Brotherly love sustains two siblings through hard times
Marcelino Brown and his brother Jorge have each other, but love is about all they have left.
Their car and Jorge’s Harley Davidson motorcycle were repossessed. A rent increase forced them to move out of their family’s Allapattah home of 32 years and into a cramped Little River duplex studio where they store their clothes in cardboard moving boxes because there is no closet. Desperate for money to pay the bills, they’ve been selling their belongings.
Marcelino got a mere $200 for his most treasured possession, a Canon camera. Photography was his passion. He used to take pictures of birds and alligators when he went fishing in the Everglades.
He can’t fish anymore. He can’t do much of anything “except stare at these four blank walls,” Marcelino said. His health began declining in 2012 when he was diagnosed with post-traumatic epilepsy that originated years earlier when he was walking across the street, got hit by a drunk driver and slammed the back of his head into a curb.
Epileptic seizures are unpredictable and debilitating. Marcelino blacks out and falls to the ground. He lost his job as a highway maintenance worker for the Florida Department of Transportation.
“I had a couple seizures at work, and I became a liability,” he said. “I could no longer drive a truck or work on the roads.”
He got certified as an air conditioning repairman and did handyman jobs “but no one wants to hire an epileptic because of the risk of falling off a ladder or hurting yourself with tools.”
Marcelino, 60, unemployed, uninsured and rejected in his applications for disability and Medicaid, has grown dependent on Jorge, 61, who works 12-hour shifts for $12 an hour as a security guard at PortMiami. They live on one paycheck, paycheck to paycheck. Jorge rides an aging bike to and from his job, 12 miles round trip.
“I don’t like to see him leaving here on that bike,” Marcelino said. “It’s dangerous. I worry about him, riding in the rain, in the dark.”
And Jorge worries about his brother, alone and susceptible to seizures. One night Jorge returned home and found Marcelino on the tile floor, bruised and bleeding. Marcelino has also had seizures at a bus stop and a Metrorail station.
“There’s no warning when he goes down — boom,” Jorge said. “I’m like a paramedic. I have to time the seizures and if they last more than 10 minutes, I call emergency. I have to make sure there’s nothing sharp near him and that he can’t harm himself. When we are separated, it weighs on me. I’m always wondering if Mars is OK.”
The brothers are looking forward to the end of 2019, the worst year of their lives. Broke, they had to live in their car for weeks until they could scrape together enough money to sign a lease. Jorge’s PortMiami co-workers donated $1,500. They miss their old house. They live in a neighborhood where most people speak Creole and they have no friends.
In April, Marcelino was the passenger in a van swept into a five-car accident on I-95. His air bag did not deploy and he was hospitalized with neck and back injuries. Pain led him back to Jackson Memorial in June, when doctors discovered an abscess near a kidney that had to be drained. He lost 34 pounds.
In September, Marcelino had a grand mal seizure walking out of the bathroom.
“I got so twisted my heel was touching my rear end,” he said. He injured tendons in his knee, which Jorge tried to repair with a makeshift brace using a towel, a piece of plastic and duct tape. When Marcelino returned to Jackson to have the swollen knee examined, doctors performed a checkup and found gallstones.
Marcelino sits in a canvas camping chair as he and Jorge do their stoic best to joke about the misfortune. Marcelino pulls up his shirt to reveal a tube connecting his gallbladder to a drainage bag. An IV line pumps the antibiotic Oxacillin into his arm. He may need to have the gallbladder removed, and doctors have discussed surgery to relieve pain in two vertebrae in his lower back. He also takes daily anti-seizure medication provided by Epilepsy Florida, a nonprofit organization.
“There are 30 different types of seizures and although the medication helps control them, there is still a stigma attached to people with epilepsy,” said Mariela Cornell, Brown’s social service case manager at Epilepsy Florida. “The brain misfires and the person’s life is instantly turned upside down.”
A cane leans against Jorge’s bike but Marcelino’s mobility is limited.
“I’m a burden on my brother,” he said. “He’s responsible for our expenses. He has to help me get dressed. He cooks. He’s like a nurse on 24-hour call.
“I wish I could pay my fair share. I feel depressed and guilty. I’ve thought about killing myself. I’ve thought about stepping in front of a bus on 79th Street.”
In better times, the brothers enjoyed going to car shows. When they were boys, mechanics at a nearby garage taught them how to restore vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles.
“We like anything with wheels and motors,” Marcelino said. “My favorite is the 1982 Corvette.”
They were born in Lima, Peru, and moved to Washington, D.C., when their father got a job through a friend as a waiter at the Monacle restaurant. They have a black-and-white photo of him serving astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in 1969. They moved to Miami in their teens and graduated from Miami High.
Marcelino had a falling out with his father and changed his last name to Brown to spite him. Jorge kept the family name of Almaluez. One of their dreams before Marcelino got sick was to take a trip back to Peru, visit their father’s homeland of Argentina and travel to their forebears’ town in Spain — Almaluez.
Marcelino and Jorge are single, never had children. Their younger brother Walter, 56, lives in Miami but they do not see him often. As the two eldest, they have always been close.
Once, there were five Almaluez brothers, no sisters. But the second youngest died at age 1.
“Choked to death on a piece of cake,” Jorge said.
Baby Ricardo died in his crib of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
“I remember holding the baby in my arms. He wasn’t breathing,” Jorge said. “Mars and I were just little boys, but from that point on we knew we would always look after each other. We’re missing two brothers. We can’t lose another one.”
Marcelino recalled how his mother suffered.
“One way she dealt with the grief was raising us to take care of each other no matter what,” he said. “She’s watching over us. That’s why when Hurricane Irma passed Miami we felt no wind whatsoever.”
Marcelino was nominated for the Miami Herald Wish Book by Cornell.
“Marcelino’s health has deteriorated immensely, and we’ve seen the struggles and strains on his brother,” she said.
For the holidays, Marcelino wants no gifts for himself. He would like a donation to cover the December rent and utility bills and relieve some financial pressure on Jorge.
“I’m hoping in 2020 we can turn things around, move to a better place, buy a car,” Marcelino said. “I want to help my brother as much as he’s helped me.”
How to help
Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.) Read more at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook.
