An Immaculate Deception: The Memoir of a Potentially Fabricated Youth, chronicles my childhood in suburban Washington, D.C. and then Pittsburgh where my family moved after my stepfather retired from the Washington, D.C., police department. With subjects that include racism, kleptomania, abuse and the most bizarre of family bonds that cannot be broken, the manuscript sets a new bar for what it means to have had a crazy childhood.

From the time she presented me with my first clunky typewriter, notebooks, pencils and pens, my mother said that I was going to write a bestseller one day about our family and she would be the star. When she died seven years ago, her death gave me the license to write our story and share our secrets.

She wasn’t what you would call a reliable witness. She was a liar, a charmer, a thief, a user, an abuser, an actress, a masochist;she was conniving; spiteful; manipulative; vengeful and mean-spirited. Despite all of this I loved her, obeyed her, believed her and stole for her until I was 18-years-old—old enough to be arrested.

She wasn’t ugly; in fact, she was the largest and most beautiful woman I would ever know. Everything she did was dangerous and every place she took me to was an adventure. From the earliest age, I was forced to pass as white, despite the tales my mother told me of Franco Harris being my father. She told me white was better, white was beautiful and I believed her.
Everything we did was deceitful:
stealing meat from the grocery store, walking out of restaurants without paying the bill (we always left a tip; if we didn’t it would be in bad taste, Mother said); taking money from the school store; giving stolen Christmas presents; stealing new school clothes even though my stepfather gave Mother the money to pay for them; making the children we babysat shoplift with us; stealing a little girl’s purse on vacation; stealing toilet paper from the White House visitor’s center bathroom; to the ultimate—getting caught stealing with Mother.

There are many memoirs that tell the story of an abusive or dysfunctional childhood, but few that depict the intimacy and trust between a mother and daughter who share unspeakable secrets. Sure, I endure physical, emotional, sexual and mental abuse; but the focus of the book is more about my crazy Mother, rather than my crazy upbringing.

The events of my youth are retold in this manuscript, which constructs the shameful story of a family living on the edge. On the outside, to a stranger, as we walked down the street in some town we were shoplifting in, we must have fit the bill as almost normal: your typical suburban mom-- moderately to extremely overweight; and Ray, my stepfather, with a baseball cap and moustache; this doting father to his two cherub-cheeked white children. And me, possibly adopted out of pity, the dark little girl with the ashy knees and shorn, black, curly hair. But what they could not see and never would were the stolen items inside Mother’s purse and the secrets we shared between us.

In the spirit of the holidays, I thought I would post a very merry chapter from the manuscript.

Hey, Santa Claus

We listened to what Mother wanted to listen to in the car: cassette tapes by Ronnie Milsap, Rick Astley and Alabama. The soundtrack of our road trips became my grade school love songs. I belted out Astley’s lyrics with Mother as I mimicked the dance moves from his music video. He was my favorite; I had never seen someone so handsome with red hair. Mother liked the way he combed the thick tufts up above his forehead. But Alabama made me the most excited to ride in the car. The lead singer Randy Owen and his salt and pepper beard made Mother the craziest. She said Alabama’s tunes made for good driving music.
“The closer you get, oh yeah, the further I fall. I’ll be over the edge now in no time at all,” Mother sang.
The Closer You Get was Mother’s favorite Alabama song. But my favorite Alabama song was Feels So Right. When it played, it felt like there were stars tingling between my legs. I thought about being alone with B.J. Russo at one of Phaelan McDeere’s Friday night basement parties. I would close my eyes in the backseat and listen to Randy Owen croon about his woman’s body being gentle and his passion rising high. I imagined B.J.’s fingers—even though they had warts—touching my face. Then the tingling, when Owen whispered, “Oh, you feel so right, baby.”
Mother stole Alabama’s greatest hits cassette the afternoon she came to our Thanksgiving mass. She and Ray were waiting in the lobby for us after school. It was the start of our Thanksgiving vacation and we were going to Ligonier that weekend to do a little holiday shoplifting, Mother said. Thanksgiving was the precursor to Mother’s insane Christmas decorating chores. She would trim her new Pennsylvania home with only the finest fresh pine garland and swags, which we would steal from a nearby nursery.
But perhaps the most sacred part of her decorating scheme for the Christmas holiday was setting up her collection of Santa Claus figurines. The collection was ever-growing, and now that we were in Pennsylvania, in a house with more windows than our Rockville ranch, she was determined to find a place to steal her first keystone state Kris Kringle.
Mother decided not to cook for our first Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania. She said she would leave that up to Ray’s sister, Lydia who lived in the Regent Square section of Pittsburgh, not far from where she and Ray grew up in East Liberty. Aunt Lydia and her husband, Uncle Vinny, knew nothing of Mother’s shoplifting habit. They were unaware each year that when they opened their Christmas gifts, they were in fact receiving stolen property.
When we visited, Ray strapped on his ankle holster and slid a sleek, black gun inside. Ray said that Pittsburgh meant niggers and he wasn’t taking any chances.
When we exited the parkway, Mother drove towards Edgewood, past the brick Foodland with the broken asphalt parking lot. We took Grandma P grocery-shoplifting there and Mother stole all of Grandma P’s meat for her. Mother didn’t steal the meat because she and Ray could not afford to buy it for Grandma P, she stole it because she was so pleased with the proud and shocked expression on my grandma’s face as Mother pulled the cold packages out of her purse.
I liked how Mother’s tires sounded on Regent Square’s brick streets when she slowed for a stop sign. Regent Square was a maze of brick streets, some red, some yellow. They were streets lined with old, sturdy Victorians, and tall, wide square homes that looked like important people lived inside. As Mother climbed the bumpy Braddock Avenue, I didn’t see any of the niggers that Ray had warned us about. I only saw white families, lots of men with camel hair ankle-length coats and women with perfectly coiffed hair rushing well-dressed children inside stately homes ablaze with early Christmas lights.
I wanted to live with Aunt Lydia, because they said it didn’t matter who my father was. Surrounded by Pittsburgh’s very green Frick Park, Aunt Lydia’s home was just minutes from Grandma P’s senior citizen high-rise in Swissvale. Aunt Lydia lived in a tall house with wide picture windows. The front porch was hidden by a gigantic blue spruce evergreen tree Uncle Vinny, trimmed with bright multi-colored C-7 lights. They were my favorite Christmas decoration. I liked the smell of the bulbs heating up our Christmas tree’s artificial branches and tinsel.
Aunt Lydia wasn’t dressed as you might expect a holiday hostess to be. She wore red sweatpants and a purple sweat shirt that was decorated with multicolored rhinestones. In the middle of her sweatshirt was a drip of turkey juice. She shuffled in slippers across the marble foyer floor, her reading glasses precariously balanced on the tip of her nose. She looked like a much rounder version of my favorite actor, Dudley Moore.
“Oh, look, my brother. It’s so good to see all a you!” Aunt Lydia shouted and proceeded to kiss all of our faces with her thin, wet lips.
“Nice stain on your shirt, sis,” Ray said. “Nothing fancy, huh?”
“What the hell you think I’m gettin’ dressed up for? Thanksgiving ain’t no Italian holiday,” Lydia said.
I loved her moustache and hard butt. She stomped so both cheeks bounced together when she moved from the foyer to the kitchen.
When we visited that summer, when we first moved to Pennsylvania, she was beautiful with her pizza dough in the hot kitchen. The bright sleeveless shirts she wore accentuated her very tan skin.
“Catchin’ up, huh?” she would say and put her arm against mine.
Her thick ankles cracked as she leaned from foot to foot, her belly resting comfortably against the kitchen table. She would open her kitchen windows and let the warm air toss her grease-spotted curtains. The screen door let in the alley light as she lined her table with heavy rectangular pans. She stretched the dough out like skin and pushed the holes back together with her thick fingernails. I sat on the sectional kitchen chairs and watched her, my chin resting on the table that smelled like green Palmolive. The vinyl on all of the seats was cracked so it pinched my bare thighs like her soft pink toilet seat did on the second floor.

I peered into the kitchen from the foyer, desperate to take a seat at the kitchen table and watch Aunt Lydia put the finishing touches on our Thanksgiving dinner.
“Here, I baked this especially for today,” Mother said and pushed a plastic-wrapped apple pie into Aunt Lydia’s hands.
A lie. Mother and I stole the pie from Giant Eagle grocery store the night before. It was something we did all the time when she needed a dessert. I would go to the cash registers to pay for a gallon of milk and a package of Mother’s Always Maxi pads. Afterwards, I’d meet Mother in the back of the store at the bakery, and then we’d casually walk out of the store. I held the pie and Mother clutched the grocery bag and it looked as if we had paid for everything.
“It’s Dutch apple,” Mother said raising her eyebrows at Aunt Lydia.
I, however, wasn’t interested in Mother’s all-American, store-bought, impostor dessert. I prayed that in Aunt Lydia’s basement refrigerator she had her famous chocolate cream pie and strawberry pretzel dessert.
“Everyone, coats off! There’s cheese and pepperoni on the coffee table and pop in the fridge,” Aunt Lydia said, stomping back to the kitchen
I hung my heavy winter coat from the thick wooden banister at the bottom of teal plush-carpeted stairs that led to the second floor. We were allowed on the second floor to use the bathroom only if the basement bathroom was occupied. Aunt Lydia would listen for our socked feet to creak her ceilings while she stirred her sauce in a tall shiny pot. We weren’t allowed on the third floor. That was our cousin Vinny’s attic-bedroom. Mother told me that he was in jail near Philadelphia for stealing something for his girlfriend.
On every holiday we spent at Aunt Lydia’s, Vinny would call and she would go into the kitchen, talk quietly, pacing so I could hear her bare feet peel off the cool linoleum.

Aunt Lydia didn’t just carve a turkey and candy yams on Thanksgiving; she carried bowls of sausages and meatballs in tomato sauce with torn potholders to her dining room table. We reddened our mashed potatoes and wiped our plates with thick slices of Italian bread.
I sat next to Grandma P at Thanksgiving dinner. The pearly buttons on her flowered housecoats looked expensive. In the summer she didn’t wear underwear and I would lie on the carpet and look up her dress, past the thickness of her thighs to a place that looked warm and soft. I liked staying overnight in her small apartment in the senior citizen high-rise where she lived. She reminded me of a queen with her fancy, white, chenille bedspread and gold phone on the mahogany nightstand.
Angela and I ran barefoot burning the soles of our feet down her seventh floor hallway to the garbage chute room past the elevator. We dropped bags of trash down the black hole and listened to them bang the walls. Grandma P’s food pantry was magical. The door was made of thin woven vinyl that opened like a stage curtain. She stacked boxes of pasta together next to the canned goods, beside firm-packed paper packages of flour and sugar. There were canisters of coffee and breadcrumbs that towered like tall cylinder buildings. She had managed to cram a refrigerator and storage freezer full of sauce and meatballs in her narrow kitchen. Grandma P was most proud of the magnet on her refrigerator, a gold, ceramic rendition of Jesus’ praying hands.
When she stayed at our house, Mother made me bathe Grandma P. I scrubbed her thin gray hair with Neutrogena T-Gel that smelled like peppermint. She picked her dry scalp with her wide fingernails and her fuzzy white roots turned red when she broke the skin. I didn’t mind bathing Grandma P because she was bashful, unlike Mother. I tried as hard as I could not to touch Grandma’s P’s missing breast. The lump of pale skin leftover from cancer looked like a shriveled gourd. I washed her hairless arms with Dove soap that clouded the water. She smiled with her eyes closed when I poured water over her head.

::

Aunt Lydia’s food pantry smelled like fontinella cheese, sour compared to Grandma P’s. After Thanksgiving dinner, we played school in Aunt Lydia’s basement with the green chalkboard that was mounted on the wall next to the pantry. I was the teacher and Angela and Dominic #2 sat on the floor. I taught them math, spelling and we drew pictures of pilgrims with colored chalk.
Lydia’s daughter Claudia was a hairdresser and had a revolving chair and real-life counter in the basement. We took turns brushing each other’s hair. Angela’s was long and brown and wavy. Mine was coarse, black, and dry. She pulled the soft-bristle brush over my cropped hair.
“It looks like an Afro! Look, Dominic, Donna has an Afro!” Angela laughed.
I grabbed the brush.
“I do not have an Afro! And Mother told you about saying black person stuff to me, Angela.”
She flinched. I could feel my fuzzy hair touching my forehead. I wanted so much to be as white as Angela. I wanted to have a straight ponytail and a normal hairline, one that didn’t connect to my eyebrows. My sister always reminded me that my black half was more noticeable than my white half.
Angela and Dominic were Ray and Mother’s children: 100% white. I didn’t look like them. Ray told me that my father was a real, dark nigger.
“It’s a wonder you didn’t come out darker,” he said.
I sat back in Claudia’s hair dressing chair as Angela squirted green, styling gel into her hand. My sister promised she would fix my hair, make it look white.
“We can just put some of this gel in your hair and it won’t look black anymore. Ok, Donna?”
She slopped the sticky green gel on my head and twirled the wet strands into ringlets with her fat fingers. She smoothed the curls against my scalp. She was gentle, pressing the wet tendrils against my temples, smiling in the mirror like she was pleased.

::

After dessert, Ray waved goodbye to Aunt Lydia on the front porch holding a paper plate of foil-wrapped turkey against his Army field jacket.
“We’ll see ya, sis’.”
I stood on my toes in the cracks on the brick street.
“Get over here, dipshit,” Mother said.
Her breath made big, warm clouds in the cold. I pushed my toes harder until the fronts of my patent leather shoes creased with a shiny black wrinkle.
“Didn’t you hear your Mother?”
Ray pulled me into his camouflage chest.
“Yeah, but she didn’t have to call me names.”
“Get the fuck in the car, you little bitch,” he said. Ray pushed me into the back seat and I hit my head off the window.
“You wanna see what bein’ a smart mouth’ll fuckin get, you? Do it, Ray,” Mother said.
“So you like that chocolate cream pie my sister makes. Well here you go, you little bitch.” As we drove away Ray rolled down the window and threw the pie out the window that Lydia made for me. When it smashed on the cold bricks Mother and Ray laughed.
I loved any kid of dessert that Aunt Lydia made, but especially her chocolate cream pie. Luckily after dinner when we were playing in the basement, I helped myself to a finger full of pie from the basement refrigerator that Aunt Lydia kept next to her washing machine. That refrigerator was like a miniature Italian pastry shop. Not only was there chocolate cream pie, its buttery crust spilling over with instant chocolate pudding, but there was Aunt Lydia’s other specialty – strawberry pretzel dessert.
Over a crust of salty, crumbled pretzels, Aunt Lydia spread a cheesecake middle and covered the creamy center with a strawberry Jell-O mixture. The sweet and salty combination was sure to satisfy anyone’s taste buds. Next to the strawberry pretzel dessert were platters with pyramids of Italian cookies – pizzelles, almond cookies, buccellati, biscotti, pignolies, macaroons. Next to the colorful cookies were homemade pumpkin pies, apple pies and Italian sponge cake. I stole cookies from each of the platters and stuffed them in my pockets.
I rubbed my hand over the cookies in my pockets, just to make sure they were still there after Ray threw my pie out of the window. I watched all of the big houses pass by with their white Christmas lights. Mother inserted a Christmas carol cassette tape and tapped her thumbs against the steering wheel while Ray whistled along.
It wasn’t the song ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ that made me cry, it was the thought of Aunt Lydia finding that pie on La Clair street the next morning when she left to start her Christmas shopping. I sobbed into my stiff coat, soaking the collar with tears and drool. As my window steamed over, I could see the remnants of a message left by Angela, ‘I Love Mommy’. I scribbled over the wet inscription with my finger making all her love for Mother disappear. That was when my sister reached across Dominic #2’s car seat and held my hand.

::

Black Friday morning we walked as a family in the small town of Ligonier, about one hour from our home. Mother was not worried about lining up at the mall for some free handout or early-bird bargain, because no sale could be better than her five-finger discount. Every gift shop in Ligonier was giving out complimentary cider, hot chocolate, coffee and cookies. Each store was decorated with fresh greens and holly branches. The windows were full of customers, children and Christmas merchandise.
“Ray, I’m gonna take the girls and hit the Wooden Bobbin. Take your son.”
She let go of Dominic #2’s gloved hand as he ran through a dusting of snow on the sidewalk.
“Now don’t go gettin caught, Anna. Look around.”
Ray put Dominic #2 on his shoulders, turned and walked to Little Drummer Boy Books. Dominic #2 didn’t participate often and when he did they were usually small roles. Like when Mother layered sweaters and blue jeans on him in dressing rooms each winter so she could keep the money Ray gave her.
Mother and Angela were ahead of me on the slippery sidewalk. Mother’s Louis Vuitton hung from her large wrist. My coat was noisy. I walked faster, skiing across the sidewalk. Mother and Angela were blocking the entrance. Mother’s hands scared me when they were in fists by her sides; it looked like she was getting ready to hit me.
“What the fuck is the matter with you? Stay with us damn it.” She pulled me under my armpit onto the porch. I had to stay close to Mother and not because she was afraid someone would snatch me. She told me that no one would want some mixed kid with fucked up hair. I had to stay close to her because she needed me.
The Wooden Bobbin was crowded. It smelled like banana nut bread and cinnamon. There were tall jars full of potpourri on rickety antique shelves. The floor was made of warped wooden planks where decorative life-size Santa Clauses stood like frozen customers. Candles burned on metal plates that were punched with sayings like home sweet home, primitive blessings, and country living. Rosehips and short cinnamon sticks surrounded the candles. There were dolls on shaker chairs without faces wearing black and blue clothing. Some wore red bandanas on their baldheads, or a gold ring in their stuffed ears. I wanted one of those bald blue-black dolls. I rubbed their cotton scalps; they were like me; they looked like little dark boys in dresses.
I knew this was the closest I would ever get to holding a black baby doll. I settled for Angela’s white Cabbage Patch kids and felt sorry for all the black ones that were left on the shelves after Christmas. I could only know Mother’s whiteness. Why couldn’t the Cabbage Patch company have a mulatto doll with in-between hair, dark skin, with some black and white facial features?
“Look at this one,” Mother said admiring a Santa Claus inside the Wooden Bobbin. He had a fuzzy tea-stained beard and red ankle length coat. He clutched a bare Christmas tree in his right arm, its base was a round burlap ball. Mother didn’t have dolls as a little girl. She said she stayed at home when Grandmother took Aunt Daina and my Uncle Jay to Disney World. All Mother asked Grammy to bring her back was a Mickey doll in a Fantasia costume; all she got was a Styrofoam cup from the hotel.
“He’s nice, Mother,” Angela said.
Mother carried the Santa Claus into a corner where there were piles of gingham linens. She picked up a pile of hand towels, put the Santa Claus underneath and dropped him into her purse.
“Donna, Angela, you guys ready?”
“Yup.” I answered for the both of us.
We left the Wooden Bobbin and ventured into ten other stores that afternoon where Mother had her way with Santa Clauses. She was collecting them for her fireplace, windowsills and china cabinet. We returned to the parking lot three times to empty her purse that day. She dumped her Santa Claus treasure into our Isuzu Trooper’s cargo space and smothered them with a quilt she stole from a Cracker Barrel in New York on our trip to Massachusetts one summer.
“Look at that, girls.” Mother said admiring her booty. “That’s what hard work’ll get ya. Good job.”
She locked the Trooper and we walked past all the stores that were missing Santa Clauses to meet Ray and Dominic #2 for lunch. I was proud as I watched her large calves shake in stretch pants.

::

The following weekend, Mother received what could be considered hate mail. I watched her from my bedroom window as she ran from the mailbox to the front door in worn sweat pants and a white tee shirt. When she slammed the door, she shook the stolen, autographed Charles Wysocki prints that hung in the downstairs hallway.
“Donna and Angela, get your asses down here, now!”
She stomped barefoot into the kitchen. Angela and I skipped steps down and slid across the floor into the kitchen. Mother was waiting at the table holding an envelope and a blue piece of paper.
“One of you really fucked up this time and you’re both gonna stand here until you tell me which of you did it.”
Mother bounced the bottom of the blue paper against her leg. She made Angela and me stand on a tile square. When our toes went outside, she would hit our feet with a wooden meat tenderizer.
“What did we do, Mother?” I wrung my hands.
“What did you do, what did you do!” she yelled. “One of you little bitches had to have signed a guest book in one of those stores last weekend. How would one of them get our address?”
I thought of all of those cinnamon-scented places we stole from last weekend. I pictured each guest book in every store, their calligraphy printed words and gold lines that separated each customer’s information. I never signed a book because I knew that Mother would kill me.
“What did they send you, Mother?” Angela asked.
“They sent me a letter telling me that I better return the Santa Clauses I took from their store. But that’s just it! I don’t know what fucking store it is! We were in so many that day and this letter isn’t even addressed!”
Mother and the letter shook violently.
“I never signed anything.”
“Me either,” Angela said.
“Well then how in the hell did they get our address?”
“We don’t know, Mother,” I said.
She sat with her legs open on a wooden kitchen chair. She put her forehead in her hand and shook her head.
“Well, the fucking damage is done. So you have to fix it.” She pointed at me and stood up with her coffee mug.
“What am I going to do?” I asked.
“You’re gonna have to return all of these goddamn Santas to all of the stores we went to last weekend.”
She poured cold coffee into her mug and walked to the microwave.
“But I don’t know where they all came from and we don’t even know who wrote that letter,” I said.
“You think I don’t fucking know that, moron?”
I sank into my chair and pulled at the tablecloth’s hem. I was a moron. Why would I question her plan for me?
“Well, tomorrow, you and I are going early in the morning to put the Santa Clauses back.” Mother said, sipping her coffee.
“But won’t the stores be open, Mother?”
“Early in the morning, Donna? Are you really that stupid?”
“Why can’t I go, Mother? I wanna go too,” Angela whined.
She kicked her feet under the table and hit my shin.
“You’re not going. Me and Donna are gettin up early and we’re going, you’re too small.”

I woke the next morning and Mother was standing at the edge of the top bunk peering over the wooden guardrail. I rubbed my eyes and rolled over.
“Wake up, kiddo, we gotta get a move on,” she whispered.
I yawned while Mother peeked through the corner of a shade.
“What time is it?”
Mother dragged her feet back to answer me.
“It’s 6:15, and we have to leave by 6:45, so hop to it.”
She left my room and walked down the creaking stairs. I heard her barefoot step onto the parquet floor. I rummaged through my dresser drawers and chose a pair of blue sweat pants and a Washington D.C. sweatshirt. I pulled it over my frizzy head and changed my underwear. My toothbrush was still wet from the night before. I pumped toothpaste onto the bristles, making sure to clean the dollops out of the sink bowl. I went downstairs to the kitchen as Mother was filling a travel mug with coffee.
“You wanna take a cup with ya?”
She snapped the plastic lid to the cup.
“No thanks, I’ll just have some juice.”
I poured a wax paper Dixie cup full and drank it down until there were only orange dots on the bottom of the cup. Mother grabbed her keys noisily from the kitchen table. She motioned for me to go out the patio door, holding the coffee to her lips.
The Isuzu Trooper was warming up in the driveway. The seats were gray and starting to tear at the edges. The snot in my nose thawed out as I buried my chin in the collar of my coat.
“We ready?”
Mother pulled the gear into reverse.
“Yup.”
I pulled the seat belt across my chest.
We backed out of the sloped driveway onto the quiet and vacant street. Our porch light was still on, but Mother said Ray would remember to shut it off.

At 7:45 a.m. we made our first stop along Route 30 on the median of the highway, at Dorothy’s Craft Gallery. Mother had arranged plastic grocery bags in the back seat that were filled with Santa Clauses. As we pulled into the parking lot, the snowy gravel crunched under Mother’s tires.
“Grab one of those bags outta the back and go and put it on the porch,” Mother instructed. I chose an orange Happy Halloween Giant Eagle bag that held five Santas.
“Why don’t we just put them all on this porch and be done with it?” I asked opening my door.
“Because, dipshit, we have to return a few to each store. I’m not sure which one sent me the fuckin’ letter!” Mother said, squeezing her black leather steering wheel.
“Well ‘scuuuuuuuuse me.”
I weaved my head and slammed the door. I walked towards Dorothy’s front porch where there was an old wagon in the front yard filled with boxes wrapped in shiny red and green paper. I stepped on the first slippery, wooden step and gently set the bag down in front of the storm door. I skipped back to the Trooper blinded by the rising sun.
“You listen to me, you talk to me like that one more fuckin’ time, I swear I’ll beat the livin’ shit outta you,” Mother yelled and almost pulled my arm out of its socket.
The rest of the drive to Ligonier was windy and silent as Mother whipped around the treacherous curves. I sat with my face pressed against the window, my arm aching from the strength of hers.
We drove quietly into Ligonier’s downtown diamond, its closed shops and empty parking spaces. The meters were adorned with plaid bows to let people know the parking was on the city.
“Now most of these shops are in a row, so just grab a bunch of bags and start settin’ them on porches and come back if you need more.”
Mother pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of the closed D & K store. We hadn’t stolen anything from there because Mother said they sold junk. I inserted my hands through the bag’s plastic handles, dividing them so they fit in each hand. I didn’t want to make another trip.
“You better make sure you get all these stores along this street cause that’s where we took them from,” Mother threatened.
I slammed the door and stepped onto the sidewalk and started my journey. I placed a single grocery bag on ten different porches. It was like I was playing Secret Santa.
I looked back at Mother in the Trooper after I abandoned each bag. She sat there, putting on Chap Stick, throwing her hands up at me. My hands were empty and burning from the cold when I trotted back to her. She had locked the doors and when I pulled on the handle, she held up her index finger and told me to wait.
“I hope you did this shit right,” she said as we made a circle around the diamond.
I could see each grocery bag, tied and secured, their handles flapping in front of the doors of ten gift shops.
“We’re good partners you know,” Mother said.
I looked at the clock. It was almost 9:00.
“Yeah, I know.”
We passed Dorothy’s Craft Gallery with the gift filled wagon on the other side of the median. The bag with the Santa Clauses was missing, but a red and blue Open flag waved from the white porch post.