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Hi, I’m Cara. And my mom is…different.
When I was a kid, Mom would take my sister, Anne, and me to various stores with her, and tell us to create a distraction—knock over a display in another aisle, or ask one of the workers tons of questions--while she slipped something into her bag. Nothing big—a tube of lipstick, a piece of fruit, a bottle of Tylenol. Because she was our mom, we trusted her. We thought it must be okay for adults to do things like that.
She did it in church too. She’d use Anne and me as a diversion, then steal some coins from the collection basket, or little pieces from the displays around the holidays. “Just a little souvenir,” she’d say. “Let’s keep it our secret.”
One day, a police officer came to talk to my class about fighting crime. He listed crimes you could go to jail for. Vandalism, assault, fraud…and stealing. He talked about a thief he’d arrested recently—how that man was rotting in prison now, and how we should all follow the laws so we didn’t turn out like him.
I knew that’s what my mom was: a thief. And I became terrified she’d go to jail.
I vowed to protect her secret, no matter what.
My mom got worse as I got older. My friends would come over for sleepovers and wake to find their earbuds missing, or their jewelry. After a while, kids stopped coming to my house. I knew from sneaking into my mom’s room once that she kept her “little souvenirs” in a blue velvet box with a glass lid. I’d stared through the glass at all the things that belonged to my friends, or to stores around town, knowing that I could never tell anyone where their things went, or my mom would go to jail.
One day in church, around Christmas, I was the last person to take communion. My mom whispered to me to knock the chalice out of the priest’s hand and make it look like an accident. I tried to protest, but my mom kept saying, “Just do it, Kara. Stop being such a baby.” So I knocked over the communion grape juice, and while people scrambled to help clean it up, my mom tried to grab the gold-plated halo on one of the angels in the nativity scene.
Jeannie, one of the parishioners, saw her. “I knew it!” she shouted, loud enough that everyone turned to stare. “That woman is a thief! She’s been stealing from the church for years. Her daughters are in it with her!” I wish I could describe the humiliation I felt, with all those judging eyes on my family. Some of my friends were there, and I knew they were putting two and two together, realizing who had taken their things over the years.
Jeannie yelled at my mom, “If you ever take anything from this church again, I will make sure you go to prison!”
The priest calmed Jeanie down, murmuring about forgiveness. But he asked my mom to stay for a private meeting. After that meeting, my mom sat down with Anne and me. “I’m very sorry,” she told us. “For making you a part of my criminal behavior over the years. I know I have a problem, but I’m going to change. I promise you.”
I wanted to believe her. And for a while, she seemed to be telling the truth. I didn’t see her steal anything else. She got rid of her box of souvenirs.
But the damage was done. Word had spread around town about my mother the thief. Neighbors whispered when I walked by. Kids at school teased me. The owners of shops around town kept an extra close eye on me. Once, at the convenience store, I picked up a candy bar an was trying to find my money in my bag. “Don’t you dare put that in your bag!” the cashier yelled at me. “I knew you’d turn out just like your mother!”
I dropped the candy bar and fled, humiliated.
For years, I didn’t have any friends. I was just that girl whose mom was a thief. One night, desperate for socialization, I attended a Halloween party that basically my whole school was invited to. I figured if I could wear a mask, maybe nobody would recognize me. I ended up talking to a really hot guy, Jeff. We really hit it off, and I was so happy to be talking to someone my age—a hot guy, no less—that my heart was soaring.
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