UNITING TO TRY TO HELP A FAMILY DIVIDED

Oscar Monzon, 13, keeps photos of his parents in a white envelope in his
dresser drawer.

When he looks at them, he thinks about how his mother used to be there when
he came home from school, making snacks for him and his brothers, or how
his father used to play catch with him on weekends and help him with his
math homework. He looks forward to the time when his family will be
together again.

Unlike many boys his age, he rarely gets to see his parents. They are in
prison on drug charges.

"I lost my father at 10," he said. "I didn't lose him, but something like I
lost him. We'd go out and play baseball every weekend. It was just great.

"Now," he said, before pausing, "it's kind of hard, because sometimes I
remember, back in the day . . ."

He stopped talking and looked down. A tear began to roll down each cheek
before he wiped them away.

Oscar and his two brothers, Osdith, 11, and Osmanny, 9, were saved from
going into an orphanage by their mother's brother, Julio Maysonet, 27. He
took an emergency flight to Miami, where the boys had moved with their
mother, to take custody of them in July 1999.

The three brothers have joined Mr. Maysonet and his wife, Debbie, 28, their
son Julio Jr., 11, and 3-month-old twins, Brinna and Ryan.

The new family of eight must survive on Mr. Maysonet's $27,800 annual
salary as a New York City sanitation worker. They live in a crowded
three-bedroom apartment in an East Harlem high-rise.

The four boys share a room, but there are not enough beds to go around, so
each night one of the boys must sleep on the floor. It is usually Osdith.
He puts two blankets on the clammy but polished tile floor, then adds a
pillow, lies down and pulls a third blanket over himself. "Somebody has to
sleep on the floor," said Osdith, who said he did not mind being the one.
"I said, `I'll do it.' "

A spokeswoman for the Children's Aid Society said that the agency recently
learned that Osdith had to sleep on the floor. It is planning to use money
from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund to pay for a new, larger bunk bed.

Oscar's aunt and uncle said that they could tell he was having trouble
dealing with the imprisonment of his parents. Since he is the oldest of the
boys, they said, he has the toughest psychological burden. "He couldn't do
his homework," Mr. Maysonet said. "I'd ask him to do his homework, and he'd
start to cry."

They took Oscar to a community center in East Harlem run by the Children's
Aid Society, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York
Times Neediest Cases Fund. There, he saw a counselor, Miguel Ratti, who
helped him understand that it was not his fault his parents were in jail,
and that it did not mean he was a bad person.

Last school year, Oscar made the honor roll every quarter. This year, he is
in the honors program at Junior High School 45 on East 120th Street.

For now, Oscar and his brothers have learned to live with less. Clothing
can be a particular problem for the family. In September, Oscar received
$500 from the Neediest Cases Fund to buy school clothes. He went with Mr.
Ratti to Old Navy on West 34th Street.

"He starts getting clothes for his aunt and uncle and brothers," Mr. Ratti
said. "I told him, `It's for you,' but he said he wanted to get clothes for
everybody."

The two bought backpacks, khaki pants, jeans and yellow and white shirts
with collars that adhered to the school's uniform requirements.

"He was like a kid in a candy store," Mr. Ratti said.

The boys said students who go to school without wearing the uniform are
given detention or may even be sent home.

Mrs. Maysonet said she and her husband did not have enough money to buy the
boys new uniforms this year.

"If they didn't have that money, they would have had to use last year's
clothes," she said, adding that the clothes would have been too small for
the boys, whose different schools require different uniforms.

Oscar is trying to get accepted by one of the city's top public high
schools. And he said he looked forward to being reunited with his parents
and to one day living in an apartment of his own.

"I want to be a business entrepreneur," he said, "or a technology person. I
couldn't be a judge — just, like, the way I am — because I would feel sorry
for everybody."