Once her anger subsided, my mother ordered, “Go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you to.”
I felt relieved to be in my room—away from her rage, away from the dark look in her eyes. I lay down on my bed and started to cry. I hadn’t cried in a long, long time. I thought I had given it up, cast it aside like I’d cast aside my dolls and other childhood things. But lying in my room, with my mother seething and humiliated out in the living room, I felt small again.
After a while, my mother opened my bedroom door and said with an unusual harshness to her tone, “I’m going to the store. Don’t you dare leave this house, do you understand?”
I looked up at her. “Yes, I understand.”
I heard her rustling around and then the front door slammed. I immediately felt relieved. But in an instant, panic set in. What if she goes through my drawers and finds all the other things I’ve stolen? She’ll kill me. The thoughts were so loud in my head that for an instant I wondered whether I’d actually said them out loud.
I immediately jumped out of bed and rushed to the kitchen for a large paper bag. I ran back into my room and opened one drawer then the next, scooping nail polish bottles and lipsticks and mascara and all the other makeup I’d collected into the paper bag until all the drawers were emptied. That done, I went to the front door and looked out. I knew she couldn’t have gone to the store and come back by this time but I took extra caution, making sure she wasn’t anywhere around, perhaps talking to a neighbor. The coast seemed clear. I went out the back door and headed for the incinerator in the back lot. I got a stick and moved the ashes into high peaks along the edge of the incinerator before dumping my stash in the center. Then I pushed the ashes back over all my booty until it was completely hidden.
I ran back into the house, put the paper bag exactly where I’d found it, and returned to my room. I had a hard time catching my breath, partly from rushing around and partly because of the terror the thought of getting caught with all that contraband inspired in me.
I lay back down on my bed and I vowed to be good. I vowed to turn over a new leaf. I promised God I would never get into trouble again—never humiliate my mother, never risk her wrath again.
chapter 25
Years later, I was with a group of high school friends when someone came up with the idea of stealing stuff from a liquor store. I told them I was out and left the store and waited for them in the car. I didn’t care what they thought; I didn’t care that they called me chicken and made fun of me for days.
You might say I had been “scared straight”—or, as my mother would say, that I had “straightened up.” But there was more to it. Much like the incident with the little boy I’d babysat a few years earlier, the shoplifting incident had given me a glimpse of a part of myself that I abhorred, and I didn’t want that part of me to take over.
I knew right from wrong. I knew it wasn’t okay to steal. But somehow my anger and pain and especially my shame had taken over and compelled me to do it.
I felt especially bad about the fact that I had gotten Patricia and Pat in trouble. The police had informed my mother that I was the ringleader and they were right. Patricia was younger than me and she trusted me. She would have done anything I told her to do just to be around me. It reminded me of how I’d felt about Peter. And Steve. She didn’t have anyone else to watch over her but me, and I had let her down. Pat was a little older than me but she had been sheltered all her life. I had a lot more experience in the world than she did. I’d let her down too.
I knew I still had a good part of me—the part of me who cared for other people, the part of me who still teared up every time I heard the siren of an ambulance or fire truck. There was even still a part of me who believed in Jesus, even though he hadn’t saved me from my mother or Steve or Harvey.
Even though I was shocked by my own behavior, even though it felt like it was someone else who had stolen those lipsticks and nail polishes, the truth was it was me. I had to admit to myself that there was a part of me that didn’t care about what was right or wrong, that didn’t care if I hurt other people or took their things. And there was a part of me that didn’t care what happened to me.
I did still care about my mother, however—something I was surprised to discover. I thought I had stopped caring about what she thought or felt. I thought I had stopped trying to please her. But I found that I cared about the fact that she had been so humiliated by
