Not long afterward, I discovered that a couple of girls in school actually liked me, which of course always makes more girls like you because it puts you in the category of Guys It’s Okay to Like. Next, I found out that I was one of the guys who girls were passing notes about and talking in the bathroom about.
It took me a while to comprehend that even though I wasn’t tall or good-looking, women were still attracted to me. And that little boost of confidence actually made me get better looking. I held my head up a little higher; pushed my chest out a little more; became a little less anxious and a little more self-assured.
Fortunately, around the same time all this was happening, my mom made a big change in my life. Because I had been respectful and obedient with the small windows of freedom she’d given me, she decided that, at age sixteen, I didn’t need a babysitter anymore. I no longer had to go to old Ms. Davis’s house after school. I could come home on my own. Sometimes, I’d have three hours alone at home, and this allowed me to invite company over after school and get myself situated to do the do.
My move was to sit on the bed with a girl and say, “Let me give you a massage.” If I felt she wasn’t ready yet, we’d watch a movie, which I hoped not to finish. I was consistent. It was the same moves every time.
However, it wasn’t just about the sex. I usually liked her and hung out with her afterward and kept seeing her. If it ended, it was always because she got tired of me and wanted to move on. I was never the type of guy who got angry or upset about a breakup. This is all part of the plan, I’d think. Let’s see what happens next.
21
* * *
A HART FAMILY REUNION
While my brother was in the Army in Oklahoma, something went wrong. During a drill, artillery fire accidentally overshot a target and hit a formation of soldiers. Three people were killed and twenty-three were injured.
That was the moment when I learned that love is stronger than anger, that family is stronger than stubbornness. Because my family came back together. My mom saw the article about it, and, for the first time since he left, picked up the phone and called my brother.
They didn’t speak a lot after that, but when my brother called to tell her that she was about to become a grandmother, their relationship fully resumed. My brother had met a single mother in Hawaii and grown close to both her and her daughter. He’d become a father of sorts to the daughter, and had gotten her mother pregnant and was about to marry her.
He flew us out there for the birth of his daughter. It had been just me and my mom for so long, the two of us against the world, and now here we were, the five of us (including my brother’s new wife and stepdaughter) celebrating the arrival of a sixth. After hanging out with my brother as he showed me around Oahu and took me to basketball games, plus becoming an uncle all of a sudden, I felt like my small world had expanded a little.
Eventually, my brother moved back to Philly with his wife, daughter, and stepdaughter. He had left a juvenile delinquent and returned a responsible man. The military and fatherhood had changed him. He got an apartment, found work cutting hair, and started saving to open his own barbershop. In the meantime, he found our dad and started working to build a relationship with him. He’d known our father in the good days, before the crack, when Dad was buying presents with money he’d legitimately worked for. To him, Dad was Superman, until he found his kryptonite.
When my brother saved enough money, he rented a storefront and started setting up his barbershop. My dad needed money, and he’d been a carpenter and electrician before, so Kenneth hired him to do the electrical work and remove one of the walls.
I’d drop by on weekends and see my brother and father working together. My brother was grateful for all the help Dad was providing, but more importantly, he was excited to be close to him again. The family was coming back together. My dad looked ragged and weak, but the work seemed to be making an honest man out of him. As a bonus for me, once my brother started serving customers, I wouldn’t have to get haircuts from my mom anymore.
Then, three days before my brother’s barbershop was set to open, I stopped by—and it looked like I’d gone back in time by a month. The place was empty. My brother was pacing back and forth, out-of-his-mind hysterical. “Dad had to fucking do this,” he fumed. “He had to!”
“Do what?”
As I looked around, it dawned on me. My brother didn’t have to say anything else. My dad had stolen everything, from the smallest set of clippers to the biggest floor hairdryers. Everything.
We knew it was him because he hadn’t shown up to work that day and wasn’t answering his phone. He’d disappeared.
“I know where to find him,” Kenneth said. There was an area known as the Badlands where junkies and crackheads went to score and get high.
We ran around the corner to get into my brother’s car. It was a Pontiac, but my brother called it “the Ac” because he wanted everyone to think it was an Acura.
However, the Ac was gone. Dad had stolen the car too.
We asked some of the employees hanging around the shop to give us a ride to the Badlands, but we got the same reaction from everyone: “I’m not fucking going down there, man. Spoon crazy.”
Finally, a friend of my brother’s named Phil agreed to drive us. We got into his car and sped to Second Street. The whole time, my brother was freaking out. One minute he’d be convincing himself it wasn’t Dad, that maybe we were wrong and jumping to conclusions. The next minute, he was fuming: “I give him a chance, I give him a job, and he steals everything from me. How could he do this?”
“What are you gonna do when you find him?” I asked. I was worried about both of them.
“Look, it’s just about getting confirmation that it’s really him, finding the stuff, and getting it back.”
We drove around the area until my brother spotted the Ac parked on a side street, with two people in the backseat. I’ll never forget the pain that shot through my brother’s face in that moment. Some part of him—that little boy who’d looked up to his dad—died.
My brother got out of the car and walked up to the Ac. My dad was in the backseat with a woman, and they were high as fuck.
Kenneth was crushed on a deep soul level. “What the hell?” he exclaimed through the window.
My dad opened the door, told the woman, “Stay right here, bitch,” and then turned to my brother. We wondered if he was going to beg for forgiveness or deny everything. He did neither.
“It’s about time you showed the fuck up,” he said, as if he were angry at my brother.
This time, it was my brother’s turn to say, “What?!”
“This raggedy-ass car of yours done ran out of gas.” He then jumped out of the car, slammed the keys down on the roof, and started to walk away.
“Where’s all my stuff?” my brother called after him, in disbelief.
“I ain’t got your stuff,” Dad replied, without turning back. “Your stuff’s gone.”