Bandit

by Molly Brodak

And I started writing more in my journal, not just reporting the facts of my days but processing them as my own. I wrote about the books I read, one notebook dedicated just to Moby Dick, for example; and I wrote about my teachers, about my mom and sister, about painting and drawing, about crushes, friends, bullies, dreams, plain days, weather, and the landscape. I filled a dozen notebooks with reflective writing just in the last two years of high school. I wrote poems too, drew comics, made zines, made art. But it was the journals, the nonfiction, where I felt best about writing; after all, in nonfiction I was only coauthor, I was witness, articulator—the world itself the other author with whom I collaborated.

  It was to no one, for no one. I threw each completed journal into a large plastic bin, sealed it, and shoved it back under the bed. I was terrified that they might be read. I was certainly afraid of finally having to admit that I had been a person who lived and knew things.

  At the end of high school I gave up my science track and veered off to an art school on the other side of the country. After graduating high school without much fanfare, I left immediately, alone, and with joy.

  43

  “It would be the most extreme sign of vulgarity to be related to one’s parents.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

  44

  Early in college I shoplifted. This is hard for me to say.

  It didn’t start how it starts with some kids, as a dare among friends, or as a way of getting high or proving something; I was alone in it. It started as it started when I first stole that book of baby names in the aisle at Kroger: out of unresolvable desire.

  It was a sterling silver mood ring, the next first thing. I was holding it in my hand on the way to the cashier in this little boutique and I realized it was either the ring or dinner with friends at Denny’s later, where we’d hang out and eat cheap sandwiches and drink coffee. I wanted both so bad. I liked the idea of the mood ring, what a novelty: this will tell me how I am, I thought, examining it in the tray. I was fifteen, working in a kitchen, and spending my money on my own phone line at home and whatever food or CDs I bought for myself. Dad was in jail by this time. This will tell me how I am.

  I just held it in my hand and walked out. Later, as I became more serious about stealing in college, I felt so bad about this time, stealing from an independent boutique in my hometown. I suppose I felt more justified stealing from the corporate places at the mall, so I allowed myself to continue.

  I stole for financial reasons, on the surface anyway. It was just a few years, this phase. I know it was childish greed. On eBay I’d sell mostly clothes, designer dresses, cashmere sweaters, popular brands, whatever was easy, and besides the small seller’s fees it was pure profit, a small hobby, not a career, and nothing I wanted to look too hard at, because, how ridiculous, could I really be that ridiculous. My dad is apparently a sociopathic criminal. And myself? What was it about this passionless, calculated theft I could convince myself to perform? What did this make me?

  I was careful and certain about it. I’d go to the mall or nicer department stores dressed up to look older and richer, usually a black dress or suit, nice shoes, big businessy purse. The jacket over my arm had two purposes—one was for stealing small items in hand, easy to make disappear under the jacket, in my palm but under the jacket, with fingers over the edge so it looked natural. Its other purpose was to have an easy pocket in which to keep my tools. Each tool had a different purpose for different security devices. First a small pair of scissors, nose-hair trimmers really, the kind with rounded tips so fabrics couldn’t get poked or snagged. Those are simply for cutting off the sewn-in sensors some stores use.

  The other two items are more serious, felt more intense and evil to have; both were used to remove two different types of plastic security sensors. The first is a small hook, just a thin curve of metal with a flat end and a groove along its length. This removes the most common kind of sensor, the plastic rectangle with a bulge near the end where the pin connects through the clothing. There’s a little hole in the top edge of those sensors, made just for this hook, to remove it in case the electromagnet under the counter at the registers fails. The hook slides in and the sensor comes apart, instantly, soundlessly. You can buy these hooks online for about ten dollars.

  The third item is a small stack of cylindrical neodymium magnets, rare earth magnets. The smaller pin-and-tab security sensors and the large dome-shaped ones simply pull apart with the magnets placed around them. The magnets are incredibly strong, but brittle and easily break if they snap back together too quickly. They are difficult to work with for this reason. Pinches and blood blisters covered my fingers when I first tried these. They are sold online, mostly for scientific experiments, toys, wind turbines, hard drives, magnet motors, audio speakers, stop-motion animation, and fishing-reel brakes. I often wondered if anyone ever saw the corner of my jacket strangely attached to a metal fixture or a car I passed by too closely, as occasionally happened, and my yanking it away with pretend calm. All of these tools stuck together in a weird clump because of the magnets, and seemed more evil for it.

  Of course, I had to use these tools in the dressing room. I knew which stores had unattended dressing rooms, or didn’t count your items on the way in, or if they did, which ones didn’t count them on the way out. Most stores do not count your items on the way out, and the nicest shops do not count your items at all. I knew to go during the busiest hours on the weekends, when salespeople were distracted, rushed, or focused on their regulars, not paying much attention to what I had in my arms. If one of them noticed one of my items, suggesting something to go with it or complimenting it somehow (“Oh that is just your color!”), I’d put it back. If they asked me if I was ready for a room I’d say yes, even if I wasn’t, because I didn’t want them to take the items from me and see for certain what I had. Mostly the people working in retail simply don’t care enough, or get paid enough, to worry about shoplifters. I was quiet in the dressing room, zipping and unzipping my huge bag with my finger behind the zipper to silence it, rolling up $300 cashmere sweaters with the tags tucked in neatly, without damage. I was friendly but neutral to the salespeople, smiling, in no hurry. I’d bring dummy items in with me, just to have something to leave behind. Once removed, I’d hide the sensors behind the mirror, or on the top of the partition between rooms, or simply attach them to some item I’d leave behind. I’d steal the hangers too. I didn’t want them to know, even when I was already gone, that anything had been stolen.

  I saw security guards or mall cops following the wrong people. Sometimes I saw other shoplifters. I mean, I saw the bad ones. They were young girls mostly, and they’d be carrying overloaded shopping bags—an obvious sign they’d been added to, since salespeople are taught to use multiple bags for big purchases instead of stuffing one bag full. Also the girls would look around, making eye contact with everyone, which real shoppers don’t do. They’d sometimes even be looking straight up, nervously checking for cameras. They looked plainly sneaky, worried.

  The color of my skin protected me from suspicion, I know. This makes me feel sick.

  Being a successful shoplifter is not about pretending to be fine; it’s about being fine. You must convince yourself first. It is hard in the beginning because it feels evil. But then, it’s not like lying at all. This is how people change anyway, in any direction, good or bad: I’m going to be the person who doesn’t smoke anymore, I’m going to be the person who writes poetry now, I’m going to be the person who trusts this person. I’m going to be the person who isn’t shoplifting. You transform yourself all the time, and a new self sticks if you keep choosing it.

  I was calm, bored looking. Shoppers have that dreamy drift, especially women, especially in nice clothing stores. I drifted with them, focused on the clothes. I didn’t look around nervously, I didn’t hesitate or hurry out afterward, didn’t act like anything was wrong. After a while, this was no act. I was just shopping, absorbed. I felt utterly safe, at ease, like everyon
e else.

  I didn’t think about my dad at the time, but I do now. I’m saying this because I know what it’s like to make the wrong choice, over and over, as if taunting the consequences, practically asking them to come straighten you up.

  And to act secretly, build a whole small, bad world in private, like an invisible dimension running just under the one everyone else lives in.

  You prop up a better self to your loved ones. A dummy self that is you, really, the you they love, but without the evil element. Exactly how theft works. That cover, that safe self who appears to be shopping honestly and not stealing, you realize, must now come home, make her boyfriend dinner, do her homework, go to work, be a gracious daughter, keep it up.

  The distance Dad placed between himself and every regular person, all of us, made sense to me when I saw it from the inside. It was a residue, I suppose, that builds, this safety in distance, to keep loved ones especially away from the truth. Protection. Which is a kind of love. And also a margin for his actions, a pivot point upon which his selves could turn.

  I knew enough to stop. I did think of myself as different from my friends and almost everyone else I knew. There was a stain on me. A lack of trust in honest methods. It came out of something beyond him—beyond us both, as thieves—a little corner we didn’t keep clean enough.

  I often thought about his crimes and decided he could have gotten away without being caught if he had just stopped sooner. Perhaps just not done the very last one, the eleventh robbery, and everything would have been different. It is hard to stop when things are going well. Criminals get greedy. Maybe you need a reason to stop: a fear, a little imagination for the future, your future, your family’s future.

  I didn’t think shoplifting was good or cool, or that it was vigilante justice against the fashion industry or big corporations. It was simply a way to make money when I had none. To me, high-end clothing stores were perfectly ridiculous. The thick, clean mood of luxury, pinched offerings, blind admiration of the shoppers, how they smelled like empty want, wanting to look more beautiful, more happy: they all seemed like suckers. I didn’t see what they saw in the stuff. I didn’t get the people who bought the clothes from me on eBay, new with tags, for near-retail price; I didn’t feel how they felt about these pieces of fabric.

  I didn’t enjoy the thrill of it; I hated the thrill, hated walking through the doors expecting an alarm but knowing it wouldn’t come. When I had extra money I would stop, for months even, and never think about it. I didn’t justify it to myself. I didn’t brag or tell anyone about it. My boyfriend in college certainly knew what was happening; with clothes and money appearing weekly it would’ve been hard to miss. He’d confront me, remind me of how horrible it would be to get caught, tell me this was the last time and to never do it again. I’d agree and get better at hiding it from him. Over a couple years I made thousands of dollars doing this. The money went to car repairs, medical bills, trips home, rent, practical things. I was never caught, never came even close to being caught.

  I felt guilty. I could block the guilt, though.

  Then the upscale department store I’d frequently milk installed a security guard just inside their doors. The steady shrinkage had become apparent to them, I could see. I’d nod and smile at the security guard on the way out, like all the other tidy white women did, and he’d sleepily nod back. I felt a little sick with this exchange, and maybe a little triumphant.

  And then, I just stopped.

  I want to say I took a hard look at myself or found some moral or mystical reason compelling me to mend my ways. But honestly, I just wanted to get away with it, as he hadn’t.

  I knew it would be only a matter of time until I made a mistake or got sloppy with my methods and found myself with a criminal record, even if just a misdemeanor. I resolved to quit while I was ahead. Now, here’s where I did have something to prove.

  It was a way of acting through—then resolving—the pattern of theft that destroyed my family. I see that now.

  I was lucky, so lucky I got to play this out. Maybe I was lucky, too, that I wasn’t predisposed in some way to become addicted to stealing. Maybe I wanted to prove that you couldn’t become addicted to stealing.

  I lived without the extra padding in my bank account and felt fine about it. After all, I didn’t crave it. I just had to adjust my spending. Then, I didn’t miss it. Even now I still see kids stealing in stores all the time, and I start to feel nervous suddenly, like it exposes me by just being around it. A lifelong nervousness around stealing: I think of this as fair, at least something close to fair, as a punishment.

  45

  It’s a little sociopathic. This conscious break with reality I am describing in the method of stealing, I know it is sociopathic. I can explain what it feels like when it happens.

  Your plan numbs you. You focus on the plan. You know if the plan goes well, you’ll be pleased afterward, but you are not pleased in the execution of it. There is no pleasure, no feeling at all. It is, Dad, a little like an out-of-body experience.

  Except that it’s more of an out-of-morals experience. A purposeful stepping out of them. That’s the difference, Dad. There’s no helplessness involved, at all.

  You feel gross. But you choose to not stop. You have all the time in the world to stop! You have a million chances to not go through with it. But you do. It’s like you’re on the other side of yourself now.

  46

  What does it mean to take care of someone?

  To protect? What parents do, with such good intentions, hiding all the bad bits, scrubbing their kids’ intake of information from the Internet, TV, friends, school, books, even from their own adult lives, as much as possible, padding their kids into a nicer, safer, false version of the world? An utter betrayal of truth? What parent does not do this? Only cruel ones.

  47

  Dad got out when I was twenty-one. He served seven years of a ten-year sentence. Thanks to the United Auto Workers he got his old job back, which I know seems insane to anyone who doesn’t know unions like the UAW. One of his brothers took him in at first, helping him with money and other essentials, like a kid moving back in after college.

  It was Thanksgiving and I was on break from the Savannah College of Art and Design, back in Michigan for a visit. Dad’s brother, Casimir, was hosting a subdued release party at his new house. My sister and I drove there together. She seemed happy, a little jittery, like me. The house was in a new development, gleaming concrete driveways and fresh sod, the house still so clean. We walked through the door and I remember standing in the vestibule looking across the room to my dad, flanked by his two brothers, all with beers in their hands, laughing intensely. I heard him making a joke about having to sleep on a potato sack in prison. His brothers laughed hard and slapped him on the shoulders. The air in the room was bright and vivid, like Christmas, and people seemed genuinely happy.

  I didn’t want to see him. How much easier it would have been to just lose him forever. Now he was here drinking a Corona and it was how it had always been, and he seemed so happy, it was worth it to hide my feelings for him, for his party.

  The first time I met with my father by myself when he was out of jail I met him at a Big Boy restaurant. The same one where I first saw him lie to me, saw it plainly. A friendly but crappy diner, with exposed brick inside and giant gumball machines in the vestibule. The breakfast buffet was still out, rubbery eggs and gray sausages steaming steadily in their pans, a geriatric calm.

  He was sitting at a booth already; he rose and hugged me hard and patted my back. We sat across from each other and read our menus. He was always bad at making eye contact, and now it seemed worse. He looked out of the window while he spoke. If we locked eyes for more than a few seconds he would flutter his lids and look away. He told me he was excited to eat Big Boy’s signature sandwich again, the Slim Jim; this was his favorite sandwich and he had been looking forward to it. I asked him about the food in jail. He said the holiday meals were nice, but
he’d save up his money so he could buy treats in the jail store like ice cream and nicer sandwiches. I looked over the giant menu of American food, embarrassed by its glut.

  He asked me about my life and my plans and kept the conversation fast and light, not seeming to register much about my answers. He had that way of asking about things that parents sometimes have that sounds inherently, although probably not intentionally, dismissive, “You still, uh, with that guy? What was his name?” No, I wasn’t, I was dating someone new now. He’d run his hand through his graying hair, purse his lips, and study a brick or the saltshaker intently. “You gotta get the school thing straightened out. On the right track. What were you doing? Illustration? It’s good you quit that,” and then his strange slow laugh that sounded fake always, like a mask of a laugh. I wanted to be casual and fine, as he was, but I felt like concrete, and I wanted to talk about my real questions. I could feel them peering out of me. I kept quiet.

  And then, he lived a normal life. He bought a house with my sister, using his money but her credit (his was ruined, of course), and a car and found a new girlfriend, a woman he could go dancing with and take care of, but someone he didn’t talk to much. We found out later he never told her about the robberies or the prison term.

  He worked overtime, as much as he could, and he bought things; he even bought me a used car. A year after that meeting at Big Boy I had dropped out of SCAD because I couldn’t afford rent after a year as a full-time student working nearly full-time in low-wage jobs and I couldn’t take out any more loans, so I came back to Michigan and took a steady job at the College for Creative Studies downtown, trying to finish school part-time at Wayne State. He would come visit me sometimes, during the middle of the day, just to say something, usually slipping me fifty dollars before leaving. He walked slowly and with great control and pride, how short men sometimes do. I liked his visits but I always felt a strange pang of guilt when I saw him walking up, like I had been caught doing something wrong, or been reminded of something I had forgotten.