September 12, 2023 • 32 mins
To better understand her own story, Emmy Olea is bringing in her mom. And they're going to start at the beginning: Emmy's birth, and how Hilda fell in love with a cholo from the other side of town and thought her life was about to change for the better.
CONTENT WARNING: This podcast has content that may not be appropriate for all audiences. You'll hear about some difficult subjects like drug abuse, domestic violence, suicidal thoughts, and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
RESOURCES: There’s a lot of difficult subjects that we cover in this show. If you or someone you know needs help - you can reach the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration hotline at 1-800-662-4357. They’ll connect you with information and resources on treatment. There’s also the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. Both are available 24/7. You don't have to be in crisis to reach out either. They're available for anyone who needs help.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast has content that may not be appropriate for
all audiences. You'll hear about some difficult subjects like drug abuse,
domestic violence, suicidal thoughts, and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Episode one, Shining Star. My name is Emmy. For as
(00:24):
long as I can remember, I've been looking for love
for a while, I was looking in all the wrong places.
I covered that ground in season one. I looked for
love from guys who were jealous. If they wanted to
possess me, then they must have loved me. I looked
for passion, passion that came alongside volatility and violence. And
(00:44):
last season I tried to figure out why I settle
for that type of love, and surprise, surprise, I traced
that back, following a trail of crumbs back to my childhood.
In my childhood memories, I found evidence of where so
much of my behavior came from. I was desperate for love.
I never got it from my dad, who was basically
out of the picture. I was desperate for attention from
(01:06):
my mom, who had me at age fourteen, who was
addicted to heroine, who was in and out of my life,
who left me to be raised by my grandma, My
Mammy Leicha, and then Mammilicha ended up in prison herself
after doing business with a Mexican drug cartel. I felt abandoned.
I thought I was unlovable. But that's my narrative, that's
(01:29):
my memory, just part of the truth. If my mom
were to tell you the story of my life, how
would she tell it. My mom Ila was in her
addiction for most of my life. But things are different now.
My mom's clean, She's present in my life. It's complicated,
for sure, but it's better than it's ever been. It's
(01:52):
taken me years, but I've done a lot of work
to forgive my mom, and now I want to listen
to her story because her story it's my story too.
I want to try to understand how we got trapped
in these cycles of addiction, violence and chaos, how we
all ended up settling for crumbs. I'm emmy and this
(02:12):
is crumbs. It's a show what the things we settle
for and the bits of ourselves that make us who
we are. In every conversation that my mom and I have,
I ask her why things happen, why this event happened,
or why things went down the way they did. She
(02:34):
says Emmy. We had really good times too, but you
only remember the negative. She's always seemed to see things
differently than I do, and that has made me mad
in the past. But maybe there's beauty in that. I
guess we'll find out. Hi, Mom, Hi, how are you feeling.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I'm feeling okay, I feel good, excited, so much to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Okay. You know, I had a conversation with my dad yesterday.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh you didn't mention that.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I was wondering why yesterday I was feeling off in
the afternoon. There was something that I just felt vulnerable,
I felt raw, I felt like I needed to cry.
And then I remember that I talked to my dad
earlier that day. You know, my dad's been in his
addiction almost his entire life. He nearly died recently, yes,
(03:34):
and that was it was difficult to see my grandmother
go through that with him. So when I talked to
him yesterday, I had this I had a really direct
conversation with him about when are you going to put
that shit down and enjoy life?
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And what did he say?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You know, he said he was going to do good.
But we already know from our own experiences that what
that phrase means to me, right, so kind of give
him a little lecture. But it's just like left me
thinking I felt compassion for the man right. After all,
he is my father. Even though he wasn't part of
(04:12):
my childhood, he's still my biological father.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's funny that you bring this up, because just the
day before yesterday, your nana and I were having this
conversation where she just thinks it's she doesn't understand how
when it comes to your dad you're a little cold,
How you don't feel this.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Oh no, my dad is sick.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I have to be there for him, and I just
I wanted to find the right ways, right words without
hurting her feelings, to let her know like he's never
been there for her, he's never given her any affection, warmth,
any of his time. But I just knew that deep
down inside you felt something. And now that you're saying
(04:55):
how you were feeling vulnerable yesterday, I understand.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I feel like maybe you know my dad a little
bit better than I do.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think, so, yes, why.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Don't you tell me about him? How did you meet him?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I'm in the seventh grade and my mom she protected
me so much I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't go outside.
And then all of a sudden, once I started getting
my period, I started changing.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I don't know what it was, but I started.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Sneaking out of the house and ditching school and experimenting
with weed and all that alcohol. So one day, another
friend and I we ditched school and we were in
her room going through her phone book, just calling people,
you know, guys, and I saw this name and this
phone number and it said Neto, And I was like, Netho,
(05:49):
what kind of a name is that? Well, let me
call him. But the person that answered was his brother,
your uncle. So I build a friendship with him, and
my friend built a friendship with your dad. And now
and then I would talk to your dad, and I
(06:09):
really liked your dad's voice.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
How old was he?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
He was sixteen. He was also young, but he lived
a little more. He had a more experience, more life
experience than you have. Yes, how did he describe himself?
Did you ask? Were you curious?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
No? I just fell in love with that voice.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
What about his lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
His lifestyle was a lot like mine. So I was
really attracted to that. He was a homeboy, and at
that time, you know, that's what I was into.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So tell me about meeting him for the very first time.
Wait a minute, how long did you talk to him
on the phone before meeting him?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I want to say a couple of months.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh wow. Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
One day, it must have been a Saturday or something.
A friend of mine and I took the bus to
the mall and we called him and he said, come
meet me at a certain park. So he jumped on
the bus and went and there he was, and he
(07:20):
looked nothing like what I expected.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Wait, wait, what did you expect? Paint the picture for me.
I'm just curious to see what you expected this homeboy
to look like that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I thought he was just a tall, dark and handsome
type of homeboy. And he was, you know, about my
heighth and had a black eye.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
And what did you think of him at first?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Like, eh, that's literally what I thought. But he had
these beautiful eyes and just stared at me in a
way that no one had ever no one had ever
looked at me the way he did.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You thought, Ill, Yet he was giving you this attention.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yes, it didn't make me uncomfortable, but it was sort
of as my friend wasn't there, and yet she was.
He wore the saggy Khakis and the Penaltons, and you know,
he had a nice low writer at sixteen. I'm sure
it was your dust car, but he drove around in
(08:19):
this really nice lowriter. And so after he said nothing,
you know, he walked us around the park and walked
us to the bus stop when it was time to leave.
But that evening, when he called to speak to my friend,
he said, no, I want to talk to you, and
I just thought it was weird. And it was weird
(08:41):
because I wanted to talk to him too. And what
happened next I would come home from school, he would
call me. We would spend hours on the phone talking
about everything and nothing, I mean whatever kids that age
would talk about at that time. He loved music. I
(09:05):
know you know that about him. But he was ready
to have more than just a phone relationship.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I was so young, and you know I never really
had friends or anything, and certainly not a boyfriend. Now
he wanted to see me on a regular basis. I
couldn't just ask for permission to go out with him,
and so I started lying to my parents as to
where I was going, and he would pick me up
(09:35):
in his car and It was not that long before
he was taking me to this park, this park that
was known as the Wing. It's in South San Diego
Montgomery Park, but we called it the Wing because there's
an actual wing from a bomber playing buried there.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
It's a California landmark. Even know this for a very
long time.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
What made this place special is that everyone on the
South Side from Santes Cedral del Sol or other neighborhoods
would go there and hang out. And when I was
growing up, at night there was these beautiful low writers that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Would cruise the park and meet up.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
For many of us, meeting at the Wing was like
forbidden because while our parents knew what went on, so
we weren't allowed.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
To go there.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
People would drink and get high, some people would hook up.
It was like the spot for all the young people
to go in the South Bay area. So Mi and
Etta would go to this Wing. We would just sit
there and you know, make out. We were in love.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What did love feel like for you? As a thirteen
year old kid? Essentially, love for.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Me was thinking about him all day long, writing his
name all over my books and school work. I couldn't
focus on anything anymore. Wearing his T shirt to me
that was like, oh, it's huge, and just wanting to
be on the phone with him all the time. And
that was enough for me, but it wasn't enough for him.
(11:14):
He was very demanding and pretty much said, if you
love me.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Oh, the classic line. Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So one night there was a school dance and I
had permission to go with my friends. My mother dropped
me off at the front of the school and promised
to pick me up when the dance was over.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And so as soon as.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
She drove off, your father was already waiting for me,
and so I left with him, and I remember we
went to the Wing and I think we had already
planned that, Okay, this was going to be where I
(12:00):
was going to show him just how much I loved him.
And so that's when you were conceived at the Wing.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
How did that feel?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I remember when I came home that night, I just
felt like really dirty, like I had done something horrible,
because in reality, I had done this to prove to
him how much I loved him, but not because I
wanted to. I wasn't ready for this, and I feel
like my father maybe felt something because when I walked
in the door, he slapped me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
That was the first.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Time, the only time that my father ever put his
hands on me, and so I stayed home from school
the next day. I remember I just wanted to sit
in a bathtub and soak. I just felt so horrible.
And then I didn't hear from him for a while.
How long, I don't know, maybe a week. But you
(13:02):
have to remember that we were on the phone all
the time. So for me, this was horrible. Why wasn't
he calling me? Why wasn't he there when I called him?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That's such a terrible feeling. It was because I can
relate to it. You know, you have this rapport with
someone and then you're with them, texting or talking to
them all the time, and then you hang out and
then it stops abruptly. So it's like the message that
I guess that, well, that's all you wanted, Like I
(13:39):
don't ming exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I felt so used and more because when he dropped
me off that night, he dropped me off at the corner,
so I walked home from the corner to my house
and in the middle of the night, and I just
felt so dirty, And I don't remember how we started
talking again or what his excuse was And of course
(14:06):
after this, we repeated the trip to the wing a
few more times, so.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
You never knew why he didn't call.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Nope, I felt pretty used and I felt ashamed. Maybe
it was just a game for him, you know, he
got what he wanted and now he could go back
to his homeboys about our time at the wing. Maybe
he moved on to his next conquest. I just know
that when he did call me, nothing else mattered to me.
(14:34):
It felt amazing. When he did call, I totally forgave
him and we went back to normal.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So then what happened.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
That was probably the happiest time of my life. And
I just continued to see your dad every chance I got.
I signed up for summer school because the classes were
going to be at the schoo that he went to,
and so that meant that we'd be able to spend
more time together. I remember showing up for the first
(15:08):
day of school and I had to leave the classroom
to go to the bathroom and throw up, and your
dad was there and he said, are you okay? And
I said, I don't feel good. I need to leave.
So that's when I started suspecting that I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I was scared, I was happy. It's like everything was
about to change for me. I was no longer going
to be that lonely child that watched her parents' fight,
that had no friends, that slipt with the light on still.
(15:50):
I was about to start my own family and be
happily ever after.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Like this enormous change would be a fresh start and
solve all your problems. I started hoping that I was
really pregnant, and you were fourteen. So I turned fourteen
on July eleventh. Then on July twenty first, I went
and got a pregnancy test that planned parenthood.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Your father took me in his lowrider and I told
your dad that I was pregnant. As soon as I
walked out of the doctor's room.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What was his reaction, Like.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He was as happy as me, as excited. Like we
weren't thinking, like we're young, what are we going to
do with this child? How are we going to support
this child? We didn't think about all that, all the consequences,
everything that came with having a baby. We just thought
we're in love and we're having a baby. We got
in the cart, and remember I told you how he
(17:00):
loved music, and that song Shining Star had just come out,
and that was like one of the best moments of
my life because I'm in a low writer with this
homeboy that I was in love with and loved me.
I'm about to have his child and this beautiful song
(17:26):
and he's singing it to me. He sang it to
me the whole way to my sister's house because I
was too scared to go home.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So after he dropped you off, what happened next?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So he dropped me off at my sister's house and
I told her, and so she called my mom and
told my mom. Of course, my mom drove over there
right away. My mom was crying and she was saying,
how could you do this to me? And I didn't
(18:14):
even want to look at her. And so she said, well,
your dad doesn't want you coming back home. You're moving
out with him. And I was like, with who with
this guy that you're pregnant with? You're leaving with him?
And I'm like, no, wait, don't I hardly know him?
Everything changed. Everything changed at that moment, all of a sudden.
(18:35):
I was afraid, Like, like, she got real, your nana,
your data, your dad's parents, they came and took me
to their house. Your dad was there waiting for me,
very happy, and I wasn't feeling the happiness that he
was feeling, like I hardly know these people, right. That
(18:56):
was the beginning of a new life for me. You know,
I had to live there.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You were just a kid. Your mom kicks you out.
Maybe you felt happier when you thought this new life
of yours was on your terms, but now you have
no say in the matter.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I sort of felt abandoned by Mammy Nitscha. As much
as I fought for my freedom from my parents, they
were all that I knew. I mean, I never had
a sleepover at a friend's house as a child, and
now they're sending me away to live with strangers. I
must have been about five or six months pregnant when
(19:43):
she stopped being angry with me. She took one look
at my swollen belly and her anger was gone. She
instantly became excited about her grandchild. And let me just
tell you that she already had fifteen grandkids, but this
one was going to be her child. So immediately she
was back at being in control of my life. Even
(20:04):
when I still lived with my new family, Familicha began
to plan my future and my child's.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
But you were still living at my nuns Did that
get easier over time?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I wasn't feeling that happiness that I thought I would.
I missed being in school, I missed my friends, I
missed my home, my parents. This life was a little
too perfect for me. I was used to the chaos
at my house, the violence. It's weird, but I think
(20:41):
I missed all of that. These people were very nice.
Your grandfather lived to work at a same time every
day and got home at exactly the same time every day,
and I wasn't used to this. To the structure and
sitting at the dinner table together, all of this was
(21:04):
new for me.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's so interesting to me to hear that he felt
like my dad's side of the family was so structured
and Mamilicha side of the family was a little more chaotic,
which for me was the complete opposite.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Growing up, I felt really out of place with them.
They were just so normal. But I did get used
to them over time, so by the time I was
like eight months pregnant, I had the best of the
two families. Mammy Lecha and Papabeto your nana, your data.
I made months pregnant, and your grandmother says, you need
(21:44):
to get married. And I was like, what what do
you mean married? Why? Because you have to be married
or you're going to have a bastard child. And so
I had to get married. Both your nana and my mom,
Mami Leicha, had to go to the courthouse and sign
(22:06):
for us because we were both miners. I was eight
months pregnant. Your dad was working at a fish market
and he was wearing a white T shirt with fish
blood stains all over.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Par romantic.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So we're married now, and weeks went by, and I
start feeling contractions. It's the middle of the night, and
your dad and one of my nieces take me outside
to walk, and they take me all the way to
(22:59):
the seven eleven and they start playing video games at
the seventy eleven. Well, I'm I'm going through these contractions,
you know, and they're playing.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Pac Man or whatever it was. We go back home.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
And my mom drives us to the hospital and I
remember one of my sisters telling me I could just
see you in the labor room screaming and crying and
screaming for your mom. And so in my head. I said,
(23:47):
I am not going to scream. I'm not calling for
my mom. I don't want an epidural, I don't want
any numbing. I'm going to have this baby natural, and
I'm not going to complain, not one time. And that's
exactly what I did. I had a natural childbirth. I
didn't complain one time. I didn't scream, not once.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Jesus Christ, Mom, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And your dad was there holding my hand through the
whole thing. I remember when your dad saw you for
the first time. I remember how he held you and cried,
and he.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Was very happy. He was very emotional. He hugged you,
he held you, and then he held me. It was
a perfect little moment.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's hard for me to imagine my dad being so
excited to see me and being emotional over meeting me
for the very first time, just because of how our
relationship has been our entire lives. But I also want
to hear what it was like for you seeing me
for the first time, how you felt.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I remember looking at you because you didn't look anything
like what I expected. I mean, yes, your dad has
some beautiful green eyes, but he also has like dark black,
curly hair. And you know, he's on the darker side,
and here I'm holding this super blond baby with bright
(25:22):
blue eyes, you know. And for a second I felt
like this fear, like, oh my god, is he gonna
think this isn't his baby? But no, it was nothing
like that. The moment he saw you, he embraced you
and cried and just loved you so much. So then
(25:49):
here comes the family. Everyone wants to see this baby,
and I'm sure everybody was as surprised as I was.
I could see it in your mommy's face. She was
very happy to see that you were this beautiful, blonde,
blue eyed baby. And it was your nana that decided,
(26:10):
because you were such a different color from them that
she said eluero miwero, and I like that, so we
all started calling Ueto, and that was your name for
the next many many years forever.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, and then what happened.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I'm living at your nana's house. Back then, I was
not a morning person. So if you woke up at
five am on a Saturday wanting to be fed or
needed a diaper change, guess who was going to get
up and do all this? Your dad, one of your
aunts used to make fun of him, because she would
(26:58):
come over and he'd be like half asleep, you know,
burping you or whatever, and she would ask, well, where's Hilda,
how she sleeping? Me?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Quiet?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
So, yeah, your dad, who was very much involved in
your life as a baby, as a baby the first year.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I feel like I should be happier hearing about this,
that my dad was this loving, caring parent when I
was a baby. But it's weird. I just think of
him as a distant relative, not a dad.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Really, you have to remember that you weren't even two
years old when your dad started his addiction and has
been in it since. So I don't know if that
plays a role in this, but I'm assuming.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So listening to you tell me how you met my
dad and how I was conceived, and how both sides
of the family he fought for me, you know, had
this like warped perception of like not being loved right,
like I wasn't enough yet. And hearing you tell you stories,
(28:14):
I'm hearing how everybody loved me from the get go.
Everybody just like fell in love with me from the
moment they saw me.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Before you were even born. Everybody loved you like you
were the main focus of the family. You brought so
many people together because I mean, I had five baby
showers and that everybody wanted to hold you. Everyone wanted
to play with you, everyone wanted to babysit you. Everyone
everyone loved you, and you were a very happy baby.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It's hard to imagine me being such a happy baby
and such so much of my childhood was very sad
and dark. So hearing that at one point in my
life I had joy as a baby it makes me
feel good.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I thought I could pay my own way with this
new family, with you, our new baby.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
When I think about the story of my life, it's
so easy to fixate on the bad things, and look,
there was a lot of bad, but I just honestly
never knew my parents were happy for a bit. I
never even saw them together or really had my dad around.
My family, my Mamili jam Nana, everyone came together to
get excited about this baby me. It's nice to hear
(29:59):
about it, and I feel a pain like I missaid
on this feeling. But it also makes me wonder. With
so much love and potential here, how did I end
up feeling so distant from my parents? I know, my grandma,
my mammy, Lecha had something to do with it. She
was a force, our matriarch. She shaped us into the
(30:20):
women we are today, and I know she had a
big role in what happened next. Next time on Crumbs,
when did you realize when you see when Minita started working?
When did you realize what she did for a living?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Probably the time when the DEA agents showed up.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Hey, listeners, there's a lot of difficult subjects that we
cover in this show. If you're someone you know needs help,
you can reach the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration Hotline at one eight hundred six six 's two
four three five. They'll connect you with information and resources
on treatment. There's also the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at
(31:07):
one eight hundred two seven to three t A l K.
Both are available twenty four to seven. You don't have
to be in crisis to reach out either. They're available
for anyone who needs help. Crumbs is a Sonato production
in partnership with Iheart's Michael Thura Network and Trojan Horse.
(31:30):
It's produced by Hannah Bottom and edited by Margaret Catcher,
Rodrigo Crespo, and Alex Umero, with support from Elizabeth Schutzel.
Original music by Dee Peter Schmidt and engineering by Carosmgagna
E Mandel Barra Studio, Recording by JTV Recording and Podcasting Studio.
(31:51):
Executive produced by Cono Brn and Giselvan Says for iHeart,
Alex Fumetro and Margaret Catcher for Trojan Horse, Gamila Victoriano
and Joshua Wine sing fer Sonoro and me Emmi OLEA
special things to Marina Cornellare and of course my mom
Il Gambois. Listen to Crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
(32:12):
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
This podcast has content that may not be appropriate for
all audiences. You'll hear about some difficult subjects like drug abuse,
domestic violence, suicidal thoughts, and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Episode one, Shining Star. My name is Emmy. For as
(00:24):
long as I can remember, I've been looking for love
for a while, I was looking in all the wrong places.
I covered that ground in season one. I looked for
love from guys who were jealous. If they wanted to
possess me, then they must have loved me. I looked
for passion, passion that came alongside volatility and violence. And
(00:44):
last season I tried to figure out why I settle
for that type of love, and surprise, surprise, I traced
that back, following a trail of crumbs back to my childhood.
In my childhood memories, I found evidence of where so
much of my behavior came from. I was desperate for love.
I never got it from my dad, who was basically
out of the picture. I was desperate for attention from
(01:06):
my mom, who had me at age fourteen, who was
addicted to heroine, who was in and out of my life,
who left me to be raised by my grandma, My
Mammy Leicha, and then Mammilicha ended up in prison herself
after doing business with a Mexican drug cartel. I felt abandoned.
I thought I was unlovable. But that's my narrative, that's
(01:29):
my memory, just part of the truth. If my mom
were to tell you the story of my life, how
would she tell it. My mom Ila was in her
addiction for most of my life. But things are different now.
My mom's clean, She's present in my life. It's complicated,
for sure, but it's better than it's ever been. It's
(01:52):
taken me years, but I've done a lot of work
to forgive my mom, and now I want to listen
to her story because her story it's my story too.
I want to try to understand how we got trapped
in these cycles of addiction, violence and chaos, how we
all ended up settling for crumbs. I'm emmy and this
(02:12):
is crumbs. It's a show what the things we settle
for and the bits of ourselves that make us who
we are. In every conversation that my mom and I have,
I ask her why things happen, why this event happened,
or why things went down the way they did. She
(02:34):
says Emmy. We had really good times too, but you
only remember the negative. She's always seemed to see things
differently than I do, and that has made me mad
in the past. But maybe there's beauty in that. I
guess we'll find out. Hi, Mom, Hi, how are you feeling.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I'm feeling okay, I feel good, excited, so much to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Okay. You know, I had a conversation with my dad yesterday.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh you didn't mention that.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I was wondering why yesterday I was feeling off in
the afternoon. There was something that I just felt vulnerable,
I felt raw, I felt like I needed to cry.
And then I remember that I talked to my dad
earlier that day. You know, my dad's been in his
addiction almost his entire life. He nearly died recently, yes,
(03:34):
and that was it was difficult to see my grandmother
go through that with him. So when I talked to
him yesterday, I had this I had a really direct
conversation with him about when are you going to put
that shit down and enjoy life?
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And what did he say?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You know, he said he was going to do good.
But we already know from our own experiences that what
that phrase means to me, right, so kind of give
him a little lecture. But it's just like left me
thinking I felt compassion for the man right. After all,
he is my father. Even though he wasn't part of
(04:12):
my childhood, he's still my biological father.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's funny that you bring this up, because just the
day before yesterday, your nana and I were having this
conversation where she just thinks it's she doesn't understand how
when it comes to your dad you're a little cold,
How you don't feel this.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Oh no, my dad is sick.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I have to be there for him, and I just
I wanted to find the right ways, right words without
hurting her feelings, to let her know like he's never
been there for her, he's never given her any affection, warmth,
any of his time. But I just knew that deep
down inside you felt something. And now that you're saying
(04:55):
how you were feeling vulnerable yesterday, I understand.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I feel like maybe you know my dad a little
bit better than I do.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think, so, yes, why.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Don't you tell me about him? How did you meet him?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I'm in the seventh grade and my mom she protected
me so much I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't go outside.
And then all of a sudden, once I started getting
my period, I started changing.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I don't know what it was, but I started.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Sneaking out of the house and ditching school and experimenting
with weed and all that alcohol. So one day, another
friend and I we ditched school and we were in
her room going through her phone book, just calling people,
you know, guys, and I saw this name and this
phone number and it said Neto, And I was like, Netho,
(05:49):
what kind of a name is that? Well, let me
call him. But the person that answered was his brother,
your uncle. So I build a friendship with him, and
my friend built a friendship with your dad. And now
and then I would talk to your dad, and I
(06:09):
really liked your dad's voice.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
How old was he?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
He was sixteen. He was also young, but he lived
a little more. He had a more experience, more life
experience than you have. Yes, how did he describe himself?
Did you ask? Were you curious?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
No? I just fell in love with that voice.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
What about his lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
His lifestyle was a lot like mine. So I was
really attracted to that. He was a homeboy, and at
that time, you know, that's what I was into.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So tell me about meeting him for the very first time.
Wait a minute, how long did you talk to him
on the phone before meeting him?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I want to say a couple of months.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh wow. Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
One day, it must have been a Saturday or something.
A friend of mine and I took the bus to
the mall and we called him and he said, come
meet me at a certain park. So he jumped on
the bus and went and there he was, and he
(07:20):
looked nothing like what I expected.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Wait, wait, what did you expect? Paint the picture for me.
I'm just curious to see what you expected this homeboy
to look like that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I thought he was just a tall, dark and handsome
type of homeboy. And he was, you know, about my
heighth and had a black eye.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
And what did you think of him at first?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Like, eh, that's literally what I thought. But he had
these beautiful eyes and just stared at me in a
way that no one had ever no one had ever
looked at me the way he did.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You thought, Ill, Yet he was giving you this attention.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yes, it didn't make me uncomfortable, but it was sort
of as my friend wasn't there, and yet she was.
He wore the saggy Khakis and the Penaltons, and you know,
he had a nice low writer at sixteen. I'm sure
it was your dust car, but he drove around in
(08:19):
this really nice lowriter. And so after he said nothing,
you know, he walked us around the park and walked
us to the bus stop when it was time to leave.
But that evening, when he called to speak to my friend,
he said, no, I want to talk to you, and
I just thought it was weird. And it was weird
(08:41):
because I wanted to talk to him too. And what
happened next I would come home from school, he would
call me. We would spend hours on the phone talking
about everything and nothing, I mean whatever kids that age
would talk about at that time. He loved music. I
(09:05):
know you know that about him. But he was ready
to have more than just a phone relationship.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I was so young, and you know I never really
had friends or anything, and certainly not a boyfriend. Now
he wanted to see me on a regular basis. I
couldn't just ask for permission to go out with him,
and so I started lying to my parents as to
where I was going, and he would pick me up
(09:35):
in his car and It was not that long before
he was taking me to this park, this park that
was known as the Wing. It's in South San Diego
Montgomery Park, but we called it the Wing because there's
an actual wing from a bomber playing buried there.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
It's a California landmark. Even know this for a very
long time.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
What made this place special is that everyone on the
South Side from Santes Cedral del Sol or other neighborhoods
would go there and hang out. And when I was
growing up, at night there was these beautiful low writers that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Would cruise the park and meet up.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
For many of us, meeting at the Wing was like
forbidden because while our parents knew what went on, so
we weren't allowed.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
To go there.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
People would drink and get high, some people would hook up.
It was like the spot for all the young people
to go in the South Bay area. So Mi and
Etta would go to this Wing. We would just sit
there and you know, make out. We were in love.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What did love feel like for you? As a thirteen
year old kid? Essentially, love for.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Me was thinking about him all day long, writing his
name all over my books and school work. I couldn't
focus on anything anymore. Wearing his T shirt to me
that was like, oh, it's huge, and just wanting to
be on the phone with him all the time. And
that was enough for me, but it wasn't enough for him.
(11:14):
He was very demanding and pretty much said, if you
love me.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Oh, the classic line. Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So one night there was a school dance and I
had permission to go with my friends. My mother dropped
me off at the front of the school and promised
to pick me up when the dance was over.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And so as soon as.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
She drove off, your father was already waiting for me,
and so I left with him, and I remember we
went to the Wing and I think we had already
planned that, Okay, this was going to be where I
(12:00):
was going to show him just how much I loved him.
And so that's when you were conceived at the Wing.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
How did that feel?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I remember when I came home that night, I just
felt like really dirty, like I had done something horrible,
because in reality, I had done this to prove to
him how much I loved him, but not because I
wanted to. I wasn't ready for this, and I feel
like my father maybe felt something because when I walked
in the door, he slapped me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
That was the first.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Time, the only time that my father ever put his
hands on me, and so I stayed home from school
the next day. I remember I just wanted to sit
in a bathtub and soak. I just felt so horrible.
And then I didn't hear from him for a while.
How long, I don't know, maybe a week. But you
(13:02):
have to remember that we were on the phone all
the time. So for me, this was horrible. Why wasn't
he calling me? Why wasn't he there when I called him?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That's such a terrible feeling. It was because I can
relate to it. You know, you have this rapport with
someone and then you're with them, texting or talking to
them all the time, and then you hang out and
then it stops abruptly. So it's like the message that
I guess that, well, that's all you wanted, Like I
(13:39):
don't ming exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I felt so used and more because when he dropped
me off that night, he dropped me off at the corner,
so I walked home from the corner to my house
and in the middle of the night, and I just
felt so dirty, And I don't remember how we started
talking again or what his excuse was And of course
(14:06):
after this, we repeated the trip to the wing a
few more times, so.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
You never knew why he didn't call.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Nope, I felt pretty used and I felt ashamed. Maybe
it was just a game for him, you know, he
got what he wanted and now he could go back
to his homeboys about our time at the wing. Maybe
he moved on to his next conquest. I just know
that when he did call me, nothing else mattered to me.
(14:34):
It felt amazing. When he did call, I totally forgave
him and we went back to normal.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So then what happened.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
That was probably the happiest time of my life. And
I just continued to see your dad every chance I got.
I signed up for summer school because the classes were
going to be at the schoo that he went to,
and so that meant that we'd be able to spend
more time together. I remember showing up for the first
(15:08):
day of school and I had to leave the classroom
to go to the bathroom and throw up, and your
dad was there and he said, are you okay? And
I said, I don't feel good. I need to leave.
So that's when I started suspecting that I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I was scared, I was happy. It's like everything was
about to change for me. I was no longer going
to be that lonely child that watched her parents' fight,
that had no friends, that slipt with the light on still.
(15:50):
I was about to start my own family and be
happily ever after.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Like this enormous change would be a fresh start and
solve all your problems. I started hoping that I was
really pregnant, and you were fourteen. So I turned fourteen
on July eleventh. Then on July twenty first, I went
and got a pregnancy test that planned parenthood.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Your father took me in his lowrider and I told
your dad that I was pregnant. As soon as I
walked out of the doctor's room.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What was his reaction, Like.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He was as happy as me, as excited. Like we
weren't thinking, like we're young, what are we going to
do with this child? How are we going to support
this child? We didn't think about all that, all the consequences,
everything that came with having a baby. We just thought
we're in love and we're having a baby. We got
in the cart, and remember I told you how he
(17:00):
loved music, and that song Shining Star had just come out,
and that was like one of the best moments of
my life because I'm in a low writer with this
homeboy that I was in love with and loved me.
I'm about to have his child and this beautiful song
(17:26):
and he's singing it to me. He sang it to
me the whole way to my sister's house because I
was too scared to go home.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So after he dropped you off, what happened next?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So he dropped me off at my sister's house and
I told her, and so she called my mom and
told my mom. Of course, my mom drove over there
right away. My mom was crying and she was saying,
how could you do this to me? And I didn't
(18:14):
even want to look at her. And so she said, well,
your dad doesn't want you coming back home. You're moving
out with him. And I was like, with who with
this guy that you're pregnant with? You're leaving with him?
And I'm like, no, wait, don't I hardly know him?
Everything changed. Everything changed at that moment, all of a sudden.
(18:35):
I was afraid, Like, like, she got real, your nana,
your data, your dad's parents, they came and took me
to their house. Your dad was there waiting for me,
very happy, and I wasn't feeling the happiness that he
was feeling, like I hardly know these people, right. That
(18:56):
was the beginning of a new life for me. You know,
I had to live there.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You were just a kid. Your mom kicks you out.
Maybe you felt happier when you thought this new life
of yours was on your terms, but now you have
no say in the matter.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I sort of felt abandoned by Mammy Nitscha. As much
as I fought for my freedom from my parents, they
were all that I knew. I mean, I never had
a sleepover at a friend's house as a child, and
now they're sending me away to live with strangers. I
must have been about five or six months pregnant when
(19:43):
she stopped being angry with me. She took one look
at my swollen belly and her anger was gone. She
instantly became excited about her grandchild. And let me just
tell you that she already had fifteen grandkids, but this
one was going to be her child. So immediately she
was back at being in control of my life. Even
(20:04):
when I still lived with my new family, Familicha began
to plan my future and my child's.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
But you were still living at my nuns Did that
get easier over time?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I wasn't feeling that happiness that I thought I would.
I missed being in school, I missed my friends, I
missed my home, my parents. This life was a little
too perfect for me. I was used to the chaos
at my house, the violence. It's weird, but I think
(20:41):
I missed all of that. These people were very nice.
Your grandfather lived to work at a same time every
day and got home at exactly the same time every day,
and I wasn't used to this. To the structure and
sitting at the dinner table together, all of this was
(21:04):
new for me.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's so interesting to me to hear that he felt
like my dad's side of the family was so structured
and Mamilicha side of the family was a little more chaotic,
which for me was the complete opposite.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Growing up, I felt really out of place with them.
They were just so normal. But I did get used
to them over time, so by the time I was
like eight months pregnant, I had the best of the
two families. Mammy Lecha and Papabeto your nana, your data.
I made months pregnant, and your grandmother says, you need
(21:44):
to get married. And I was like, what what do
you mean married? Why? Because you have to be married
or you're going to have a bastard child. And so
I had to get married. Both your nana and my mom,
Mami Leicha, had to go to the courthouse and sign
(22:06):
for us because we were both miners. I was eight
months pregnant. Your dad was working at a fish market
and he was wearing a white T shirt with fish
blood stains all over.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Par romantic.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So we're married now, and weeks went by, and I
start feeling contractions. It's the middle of the night, and
your dad and one of my nieces take me outside
to walk, and they take me all the way to
(22:59):
the seven eleven and they start playing video games at
the seventy eleven. Well, I'm I'm going through these contractions,
you know, and they're playing.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Pac Man or whatever it was. We go back home.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
And my mom drives us to the hospital and I
remember one of my sisters telling me I could just
see you in the labor room screaming and crying and
screaming for your mom. And so in my head. I said,
(23:47):
I am not going to scream. I'm not calling for
my mom. I don't want an epidural, I don't want
any numbing. I'm going to have this baby natural, and
I'm not going to complain, not one time. And that's
exactly what I did. I had a natural childbirth. I
didn't complain one time. I didn't scream, not once.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Jesus Christ, Mom, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And your dad was there holding my hand through the
whole thing. I remember when your dad saw you for
the first time. I remember how he held you and cried,
and he.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Was very happy. He was very emotional. He hugged you,
he held you, and then he held me. It was
a perfect little moment.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's hard for me to imagine my dad being so
excited to see me and being emotional over meeting me
for the very first time, just because of how our
relationship has been our entire lives. But I also want
to hear what it was like for you seeing me
for the first time, how you felt.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I remember looking at you because you didn't look anything
like what I expected. I mean, yes, your dad has
some beautiful green eyes, but he also has like dark black,
curly hair. And you know, he's on the darker side,
and here I'm holding this super blond baby with bright
(25:22):
blue eyes, you know. And for a second I felt
like this fear, like, oh my god, is he gonna
think this isn't his baby? But no, it was nothing
like that. The moment he saw you, he embraced you
and cried and just loved you so much. So then
(25:49):
here comes the family. Everyone wants to see this baby,
and I'm sure everybody was as surprised as I was.
I could see it in your mommy's face. She was
very happy to see that you were this beautiful, blonde,
blue eyed baby. And it was your nana that decided,
(26:10):
because you were such a different color from them that
she said eluero miwero, and I like that, so we
all started calling Ueto, and that was your name for
the next many many years forever.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, and then what happened.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I'm living at your nana's house. Back then, I was
not a morning person. So if you woke up at
five am on a Saturday wanting to be fed or
needed a diaper change, guess who was going to get
up and do all this? Your dad, one of your
aunts used to make fun of him, because she would
(26:58):
come over and he'd be like half asleep, you know,
burping you or whatever, and she would ask, well, where's Hilda,
how she sleeping? Me?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Quiet?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
So, yeah, your dad, who was very much involved in
your life as a baby, as a baby the first year.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I feel like I should be happier hearing about this,
that my dad was this loving, caring parent when I
was a baby. But it's weird. I just think of
him as a distant relative, not a dad.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Really, you have to remember that you weren't even two
years old when your dad started his addiction and has
been in it since. So I don't know if that
plays a role in this, but I'm assuming.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So listening to you tell me how you met my
dad and how I was conceived, and how both sides
of the family he fought for me, you know, had
this like warped perception of like not being loved right,
like I wasn't enough yet. And hearing you tell you stories,
(28:14):
I'm hearing how everybody loved me from the get go.
Everybody just like fell in love with me from the
moment they saw me.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Before you were even born. Everybody loved you like you
were the main focus of the family. You brought so
many people together because I mean, I had five baby
showers and that everybody wanted to hold you. Everyone wanted
to play with you, everyone wanted to babysit you. Everyone
everyone loved you, and you were a very happy baby.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It's hard to imagine me being such a happy baby
and such so much of my childhood was very sad
and dark. So hearing that at one point in my
life I had joy as a baby it makes me
feel good.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I thought I could pay my own way with this
new family, with you, our new baby.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
When I think about the story of my life, it's
so easy to fixate on the bad things, and look,
there was a lot of bad, but I just honestly
never knew my parents were happy for a bit. I
never even saw them together or really had my dad around.
My family, my Mamili jam Nana, everyone came together to
get excited about this baby me. It's nice to hear
(29:59):
about it, and I feel a pain like I missaid
on this feeling. But it also makes me wonder. With
so much love and potential here, how did I end
up feeling so distant from my parents? I know, my grandma,
my mammy, Lecha had something to do with it. She
was a force, our matriarch. She shaped us into the
(30:20):
women we are today, and I know she had a
big role in what happened next. Next time on Crumbs,
when did you realize when you see when Minita started working?
When did you realize what she did for a living?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Probably the time when the DEA agents showed up.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Hey, listeners, there's a lot of difficult subjects that we
cover in this show. If you're someone you know needs help,
you can reach the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration Hotline at one eight hundred six six 's two
four three five. They'll connect you with information and resources
on treatment. There's also the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at
(31:07):
one eight hundred two seven to three t A l K.
Both are available twenty four to seven. You don't have
to be in crisis to reach out either. They're available
for anyone who needs help. Crumbs is a Sonato production
in partnership with Iheart's Michael Thura Network and Trojan Horse.
(31:30):
It's produced by Hannah Bottom and edited by Margaret Catcher,
Rodrigo Crespo, and Alex Umero, with support from Elizabeth Schutzel.
Original music by Dee Peter Schmidt and engineering by Carosmgagna
E Mandel Barra Studio, Recording by JTV Recording and Podcasting Studio.
(31:51):
Executive produced by Cono Brn and Giselvan Says for iHeart,
Alex Fumetro and Margaret Catcher for Trojan Horse, Gamila Victoriano
and Joshua Wine sing fer Sonoro and me Emmi OLEA
special things to Marina Cornellare and of course my mom
Il Gambois. Listen to Crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
(32:12):
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Emmy Olea
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