When first Pat and then Patricia followed me out, they were grabbed as well. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were as terrified as I was. I knew it was my fault they were in this predicament, and shame flooded over me. But mostly I was terrified about what my mother was going to do to me when she found out what I’d done.
The big man turned out to be a store detective. He directed the three of us into a back room of the store and told us to empty our purses as another man, the store manager, looked on. Lipsticks and nail polish of all colors came tumbling out.
The store manager didn’t yell at us but he might as well have. He looked at us with contempt as he lectured us: “Who do you think you are? This is my store. You hoodlums have no right stealing from me. How would you like it if I came into your house and took your things?”
I hadn’t thought of it like that.
Then the store manager told the detective to call the police. He looked back at us and I thought he was going to begin lecturing us again but instead he just said, “I can have you locked up in juvenile hall for this.”
I’d heard about “juvie”—a lot of kids on Janice Drive talked about it. I’d heard it was a terrible place with mean guards and even meaner bullies, “bull dykes” who raped young, innocent girls as soon as they came in.
As soon as the cops got there, the store manager told us, scowling, that we could never come into his store again—for the rest of our lives—and that if he ever saw us again he’d have us arrested. The cops walked us to a police car waiting outside and put us all in the backseat. Pat, Patricia, and I didn’t say a word to each other or even look at one another. I expected the cops to head downtown but instead they headed toward my house.
The cops and the people at Grants had treated me like I was a real criminal, and I felt like one. But in spite of all my bravado and rage against adults—specifically, authority figures—I was only twelve years old. As much as I acted like an adult, I was just a kid, and I was scared to death.
I felt humiliated when the cop car pulled into our driveway. I imagined everyone in the neighborhood was watching me as the cop opened up the back door of the car and escorted me to our front door.
The fallout with my mom was bad enough whenever I disobeyed her, but humiliating her like this was the worst sin I could commit. To have a cop car deliver me home for all the neighbors to see—to shame her in this way—was unforgivable.
I really didn’t know if I’d survive it. I knew I was in for a beating at the very least. I’d suspected my mother wanted to kill me since I was nine, and there were times I’d thought she was capable of doing it. If she wasn’t going to kill me, she was finally going to do what she had threatened to do all my life when I was bad: send me away to the dreaded convent.
The look on my mother’s face when she opened the front door to find me flanked by two cops confirmed all my worst fears. She looked at me with absolute hatred and contempt. That look said it all: I hate you. This is the last straw. I want you out of my life. Now you’ve done it—I can never trust you again. I can never love you again. I never want to look at your face again. You’ve humiliated me for the last time.
I had broken the most important rule: “Don’t do anything to shame or humiliate me.” I knew she could never forgive me for this. She’d somehow been able to bounce back from the other times she’d caught me acting out or disobeying her. Even the time I fell asleep by mistake at Linda’s house and she’d awakened to find my bed empty hadn’t been as bad at this. That time, she was so enraged with me when I got home in the morning she used a switch from our apricot tree to beat me in the front yard in front of everyone. I guess she wanted to humiliate me like I had humiliated her so many times.
But this was different. This involved the police, the authorities. My mother respected those who were in power, unlike me. She looked up to those in charge, imbuing them with some sort of special power. She became almost childlike in the presence of authority. And here I had gone and disrespected those very authorities.
As soon as the police left, she started in on me.
“What possessed you to do such a thing?”
“What is wrong with you? Are you crazy?”
“This isn’t the way I raised you!”
“How am I going to show my face in this neighborhood again?”
Then came the strap. I don’t know where it came from. It hurt a lot more than the switch. Now she really meant business.
“Don’t think you are too old to get a whipping,” she snarled as she started striking me on my back, legs, and arms.
I couldn’t help but try to avoid her strikes. My body moved away automatically. But I knew enough to not try to run away. I told myself I deserved this whipping and I was going to take as much of it as I could.
She laid into me with all her rage, all her hurt, all her determination. Maybe she thought she was going to beat the bad out of me. Even though I was nearly as tall as she was and probably weighed a
