Jenny Troy Gimmelman was born on January 12, 1989, Steph’s water breaking while I was playing a game of Q*bert. She was in labor for thirty-six hours, and when I first saw my baby niece, she had a full head of dark hair and a smushed red face. Like Grandma Bernice had described Jenny when she was baby, new Jenny wailed like a banshee for the first few months, all of us up throughout the night to help Steph until Grandma Bernice convinced an old Orthodox former nurse to ease the burden. I was starting high school, and while back in the day, I would’ve been nervous to not know anyone, after making it through the detention center and coming out in one piece, a Boca Raton high school was a breeze.
I got really into journalism and began writing for the newspaper, which led to an internship at the Boca Raton Tribune. I typed up copy for the crime-beat reporters after school as they fed cigarettes into ashtrays and spoke of war wounds on the job. I had a small group of friends who also worked at the school newspaper, and we’d hang out at the mall or get forties and lounge in each other’s backyards. They all knew who I was, but none of them cared. I actually think they were impressed, but I never talked about it. The less I thought about what we had done, the further away it became. At night, I helped Steph bathe Jenny and read books to her before going to bed. As she grew up, her favorites were Amelia Bedelia and Euphonia and the Flood and Miss Nelson is Missing. By the age of two, she knew how to read a little, or at least had memorized the books enough to get by. She was a smart child, sweet, precocious, and a bit of a troublemaker, just like the aunt she was named after.
Working for two newspapers and writing all the time, I really didn’t pay much attention to other studies and did just what I needed to get by. I tried out for the JV basketball team and made it playing point guard, since I’d grown a bit but not enough to be a forward or center. I got so busy I barely had time to think any more about how insane our lives had been. Occasionally someone brought it up, or I was hounded by the press for an interview, but Steph and I made a decision not to do any. We had moved on and wanted the world to move on as well.
Mom still sent letters on the dot every week. We never answered any, but after a while, I started to read them. After about a year in prison, she decided to become an Orthodox Jew. Every day, she studied the Talmud and the Torah, searching for an explanation as to why she’d allowed herself to become so lost. The root of it began when her father Herb died, and she tried drugs and followed bands on tour. Drugs had always been a negative influence, even more so when we were pulling off heists, and she was stoned on pills most of the time. She was aware that Barry wanted her to be this way, but that wasn’t completely an excuse because she wanted it too. The more she dissociated with reality, the better she felt. She’d been an addict, and it was hard to wean off in prison, but Hashem helped her. Without the pull of drugs, she found something new to attach herself to. For the past year, God had been guiding her to deal with the torturous guilt. Because her Jenny was dead, this would be the grief she must bear for the rest of her life. Now, it would be up to her to discover how to allow that to make her into a better Jew, devote her time to His teachings, to His devotion. At first, Grandma Bernice pursed her lips when she read this, but as the letters kept coming and the dedication for Hashem continued, she stopped judging. She could not condemn someone for finding God, even though Mom had taken a roundabout path. She could only hope Mom continued to be as good a Jew as she could possibly be now, despite the pitfalls in her past.
Senior year, I turned eighteen and was a starter for the varsity squad when I fractured my kneecap. This ended the season for me, and I was crushed because we were in line to win the league. The guys at the Tribune felt bad and asked if I wanted to write an article from home instead of just typing up copy. While they couldn’t put me on a current crime beat, they wondered if I wanted to write about my time as a criminal (har, har, har)? I didn’t think they were serious, but they were, and so I began to write. The journal I kept during the ordeal had gone into police evidence, and I hadn’t written a word about it since.
I didn’t know if it would be difficult to access those memories from years ago, but they flowed out of me like lava. I had pages and pages after an all-night bender, way too long for an article, but I eventually cut it down and sent it to them. I called it “I Was a Kid Bank Robber,” and the article received more calls and letters than any other op-ed piece in the newspaper’s history. The media had lost interest in our case. Barry and Mom were in prison and not allowed to make any money off their appearances, so they hadn’t done any. Steph and I refused, and only once in a while, a bit player would pop up somewhere: a waitress who served us, someone we held hostage, obviously when Special Agent Terbert died frozen on the lake in Maine. It had been a while since we were thrust into the spotlight, and media outlets started picking up on the article. I was encouraged to write another, which I did to even more fanfare, and then I got a call from some big literary agent in New York City who was impressed by my writing and asked if I would author a book. They told me I could get big money for doing it.
I didn’t say yes immediately, wanting to go over it with Steph and Grandma Bernice, but we were kind of struggling money-wise. Grandma Bernice received social security, and Steph got her GED while working a job at the mall at an Orange Julius while Jenny was in pre-school. When they asked how much the agent thought I could get, they said I was nuts if I didn’t do it. I called back the agent, who clarified that the book would really sell if I got my parents’ side of the story, too. I told her I hadn’t spoken to my parents since they were locked up, and she said for the kind of money she’d be asking for, it was crucial to have their perspective to give the book a round appeal. I didn’t know what the fuck that meant, but she told me the difference could be upwards of five hundred thousand dollars, and so that was when I first responded to Mom’s letter and said I would be visiting her at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.