Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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, 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 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 name only, an abandoned son mourning his dead father who wasn't dead and wasn't his father.

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.

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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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.

And at that time that was still very much your belief right that you were American Indian.

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 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, 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.

I do describe your mother a bit, the mother of your childhood, the mother of those years.

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, 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 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 to her.

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, her name was Maria Teresa and she was Mexican, and she changed her name to Running Deer.

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 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.

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.

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.

Any questions, I mean, it's just it's designed for there to be absolutely no questions.

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 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 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.

Contenders for this role over the years, quite a few of whom fail spectacularly.

Yes, certainly, But that first.

Of these is indeed someone named Paul Skyhorse.

That's right, your mother brings you to see when you're four years old.

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 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 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 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, 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

You know.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

Brando's childhood and teenage years are rife with fathers, surrogate fathers, stepfathers, 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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.

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.

Yeah yeah, that's spot on.

Yeah, I love that.

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.

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.

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, 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 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.

Yeah, but you couldn't because she wasn't a dad, and what that whole business was about was throwing a ball.

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, 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.

Right, speaking of serial killers.

At one point, she alludes to an encounter that she got away from with Ted Bundy.

That's right, and that was not true, right.

I am ninety nine point nine percent sure it was a fabrication, correct.

Yeah, But there always is that ero point one percent right that you kind of have when you're with somebody who is really truly a professional at deceit.

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 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.

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, 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, 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.

At one point, Brando's mom takes on a new job, a very unconventional job.

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 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, 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, 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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

You know, they can be healed over and they can soften, but they're there.

We'll be right back.

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 quietly applies to some of the best universities in the country, telling no one, and he's admitted to Stamford University.

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?

Right?

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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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?

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 of quarters of particular.

What do you think kept you from doing just that?

So, for whatever reason.

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 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 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, 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.

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.

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.

Well, I love that.

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 the academically rigorous MFA program at Irvine University of California.

This is a big move found his door.

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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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.

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 ero 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 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 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 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 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 of it.

What year did your mother die?

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.

In twenty ten, Brando finds and contacts his biological father, another father, the og Father.

His name is Candy Uyoa.

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 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 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 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 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 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 eroxis of some photos.

I'm like, I think you're 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, 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.

You know.

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 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, 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.

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 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, 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.

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.

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 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 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 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, 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.

Well, and Candy also lets you know that he did not leave you.

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 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.

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.

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 ero.

That's the number ero.

You can also find 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.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.