was
again the early nineteen eighties, so that was the kind
(03:59):
of thing that just you know, that happened every day,
and saying it and sitting down and this is kind
of like this wave of like anxiety and fear and
doing it and feeling like in the moment, oh okay,
well I just sat down and nothing really happened, and
my teacher really not processing it in a way that
I guess i'd assumed she would, and her coming over
(04:21):
to me and laying hands on me and pulling me
out of my chair and forcing me to physically complete
the pledge of allegiance and then ejecting me from the classroom.
So that was first grade. So what yeah, eight years old, seven,
eight years old something around that.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And at that time that was still very much your
belief right that you were American Indian.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So it was my belief that I was an American Indian.
I think the idea of outwardly, you know, telling people
making those kinds of gestures certainly wasn't on my menu
for these are the things that I want to do
in a first grade classroom. But the thing that I
keep returning to is that, you know, essentially, I'm just
(05:04):
a child that wants to make my mom happy. And
this was a way that I believed, Oh, if I
do these things, if I act in these ways, if
I follow what my mom tells me to do in
these public spaces. My mom will love me, my mom
will take care of me. And that was I think
very important to me, living in a household where I
had no father figure, no father, no stable father figure,
(05:26):
and living in a household with just my mom and
my grandma. So I was very eager to please, very
very eager to follow what she suggested.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I do describe your mother a bit, the mother of
your childhood, the mother of those years.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The only word I can grasp at is awesome. And
I mean that in that the larger sense of that word, right,
just like a force larger than anything else in my life.
She was hypnotic. She was a fantastic storyteller. She was
the kind of person that you'd be transfixed, you know,
(05:58):
she would plant herself in front of you and you
would have this amazing, phenomenal conversation with her and think,
oh my god, like that's the most fascinating person that
I've ever met in my life. She was attractive, She
had long hair that would go down to her waist,
and just had this presence about her that, you know,
people wanted to talk to her. She drew people to
her and even as a young child, I was in
(06:19):
awe of her, but I also saw other people in
awe of her as well, which just adds to that
idea that, oh, here's this person who whom the world
is drawn to and circulates around. I think the result
of that was just giving her that additional credibility that
when she would tell me these things, was like, well,
of course they're true, because look at all the people
around her, look at all the people that are drawn
(06:40):
to her.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah. The word that kept on coming to me as
I was reading about your mother was well, there were
a couple of words, but kind of a fabuloust and
a fantasist, yes, And the largeness of what she took on,
what she did by changing not just your name and
not just her own name, but both of your identity. Yeah,
(07:05):
her name was Maria Teresa and she was Mexican, and
she changed her name to Running Deer.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes. It's amazing, isn't it. And it sounds so over
the top, right, But this was the late seventies, early eighties.
So this idea that you had this Mexican American woman
and this Mexican American child living in a predominantly Mexican
American neighborhood. But of course they're American Indians. And her
name is Running Deer sky Horse ed. This kid's name
(07:33):
is Brando s Cars. Of course that's more credible to
believe than there are actually. Oh, they're just two Mexican
American people who have adopted these personas. And I think
again that is a testament to, you know, my mother's
ability to get people to essentially fall in love with
her but also fall in love with her narratives.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
In a striking passage from his memoir, Brando writes about
learning to talk fast and hide the truth. He learned
to stick to his mother's narrative.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
My father is Paul Skyhorse, my mother is Running Deer Skyhorse.
They are both full blooded American Indians. My father was
falsely arrested for killing two FBI agents. My mother was
a lawyer helping with his defense. I'm the son of
an Indian chief and will become a chief one day myself.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Any questions, I mean, it's just it's designed for there
to be absolutely no questions.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
No, right, you're right, yeah, that's the thing. The idea
of you know, how much information, right, how much information
do you need to sell a lie to sell a narrative.
I think that's one of the reasons that I became
a writer, and one of the reasons that I'm fascinated
with the idea of how you structure a story, how
you structure not only a narrative, but one's life, one's
(08:55):
life's narrative. How do you put that together? What are
the things that draw people in, and what are the
things that you can leave out? And everything in that paragraph? Right,
it's like, wow, this is really all that. Wow a lawyer,
and you know, kill that behind. Really there's just enough
of these sorts of like nuggets of fantastical information that
again it's beyond belief and you feel like, well, who
(09:18):
would make up something so fantastical? Right, it must be
true because we've all met those people. So much of
your story, to my mind, is about longing, longing for
a father, longing for a father figure. There are many.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Contenders for this role over the years, quite a few
of whom fail spectacularly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yes, certainly, But that first.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Of these is indeed someone named Paul Skyhorse. That's right,
your mother brings you to see when you're four years old.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, And this is again that sort of nature of
how sort of fantastical or beyond belief this is, is
that in this larger than life experience or this larger
than life upbringing the idea of like, we're going to
meet your father, but you know, we're going to meet
him in this situation that you wouldn't necessarily think it
(10:17):
would be normal to take a four year old child
to There are two Paul sky Horses that I met.
One was in a courtroom or I saw behind glass
they really meet him. I waived in it, and one
in prison I get a visitation center, right, And so
again the way memory works is that you know, it
took me the longest time to realize, oh, those two
(10:39):
sky horses. Of course they couldn't have been the same person,
but there was one Paul sky Horse out in Los Angeles,
one Paul sky Horse in the Midwest, and so as
a child, it just naturally felt like, oh, well, how
did this one person get over here? And then six
or seven months later they were over there? How did
that sort of like how did that work? And I
(10:59):
think that my mom was relying very much on the
fact that I was a child, that I wasn't going
to remember much that she could basically just shepherd me,
you know, or shove me in front of whomever she
was interacting with and say, well, that's Paul Skyhorse and
that's who your father is, and that I would just
accept it at face value. So in both of those memories,
(11:21):
the one in the courtroom and the one in the prison,
I think that my memory of both those instances is like, oh,
at last, here's my father, here's someone I'm connected with.
So I think in both those instances it was that
sense of relief. It was that sense of like, oh,
finally this question has been answered for me, when the
harsh reality of it is that my search was just beginning.
(11:46):
What do you think motivated your mother? What was she
hoping to accomplish by shedding this Mexican American identity by
coming up with these beautiful poetic names, I mean, Brando's Skyhorse.
I mean what could be more just powerful and musical
(12:07):
and unforgettable than that? What was she doing by bestowing
that unto you and unto herself? So let me give
you the generous years of therapy response to that, because
I think that's important to keep in mind too. This is,
you know, I've had a lot of time, I've written
about this. I've had a lot of opportunities to reflect
(12:29):
on this, and I think that my mother suffered from
this idea that she was just some ordinary Mexican kid
from you know, a neighborhood near East Los Angeles. And
I think she had this idea that she wanted to
be more than that. She wanted to be famous, She
wanted to be a celebrity. She wanted to I guess,
(12:50):
interact in that world. Again. You know, it's a common story,
especially to people who live in Los Angeles, the idea
that you know, Hollywood is not as far from the
people in La as it is from other people who
you know, have been drawn to Southern California, drawn to
the idea of like stardom and movies, et cetera. And
so I think there was this sense that she could
(13:11):
reinvent herself and infiltrate this world of I guess political activism,
because that's the other thing too. In the seventies, in particular,
the world of American Indian activism drew a lot of
stars Marlon Brando. There was the Skyhorse Mohawk murder trial
in Los Angeles in the mid to late seventies, and
(13:32):
I know that a number of you know, prominent Hollywood
celebrities came out for benefits and other such things. And
I think my mom saw, I guess in a certain way,
a way into that world, a way that she could
be more than who she was. And if I am
being really, really generous, I can say that she assumed,
(13:53):
by inventing this narrative, inventing this name for me, that
I would transcend my status as you know, just another
ordinary Mexican kid from LA I would be more than
when again, the reality is that if we had lived
in another part of the country, if we had lived
in say, Oklahoma, where there are stereotypes associated with American Indians,
(14:17):
it would have been a vastly different enterprise. So I
think there is a sense of I want to transcend
my own station, and I want the same thing to
happen for my son too. That's the most generous interpretation
I can offer.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Brando's in his last year of elementary school, when he
learns quite abruptly that Paul Skyhorse is not his father,
his mother just kind of drops it into casual conversation
and proceeds to tell him the name of the man
who is his biological father.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
It was roughly around, you know, when I was twelve
or thirteen, And you know, maybe it's because she felt
like I was getting older, I was getting more inquisitive
and really wasn't taking no for an answer, that she decided, Oh, okay,
now's the time in which I can acknowledge these things
that happened, which were that you know, oh, you know,
you are actually the son of this Mexican American and
(15:09):
you know we had a brief marriage and it didn't
work out for a variety of reasons, and he's actually
your father. And she was very specific that he abandoned us.
She was also very specific that he abandoned me. It
wasn't her he had left, It was me that he
had left. I think she wanted to hammer that point
very specifically, because I think even at that point, there
(15:31):
was this idea of, well, he certainly couldn't have left me,
given how fantastic an individual I am. So you must
have been the issue. If you hadn't been here, maybe
things would have worked out between us. But now that
you are here, and now that you know the truth,
you know, I want you to despise him as much
(15:51):
as I despise him, and I want you to keep
this a secret. This is a secret. This is something
that I just told you because you wouldn't leave me alone.
You kept harassing me about it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
She tells me, you have to be more like the mafia.
You have to like keep everything together for the family,
and you can't let other people outside the family know
our business because this is our business. And so as
I got that information, there was this pivot to, Okay,
now you know the truth, but now there's a responsibility
that comes with knowing that truth, which means you now
(16:23):
have to keep up the lie with me to whomever
you meet moving forward. You know, I was twelve, so
again it's like, oh, well, this is my mom, and
I guess this is how it is, and so that's
what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep up
the lie because that's what my mom asked me to do.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
During this time, Brando and his mom are living with
his grandmother, June. Well, June doesn't exactly conform to the
facade created by Brando's mom. She doesn't discourage it either,
to some degree, she plays along.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I suspect that part of the reason that my grandmother
or didn't really challenge my mother on any of this
or kind of went along with this, was because there
was a lot of friction between the two. You know,
my mother, I've come to realize, had borderline personality disorder.
She was an incredibly abusive person physically and emotionally, and
not only was I on the receiving end of it
(17:18):
on a daily basis, but my grandmother was too. It
was like trying to fit a triangle in a circle.
And I think that there were instances where it was
simply easier to go along with my mom's schemes than
the challenger, because she just didn't want to deal with
the aggravation, the headaches, the abuse, the constant arguments, the toxicity.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Brando's childhood and teenage years are rife with fathers, surrogate fathers, stepfathers,
(18:09):
pseudo fathers, men he was supposed to refer to as fathers.
First there's Frank, who's the first man Brando thought of
as a father. Then his mom takes Brando to meet
the man she tells him is really his father, Paul Skyhorse,
who is living in a correctional facility in Illinois. Quickly
Brando's little boy loyalties shift from Frank to this new
(18:31):
father or father figure, Paul's skyhorse. But that's not quite
right either. This begins a long period of time which
Brando's mom refers to as her man hunts. She simply
cannot be without a man, and Brando is her sidekick
in these man hunts.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It very actively includes me. To me, we had the
feel of like a seventies detective show. It was like
we were searching for the man with the one arm
or so, I know that's the fugitive, right, but like,
you know, we were like searching for someone. And so
every week it literally almost did it feel like every
week there was a new character, There was a new
person to talk to, There was a new guy who
(19:11):
could potentially be you know, my father, and traveling around
the country many times by train, sometimes by plane or
by bus going out and if you know, I describe
this to people, it's like, you know, this was the seventies,
and so again it's like there were no Google searches.
You couldn't check out like these people. The fact that
(19:31):
we survived meeting many numerous people just on the basis
of like here's a photograph here's an address. Oh, we've
got a phone number, and yeah, maybe that person will
be there. It's like it's astonishing, it's absolutely astonishing. But
I think there was this sense that to me, we
were on an adventure and at a certain point finding
(19:52):
a father figure, because it's the way she used to
sell it to me. It's like, well, I'm doing this
for you. I'm doing this for you, you know, like you
want a dad, like you know, you want someoneble that's
someone like Frank of course, who of course was reliable
and of course was in la and of course would
have been the obvious solution. Here's an opportunity for us
to like see the country and spend time together and
like find the right person. So I felt like, wow,
(20:14):
how incredible a situation this is. To be included, to
be trusted, to be given the responsibility to make this
decision with my mom, to be essentially a caretaker that
was something at like five or six, At seven years old,
it was like, wow, that's something that I want to do.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, of course, you know, it's reminding me a little bit.
I wasn't thinking about this when I was reading the book,
but it's reminded me a little bit of Ryan and
tatumonial in Paper Moon. Oh right, yeah, that's you know,
like just the like that's great little sidekick.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah yeah, that's spot on. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
After a series of different father adjacent characters, when Brando
is around ten or eleven, he has his first live
in stepfather, Robert. Robert is around for a couple of years,
and in that time he and Brando play ball together,
a father son activity if there ever was one. But
when Robert leaves abruptly, Brando is done with playing ball.
(21:15):
He never picks up the mit or ball again. At
one point, grandmother June, almost seventy, having never held a
baseball in her life, says to him, hey, let's play ball.
This is the first moment Brando feels seen, even for
a minute. June notices and witnesses the loss that nobody
else is seeing.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
She did see that loss. And you know, again, I
think about sort of the nature of memoir and how
like it's so important to be as candid as one
memory allows, and thinking of that memory of like how
I had this father figure who was certainly not ideal
for many reasons, for much of his I guess, illegal activity,
(21:58):
And then he's gone, and I'm disappointed in that. I'm
heartbroken at that. And then my grandmother sees me. She
offers to play with me, and I reject her. I'm like, oh,
I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? Like,
you know, just like looking at her, I'm looking at
her as if she is the most absurd person in
the world. And again, I was ten. But also the
(22:20):
only way that moment works if I'm honest about how
I was in that moment, and you know, thinking about
this forty years later or so, I wish I could
go back. I wish I could go back. And it's like,
you know what, pick up the glove, ma'am, pick up
the glove, pick up the ball. Have a little catch
with her.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, but you couldn't because she wasn't a dad, and
what that whole business was about was throwing a ball.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
As a dad. I think that's right. And understanding the
nature of just my circumstances to go back, you know,
the idea of like vetting my mom's boyfriends. I am
reminded of the fact that she would tell me frequently
that the primary reason she took me is for security,
because you know, it must have been a really ten
year old. But no, the idea is that if we
had somehow run into someone who would want to harm us,
(23:05):
because again, seventies eighties serial killers everywhere, it would take
a really specially messed up person to want to kill
a woman and her child. So I guess the logic
there is like, oh, well, if this person was to
hurt me, you're there, and he would be much less
likely to kill two people instead of one. So that's
my mom in a nutshell.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Right, speaking of serial killers. At one point, she alludes
to an encounter that she got away from with Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
That's right, and that was not true, right. I am
ninety nine point nine percent sure it was a fabrication, correct.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, But there always is that zero point one percent
right that you kind of have when you're with somebody
who is really truly a professional at deceit.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It's always the point one percent right. And I do
feel like as I've sort of did my sort of
excavation to my mind mom's stories and like, you know,
discovering this tiny little kernel of truth that got exploded
into something massive. Talking about two Paul skyhorses. So there
was one in La and one in the Midwest, the
one in LA who was on trial for murder, and
you know, it was a very prominent trial. When I
(24:15):
started to do some dick and I was like, oh,
you know, like I think my mom was just one
of those courtroom junkies, you know, just kind of like
hung around and like told people, oh, this is Paul
Skyhorsus Sun, et cetera. I bet their past they ever
even crossed. And so I did a Freedom of Information
Act request. Six months later I got this, like basically
about almost two thousand pages, this massive sheet of documents.
(24:35):
I don't know what I was looking to find. I
don't know if I was looking to find like, you know,
my mom's letters or you know whatever, right like, I
was looking for something somehow their past must have crossed.
And on the next to last page, like after hundreds
and hundreds of pages, I'm not exaggerating, I found a
visitor sign in sheet from nineteen seventy whatever, and lo
and behold, there was my mom's name. There was her name,
(24:57):
there was her signature. So she wasn't exaggerating at least
about this. They had met, she had visited him, and
of course, because she was a beautiful young woman, you know,
I want to visit Paul Scard. Yeah, of course she.
Of course she made her way in, and of course
they had a series of conversations, and of course they
had maybe corresponded or whatever. But it then got blown
into this much larger, more fantastical narrative when to me,
(25:20):
just the fact that she decided to reach out to him,
just that part of the story, that would have been
more than enough for a really incredible tale, right, But
not for her, not for her, not for her.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
At one point, Brando's mom takes on a new job,
a very unconventional job.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
So the way my mom tells it is that we
were watching the talk show Dona Hue. All right, remember
Dona Hue, and like you know, always come around the
same time in the afternoon, and he had a whole
episode devoted to phone sex operators. So there were these
you know, women behind like a black screen, and we
were watching it together. I guess it must have been
summer time. I was home from school, or maybe I
(25:59):
was home from school earlier or something, and she said
that I pointed to the screen and said, you know,
you could do that because the show had like demonstrated
to audience. Oh, look, these are people who work from
home and make large amounts of untaxed money. They kind
of set their own schedule. I'm like, oh, sounds like
a good deal. And so supposedly I said to my mom, oh, hey,
(26:20):
you could do that, and that was something that did
I actually say that. I'm guessing probably not. I hope
I didn't say that, because again, ten eleven years old,
but my mom decided she answered an AD was in
the classifieds. And she then proceeded to start a career
as a phone sex operator, initially working for a company
where basically it was almost kind of like a dispatch service,
(26:42):
like she would get like a number and then this
would be a number you would call and it would
be like, oh, I want someone who looks like this
and blah blah blah blah, and who has this kind
of backstory. And then later as the nature of the
service morphed, she went to working like one nine hundred
numbers ninety seven six numbers, where it wasn't I hate
to use the phrase high end, but it was more
like just random people on the phone, as opposed to
(27:04):
like catering to people with specific taste, specific desires, et cetera.
She did that for a number of years long unto
when I was well into high school, and you know,
I would have to try to invent stories from my
high school buddies because you know, my mom was always
at home. The door was always closed, and you know,
they'd be like, why is your mom always in there?
I'm like, oh, she's working. It's like what kind of
works she do? Telemarketing, you know, because I had heard
(27:26):
that word somewhere. They're all from high school, so it's like, okay,
kind of weird but whatever. But was like, it's not
something I could just freely tell people. So it was
another example of my mother's I guess, fascination with narratives
and storytelling because that's basically what she was doing.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Right well, and it may be if you did indeed
say that, it would be a recognition that she would
be good at that, at telling stories.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I really like that interpretation, Danny. I really like that,
So I'm gonna use that from now. I'm like, yeah,
that's that must have been what I realized, Like, she's
a really a storyteller, so she'll just do that. It's
not for everybody, No, it's for everybody. But yeah, I
think my mom was only really happy, genuinely happy talking
(28:13):
to strangers and telling stranger stories in whatever sense of
that word, because once you've met her, once you knew her,
then you kind of like lost whatever sort of novelty
value you had to her.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
There are so many stepfathers who come in and out
of the picture that Brando in his memoir creates a
visual chart of sorts, a casting sheet, so the reader
can keep track all the way through his teenage years
and well into high school. All these father ish figures,
their comings and goings set off little nuclear bombs of
(28:47):
longing in young Brando because there's always the possibility, the
hope that somebody's going to stick around, or that someone's
going to keep their promises, but none of them do.
And what these father thinks gears also have in common
is that they're often on the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
There were five step fathers total, I would say, four
of whom being on the wrong side of the law
I think is an apt way to put it. And
you know, the thing that I would love to be
able to say is that, oh, you know, I eventually
outgrew that need, but like, I don't think I ever did.
I don't think even now, I think there's still this
desire that I have that you know, whenever I meet
somebody who's older and kind of gives off that mentor
(29:29):
kind of vibe, do you know what I mean, Like
somebody who has bid around a lot likes to tell
stories that there's always like kind of a romantic part
of me.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
It's like, oh, I wish I had a dad like
that Berando. That does not surprise me in the slightest.
I would be surprised if you didn't feel that way,
because you know, there's there's a moment in your book
that I underlined and it's just one sentence, but it's
I'm intact. But the scars are there, of course they are.
I mean, it's a myth to think that scars go away.
(29:59):
You know, they can be healed over and they can soften,
but they're there.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
The human spirit's capacity to reach toward the light, like
a hardy weed pushing its way through a crack in
a sidewalk never ceases to amaze me. Against the backdrop
of the sketchy non father figures and his mother's violent,
mercurial nature, Brando knows he's going to college. And not
only is he planning to go to college, but he
(30:45):
quietly applies to some of the best universities in the country,
telling no one, and he's admitted to Stamford University.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
There's an acquaintance of mine who calls Stamford today the
no factory because basically, yo, no, you're not getting in.
So I will say, let's just say, for the sake
of argument, it was the early nineties, maybe it was
a little easier for me to get in. I will
also say, because this is a conversation I've had when
students asked me about this, It's like, oh, well, what
did you apply as?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
What did you apply as? Because again it was like
you were living your life as this American Indian. What
did you apply as? And you know, I'm completely honest,
It's like, okay, well, I was living my life as
an American Indian, even though I did not know. This
was like a story. I wasn't supposed to tell people
that I was actually a Mexican American. So that's what
I told. That's times like, I'm living my life as
an American Indian. So I told the Emissions Committee that
(31:33):
I put in my application I'm an American Indian, but
also wrote about everything that I've written about in the book,
which was, you know, meeting this person who I believe
was my father, all those things. Those things actually happen.
But you know, the implication under that, of course, is well,
you really didn't earn your way in, right, you really,
(31:53):
you know, you were put in the American Indian pile.
And so what I have to remind people is like, oh,
so if you're saying I benefited from affirmative action, it's like, well,
I'm actually Latino, so I probably would have been put
if that's your argument, I would have been put in
the same pile, just if we're gonna be honest about this, right.
But you know, to me, the bigger sense of this
location is going to a place like Stanford, and because
(32:15):
I checked American Indian on the box is that I
was immediately routed to the American Indian students who are there.
And so I felt like, well, I can't interact with
these students because somehow that would be unfair, that would
somehow be unfair to perpetuate this lie to them. But
at the same time, it's like, well, I'm Latino, but
I got this name sky Wars, Well, what are the
(32:37):
Latinos gonna think? You know what I mean? So, like
it left me in this very funky situation where I
got in and expected it to be this transformative experience
and it wasn't. And it wasn't because in part I
was never able to just have that honest conversation with
myself and say, this is who I am, this is
(32:58):
my identity. I didn't choose, it was chosen for me,
and I'm going to make the best of this situation.
That's probably a lot to ask of an eighteen year old,
though I was basically walking around in this dank fog.
And I remember one of the first meetings I had
with an advisor if I submitted this paper and it
was like a three page aside and all Greek nts
or something or other. And this person was a resident fellow.
(33:20):
And so at Stanford, like these professors they live in
the dorms, right, so you can go to their apartment
and it's meant to create this sort of atmosphere of
conviviality that like, you can eat dinner with your professors.
So I remember walking down this hall because I had
submitted like an eight page paper, I'll blow him out
of the water. And I remember going into his apartment
and my paper was on the table and I looked
(33:41):
at the papers blank, like there's no red marks. I'm like,
oh my god, this is going to be easier than
I thought. And he sits down and he turns to
me and he says, Okay, did you have problems writing
in high school? And it was like one of those
like telescopic moments in a movie where it's just like
everything is shattered. It's like, oh wow, I'm really terrible
at this. I'm trouble now. How do I figure this out?
(34:03):
And every week I was there, there is this sense
of I'm a fraud. I don't belong here. I should leave,
and getting that message reafferred by my mother, who had
a I mean possible time letting me go and was
constantly on the phone with me saying just come on home,
come on home, you know, like there's no shame in this,
just you don't belong there. And so, yeah, that first
quarter was a really really challenging time, the first couple
(34:25):
of quarters of particular.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
What do you think kept you from doing just that? So,
for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I stuck around fall quarter I came back home and Danny,
I'm sure you've had this experience where, perhaps you know,
going back to a childhood home and just everything seemed
so much smaller, almost like a miniature version of things.
And I remember leaving that September and just feeling like, oh,
this was my home. What am I doing? Every sort
of like attachment in the world is here, and then
(34:54):
coming back and feeling like I'm like an actor on
a stage, almost like this is completely foreign to me,
these connections, this house, everything felt like shrunk down, and
there was this realization was like, oh, I'm gonna move
back into this. This doesn't feel right. So I went
back that winter semester, and again i'd had a different professor,
somebody who I think was aware of where my interests
(35:16):
were and perhaps where my talents were and worked with
me in a way that helped me get over that hump.
By the time I got to nearly the end of
winter quarter, I was turning excellent work, not just for me,
work that was acknowledged by my Stanford professors like oh,
this is really great, believe provocative thesis. And I think
it was just that acknowledgment that I know what's down
that road. I know that my mom and my grandmother,
(35:38):
having lived in that house for many, many, many years,
I know what's down that road. It's me taking my
place in that house alongside them. And I knew that
wasn't what I wanted, and so I just had to
dig out. I just had to dig out and just
hunker down and hang in there. And I know it
sounds incredibly cliche, but time time to I guess acknowledge.
(35:59):
This is not going to be something that happens overnight.
My integration into this world is going to take work
and it's going to take time, but that I owe
myself the benefit of both.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yeah, that's beautiful. It reminds me of I saw a
play recently, really good play on Broadway called The Hills
of California, and there's this moment where there's this one character,
this daughter, who has never left home, and you know
they're all adults, and one of the sisters turns to
her and says, you just could never find the door. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Well, I love that.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Growing up reading had been Brando's refuge. Reading had been
his escape into narrative, and interestingly enough, away from narrative too,
away from the stories. Spun by his mother, and as
he moves through college he discovers he's not only a reader,
but a writer. After finishing undergrad he goes directly into
(36:52):
the academically rigorous MFA program at Irvine University of California.
This is a big move found his door.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So the idea, I think was either find a way
to write for a living or become an entertainment lawyer.
And I think maybe that's because I watched a lot
of LA law growing up. Maybe that was it. I'm
not really sure. I was really like drawn to those
big houses and fancy cars. But I had this wonderful
associate instructor named Ray. He was a Stagner fellow, and
(37:24):
I was talking to him about applying to law school,
applying to you know, MFA programs, because I really want
to write. And he's like, look, if you go to
law school, you're gonna get in a lot of debt.
So find an MFA program that will give you, you know,
a fully funded degree, and go do that because you
can always go do law school afterwards. And he had
like it was another person. You know, there are always
these people along the way who are like, oh, hey,
(37:45):
I really like what you're doing, keep at it. You know,
I think this is something that you could probably make
a living at. I think maybe he even mentioned the
fact that Irvine had a program, because you know, this
wasn't something that I was very knowledgeable about, and so
I think the idea is like, oh, I can do this,
and it's only going to be two year and let's
see what comes of it. So getting to Irvine and
then hitting the ground running and realizing oh, this is
(38:06):
something that you know, I really enjoy doing and really
appreciate doing it just felt like there was a piece
that I felt in myself. Because again this is before
therapy and for everything else, there was a piece that
I felt in myself when I was writing, and it's
still every time I sit down, every time I turn
(38:26):
off all the distractions and it's just me and the work.
Everything else disappears, and there's this enormous sense of peace
and tranquility that happens. It's like going almost into a
fugue state, and it feels very comforting, it feels very protective,
it feels like tons of possibility. And then of course
(38:48):
obviously when you finish writing, like in the revision and
all that other stuff, it's like, oh, you know, like
if I could just skip all of this part right,
But I think, to me, the reason why I write,
it's that sense of possibility and comfort and protection.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
That's why I write. After graduating from the MFA program
at Irvine, Brando and his girlfriend move east to Jersey City.
They're just settling into their new place when Brando receives
a message from his latest stepfather with some very intense news.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I get the call and it's a stepfather number five
who tells me that my mom had passed, and it
was sudden. My mother had gained a lot of weight
over the years and had become fixated with trying to
lose that weight. Tried a number of these ridiculous powders
and all the other stuffers the eighties and nineties zero
(39:43):
were just awash and all of these infomercials, and unbeknownst
to me, she had started taking drugs to lose that weight.
She started taking speed, which she had dabbled with, you know,
throughout much of her life, and then she also started
taking fen fenn. This was before was off the market,
Forest taken off the market, and she start to cocktailing
the two a very very dangerous combination, and her heart
(40:05):
just gave out when she was fifty years old. I
didn't handle it well, I remember at the time, just
not really processing it, just kind of like robotically saying, Okay,
my mom passed away, hanging up the phone. I didn't
go back for the funeral because I had this sense,
because I was on the East coast now, that if
I went back, I would end up, you know, to
use the language you describe, I would end up back
(40:27):
in that house, not finding the door. I would end
up back in the house taking my mom's place. I
just knew that's what would happen, and it terrified me.
Should have gone back for the funeral, didn't go back,
and spent many many years basically trying to process this,
trying to process our relationship, trying to essentially figure out
(40:47):
an ending for my mother and I because I think
I believed at a certain point, you reach a certain age, oh,
my mom and I are going to come to some
sort of reconciliation, right, There's going to be some sort
of movement or some sort of whatever. And it just
was like cutting off a tree, Bram. She was just like, basically,
my mom is forever frozen as a fifty year old
like I'm now older than she is, and so there
(41:09):
is that sense of what could have been, what would
have happened. Would we have found a way to reach
some sort of understanding between us? And I hate to
be cruel about it, but it's like, I don't know
if that's possible, and maybe in a certain way for me,
you know, her passing, her sudden passing, allowed me to
do the work without additional damage being added on top
(41:34):
of it.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
What year did your mother die?
Speaker 2 (41:37):
She died in nineteen ninety eight. January sixth, nineteen ninety eight,
says If I needed other reasons to remember that day today,
I'd never forget. And my grandmother passed away a year
after that in ninety nine. About a year and a
half after that.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
In twenty ten, Brando finds and contacts his biological father,
another father, the og Father. His name is Candy Uyoa.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I reached out to him for the best of reasons,
which was I had a book contract to write a memoir,
So what better time, right, you know, writers, writers, man?
So I just published my first novel, which I think
went well. I was pleased with the experience. It was
a two book deal, and I was putting together the
sort of the outline for this book, and I had
(42:28):
trouble beginning it. And again, you know, I'm assuming you
understand as somebody who's written many wonderful, beautiful memoirs yourself.
For me, as far as this memoir, I just didn't
know where to begin. It seems so massive, the story
seems so overwhelming. It's like, what's the door in? How
do you walk into this story? Because there's just so
many twists and turns. And my ex girlfriend, the one
(42:49):
who actually I moved out with to the East Coast,
we were still in contact. She's like, Yo, why don't
you see if you can find Gabby though? And I'm like,
come on, you know what I mean? Like girls, I
was thinking, like the movies, I can't afford a private
I'm gonna hire like what Barnaby Jones or something like
I don't know why all my references are seventies and
it's maybe that's where my head is. But she was like, no, like,
you know, just use the internet see if you could,
like maybe you know, find somebody who could do some
(43:10):
online research for you or something. And so I figured like, okay,
that seems like a reasonable idea, and I thought I
would write about my inability to find him. That was
the ankle. That was how I was going to structure
because I was like, that seems like an interesting way, right,
empty computer screen or whatever, So I'm gonna have to
white pages. Dot Com typed in his name and I said, oh,
we have a result, but you have to pay ten
bucks ord or whatever. It's like, okay, let's see who
(43:31):
this non person is. And it was his name complete
GANI though Garcia Yoa and it had an address in California,
and I'm like, all right, well, let's get this a shot.
I wrote him a letter, a simple one page letter,
and I had my friend translated into Spanish, because again,
having been raised as a Mexican American, it's one of
(43:52):
the things that I lost, and people think about passing
right now. It's passes an American Indian. People think about, oh,
you gained this, or you gained that. Nobody thinks about
what you lost. I lost this whole identity of mine.
I should know Spanish, I should be able to speak
Spanish better than I do. So I had a friend
translated for me, and I included a couple of photos
color zeroxis of some photos. I'm like, I think you're
(44:13):
my father. Here's a letter, and he received it and
his wife had already known about my existence, but his
children didn't. And so when the letter arrived, his wife,
a wonderful woman named Dorora, went to him and said,
your son is looking for you. Here's his letter. You're
going to contact him. And when she said are you
going to it really wasn't a question, it was a statement, like,
(44:37):
you're going to contact him? And a week later I
got a message on my voicemail short message with a number,
called him back and he immediately started speaking to me
in Spanish and I'm like, no, no, that somebody else
wrote that letter. I don't understand what you're saying. And
he's like, oh, you know, Spanish was so well written.
He's like, I'm the man you're looking for. Didn't say
it was my father said I'm the man you're looking for.
(45:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
One of the things I think about about writing memoir,
writing creative nonfiction when it's personal and therefore scary, that
there's also this way in which I'm curious what you think,
because I know for me, I think that it has
given me the permission to be brave and write the
(45:21):
letter or make the phone call in a way that
I don't think I would have dared to do in
any other way. But because it was for my book,
for my job, because it was for the story, it
allowed me to push past my own fear, you know,
because you're framing it, and maybe it's true for you,
but you're framing it as you know, well, writers, we
want what we want if it's good for a story,
(45:42):
which I also think you know is very valid and
certainly for me in other ways. But I wonder whether
you think you ever would have done that regardless.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
So I really like the way you frame it, in
part first because it's much less cynical, but my take,
which is a very very cynical take, right, But more specifically, yeah,
this rationalization that hey, like, I have permission to knock
on doors and do a little gumshoe sleuthing and figuring
(46:12):
things out because this is what I do. It's for
the project, it's for the book. It's a sense of
I'm giving myself permission because I think that given the
way that you have told me you venerate books and
the way that I venerate books, right, like books save
my life, right, And here's a chance to create a book,
(46:33):
to create a narrative that might impact someone's life in
a positive way. That somebody might have this crazy upbringing
and they read my book and they're like, oh wow,
like maybe I feel less alone. It's like that sense
of oh, I have permission to go and knock on
this door. I have permission to send this letter.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
When Brando connects with Candy, he also learns something extraordinary.
Not only has he finally met his biological thoughts, but
he also has three sisters.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Growing up, I think I had often long for siblings,
but for a very selfish reason, and that there would
be multiple people to absorb my mother's abuse, in my
mother's my mother's anger, there would be like, you know,
more bodies, I guess, to go around. But also I
think the sense that having siblings would have validated that
experience so much more, the idea of like, hey, wasn't
that crazy what she just did? Or wasn't that crazy
(47:26):
what she just said? I would have had much less
of this, the sense of that I was experiencing and
absorbing all of this trauma on my own. But to me,
the wonderful thing about having these sisters and these siblings
is well twofold, you know. Number one, just knowing that
there are people out there like me who are just
kind of experiencing the world to me again, like I
still marvel at that. That's still amazing to me. But
(47:49):
the fact that after a single conversation, one conversation where
essentially my eldest sister asked me like, okay, well, who
the heck are you? I met them in La like
who are you? What are you doing here? Right? And
once I explained to them what I've just told you,
once they understood the situation, they're like, oh, okay, well
you're our brother, simple as that. So we don't even
(48:11):
use the half designations like oh well technically, oh he's
a half brother. Half they're my sisters and I'm their brother.
And the fact that one of the conversations I had
with Frank after I discovered them is that, you know,
he said, they were clearly waiting for you. They were
waiting for you. They somehow they didn't know you existed,
(48:31):
but they were waiting for you. And that's your family.
It's not how all families work, but this is how
your family works.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Well, and Candy also lets you know that he did
not leave you.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, he wanted to make that clear, that that narrative
that I'd had drilled into me for years and years
and years, that he wanted to stay, he wanted to
find a way to make this work and that. But
you know, essentially I was never far from his thoughts.
I don't think he would say that he acted perfectly
(49:07):
in all of the subsequent situations. But when I took
him out to lunch, this was a few years ago. Now,
he tells me, oh, I'm getting a new email address,
and this is the first time in as many many
years that you know, he had an email address. It
would have to check into a computer and they say, well,
you're going to need a password, and you know the
password is obviously, that's the one word you never give anyone.
(49:28):
That's the one Never share your password, never tell anyone
what that password is. And he looks at me very earnestly,
and he says, my password is Brando, And somehow that
seems wholly appropriate.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Zaccor is the
story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
you have a family secret, you'd like to share, Please
leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
(50:18):
me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like
to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I was five when I'd clung to Paul's legs like
a tree and called him Daddy. I was fifteen when
the father i'd waited ten years for, the one father
i'd believed in or thought i'd had a write to,
abandoned me, just like the others hadn't my other fathers, Gandhi,
(00:25):
though Frank Robert been building up to this one father
whose name I shared, who was supposed to stay for good?
Was I no longer a sky Horse? I was still
quote unquote Indian closing gearbook signatures the way I had
in seventh and eighth grades. Quote may the Great Spirit
(00:47):
guide you end, quote the same signature Paul use in
his letters. If I wasn't a skyhorse, the only part
of my identity I felt was quote unquote me. Then
who was I a Mexican who had no idea what
being Mexican meant? Pretending to be an American Indian in
(01:09):
name only, an abandoned son mourning his dead father who
wasn't dead and wasn't his father.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
That's Brando Skyhorse, writer, Associate professor of English at Indiana University,
an author of two novels, most recently, My Name is
Iris and the memoir Take This Man Brando's is a
story of identity, fantasy, mythmaking, deceit, and, more than anything,
a life shaped by the profound be longing for a father.
(01:54):
I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
that are kept from us, the secret we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The landscape of my childhood started in Echo Park, southern California.
She's a neighborhood adjacent to Dodger Stadium. I was born
in nineteen seventy three, so it makes me I guess
gen X. And I was about two or three years
old when my biological father left my family. And the
(02:31):
reason I'm hesitating there is because I'd always phrase it
as him leaving. Later I sort of reframed that understanding
was perhaps he was kicked out, perhaps there was an
aggressive move to eject him from our family household. And
both my biological parents are Mexican American, and my mother
decided to use that specific incident to essentially reinvent both
(02:53):
of us as American Indians. She created a persona for herself.
She created a persona for me. I didn't really know
that this had happened until I was about twelve or thirteen.
But that initial landscape, I guess was one of fantasy.
I suppose I was led to believe that I was
an American Indian. I was led to believe that I
was the son of an American Indian chief. You know,
(03:16):
so three, four or five, six years old, I'd been
told all of these really fantastical things, and I believe
them because when you're a child, you believe what your
parents tell you. My mother had this very specific idea
of how we, as American Indians were supposed to perform,
and she gave me this little speech that I was
(03:37):
supposed to recite, something along the lines of I don't
remember the exact words, but basically, because of this country's
treatment of our people, notice of the use of our there,
I cannot stand. I cannot salute the flag. And I remember,
you know, going into that classroom and everyone being asked
to rise with the pledge of allegiance. Because it was
again the early nineteen eighties, so that was the kind
(03:59):
of thing that just you know, that happened every day,
and saying it and sitting down and this is kind
of like this wave of like anxiety and fear and
doing it and feeling like in the moment, oh okay,
well I just sat down and nothing really happened, and
my teacher really not processing it in a way that
I guess i'd assumed she would, and her coming over
(04:21):
to me and laying hands on me and pulling me
out of my chair and forcing me to physically complete
the pledge of allegiance and then ejecting me from the classroom.
So that was first grade. So what yeah, eight years old, seven,
eight years old something around that.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And at that time that was still very much your
belief right that you were American Indian.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So it was my belief that I was an American Indian.
I think the idea of outwardly, you know, telling people
making those kinds of gestures certainly wasn't on my menu
for these are the things that I want to do
in a first grade classroom. But the thing that I
keep returning to is that, you know, essentially, I'm just
(05:04):
a child that wants to make my mom happy. And
this was a way that I believed, Oh, if I
do these things, if I act in these ways, if
I follow what my mom tells me to do in
these public spaces. My mom will love me, my mom
will take care of me. And that was I think
very important to me, living in a household where I
had no father figure, no father, no stable father figure,
(05:26):
and living in a household with just my mom and
my grandma. So I was very eager to please, very
very eager to follow what she suggested.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I do describe your mother a bit, the mother of
your childhood, the mother of those years.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The only word I can grasp at is awesome. And
I mean that in that the larger sense of that word, right,
just like a force larger than anything else in my life.
She was hypnotic. She was a fantastic storyteller. She was
the kind of person that you'd be transfixed, you know,
(05:58):
she would plant herself in front of you and you
would have this amazing, phenomenal conversation with her and think,
oh my god, like that's the most fascinating person that
I've ever met in my life. She was attractive, She
had long hair that would go down to her waist,
and just had this presence about her that, you know,
people wanted to talk to her. She drew people to
her and even as a young child, I was in
(06:19):
awe of her, but I also saw other people in
awe of her as well, which just adds to that
idea that, oh, here's this person who whom the world
is drawn to and circulates around. I think the result
of that was just giving her that additional credibility that
when she would tell me these things, was like, well,
of course they're true, because look at all the people
around her, look at all the people that are drawn
(06:40):
to her.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah. The word that kept on coming to me as
I was reading about your mother was well, there were
a couple of words, but kind of a fabuloust and
a fantasist, yes, And the largeness of what she took on,
what she did by changing not just your name and
not just her own name, but both of your identity. Yeah,
(07:05):
her name was Maria Teresa and she was Mexican, and
she changed her name to Running Deer.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes. It's amazing, isn't it. And it sounds so over
the top, right, But this was the late seventies, early eighties.
So this idea that you had this Mexican American woman
and this Mexican American child living in a predominantly Mexican
American neighborhood. But of course they're American Indians. And her
name is Running Deer sky Horse ed. This kid's name
(07:33):
is Brando s Cars. Of course that's more credible to
believe than there are actually. Oh, they're just two Mexican
American people who have adopted these personas. And I think
again that is a testament to, you know, my mother's
ability to get people to essentially fall in love with
her but also fall in love with her narratives.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
In a striking passage from his memoir, Brando writes about
learning to talk fast and hide the truth. He learned
to stick to his mother's narrative.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
My father is Paul Skyhorse, my mother is Running Deer Skyhorse.
They are both full blooded American Indians. My father was
falsely arrested for killing two FBI agents. My mother was
a lawyer helping with his defense. I'm the son of
an Indian chief and will become a chief one day myself.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Any questions, I mean, it's just it's designed for there
to be absolutely no questions.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
No, right, you're right, yeah, that's the thing. The idea
of you know, how much information, right, how much information
do you need to sell a lie to sell a narrative.
I think that's one of the reasons that I became
a writer, and one of the reasons that I'm fascinated
with the idea of how you structure a story, how
you structure not only a narrative, but one's life, one's
(08:55):
life's narrative. How do you put that together? What are
the things that draw people in, and what are the
things that you can leave out? And everything in that paragraph? Right,
it's like, wow, this is really all that. Wow a lawyer,
and you know, kill that behind. Really there's just enough
of these sorts of like nuggets of fantastical information that
again it's beyond belief and you feel like, well, who
(09:18):
would make up something so fantastical? Right, it must be
true because we've all met those people. So much of
your story, to my mind, is about longing, longing for
a father, longing for a father figure. There are many.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Contenders for this role over the years, quite a few
of whom fail spectacularly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yes, certainly, But that first.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Of these is indeed someone named Paul Skyhorse. That's right,
your mother brings you to see when you're four years old.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, And this is again that sort of nature of
how sort of fantastical or beyond belief this is, is
that in this larger than life experience or this larger
than life upbringing the idea of like, we're going to
meet your father, but you know, we're going to meet
him in this situation that you wouldn't necessarily think it
(10:17):
would be normal to take a four year old child
to There are two Paul sky Horses that I met.
One was in a courtroom or I saw behind glass
they really meet him. I waived in it, and one
in prison I get a visitation center, right, And so
again the way memory works is that you know, it
took me the longest time to realize, oh, those two
(10:39):
sky horses. Of course they couldn't have been the same person,
but there was one Paul sky Horse out in Los Angeles,
one Paul sky Horse in the Midwest, and so as
a child, it just naturally felt like, oh, well, how
did this one person get over here? And then six
or seven months later they were over there? How did
that sort of like how did that work? And I
(10:59):
think that my mom was relying very much on the
fact that I was a child, that I wasn't going
to remember much that she could basically just shepherd me,
you know, or shove me in front of whomever she
was interacting with and say, well, that's Paul Skyhorse and
that's who your father is, and that I would just
accept it at face value. So in both of those memories,
(11:21):
the one in the courtroom and the one in the prison,
I think that my memory of both those instances is like, oh,
at last, here's my father, here's someone I'm connected with.
So I think in both those instances it was that
sense of relief. It was that sense of like, oh,
finally this question has been answered for me, when the
harsh reality of it is that my search was just beginning.
(11:46):
What do you think motivated your mother? What was she
hoping to accomplish by shedding this Mexican American identity by
coming up with these beautiful poetic names, I mean, Brando's Skyhorse.
I mean what could be more just powerful and musical
(12:07):
and unforgettable than that? What was she doing by bestowing
that unto you and unto herself? So let me give
you the generous years of therapy response to that, because
I think that's important to keep in mind too. This is,
you know, I've had a lot of time, I've written
about this. I've had a lot of opportunities to reflect
(12:29):
on this, and I think that my mother suffered from
this idea that she was just some ordinary Mexican kid
from you know, a neighborhood near East Los Angeles. And
I think she had this idea that she wanted to
be more than that. She wanted to be famous, She
wanted to be a celebrity. She wanted to I guess,
(12:50):
interact in that world. Again. You know, it's a common story,
especially to people who live in Los Angeles, the idea
that you know, Hollywood is not as far from the
people in La as it is from other people who
you know, have been drawn to Southern California, drawn to
the idea of like stardom and movies, et cetera. And
so I think there was this sense that she could
(13:11):
reinvent herself and infiltrate this world of I guess political activism,
because that's the other thing too. In the seventies, in particular,
the world of American Indian activism drew a lot of
stars Marlon Brando. There was the Skyhorse Mohawk murder trial
in Los Angeles in the mid to late seventies, and
(13:32):
I know that a number of you know, prominent Hollywood
celebrities came out for benefits and other such things. And
I think my mom saw, I guess in a certain way,
a way into that world, a way that she could
be more than who she was. And if I am
being really, really generous, I can say that she assumed,
(13:53):
by inventing this narrative, inventing this name for me, that
I would transcend my status as you know, just another
ordinary Mexican kid from LA I would be more than
when again, the reality is that if we had lived
in another part of the country, if we had lived
in say, Oklahoma, where there are stereotypes associated with American Indians,
(14:17):
it would have been a vastly different enterprise. So I
think there is a sense of I want to transcend
my own station, and I want the same thing to
happen for my son too. That's the most generous interpretation
I can offer.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Brando's in his last year of elementary school, when he
learns quite abruptly that Paul Skyhorse is not his father,
his mother just kind of drops it into casual conversation
and proceeds to tell him the name of the man
who is his biological father.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
It was roughly around, you know, when I was twelve
or thirteen, And you know, maybe it's because she felt
like I was getting older, I was getting more inquisitive
and really wasn't taking no for an answer, that she decided, Oh, okay,
now's the time in which I can acknowledge these things
that happened, which were that you know, oh, you know,
you are actually the son of this Mexican American and
(15:09):
you know we had a brief marriage and it didn't
work out for a variety of reasons, and he's actually
your father. And she was very specific that he abandoned us.
She was also very specific that he abandoned me. It
wasn't her he had left, It was me that he
had left. I think she wanted to hammer that point
very specifically, because I think even at that point, there
(15:31):
was this idea of, well, he certainly couldn't have left me,
given how fantastic an individual I am. So you must
have been the issue. If you hadn't been here, maybe
things would have worked out between us. But now that
you are here, and now that you know the truth,
you know, I want you to despise him as much
(15:51):
as I despise him, and I want you to keep
this a secret. This is a secret. This is something
that I just told you because you wouldn't leave me alone.
You kept harassing me about it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
She tells me, you have to be more like the mafia.
You have to like keep everything together for the family,
and you can't let other people outside the family know
our business because this is our business. And so as
I got that information, there was this pivot to, Okay,
now you know the truth, but now there's a responsibility
that comes with knowing that truth, which means you now
(16:23):
have to keep up the lie with me to whomever
you meet moving forward. You know, I was twelve, so
again it's like, oh, well, this is my mom, and
I guess this is how it is, and so that's
what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep up
the lie because that's what my mom asked me to do.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
During this time, Brando and his mom are living with
his grandmother, June. Well, June doesn't exactly conform to the
facade created by Brando's mom. She doesn't discourage it either,
to some degree, she plays along.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I suspect that part of the reason that my grandmother
or didn't really challenge my mother on any of this
or kind of went along with this, was because there
was a lot of friction between the two. You know,
my mother, I've come to realize, had borderline personality disorder.
She was an incredibly abusive person physically and emotionally, and
not only was I on the receiving end of it
(17:18):
on a daily basis, but my grandmother was too. It
was like trying to fit a triangle in a circle.
And I think that there were instances where it was
simply easier to go along with my mom's schemes than
the challenger, because she just didn't want to deal with
the aggravation, the headaches, the abuse, the constant arguments, the toxicity.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Brando's childhood and teenage years are rife with fathers, surrogate fathers, stepfathers,
(18:09):
pseudo fathers, men he was supposed to refer to as fathers.
First there's Frank, who's the first man Brando thought of
as a father. Then his mom takes Brando to meet
the man she tells him is really his father, Paul Skyhorse,
who is living in a correctional facility in Illinois. Quickly
Brando's little boy loyalties shift from Frank to this new
(18:31):
father or father figure, Paul's skyhorse. But that's not quite
right either. This begins a long period of time which
Brando's mom refers to as her man hunts. She simply
cannot be without a man, and Brando is her sidekick
in these man hunts.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It very actively includes me. To me, we had the
feel of like a seventies detective show. It was like
we were searching for the man with the one arm
or so, I know that's the fugitive, right, but like,
you know, we were like searching for someone. And so
every week it literally almost did it feel like every
week there was a new character, There was a new
person to talk to, There was a new guy who
(19:11):
could potentially be you know, my father, and traveling around
the country many times by train, sometimes by plane or
by bus going out and if you know, I describe
this to people, it's like, you know, this was the seventies,
and so again it's like there were no Google searches.
You couldn't check out like these people. The fact that
(19:31):
we survived meeting many numerous people just on the basis
of like here's a photograph here's an address. Oh, we've
got a phone number, and yeah, maybe that person will
be there. It's like it's astonishing, it's absolutely astonishing. But
I think there was this sense that to me, we
were on an adventure and at a certain point finding
(19:52):
a father figure, because it's the way she used to
sell it to me. It's like, well, I'm doing this
for you. I'm doing this for you, you know, like you
want a dad, like you know, you want someoneble that's
someone like Frank of course, who of course was reliable
and of course was in la and of course would
have been the obvious solution. Here's an opportunity for us
to like see the country and spend time together and
like find the right person. So I felt like, wow,
(20:14):
how incredible a situation this is. To be included, to
be trusted, to be given the responsibility to make this
decision with my mom, to be essentially a caretaker that
was something at like five or six, At seven years old,
it was like, wow, that's something that I want to do.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, of course, you know, it's reminding me a little bit.
I wasn't thinking about this when I was reading the book,
but it's reminded me a little bit of Ryan and
tatumonial in Paper Moon. Oh right, yeah, that's you know,
like just the like that's great little sidekick.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah yeah, that's spot on. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
After a series of different father adjacent characters, when Brando
is around ten or eleven, he has his first live
in stepfather, Robert. Robert is around for a couple of years,
and in that time he and Brando play ball together,
a father son activity if there ever was one. But
when Robert leaves abruptly, Brando is done with playing ball.
(21:15):
He never picks up the mit or ball again. At
one point, grandmother June, almost seventy, having never held a
baseball in her life, says to him, hey, let's play ball.
This is the first moment Brando feels seen, even for
a minute. June notices and witnesses the loss that nobody
else is seeing.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
She did see that loss. And you know, again, I
think about sort of the nature of memoir and how
like it's so important to be as candid as one
memory allows, and thinking of that memory of like how
I had this father figure who was certainly not ideal
for many reasons, for much of his I guess, illegal activity,
(21:58):
And then he's gone, and I'm disappointed in that. I'm
heartbroken at that. And then my grandmother sees me. She
offers to play with me, and I reject her. I'm like, oh,
I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? Like,
you know, just like looking at her, I'm looking at
her as if she is the most absurd person in
the world. And again, I was ten. But also the
(22:20):
only way that moment works if I'm honest about how
I was in that moment, and you know, thinking about
this forty years later or so, I wish I could
go back. I wish I could go back. And it's like,
you know what, pick up the glove, ma'am, pick up
the glove, pick up the ball. Have a little catch
with her.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, but you couldn't because she wasn't a dad, and
what that whole business was about was throwing a ball.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
As a dad. I think that's right. And understanding the
nature of just my circumstances to go back, you know,
the idea of like vetting my mom's boyfriends. I am
reminded of the fact that she would tell me frequently
that the primary reason she took me is for security,
because you know, it must have been a really ten
year old. But no, the idea is that if we
had somehow run into someone who would want to harm us,
(23:05):
because again, seventies eighties serial killers everywhere, it would take
a really specially messed up person to want to kill
a woman and her child. So I guess the logic
there is like, oh, well, if this person was to
hurt me, you're there, and he would be much less
likely to kill two people instead of one. So that's
my mom in a nutshell.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Right, speaking of serial killers. At one point, she alludes
to an encounter that she got away from with Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
That's right, and that was not true, right. I am
ninety nine point nine percent sure it was a fabrication, correct.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, But there always is that zero point one percent
right that you kind of have when you're with somebody
who is really truly a professional at deceit.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It's always the point one percent right. And I do
feel like as I've sort of did my sort of
excavation to my mind mom's stories and like, you know,
discovering this tiny little kernel of truth that got exploded
into something massive. Talking about two Paul skyhorses. So there
was one in La and one in the Midwest, the
one in LA who was on trial for murder, and
you know, it was a very prominent trial. When I
(24:15):
started to do some dick and I was like, oh,
you know, like I think my mom was just one
of those courtroom junkies, you know, just kind of like
hung around and like told people, oh, this is Paul
Skyhorsus Sun, et cetera. I bet their past they ever
even crossed. And so I did a Freedom of Information
Act request. Six months later I got this, like basically
about almost two thousand pages, this massive sheet of documents.
(24:35):
I don't know what I was looking to find. I
don't know if I was looking to find like, you know,
my mom's letters or you know whatever, right like, I
was looking for something somehow their past must have crossed.
And on the next to last page, like after hundreds
and hundreds of pages, I'm not exaggerating, I found a
visitor sign in sheet from nineteen seventy whatever, and lo
and behold, there was my mom's name. There was her name,
(24:57):
there was her signature. So she wasn't exaggerating at least
about this. They had met, she had visited him, and
of course, because she was a beautiful young woman, you know,
I want to visit Paul Scard. Yeah, of course she.
Of course she made her way in, and of course
they had a series of conversations, and of course they
had maybe corresponded or whatever. But it then got blown
into this much larger, more fantastical narrative when to me,
(25:20):
just the fact that she decided to reach out to him,
just that part of the story, that would have been
more than enough for a really incredible tale, right, But
not for her, not for her, not for her.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
At one point, Brando's mom takes on a new job,
a very unconventional job.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
So the way my mom tells it is that we
were watching the talk show Dona Hue. All right, remember
Dona Hue, and like you know, always come around the
same time in the afternoon, and he had a whole
episode devoted to phone sex operators. So there were these
you know, women behind like a black screen, and we
were watching it together. I guess it must have been
summer time. I was home from school, or maybe I
(25:59):
was home from school earlier or something, and she said
that I pointed to the screen and said, you know,
you could do that because the show had like demonstrated
to audience. Oh, look, these are people who work from
home and make large amounts of untaxed money. They kind
of set their own schedule. I'm like, oh, sounds like
a good deal. And so supposedly I said to my mom, oh, hey,
(26:20):
you could do that, and that was something that did
I actually say that. I'm guessing probably not. I hope
I didn't say that, because again, ten eleven years old,
but my mom decided she answered an AD was in
the classifieds. And she then proceeded to start a career
as a phone sex operator, initially working for a company
where basically it was almost kind of like a dispatch service,
(26:42):
like she would get like a number and then this
would be a number you would call and it would
be like, oh, I want someone who looks like this
and blah blah blah blah, and who has this kind
of backstory. And then later as the nature of the
service morphed, she went to working like one nine hundred
numbers ninety seven six numbers, where it wasn't I hate
to use the phrase high end, but it was more
like just random people on the phone, as opposed to
(27:04):
like catering to people with specific taste, specific desires, et cetera.
She did that for a number of years long unto
when I was well into high school, and you know,
I would have to try to invent stories from my
high school buddies because you know, my mom was always
at home. The door was always closed, and you know,
they'd be like, why is your mom always in there?
I'm like, oh, she's working. It's like what kind of
works she do? Telemarketing, you know, because I had heard
(27:26):
that word somewhere. They're all from high school, so it's like, okay,
kind of weird but whatever. But was like, it's not
something I could just freely tell people. So it was
another example of my mother's I guess, fascination with narratives
and storytelling because that's basically what she was doing.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Right well, and it may be if you did indeed
say that, it would be a recognition that she would
be good at that, at telling stories.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I really like that interpretation, Danny. I really like that,
So I'm gonna use that from now. I'm like, yeah,
that's that must have been what I realized, Like, she's
a really a storyteller, so she'll just do that. It's
not for everybody, No, it's for everybody. But yeah, I
think my mom was only really happy, genuinely happy talking
(28:13):
to strangers and telling stranger stories in whatever sense of
that word, because once you've met her, once you knew her,
then you kind of like lost whatever sort of novelty
value you had to her.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
There are so many stepfathers who come in and out
of the picture that Brando in his memoir creates a
visual chart of sorts, a casting sheet, so the reader
can keep track all the way through his teenage years
and well into high school. All these father ish figures,
their comings and goings set off little nuclear bombs of
(28:47):
longing in young Brando because there's always the possibility, the
hope that somebody's going to stick around, or that someone's
going to keep their promises, but none of them do.
And what these father thinks gears also have in common
is that they're often on the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
There were five step fathers total, I would say, four
of whom being on the wrong side of the law
I think is an apt way to put it. And
you know, the thing that I would love to be
able to say is that, oh, you know, I eventually
outgrew that need, but like, I don't think I ever did.
I don't think even now, I think there's still this
desire that I have that you know, whenever I meet
somebody who's older and kind of gives off that mentor
(29:29):
kind of vibe, do you know what I mean, Like
somebody who has bid around a lot likes to tell
stories that there's always like kind of a romantic part
of me.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
It's like, oh, I wish I had a dad like
that Berando. That does not surprise me in the slightest.
I would be surprised if you didn't feel that way,
because you know, there's there's a moment in your book
that I underlined and it's just one sentence, but it's
I'm intact. But the scars are there, of course they are.
I mean, it's a myth to think that scars go away.
(29:59):
You know, they can be healed over and they can soften,
but they're there.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
The human spirit's capacity to reach toward the light, like
a hardy weed pushing its way through a crack in
a sidewalk never ceases to amaze me. Against the backdrop
of the sketchy non father figures and his mother's violent,
mercurial nature, Brando knows he's going to college. And not
only is he planning to go to college, but he
(30:45):
quietly applies to some of the best universities in the country,
telling no one, and he's admitted to Stamford University.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
There's an acquaintance of mine who calls Stamford today the
no factory because basically, yo, no, you're not getting in.
So I will say, let's just say, for the sake
of argument, it was the early nineties, maybe it was
a little easier for me to get in. I will
also say, because this is a conversation I've had when
students asked me about this, It's like, oh, well, what
did you apply as?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
What did you apply as? Because again it was like
you were living your life as this American Indian. What
did you apply as? And you know, I'm completely honest,
It's like, okay, well, I was living my life as
an American Indian, even though I did not know. This
was like a story. I wasn't supposed to tell people
that I was actually a Mexican American. So that's what
I told. That's times like, I'm living my life as
an American Indian. So I told the Emissions Committee that
(31:33):
I put in my application I'm an American Indian, but
also wrote about everything that I've written about in the book,
which was, you know, meeting this person who I believe
was my father, all those things. Those things actually happen.
But you know, the implication under that, of course, is well,
you really didn't earn your way in, right, you really,
(31:53):
you know, you were put in the American Indian pile.
And so what I have to remind people is like, oh,
so if you're saying I benefited from affirmative action, it's like, well,
I'm actually Latino, so I probably would have been put
if that's your argument, I would have been put in
the same pile, just if we're gonna be honest about this, right.
But you know, to me, the bigger sense of this
location is going to a place like Stanford, and because
(32:15):
I checked American Indian on the box is that I
was immediately routed to the American Indian students who are there.
And so I felt like, well, I can't interact with
these students because somehow that would be unfair, that would
somehow be unfair to perpetuate this lie to them. But
at the same time, it's like, well, I'm Latino, but
I got this name sky Wars, Well, what are the
(32:37):
Latinos gonna think? You know what I mean? So, like
it left me in this very funky situation where I
got in and expected it to be this transformative experience
and it wasn't. And it wasn't because in part I
was never able to just have that honest conversation with
myself and say, this is who I am, this is
(32:58):
my identity. I didn't choose, it was chosen for me,
and I'm going to make the best of this situation.
That's probably a lot to ask of an eighteen year old,
though I was basically walking around in this dank fog.
And I remember one of the first meetings I had
with an advisor if I submitted this paper and it
was like a three page aside and all Greek nts
or something or other. And this person was a resident fellow.
(33:20):
And so at Stanford, like these professors they live in
the dorms, right, so you can go to their apartment
and it's meant to create this sort of atmosphere of
conviviality that like, you can eat dinner with your professors.
So I remember walking down this hall because I had
submitted like an eight page paper, I'll blow him out
of the water. And I remember going into his apartment
and my paper was on the table and I looked
(33:41):
at the papers blank, like there's no red marks. I'm like,
oh my god, this is going to be easier than
I thought. And he sits down and he turns to
me and he says, Okay, did you have problems writing
in high school? And it was like one of those
like telescopic moments in a movie where it's just like
everything is shattered. It's like, oh wow, I'm really terrible
at this. I'm trouble now. How do I figure this out?
(34:03):
And every week I was there, there is this sense
of I'm a fraud. I don't belong here. I should leave,
and getting that message reafferred by my mother, who had
a I mean possible time letting me go and was
constantly on the phone with me saying just come on home,
come on home, you know, like there's no shame in this,
just you don't belong there. And so, yeah, that first
quarter was a really really challenging time, the first couple
(34:25):
of quarters of particular.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
What do you think kept you from doing just that? So,
for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I stuck around fall quarter I came back home and Danny,
I'm sure you've had this experience where, perhaps you know,
going back to a childhood home and just everything seemed
so much smaller, almost like a miniature version of things.
And I remember leaving that September and just feeling like, oh,
this was my home. What am I doing? Every sort
of like attachment in the world is here, and then
(34:54):
coming back and feeling like I'm like an actor on
a stage, almost like this is completely foreign to me,
these connections, this house, everything felt like shrunk down, and
there was this realization was like, oh, I'm gonna move
back into this. This doesn't feel right. So I went
back that winter semester, and again i'd had a different professor,
somebody who I think was aware of where my interests
(35:16):
were and perhaps where my talents were and worked with
me in a way that helped me get over that hump.
By the time I got to nearly the end of
winter quarter, I was turning excellent work, not just for me,
work that was acknowledged by my Stanford professors like oh,
this is really great, believe provocative thesis. And I think
it was just that acknowledgment that I know what's down
that road. I know that my mom and my grandmother,
(35:38):
having lived in that house for many, many, many years,
I know what's down that road. It's me taking my
place in that house alongside them. And I knew that
wasn't what I wanted, and so I just had to
dig out. I just had to dig out and just
hunker down and hang in there. And I know it
sounds incredibly cliche, but time time to I guess acknowledge.
(35:59):
This is not going to be something that happens overnight.
My integration into this world is going to take work
and it's going to take time, but that I owe
myself the benefit of both.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yeah, that's beautiful. It reminds me of I saw a
play recently, really good play on Broadway called The Hills
of California, and there's this moment where there's this one character,
this daughter, who has never left home, and you know
they're all adults, and one of the sisters turns to
her and says, you just could never find the door. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Well, I love that.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Growing up reading had been Brando's refuge. Reading had been
his escape into narrative, and interestingly enough, away from narrative too,
away from the stories. Spun by his mother, and as
he moves through college he discovers he's not only a reader,
but a writer. After finishing undergrad he goes directly into
(36:52):
the academically rigorous MFA program at Irvine University of California.
This is a big move found his door.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So the idea, I think was either find a way
to write for a living or become an entertainment lawyer.
And I think maybe that's because I watched a lot
of LA law growing up. Maybe that was it. I'm
not really sure. I was really like drawn to those
big houses and fancy cars. But I had this wonderful
associate instructor named Ray. He was a Stagner fellow, and
(37:24):
I was talking to him about applying to law school,
applying to you know, MFA programs, because I really want
to write. And he's like, look, if you go to
law school, you're gonna get in a lot of debt.
So find an MFA program that will give you, you know,
a fully funded degree, and go do that because you
can always go do law school afterwards. And he had
like it was another person. You know, there are always
these people along the way who are like, oh, hey,
(37:45):
I really like what you're doing, keep at it. You know,
I think this is something that you could probably make
a living at. I think maybe he even mentioned the
fact that Irvine had a program, because you know, this
wasn't something that I was very knowledgeable about, and so
I think the idea is like, oh, I can do this,
and it's only going to be two year and let's
see what comes of it. So getting to Irvine and
then hitting the ground running and realizing oh, this is
(38:06):
something that you know, I really enjoy doing and really
appreciate doing it just felt like there was a piece
that I felt in myself. Because again this is before
therapy and for everything else, there was a piece that
I felt in myself when I was writing, and it's
still every time I sit down, every time I turn
(38:26):
off all the distractions and it's just me and the work.
Everything else disappears, and there's this enormous sense of peace
and tranquility that happens. It's like going almost into a
fugue state, and it feels very comforting, it feels very protective,
it feels like tons of possibility. And then of course
(38:48):
obviously when you finish writing, like in the revision and
all that other stuff, it's like, oh, you know, like
if I could just skip all of this part right,
But I think, to me, the reason why I write,
it's that sense of possibility and comfort and protection.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
That's why I write. After graduating from the MFA program
at Irvine, Brando and his girlfriend move east to Jersey City.
They're just settling into their new place when Brando receives
a message from his latest stepfather with some very intense news.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
I get the call and it's a stepfather number five
who tells me that my mom had passed, and it
was sudden. My mother had gained a lot of weight
over the years and had become fixated with trying to
lose that weight. Tried a number of these ridiculous powders
and all the other stuffers the eighties and nineties zero
(39:43):
were just awash and all of these infomercials, and unbeknownst
to me, she had started taking drugs to lose that weight.
She started taking speed, which she had dabbled with, you know,
throughout much of her life, and then she also started
taking fen fenn. This was before was off the market,
Forest taken off the market, and she start to cocktailing
the two a very very dangerous combination, and her heart
(40:05):
just gave out when she was fifty years old. I
didn't handle it well, I remember at the time, just
not really processing it, just kind of like robotically saying, Okay,
my mom passed away, hanging up the phone. I didn't
go back for the funeral because I had this sense,
because I was on the East coast now, that if
I went back, I would end up, you know, to
use the language you describe, I would end up back
(40:27):
in that house, not finding the door. I would end
up back in the house taking my mom's place. I
just knew that's what would happen, and it terrified me.
Should have gone back for the funeral, didn't go back,
and spent many many years basically trying to process this,
trying to process our relationship, trying to essentially figure out
(40:47):
an ending for my mother and I because I think
I believed at a certain point, you reach a certain age, oh,
my mom and I are going to come to some
sort of reconciliation, right, There's going to be some sort
of movement or some sort of whatever. And it just
was like cutting off a tree, Bram. She was just like, basically,
my mom is forever frozen as a fifty year old
like I'm now older than she is, and so there
(41:09):
is that sense of what could have been, what would
have happened. Would we have found a way to reach
some sort of understanding between us? And I hate to
be cruel about it, but it's like, I don't know
if that's possible, and maybe in a certain way for me,
you know, her passing, her sudden passing, allowed me to
do the work without additional damage being added on top
(41:34):
of it.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
What year did your mother die?
Speaker 2 (41:37):
She died in nineteen ninety eight. January sixth, nineteen ninety eight,
says If I needed other reasons to remember that day today,
I'd never forget. And my grandmother passed away a year
after that in ninety nine. About a year and a
half after that.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
In twenty ten, Brando finds and contacts his biological father,
another father, the og Father. His name is Candy Uyoa.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I reached out to him for the best of reasons,
which was I had a book contract to write a memoir,
So what better time, right, you know, writers, writers, man?
So I just published my first novel, which I think
went well. I was pleased with the experience. It was
a two book deal, and I was putting together the
sort of the outline for this book, and I had
(42:28):
trouble beginning it. And again, you know, I'm assuming you
understand as somebody who's written many wonderful, beautiful memoirs yourself.
For me, as far as this memoir, I just didn't
know where to begin. It seems so massive, the story
seems so overwhelming. It's like, what's the door in? How
do you walk into this story? Because there's just so
many twists and turns. And my ex girlfriend, the one
(42:49):
who actually I moved out with to the East Coast,
we were still in contact. She's like, Yo, why don't
you see if you can find Gabby though? And I'm like,
come on, you know what I mean? Like girls, I
was thinking, like the movies, I can't afford a private
I'm gonna hire like what Barnaby Jones or something like
I don't know why all my references are seventies and
it's maybe that's where my head is. But she was like, no, like,
you know, just use the internet see if you could,
like maybe you know, find somebody who could do some
(43:10):
online research for you or something. And so I figured like, okay,
that seems like a reasonable idea, and I thought I
would write about my inability to find him. That was
the ankle. That was how I was going to structure
because I was like, that seems like an interesting way, right,
empty computer screen or whatever, So I'm gonna have to
white pages. Dot Com typed in his name and I said, oh,
we have a result, but you have to pay ten
bucks ord or whatever. It's like, okay, let's see who
(43:31):
this non person is. And it was his name complete
GANI though Garcia Yoa and it had an address in California,
and I'm like, all right, well, let's get this a shot.
I wrote him a letter, a simple one page letter,
and I had my friend translated into Spanish, because again,
having been raised as a Mexican American, it's one of
(43:52):
the things that I lost, and people think about passing
right now. It's passes an American Indian. People think about, oh,
you gained this, or you gained that. Nobody thinks about
what you lost. I lost this whole identity of mine.
I should know Spanish, I should be able to speak
Spanish better than I do. So I had a friend
translated for me, and I included a couple of photos
color zeroxis of some photos. I'm like, I think you're
(44:13):
my father. Here's a letter, and he received it and
his wife had already known about my existence, but his
children didn't. And so when the letter arrived, his wife,
a wonderful woman named Dorora, went to him and said,
your son is looking for you. Here's his letter. You're
going to contact him. And when she said are you
going to it really wasn't a question, it was a statement, like,
(44:37):
you're going to contact him? And a week later I
got a message on my voicemail short message with a number,
called him back and he immediately started speaking to me
in Spanish and I'm like, no, no, that somebody else
wrote that letter. I don't understand what you're saying. And
he's like, oh, you know, Spanish was so well written.
He's like, I'm the man you're looking for. Didn't say
it was my father said I'm the man you're looking for.
(45:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
One of the things I think about about writing memoir,
writing creative nonfiction when it's personal and therefore scary, that
there's also this way in which I'm curious what you think,
because I know for me, I think that it has
given me the permission to be brave and write the
(45:21):
letter or make the phone call in a way that
I don't think I would have dared to do in
any other way. But because it was for my book,
for my job, because it was for the story, it
allowed me to push past my own fear, you know,
because you're framing it, and maybe it's true for you,
but you're framing it as you know, well, writers, we
want what we want if it's good for a story,
(45:42):
which I also think you know is very valid and
certainly for me in other ways. But I wonder whether
you think you ever would have done that regardless.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
So I really like the way you frame it, in
part first because it's much less cynical, but my take,
which is a very very cynical take, right, But more specifically, yeah,
this rationalization that hey, like, I have permission to knock
on doors and do a little gumshoe sleuthing and figuring
(46:12):
things out because this is what I do. It's for
the project, it's for the book. It's a sense of
I'm giving myself permission because I think that given the
way that you have told me you venerate books and
the way that I venerate books, right, like books save
my life, right, And here's a chance to create a book,
(46:33):
to create a narrative that might impact someone's life in
a positive way. That somebody might have this crazy upbringing
and they read my book and they're like, oh wow,
like maybe I feel less alone. It's like that sense
of oh, I have permission to go and knock on
this door. I have permission to send this letter.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
When Brando connects with Candy, he also learns something extraordinary.
Not only has he finally met his biological thoughts, but
he also has three sisters.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Growing up, I think I had often long for siblings,
but for a very selfish reason, and that there would
be multiple people to absorb my mother's abuse, in my
mother's my mother's anger, there would be like, you know,
more bodies, I guess, to go around. But also I
think the sense that having siblings would have validated that
experience so much more, the idea of like, hey, wasn't
that crazy what she just did? Or wasn't that crazy
(47:26):
what she just said? I would have had much less
of this, the sense of that I was experiencing and
absorbing all of this trauma on my own. But to me,
the wonderful thing about having these sisters and these siblings
is well twofold, you know. Number one, just knowing that
there are people out there like me who are just
kind of experiencing the world to me again, like I
still marvel at that. That's still amazing to me. But
(47:49):
the fact that after a single conversation, one conversation where
essentially my eldest sister asked me like, okay, well, who
the heck are you? I met them in La like
who are you? What are you doing here? Right? And
once I explained to them what I've just told you,
once they understood the situation, they're like, oh, okay, well
you're our brother, simple as that. So we don't even
(48:11):
use the half designations like oh well technically, oh he's
a half brother. Half they're my sisters and I'm their brother.
And the fact that one of the conversations I had
with Frank after I discovered them is that, you know,
he said, they were clearly waiting for you. They were
waiting for you. They somehow they didn't know you existed,
(48:31):
but they were waiting for you. And that's your family.
It's not how all families work, but this is how
your family works.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Well, and Candy also lets you know that he did
not leave you.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, he wanted to make that clear, that that narrative
that I'd had drilled into me for years and years
and years, that he wanted to stay, he wanted to
find a way to make this work and that. But
you know, essentially I was never far from his thoughts.
I don't think he would say that he acted perfectly
(49:07):
in all of the subsequent situations. But when I took
him out to lunch, this was a few years ago. Now,
he tells me, oh, I'm getting a new email address,
and this is the first time in as many many
years that you know, he had an email address. It
would have to check into a computer and they say, well,
you're going to need a password, and you know the
password is obviously, that's the one word you never give anyone.
(49:28):
That's the one Never share your password, never tell anyone
what that password is. And he looks at me very earnestly,
and he says, my password is Brando, And somehow that
seems wholly appropriate.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Zaccor is the
story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
you have a family secret, you'd like to share, Please
leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
(50:18):
me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like
to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.