When you’re a kid, you have your own unique sense of what’s “normal”.
I grew up in Ohio, so I knew that sometime after Thanksgiving, it was going to start getting cold outside. And we would have snow. Sometimes, LOTS of snow. And I loved it. Of course, as a little boy, big piles of snow just meant having fun sledding and making snow forts. I didn’t have to drive on it or shovel it; at least not until I got a little older.
But as far as I knew, that’s how it was in the winter for everyone. What I experienced must be the same for other people. But then sometimes we would go and visit my grandfather, who lived in Miami. And there we were, in the middle of winter, and not even wearing a coat outside. I couldn’t believe it.
My guest today is Angel. He grew up with his three brothers in Brooklyn. And to him, his childhood was normal. The hunger, the abuse, the homelessness – that’s all he knew.
And I have to give you a little content warning here, that this episode is going to include something I’ve never had in a previous episode, but you’ll have some warning if you want to fast forward. There’s a brief bit of audio where Angel talks about what his father did to the family cat. I contemplated not including this, because I hate to hear about animal abuse and I know you do too. But that incident is important to the story and what happened afterward, and I always say, this podcast doesn’t shy away from real life. But when you hear me ask Angel to talk about the story of their cat named Bonkers, that’s when you can fast forward about 2 1/2 minutes if you want to. It’s not a graphic description, just sad.
That’s the incident that finally triggered something inside Angel. He and one of his brothers decided they were going to kill their father.
And Angel was just 10 years old.
Angel’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4CVDSXP/
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/270
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
When you’re a kid, you have your own unique sense of what’s “normal”.
I grew up in Ohio, so I knew that sometime after Thanksgiving, it was going to start getting cold outside. And we would have snow. Sometimes, LOTS of snow. And I loved it. Of course, as a little boy, big piles of snow just meant having fun sledding and making snow forts. I didn’t have to drive on it or shovel it; at least not until I got a little older.
But as far as I knew, that’s how it was in the winter for everyone. What I experienced must be the same for other people. But then sometimes we would go and visit my grandfather, who lived in Miami. And there we were, in the middle of winter, and not even wearing a coat outside. I couldn’t believe it.
My guest today is Angel. He grew up with his three brothers in Brooklyn. And to him, his childhood was normal. The hunger, the abuse, the homelessness – that’s all he knew.
And I have to give you a little content warning here, that this episode is going to include something I’ve never had in a previous episode, but you’ll have some warning if you want to fast forward. There’s a brief bit of audio where Angel talks about what his father did to the family cat. I contemplated not including this, because I hate to hear about animal abuse and I know you do too. But that incident is important to the story and what happened afterward, and I always say, this podcast doesn’t shy away from real life. But when you hear me ask Angel to talk about the story of their cat named Bonkers, that’s when you can fast forward about 2 1/2 minutes if you want to. It’s not a graphic description, just sad.
That’s the incident that finally triggered something inside Angel. He and one of his brothers decided they were going to kill their father.
And Angel was just 10 years old.
Scott
This whole story centers around your family – your mom and dad and four boys, so you and your three brothers. Melo, Ruly, and Mikey. Can you just give us a little synopsis of what you boys were like? Melo was the oldest, right?
Angel
Yeah, Melo was the oldest – really good at sports, really smart. He would bring textbooks home just for fun and he would read them. He was really into science and math. The teachers really liked him. Yeah, that was Melo. Ruly was the second oldest – animal lover, always bringing things home. Dogs, cats, birds, like just any stray animal he could find, he would bring it home.
Scott
You said he wanted to own a farm someday, right? That was his goal?
Angel
Yeah, that was his dream. He would sit on the floor and he would draw farms on the floor. They were basically just boxes and then, in the boxes, he would put animals like chickens and horses. That’s how he would spread them out on the farm. But yeah, he would draw farms on the floor and that was his dream. He wanted to have a farm one day, which is interesting because we grew up in Brooklyn. That’s what he wanted. He wanted a farm.
Scott
And the next was you.
Angel: And then it was me. I was mostly the quiet one. I was the one in the corner observing everything. The wheels were always turning – I was always thinking – but I was just more of an observer. That’s just the way I was. And then there was Mikey. Mikey was the youngest. He would draw too but he would just draw cartoon characters and stuff. That was Mikey. He was the youngest and he would just draw, mostly.
Scott
Your dad had some bad history from back when he was 19. What happened?
Angel
When my father was 19, he got into a fight over a girl and he got his ass kicked. Him and another guy got into a fight over some girl. My father got his ass kicked and, the next day, my father found the guy and he shot him dead. My father killed him.
Scott
Wow. Okay.
Angel
Yeah.
Scott
And obviously, did he get caught? What happened? How did that play out?
Angel
Yeah. He went to prison – this was before I was even born, obviously. He went to prison and he served some time in prison. He never told us exactly how much time he was in prison, but he did wind up getting probation. I know that he said once he was out of prison– I don’t know if he was paroled or exactly how it worked but he did tell us that he was on probation for five years when he got out of prison, when he met my mother.
Scott
And it seems like his biggest problem was alcohol.
Angel
Yeah.
Scott
What did that look like in your home?
Angel
Well, for us, my father would start drinking, sometimes, seven in the morning. He was a bad drunk. He would start drinking. When he would start drinking, he was kind of loose, kind of funny, kind of friendly. Once he got really drunk by the evening, he was beating my mom. It was chaos. He was either beating my mom or he would– my mother would get a monthly welfare check. He would take the cash and he would just disappear sometimes for days, and he would just leave my mom with us, the four boys, just in the house, in the apartment with just the food stamps. And that was it.
Scott
Did he beat your mom in front of you and your brothers?
Angel
All the time. When he hit our mom, we would try to step in and save her and we would end up on the floor. We were little. We couldn’t stop him. There were a couple times where my brother tried– Melo – he was the oldest, he called the police, he called 911, and the cops showed up. When the cops showed up, my mother would be standing there pointing at my father, telling the cops, “He hits our mom.” And my mother would say, “No, they’re lying. I fell. He didn’t hit me.” And as soon as the cops left, he would beat Melo because Melo was the oldest. We didn’t know how to use the phone. Melo picked up the phone. Melo was the one who called for help, and Melo was the one who got the beating when the cops left.
Scott
It seems like a scenario like that now, that’s when Child Protective Services would be brought in, but did that just not exist back then?
Angel
I don’t know. I don’t know why no one ever called Child Protective Services. I know, for my part, if I went to school with a black eye and I told somebody, I was going to get another black eye when I got home, so I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned that, in a house with two alcoholics, it’s always about, “Don’t tell anybody what happens in this house. Don’t go out there and tell people what my mother and father used to call family business.”
“This is the family business. This is between us. You don’t go out there and you tell people what’s happening in this house.” Because they didn’t want people to know we didn’t have any food. They didn’t want people to know how violent my father was. So we learned to not say anything.
Scott
How old were your parents when they got married?
Angel
When my parents got married, my mother was 16 and pregnant with Melo and my father was 27. So he must have been fresh out of prison. I mean, he must have been.
Scott
Right. Yeah. For murder. He did that when he was 19.
Angel
When he was 19, yeah. I had asked him about that and he said something about the way the days were added up in prison were different back then. If you got 10 years, you did 5 because he told us originally that he was sentenced to 10 years – that’s what he told us – but I don’t really know how much time he was really in prison. We don’t really know.
Scott
She was pregnant with Melo at that time. Things got bad pretty quickly and she was stuck, right? She had no education, no. options. Why couldn’t she go back to her family?
Angel
Well, she tried to. She called her mother. Originally, before she married my father, her mother told her, “Don’t do it. Don’t leave home and marry that guy. He’s trouble. He’s a convicted murderer.” My mother was in love with him. She was pregnant and she left anyway. When things got bad and she realized her mistake, she tried to go back home and her mother told her, “Basically, you made your bed, you lay in it.” Her mother told her, “You can’t come back home. You made this choice, you made this decision, and now, you have to live with it.” And so she felt stuck. Her father had passed away in his 40s from cirrhosis of the liver, so he was already dead when I was born. So, she didn’t have a father to go to, she didn’t have a mother to go to. So, she felt stuck.
Scott
Fast forward from then, there were six of you – four boys, two parents – living in a one-bedroom apartment. Your dad only worked sporadically.
Angel
I remember him working once at a factory very briefly, but I don’t know if he got fired or the drinking was obviously a problem with him showing up. I don’t know exactly what happened. I mean, other than that, I don’t remember him ever working. He was always drinking and partying. But other than that, he didn’t work. It was my mother who would get a welfare check and that’s how they supported us. That’s how my mother supported us.
Scott
And I would think, even if you wanted to work, when you’ve got a convicted felon, who’s going to hire somebody like that?
Angel
Yeah. That was a big problem for him too. Yeah, obviously, the charge that he had was going to make it difficult for him. My father also dropped out of school in the fourth grade and we still don’t know if he can even read or write, to be honest with you. I think he can read in Spanish. I don’t know if he can read in English at all.
Scott
A few things I want to ask you about Conan Soup. What was that?
Angel
Yeah. Conan Soup was basically– we were at the end of the welfare check. Let’s say it was the second or third week and we barely had anything, so we went to the kitchen and looked for any scraps we could find – there was spam, ketchup, can of beans, anything we could find. My brother, Melo would stand on the chair, he would take a pot, he would put it on the stove, he would stand on the chair and he would put everything in the pot, he would warm it up, and we would all split it four ways, and he called it Conan Soup. We named it after Conan the Barbarian because that was somebody we looked up to, being four boys. We looked up to Conan the Barbarian, so we called it Conan Soup because it was kind of. scrappy.
Scott
Typically, in a family, especially back in that era, the mother would cook the meals. Did she see you guys making your own food and not feel responsibility?
Angel
I don’t know if she was drunk. But the truth is that, when I say we barely had anything, I mean, there was nothing. That’s what we had. If we had a can of Spam, some ketchup, I mean, there was nothing to cook. I mean, that was it. That’s all we had. So, we just made do. We just had to make do with what we had.
Scott
This was in Brooklyn. How cold was it in the winter in that apartment?
Angel
It was pretty cold. We had radiators, but they didn’t work. Most of the time, they were broken. The radiators were broken and the windows were broken. So, we would put on two or three shirts, two or three pairs of jeans. Whatever we could find, we would just layer up and then we would turn on the electric stove and we would hang out or put our hands over the electric stove to stay warm. That’s what we did.
Scott
What happened on holidays and birthdays?
Angel
We didn’t have any of those. No Christmas, no birthdays, no Thanksgiving. We would ask, “Why can’t we have Christmas like the other kids?” And the answer was something like, “We don’t have money for that” or “Only rich people do that. Only people in the movies do that. Not everyone really does that – celebrate Christmas and all this stuff.” And that’s what we thought. We thought only rich people celebrated holidays. So we would go to school, and we would be asked, “Hey, what did you get for Christmas?” We would just make something up. We would just lie, “I got this, I got that,” but there were no presents. There was nothing.
Scott
Did you ever wonder, as a small child like that, why am I different? All these other kids get stuff for Christmas. Why don’t I get anything for Christmas?
Angel
No, I don’t want to say that I even felt different. I didn’t go to anyone else’s house. I didn’t know what the other kids were doing. I thought, maybe, there were a lot of kids just like me that didn’t have a tree and didn’t get presents. I never really viewed myself as different.
Scott
If that’s all you ever see, that’s your normal.
Angel
Yeah, to me, it was normal. Right. To me, it was normal. When we ran out of food, I thought everybody ran out of food. I was not sitting there thinking, man, how come everyone has food and we don’t? I was just thinking this is the way it is. Sometimes you run out of food, and you have to make conan soup.
Scott
This is kind of a side question, but do you remember the first time you ever actually celebrated your birthday?
Angel
Oh, my God. Wow. No, I don’t. I don’t remember the first time I celebrated my birthday. In fact, I think I got so used to celebrating my birthday– it’s odd you ask me that now. Today is my birthday. Yeah, today is my birthday.
Scott
I didn’t even know that when I asked the question. Well, happy birthday!
Angel
Yeah, thank you. Like today, we went out to get some food, but that was pretty much it. Maybe I’ll do something big for my next birthday – I’ll be 50. I generally don’t celebrate my birthday, maybe because I’m just used to not celebrating it. It just feels like a normal day to me. But as I got older, even now, I really do enjoy Christmas. The first time I sat in front of a tree, that felt special to me. I do enjoy Christmas a lot.
Scott
I would imagine, yeah. The clothes that you kids had for school, how did that work?
Angel
In the summer, when my mother got the welfare check, it was part cash and part food stamps. So in the summer, our parents bought us each one outfit for school that we were supposed to wear when the school year started. So, we would put that outfit on, and then at the end of the day, when we got home, we had to take that outfit off. We would wear whatever old jeans we had around the house. Then, the next day, we were going to put those same clothes on. So I wore that outfit all week. My brothers wore that outfit all week. As the clothes got older and we got taller– like me and Mikey, for example, we would take Ruly’s clothes and Melo’s clothes, and then they would get new clothes, but they would still have to wear those clothes all week, and then they would just get passed down to us, so they were “new” to me. I mean, that was the sequence, pretty much.
Scott
You guys were all in a one-bedroom apartment. What were the sleeping arrangements?
Angel
Me and my brothers would share a full bed. We shared a full bed. That’s where we slept. That’s all we had. We had a full bed. There was one twin. Melo slept on the twin because he was the oldest, so he took the twin. Now, when we slept on this full bed, I had to sleep lengthwise at the bottom of the bed because I was a bed wetter. So, obviously, sleeping in between my brothers was not going to work because they would be woken up wet, and this would start so many fights with Mikey and Ruly. I would wake up, and one of them was pushing me or punching me, and saying, “Hey, you peed again!” And so, we would get up and try to figure it out ourselves. We would flip the mattress over, and then that side was damp because it was still drying from the last time. So, eventually, that’s what I did. I just slept lengthwise, and that worked out. I slept lengthwise at the bottom of the bed, and that worked out for us, and that’s how we slept.
Scott
Was that in the bedroom? Where were your parents sleeping?
Angel
They slept in the living room. They had a bed in the living room. That was their bedroom.
Scott
At some point, your parents fall behind on the rent, and you all get evicted. Do you remember that day?
Angel
Yes, I do remember that day. The thing I remember most vividly is being out in the street, out on the sidewalk, with everything we owned in one shopping cart. That was it. Whatever was in that shopping cart, that was it, that was ours. I didn’t realize that we were being evicted. I didn’t realize what had actually really happened. I mean, to me, it felt like we were going somewhere, which felt exciting because we never did anything, so I felt like we were going on a trip. Every once in a while, we would go to our grandmother’s house, and that was exciting. So, it just felt like we were going on a trip and we became homeless right at that moment.
Scott
That’s kind of like it is with kids, though, right? You don’t really realize the gravity of the situation. It reminds me, sometimes, when my kids were little and the electricity would go off during a storm or something, to me, it’s an inconvenience. What are we going to do, you know? But for them, it’s an adventure. Everything’s in the dark.
Angel
Right, yeah.
Scott
so, you guys were homeless. Did you have family nearby that could take you in?
Angel
We did. All over Brooklyn, we had family in Bushwick, we had family in the Bronx. My parents made phone calls, and the answer was no. The answer was no. Everyone in my family knew our situation. They knew my father was a drunk. They knew he was a convicted murderer. They knew he was very violent. I mean, we rarely even got visitors. My family rarely came over to visit. If they did, it was maybe one person. Like, my mother’s sister would come early in the morning when they knew my father wouldn’t be inebriated because, when he was drunk, he was an asshole. Before he got violent, he was an asshole. He went from friendly to asshole to violent.
Scott
Dangerous.
Angel
Yeah, yeah.
Scott
So, where do you go?
Angel
We went to a homeless shelter. Honestly, for me, the homeless shelter was awesome. I remember being happy at the homeless shelter. It wasn’t cold. They had heat. I had my own bed at the homeless shelter. I had my own cot. They had food, bologna sandwiches. There were some nice ladies in the cafeteria, and they would feed us three times a day. But if we were still hungry, we would go over to the cafeteria, and the lunch ladies there would give us more sandwiches. Me and my brothers would say, “Hey, we’re still hungry. Can we have some more sandwiches?” “Yeah, sure, no problem.” They would give us more sandwiches. So, we got to eat as many sandwiches as we wanted. That was new for us. We never ate till we were full. We never got to do that before.
Scott
It’s so incredible to think about getting evicted and living in a homeless shelter, and that’s an upgrade.
Angel
Yeah, I mean, it was.
Scott
Did you ever feel like you boys have to take responsibility for yourselves since the parents weren’t doing it?
Angel
I mean, we were. We were already doing it, especially Melo. Sometimes, when I talk about life back then, I sometimes refer to Melo as mom and dad because Melo stepped in and took care of us. He did. He cooked for us. He looked out for us. He protected us.
Scott
How long were you homeless?
Angel
Three years.
Scott
Three years.
Angel
Three years with that one shopping cart. We went from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. I forgot to mention that, at the homeless shelter, my father couldn’t drink. So, that whole thing was gone too. We didn’t have to deal with that mess which meant, sometimes, he would disappear so he could drink. He would leave for a few days and then come back, but he couldn’t drink at the homeless shelter. So, the homeless shelter was less chaotic than the home life by far.
So we were homeless for three years and then two years in the Brooklyn Arms Hotel, the welfare hotel. It was a welfare hotel. The difference was, at the shelter, it was just like a big gymnasium with rows of beds. The Brooklyn Arms Hotel was a welfare hotel. It was like an apartment. It was a one-bedroom apartment just like we had on Whipple Street. So, same sleeping arrangement where we had a full bed. My brother had the twin and I would sleep at the foot so I wouldn’t get my brothers wet, and my parents slept in the living room.
Scott
Just like before.
Angel
Just like before.
Scott
Were you kind of unhappy about going to that arrangement again?
Angel
I don’t know if it was a big deal to me, sleeping at the foot of the bed. I never viewed it as something that was bad. I was happy that I didn’t have to get my brothers wet. I was happy about not having to deal with that problem.
Scott
But now you’re back to the situation of no food and life like it was before.
Angel
But we had a place with walls. It felt like a home. It felt like we had a more permanent home. It felt like a real home. It was a real apartment to us.
Scott
And you weren’t in a big room with a bunch of other people.
Angel
Right.
Scott
What floor were you on?
Angel
We were on the 13th floor but everyone in the building– to everyone in the building, it was unofficially the 14th floor. The maintenance crew had gone up there and they crossed out the 13 because that was bad luck. They painted a 14 over it. So, in order to get the elevators up, you had to bang on the door and yell the floor number because the buttons were broken and, if you yelled 13, they weren’t coming, nobody was coming. Nobody was pressing your floor because it was sort of an unofficial rule in the building. We don’t have a 13th floor, technically. So, you could say it was 14, but we really lived on the 13th floor.
Scott
And you couldn’t push a button and get the elevator?
Angel
No. The button on the outside panel was broken, but the buttons on the inside of the elevator worked. So, you had to bang on the door, yell your floor number into the shaft and you hoped that somebody was in the elevator, somebody heard you and pressed your number for you so you could get the elevator. That was two of the three. The last elevator was a freight elevator and that one had a manual handle and there was a security guard in there and he operated that elevator. You had to call for that one too. So, the guy who operated the elevator either heard you and came up or, if he didn’t feel like it or– for example, in my father’s case, the elevator operator recognized my father’s voice, they knew he was a drunk and a problem. So, my father, if he wanted to go out, he would pull one of us into the hallway, he would bang on the door and he would have one of us yell for the elevator because he knew that if the elevator operator heard his voice, he wouldn’t come up because they didn’t want to deal with him.
Scott
Can you tell us the story of Bonkers the Cat?
Angel
Ruly– like I said, he’s always saving other things. He loves animals and, in the Brooklyn Arms Hotel, there were a lot of strays – dogs, cats. Well, he finds this small gray cat in the hallway and he decides to take him in. Now, my father, anytime we bring animals home, my father loses it because the animals are filthy – ticks, fleas. My father had to take ticks off of my legs because, when we brought these animals home, it’s our new pet. We love the animal now and he sleeps in our bed and everything and the cat is completely filthy. So, Ruly brings the cat home and my father says, “The cat can stay, but only temporarily because I don’t want animals in this house. You know that. I’ve told you that already. The cat can stay for a little while but I don’t want him here.”
So, the cat stayed and a few weeks went by, and the cat was mostly in Ruly’s room. But the cat walks out into the living room and my father sees it and my father’s drunk and he says, “I told you I don’t want cats in this house!” He walks over and he picks up the cat. The cat is a feral cat – the cat is not really a house cat even though we’ve had him for a couple of weeks – and he starts scratching my father’s hand. My father gets pissed off. My father walks over to the window. He opens the window and he throws the cat out of the window.
Scott
From the 13th floor.
Angel
From the 13th floor, yeah. We’re trying to stop him. When he opened the window, we knew what was happening. My mother tried to stop him. My mother was grabbing his arm. We were grabbing his arm trying to get him to stop. We knew exactly what he was doing and he just threw the cat right out of the window.
Scott
How do you all react to that?
Angel
Well, I looked at Ruly immediately – because it was Ruly’s cat – and Ruly was just still. He was just angry. Ruly was angry. Ruly’s face was just still like he saw a ghost or something.
Scott
You’ve written that the incident with Bonkers kind of changed something in Ruly. What did you see?
Angel
Well, after that, Ruly was very angry, obviously, and he was angry at my father. One day, he just came up to me out of the blue and he asked me if I would help him kill my father. He said, “Will you help me kill Papa?” And I said, okay.
Scott
How old were you each at that time?
Angel
I was 10 and Ruly had to be about 11 or 12.
Scott
Why do you think Ruly involved you? Why did he invite you in on this plan? I mean, it seems like Melo would have been the choice since he’s older.
Angel
I don’t know. Maybe because he knew I would say yes. I mean, he’s my brother. I don’t know why he picked me.
Scott
So what was the plan?
Angel
So the plan was when we moved into the Brooklyn Arms, there was a steel pipe under the bed that we found right away. I don’t know if someone had it probably under the bed for protection, but it was there. We knew it was there and the plan was that– there was only one bathroom in this place and it was in our bedroom. My father had to go from the living room across our bedroom to go into the bathroom. The plan was that we would wet the floor in front of the bathroom. He would walk out of the bathroom, slip on the water, and then I would be there with the pipe and then I would bash his head in. That was the plan. I’m 10, so this is a 10-year-old’s plan, obviously.
Scott
And did you think past that? Was there a plan after he’s laying dead on the floor?
Angel
Yeah. Well, I remember thinking my mother’s going to be so proud of me. I remember thinking this would be over. The craziness, the chaos – I was going to end it all. He wouldn’t be able to hit my mom. I mean, I thought it would all be over and we could just live a normal life.
Scott
So what happened?
Angel
Well, he came out of the bathroom and he didn’t slip like a cartoon, like I thought he was going to. I didn’t even register as a threat to him. It’s like he didn’t even know I was there. He walked out of the bathroom and he just kind of swatted me away and he just went about his way and he went into the room and when he walked over the puddle, I just froze because I thought, “Oh my God, he didn’t slip like he’s going to. He’s going to beat the hell out of me now because he sees that I’m here trying to kill him.” And then he walked through the puddle and he just went into the room and Ruly was behind me and he ran up and he said, “What happened?” And I said, “He didn’t slip.”
Scott
So he didn’t question why you’re standing there holding this steel pipe.
Angel
No, he didn’t say a word, just walked right past me.
Scott
Of all the weird things that happened in that house, that’s probably not that unusual.
Angel
Yeah.
Scott
You didn’t quit with that plan. You made another one.
Angel
Yeah, we did. We decided that we were going to kill our father and we weren’t going to give up there. That plan didn’t work. So the next plan was we were going to go to the medicine cabinet and we got some pills. I don’t know what the pills were. We just relied on movie logic and if you swallow a bunch of pills, you die. So we took the pills and we went into the refrigerator and my father drank these quarts of beer. He drank these Colt 45 beers. So we opened up the Colt 45, we put the pills in there, put the whole bottle in there, sealed it up, put it back in the fridge, and then we just waited.
That night, he grabbed the bottle and he was in the living room giving a speech about life like he would do sometimes when he was drunk, giving some grand speech. He shit himself is what happened. It didn’t kill him. Whatever was in there didn’t kill him but the backs of his legs were completely soaked in diarrhea. He was completely covered in diarrhea.
Scott
Did he realize that? Was he too drunk to even realize that was happening?
Angel
Well, yeah, I don’t think he realized that we had put pills in there, but there was a moment while he was giving his prophetic speech, he said, “You never know what’s going to happen in life. I could die right now.” And me and Ruly look at each other and we’re thinking, “He knows we poisoned him or try to poison him. He knows, but he didn’t react to it after that.” And then, that’s when he shit himself.
Scott
When did he realize what was happening with his stomach?
Angel
I mean, as he was drinking, after he got diarrhea, he spent the rest of the night on the toilet. He was done. He was out of commission. Whatever was in there, whatever pills we put in there, it didn’t do what we intended but that’s what it did.
Scott
It sounds like maybe they were pills that you take for constipation or something, and maybe only take one or two but when you take all of them–
Angel
Yeah.
Scott
There’s a lot more to your story than what we’re talking about here on the podcast. All those details are in your book, which we’ll talk about in just a second. You wrote this book to tell your story, but you mostly wrote it for your brother.
Angel
I did. Yeah. I didn’t want Ruly to be forgotten. I didn’t want Ruly to be forgotten.
Scott
What happened to Ruly?
Angel
After the Brooklyn Arms, we moved into the Farragut houses in Brooklyn – it was a housing project – and it was a bad neighborhood. Me and my brothers started stealing. We got in trouble in school and we started getting– Ruly got arrested. Ruly got arrested for stealing. After he got arrested, he was put on probation and the judge told him, “You screw up one more time and you’re going to Spofford.” Spofford was a juvenile detention center in the Bronx. If you were too young for Rikers Island, the prison, you went to juvie, you went to Spofford. So the principal, Mrs. Bader, suspended Ruly for getting into a fight at school. That suspension meant that Ruly had violated his probation, so he was sent to Spofford. After a few months in Spofford, he was transitioned into a group home. They transfer into a group home before they’re going to decide to let you go.
After a few months in Spofford, he goes to a group home. While he’s in the group home in Queens, the kids go on a. field trip to the beach in Far Rockaway. While they’re in Far Rockaway, Ruly drowns. Ruly goes into the water and he drowns. He doesn’t come back out. Now, they don’t realize Ruly ‘s missing. The staff doesn’t realize Ruly ‘s missing. The staff goes back. Field trip’s over. About three hours go by before they realize that my brother’s gone, that my brother is missing. Someone called the house and they told us what had happened, and Ruly was gone. Ruly was dead.
Scott
How old was he at that time?
Angel
He was 14.
Scott
Do you remember getting that news yourself?
Angel
I do remember getting the news. It was from Melo. I watched Melo answer the phone. Oddly enough, I watched Melo answer the phone. And I could see in his face that something bad happened, and then he told us. Melo was the one that told us, “Ruly ‘s dead. They said they found his body.” I didn’t cry. I guess I was just shocked because I don’t know if I fully believed it. I don’t know. It really didn’t hit me until I saw him in the casket.
Scott
To me, it’s remarkable that, whatever this is, this facility, this juvenile detention place calls your home to advise that your brother has drowned and they give that news to one of the other brothers, not to the parents.
Angel
Just to whoever answered the phone. That’s who they gave the news to.
Scott
Well, if we go to present day, can you talk about where each of your family members are now?
Angel
My mother is sober. My mother stopped drinking right after Ruly died, completely.
Scott
Just cold turkey.
Angel
Cold turkey. That was it for her. My father tried and he relapsed. It took him about another decade but, eventually, he completely stopped drinking too. My parents still live in Brooklyn. They’re still together. My father’s not in good health. He’s 79 and he’s not in good health.
Scott
Why did he stop drinking?
Angel
I mean, I think he just got old. I know that after Ruly died– he was trying after Ruly died just the way my mother stopped drinking. He tried to stop, but he just couldn’t. He was an alcoholic. He was a bad alcoholic. Now he had the weight of Ruly being dead, the day Ruly died and he came home, it was chaos. He left and he came back inebriated, and he attacked Melo. He said, this is Melo’s fault that Ruly’s dead. He never saw himself as the problem. Melo was the oldest. He blamed Melo for that. But yeah, my father’s not in good health. He’s 79. He has diabetes. He’s a little bit blind. My mother tells me he may have dementia. I don’t know. So, obviously, they don’t drink.
Scott
With the absence of alcohol now, is he still abusive toward your mother?
Angel
No, no, not at all. Years ago, around the time that Ruly died or a few years after that, my mother told him, “If you ever put a hand on me again, I’m out of here. I’m leaving.” And so, yeah, the beatings and all that stuff eventually did stop.
Scott
Okay. What about the other brothers?
Angel
Today, Melo struggled. Melo struggled a lot with drugs, homelessness after Farragut. I left Farragut at 14 or, well, I got kind of taken out. Melo struggled with homelessness, he struggled with drugs, and then he was diagnosed with throat cancer last year. So he had a tumor. He got the tumor removed. Last time I spoke to him, which was a week ago, he told me that his cancer was in remission. So he is getting better.
Scott
So does Melo have a reasonably normal life now?
Angel
Yeah. Melo lives with his daughter, who’s a registered nurse, so she takes care of him, which he loves. She loves her father very much. She takes care of him. He’s happy to have her there because he needs her. He’s sick. Nobody’s going to take care of him better than her.
Scott
And then Mikey…
Angel
The last time I talked to Mikey was in the mid 2000s. Mikey left home in his 20s and he went to join the Marines. He went to join the Marines, came to visit me in my home in Florida, and we kind of got into it a little bit. Mikey was angry and I understand why.
Scott
At you?
Angel
No, not at me. He was mad because Ruly was dead, Melo was on drugs, and the whole family was completely scattered and completely destroyed by, really, one person. So he was mad at my father and he was angry at my mother too, and I really wasn’t and I’m not because I don’t let that stuff sit with me because, then, it’s going to destroy me if I let it sit with me. I know we all deal with it differently and I respect his feelings on it. But after that day, Mikey just left and I haven’t talked to him since. I tried to reach out to him. Mikey has cut off the whole family. My mother tells me he won’t return the phone calls. He won’t return Melo’s phone calls. He just completely cut off the whole family.
Scott
When’s the last time you were in touch with him?
Angel
It was in the mid 2000s. I don’t remember the exact year, but when he came to my home in Florida, that was the last time I talked to him. I haven’t talked to him in a while. I haven’t talked to him since.
Scott
And you– you’ve built a life that’s very. different from how you grew up.
Angel
Yeah. I raised a son that never had to go to bed hungry. That’s what I’m proud of. For me, it’s not about a big dramatic victory, a mansion. That stuff doesn’t matter to me. I’m healthy. My son is healthy. That’s the stuff that matters to me. So that’s my happy ending.
Scott
You’ve got a good life now.
Angel
Yeah, I do have a good life.
Scott
A job, a house.
Angel
Yeah, I went from being homeless to owning my own home now. I have a supportive wife. So, I do have a good life. I’m very grateful and I’m healthy, which is the most important thing.
Scott
You’ve said that you carried a lot of shame for years about where you came from. What changed that?
Angel
Yeah. I was embarrassed by all of it. I was embarrassed by all of it. I had all of these notes in my phone. Every time something from the past would come up, I would write it down and that’s how I felt better. It was like I was just letting it go. These notes just accumulated. I had so many over the years and, one day, I said, “Man, I should turn this into a book.” But I felt like I was never really going to do it. I said, “No, I’m not going to do it. These are private. These are embarrassing.” I mean, that’s really where this all came from – my own personal notes that were meant to be only for me originally. It was meant to be only for me, only for my eyes.
Scott
Your book is called “Stay Down”. Where did that title come from?
Angel
“Stay Down” is the command my father gave me when he was beating me for trying to protect my mother. There was an incident where things had shifted when Melo got older. When Melo turned 16, there was a day where he had stood up to my father. He basically beat my father’s ass for hitting my mother. That had never happened before. This was something different. Melo had gotten older. My father had gotten older too, but Melo had also gotten older. By then, we had been in the Projects for a few years and the Projects had toughened Melo up. So, Melo beats my father’s ass and he tells him, “You’re not going to hit my mother anymore. It stops today.”
So after I saw my brother do that, the next time my father got in on my mother, I felt like I had the formula. I said, “Well, I’m going to do what Melo did and I’m going to stop him.” I was only 13. I had been eating Conan soup most of my life. When I stepped in to try to stop him, he gave me the worst beating of my life and that was the command he gave me when he was stomping my head in. He told me to stay down over and over again when I tried to get up. So those are the words that stayed with me, honestly. That’s where the title comes from.
Scott
What a way to remember your dad.
Angel
Yeah, well, it’s not the only way I remember him because I know, on top of all that – it sounds weird to say it but – there were some good memories too.
Scott
What are some of the happy times?
Angel
When my father wasn’t drinking, he was good to us. He cooked for us. He took us to Prospect Park. He played catch with us. He joked around with us. He was a good, normal dad but, when he drank, he was Godzilla. He was that guy that, when he drank, he got beer muscles. He wanted to fight everybody. But when he wasn’t drinking, man, he was so good to us. He was funny. He was fun.
Scott
Do you ever talk with your dad today?
Angel
I haven’t talked to him in a few years. I think it’s been about five years since I’ve spoken to him. I don’t hate my father. I don’t hold any grudges. I’m just not wired that way. I know that might sound weird to some people, but that’s just the way I am. I’m not going to sit around and carry it in a way that affects me where I’m walking around angry. I’m just not going to be that way. Some of these memories still bother me, of course. That’s why I write them down. It feels good to write them down. It’s a release for me. I learned that, when I was little, I started writing things down, and then I would ball up the paper and throw it away because I was too embarrassed about what was on there, but that’s just what works for me. I write stuff down, and I feel better afterwards.
Scott
Have your parents read your book?
Angel
Before I published the book, I ordered a few author copies, and I mailed one to my mom. I wanted her to read it before I published it just out of respect. She’s in the book, obviously. She’s a big part of the book. I explained to her that the book was very dark, and she wasn’t going to like some of the things in the book. I explained these things to her. She told me she just read the back cover, and she was furious with me. She said, “I don’t like this idea. That’s foolish. Why would you put our family’s business out there like that?” I told her I felt like this is something that I just felt like I needed to do. I told her I felt like I needed to keep Ruly’s memory alive, and this was the best way for me to do it forever. Of course, she disagreed. Her words to me about reading the book, to answer your question, is, she told me she’s not ready to read the book. That’s what she told me.
Scott
Do you think your dad has read it?
Angel
Well, there is a Spanish version of the book, because I don’t think he can read English. He may be able to read Spanish – I don’t even know that he can – but probably definitely not.
Scott
But you’re doing an audio version.
Angel
I am. That’s right. I am recording the audio book.
Scott
So perhaps he could listen, if he even wanted to.
Angel
Yeah. And I wish he would. I don’t know if he’s going to.
Scott
We’d love to hear an update on that if something like that happens. That would be interesting.
Angel
I mean, this is the story for better or for worse. This is what happened. This is how it happened. I mean, we have to accept it. I mean, that’s what it was. That’s the life that we live, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.
Scott
I know that’s what you told me when we were speaking prior to recording here – what’s in the book. It’s just the way it happened. You don’t sugarcoat anything. It is what it is.
Angel
Yeah.
Scott
Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?
Angel
I would like to bring up Coco because it’s interesting. Ruly, before he died, before he went to Spofford, before he got locked up, he brought another cat home. The cat’s name was Coco. He named the cat Coco. It was another stray. Ruly walks in with the cat, and I immediately tell Ruly, “Ruly, you can’t bring that cat in here. Papa’s going to kill that cat. You know he doesn’t want cats in here.” And as I’m telling Ruly this, my father’s behind me, and he sees the cat. The cat is probably one of the dirtiest cats I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s covered in some kind of motor oil. He’s filthy, so I already know it’s going to be a problem. Anyway, my father winds up taking the cat into the bathroom and bathes the cat. He washes the cat. Now that the cat is clean, he says Ruly can keep it. I don’t know if he felt guilty but, this time, he decided to clean the cat so it wasn’t dirty, and he let Ruly keep it. But my parents generally didn’t want animals in the house at all.
After Ruly died, my parents kept that cat for 17 years because, to them, he was a piece of Ruly . That cat was a piece of Ruly . So these two people that couldn’t even take care of their own kids, they kept that cat alive, and they fed him good for 17 years. He slept on their bed, and he was the last thing that Ruly brought into the house, and they kept him for 17 years.
Scott
Angel’s life is so different now, because he has stopped the cycle of violence. He and his wife Shannon live here in Florida, not that far from me. So we met up, and he gave me a signed copy of his book. And of course we took a picture. You can see that, as well as a picture of Angel with his brothers when they were kids, and the link to his book, in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/270.
And if you have a question for Angel that I didn’t ask, he’s in the What Was That Like Facebook group – so come on over and leave a question or a comment. WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now we’re about to hear this week’s Listener Story. I’ve got some more listener stories lined up for future episodes – but I don’t have YOURS yet. I’d love to hear it, and so would all the other listeners here. Record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This listener talks about the scariness of not knowing where your child is.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener story)
When my children were about probably two and one– our church had several services. I had attended the first service, and then Sunday school, and then I was leaving. I went and gathered my children, and we’re taking them out to the car, one on the hip, one by the hand. This church was located right on a busy road. On either side of that road were heavily trafficked roads going into a neighborhood. Because of that, the parking lot was surrounded by a fence. There were a couple of places on each– like, in the back on each side, where you could go through a gate, and those were usually open on Sundays for obvious reasons.
I took the children to the car, and they were both in car seats, of course, at the time. I told Kenneth to sit right there, which he normally did. I put his brother in the seat, plopped Joey in the seat. By now, I’m a pro at it. Probably took all of 15 seconds. Turned to Kenneth and said, “Okay, buddy, your turn,” and he was not there. So, of course, I called for him. He did not answer me. Now, he’s only two years old. He’s not going to be able to be seen over the cars, so I immediately dropped down to my hands and knees, and looked underneath all the cars. I’m like, “He cannot have gone that far.” So I’m down there looking, and I probably took about 30 seconds to do that. Popped back up and started calling for him again. I went from zero to panic in no time.
I got Joey out of his car seat, put him on the hip, and started running around the parking lot, basically screaming at this point. I was running back to the church – because there were no cell phones back then – to say, “Hey, can somebody call 911? I don’t know where my son is.” When I saw a gentleman walking out of the church with my son on his hip, he said, “Hey, did you lose somebody?” Now, all this probably took under five minutes but, evidently, what happened was Kenneth had run back towards the church. A man pulling in, thankfully, had seen him, thought he had escaped from the nursery, took him back into the church, at which point he was told his mother just picked him up. She’s probably freaking out right now, which was a correct assessment. That was only probably five minutes, but five minutes of pure terror.
Next time was my older son. He was probably seven, and he was gone for over an hour. I know that it took years off my life. I was panicking. My job was an hour away. My husband got on board and tried to come home and find out what was going on. I was calling the babysitter who lived right next door, because that’s where he was supposed to be. Again, no cell. It’s just leaving a voicemail – not a voicemail, but the old-time answer machines. Leaving it over and over and over on her phone. “Where are you? Call me back. I need to know that Joey’s okay.” On and on and on and on. My husband, about the time he came back to the phone, said, “Karen, we have to call the police. I can’t find him. He’s nowhere to be seen.” I heard him yell, “What?” He was talking to the neighbor two doors down. She had Joey because it had been raining, which is part of the story. She had taken him inside, thrown his clothes in a dryer, wrapped him in a warm blanket and cooked him a hot dog because he didn’t know his mom and dad’s work phone number. Nothing like that. She’d know how to get in touch with us but we weren’t home. So for over an hour, probably close to an hour and a half.
Since that time, I’ve had police banging on the door to let me know one was in an accident. I had one with a tumor on his neck. That turned out to be nothing. But you know what? Those were scary, but nothing will ever come close to not knowing where your child is.