This plan wasn’t really well thought out. But you don’t plan for these things. They just happen.
So I’m walking inside now, slowly, scanning for anything suspicious or out of place. Scanning, searching, examining. The hallway looked like it always looked. No one had taken the ceiling or made the walls wider. I don’t know what the fuck I was expecting to see in the hallway.
I kept walking, scanning, examining. And then I backtracked and saw it: the stove. There was a pot of half-eaten grits on the stove. I knew it wasn’t my mom’s, because no one leaves a dirty dish in her kitchen. It was now pretty clear what had happened: Someone had broken into my house and cooked grits. I had a cook-and-run situation on my hands.
Suddenly, a new and bigger fear raced through my mind: This sneaky cooking motherfucker could have taken my new Eastlands too. That would be the equivalent today of someone breaking into my house and stealing half a million dollars’ worth of jewelry, which actually happened. Honestly, it would be worse—at least the jewelry was insured. My Eastlands weren’t, and I was convinced my previous lack of Eastlands was all that had separated me from every girl I liked in school.
I ran to the back room, my heart pounding. There they were: my precious Eastlands. I picked them up, just in case someone was hiding and waiting until I left to snatch them. Then I entered my mom’s room.
Her middle drawer was open, and her stockings, underwear, and bras were on the floor and clearly tampered with. Now I had more than a cook-and-run situation on my hands. I had a situation on my hands that . . . I didn’t even want to think about. That’s not shit I ever want to think about.
I suddenly remembered that she hid her money in that drawer. So someone had taken our door off the hinges, entered my mom’s bedroom, opened the exact drawer where she kept her money, snatched it, and then cooked grits in the kitchen.
At least whoever committed this heinous act knew nothing about shoes.
Shit, what if they got my new shirts?
I ran back to check. My school clothes were still there, so I stuffed them into my book bag just in case the thieves came back for them, because of course that must have been their real objective, before they got too hungry to see it through. I ran back to Ms. Davis’s house and asked if I could use the phone.
Once I got my mom on the line, I broke the news, “I think we’ve been robbed.”
To this day, I still don’t know why I used the words “I think.”
I don’t know why I ran back to my babysitter’s house either, rather than just use the phone at home.
And I don’t know why I asked my mom to pick me up instead of meeting her in front of our house.
I don’t know why I did a lot of things.
This was all new to me, okay? It was my first time being robbed. No one gets robbed perfectly the first time. It takes experience to get good at it: to not touch stuff and dust for fingerprints and bring in tracker dogs and do DNA tests on the grits and all the shit that championship-level victims do.
“It was your father.” Those were the first words my mom said when she came to get me. She had stopped by the house first. “I got something for his ass.” She balled up her fist, her face filled with a level of fury I hadn’t seen since I’d set the clocks back.
She noticed me hugging my bursting-full book bag to my chest like my life depended on it and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Oh, honey, no one’s gonna wanna steal that stuff.”
She knew everything. That’s how good she was.
“How do you know it was Dad?” I was still imagining a cabal of criminals that had followed us home from Burlington Coat Factory.
“That fool went straight for the middle drawer. Nobody else knows about that but you, me, your brother, and your father. So who else was it? Your brother’s in Hawaii.”
“Okay.”
“People don’t just rob you and cook. You bet your ass it was your father. His favorite damn food is grits.”
She vented on the whole walk home. But I had my Eastlands. I had my new shirts. I had my new jeans. Everything had turned out fine.
I called my dad the next day. This was the entirety of the conversation:
Me: Mom said you robbed us.
Dad: She don’t know what she’s talking about, boy. Let me call you back.
A small part of me believed him, because I didn’t think it was possible for my own father to do something so low. I didn’t hear from him again until he called three weeks later. “Where you at, Dad?” I asked. “When are you coming to visit me?”
“Oh, you know I want to see you, son. I just got a lot going on right now. I’ll see you in a couple weeks. Don’t you forget about your dad now, you hear?”
A couple of weeks passed, and I didn’t see him. He just called to check in on me and promised to see me again. This happened over and over, until he stopped calling.
Then one afternoon, I finally saw him. I was sitting on the train, and my dad walked through the door at the end of the car. I exclaimed, “Dad?!”
He looked me dead in the eye, then turned around and ran back into the car he came from. I sat there, confused. That night, I wrote my brother a letter. “I think I saw Dad on the train, and he ran away from me.”
Two weeks later, I received my brother’s reply: “Dude, don’t worry about it. Dad’s on drugs. He’s not thinking right. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Huh? I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. At a family party that night, I asked our relatives and friends about my brother’s accusation. Evidently, everyone in the world knew this piece of information but me.
The World: Hey, man, it’s true. Your dad’s on drugs.
Me: Why didn’t anyone tell me?
The World: We’re telling you now. He’s on drugs, real bad.
Me: Don’t you think that’s something I should have known?
The World: Just don’t give him no money, cause if you do, it’s going to drugs.
Me: Did you know Dad was on drugs, Mom?
Mom: Yeah, I knew.
Me: Aunt Patsy?
Aunt Patsy: Yeah, everybody knows. Now you know too. So don’t give him anything.
Me: Okay.
As usual, I shoulder-shrugged it. But years later, I had an opportunity to speak with him again about robbing us. The conversation went like this . . .
19
* * *
TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE HART WAY
THE TIME: The present, Father’s Day
THE PLACE: Orlando, Florida, vacation rental home
THE SIZE: 20,300 square feet bigger than my childhood home
Writer: Maybe you can help solve a mystery. Did you ever break into your son’s home and take stuff?
Dad: No.
Kevin: If my mom were here, she would argue this man down right now.
Dad: Nah, I didn’t do that.
Kevin: I’ll never forget it. She said, “It was your father.”
Dad: Listen, here’s the thing: With Nance, anything that was wrong was always me.
Kevin: All arrows pointed to you on that one. Who else is gonna come into the house and cook your favorite food?
Dad: Listen, there’s nothing I won’t admit, because back then it wasn’t me, it was that demon. So if I did something, I’d tell you. But ain’t nobody gonna beat my butt over something I didn’t do.