My mother and I are silent the entire drive home. What’s left to say? She’s getting rid of me, and I’m going to spend the next however many days-weeks-months with a guy that split seven years ago. The guy I looked up to until I realized who he really was.
We enter our apartment, and I make a beeline to my room. For living on the poor side of town, you’d never guess our struggle by the contents of my room. I have a stack of brand-new denim jeans, several unopened boxes of electronics, perfumes, colognes, and half a dozen wallets. All hidden under my bed.
I make most of my money stealing from the Miller Hill Mall and then I turn around and sell everything to kids at school for a fraction of the price. Sometimes, I even hit up the campuses of Denfeld and Central to sell the merchandise to high schoolers. Thieving is my job, and I take my job seriously. This is why my bedroom door is usually locked. Until now, I had the good fortune of having a mom who respects privacy. So, naturally, I’ve taken full advantage of that.
I slip my key into the door, but … oh crap, it’s unlocked. She was in here. I swing the door open and dive to the floor near my bed. I lift my droopy Timberwolves comforter back and look under it. My jaw drops. Nothing. It’s gone. All of it.
AHHH! I feel the blood inside of me begin to boil. Panic rolls out in beads of sweat. How could she do this to me?
“Mom!” I shout, but she’s already standing behind me, arms crossed and looking smug.
“Where’s all my stuff?” I ask.
“All your stuff?”
“My stuff! Where is it?” I repeat.
“Well, looks like someone broke in and took everything. Thieves really suck, don’t they?” she says, and walks victoriously out of my room.
I slam my door shut so hard it rattles the walls. What did she do with all of it? Usually, whenever she catches me with a stolen wallet, she threatens to take it to the police station to drop it off. I guess she actually did it this time. She clearly doesn’t care that I just lost out on customers, money, and street cred. But doesn’t she realize that the money I slip into her purse at night, especially when rent is due, comes from all this stuff? Now what is she going to do?
“You’re lucky I didn’t call the police!” my mom shouts from the living room.
She’s right. Knowing my mom could just sell me out the way she did to the judge, I am lucky she didn’t have me arrested. That would have been a first-class ticket to juvenile hall.
Did she take off work and spend the day returning everything to each store while I was at school? Was she embarrassed to stand in line with the customers that were there to actually shop? Did I humiliate her? How did she explain it to everyone? Did she say, My good-for-nothing son stole all this stuff from under your noses, and I’m here to give it back?
I hope she doesn’t get in trouble for missing work. She needs her job. She’s worked so hard for it. She studied every night to get her certification and worked even harder to land a job at Duluth’s best physical therapy facility. Years and years of dedicating her life to PT, all down the tubes because she had to clean up her son’s mess. Ugh.
But if she does lose her job, she has no one to blame but herself. She did this. She stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She will have hurt herself by trying to hurt me.
I slide open a dresser drawer and see that even some of my clothes are gone. What? I turn to ask my mom where the heck my underwear went, but the answer is staring back at me near my bedroom door … A packed suitcase.
Oh yeah. I’m leaving.
I don’t know how my mom knew the judge would agree to her request, but she somehow did, because the bus ticket on the suitcase is for early tomorrow morning. A two hour and forty-seven minute bus ride from Duluth to Grand Portage.
This sucks.
I don’t remember much about Grand Portage. We’ve only gone back a couple times to bury distant relatives, when we were still a family. Those were long-ago times. But they’re also some of my favorite memories as a kid, which is weird because technically we were always on our way to a funeral. But that’s when my parents were happy. That’s when they laughed. When my dad would play with me. When my mom would call us both goofballs.
But when Duluth’s Savannah-Pacific plant closed and my dad, along with 144 other workers suddenly had no job, I suddenly had no dad. He changed so fast. It caught my mom and me completely off guard. His smile flipped over like a turtle and never really found a way back to its feet.
That was seven years ago. I was just a little rug rat that hung on to his leg when he walked. I don’t even remember what he looks like. I mean, I kind of do, but people change. I look completely different now. Back then, I was a scrawny six-year-old kid that wanted to grow up and be exactly like my dad.
But when I picture him now, I don’t see my hero. I see an angry man that yelled too loud and locked himself in his room all day. I see a guy who the cops would bring home in the middle of the night after he’d made a scene at the local bar. Some nights, my mom and I would drive around looking for him, only to find him hanging outside of the liquor store or begging for money at random gas stations. My mom was so embarrassed. I was too young to be embarrassed. I was just happy we found him. My mom tried to shelter me from what was really happening. She made it a game for us to play. First one to find Daddy wins.
Then he left for good.
When I realized that this was not a game that families play, I got angry. I guess that’s when I started stealing. Not to be like him, but to show him I was better than him. He got caught. He was a lousy thief. I wanted to prove to him that I could do what he did, only better. At everything, even the things no one should be proud of. I’m really good at it too. I can steal the wings off a bee and not get caught. After a while, it just made sense to keep doing it. The more I took, the better I felt about being good at something.
But since getting busted for stealing that stupid stuffed bear, I’m starting to think that maybe I’m not so good after all, even though I stuck to my game plan. I have five rules for stealing. And I always follow my rules.
1. Count how many security guards there are between me and the exit.
2. Check for cameras.
3. Make sure I’m wearing baggy clothes that have deep pockets.
4. Have another item in my hand so when I pocket the item I want, I’m seen putting the decoy item back on the shelf.
5. And lastly, only steal what I know I can flip, which means turn around and sell.
I broke all my rules with that stuffed bear. I saw it, stopped, and stared at it for a good minute or two. It was like that bear was calling to me to take it home. I grabbed it and walked out of the store. And the award for Worst Thief Ever goes to … me.
I hear the shower run from down the hall. That’s one advantage of being a thief and living in a small apartment: thin walls. I can hear everything. At times like right now, I know she’s occupied, so I have a few minutes to sneak into her room, find her purse, and snake a few bucks. Now that she took all my stuff, I’m gonna need some money for this pointless trip she’s sending me on. It’s only fair.
I quietly open my door, tiptoe down the hall, and slip into her room. Her purse is on her bed. She’s way too trusting; I mean, there are thieves everywhere. I open it and rifle through it. Where the heck is the cash? I dump the contents out onto the Thunderbird blanket her mom made before she died. Out fall keys, wallet, and about two bucks in change, but still, no dollar bills.
I feel three light taps on my shoulder. I turn around and see my mom standing there, at the doorway, with dripping wet hair and her body wrapped in a red towel. Clever. She kept the water running so I’d think I had more time.
“I’d assume that stealing from your own mother qualifies as hitting rock bottom, wouldn’t you agree?” she says.
I shovel all her belongings back into her purse. “I’m sorry … But—”
“No buts. You’ve done many things I am very upset about, but right now, at this moment, I’ve never been more disappointed.”
“I was only looking for—”
“Go to your room, Benny.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry. We have nothing without trust, and you just took ours away.”
Ugh. I feel like crap. No, worse than crap. I feel like the crap that crap craps out: crap crap. She’s right. There should be a line, even for me, and stealing from the woman who gave birth to you definitely crosses that line.