#327 Admit that I Stole From My Grandmother
It was the summer after my sophomore year in college. I had just been driven back from Hanford of all places. A friend of mine in college said he could get me a job over the summer where he lived. I stayed at his family’s house then at a friend of his as I waited for him to try and get me a job. A month went by before I came to my senses and realized there was never going to be a job. I made him drive me back to Berkeley that day.
Since I had no other place to go, I stayed with my Grandmother who, at the time, still lived by herself in a small house by the North Berkeley BART station.
She was happy to have me. Even though she couldn’t speak a lick of English and my Chinese was on the level of a six year old half-wit. She loved that I ate copious amounts of the food she cooked. I loved eating her food. It was a true symbiotic relationship.
But after a week, I realized that I was required to do more than just eat her food. I had to get groceries for her. I had to vacuum. I had to lift heavy objects and move them around the house, seemingly for no reason at all. I had to listen to her blast Chinese TV shows to her failing ears. Somebody here seemed to be getting the short end of the stick.
I ended up getting a job at The North Face. I took the bus there every morning. The job paid little but at least I was finally making some money. I was still pretty broke at this point and I didn’t want to go begging my parents for money. I didn’t really need it that badly. I wasn’t paying rent and I had free food whenever I wanted. Still, I wanted to go out with my friends who were still in town over the summer. Eat at restaurants. Watch movies. Buy comic books.
While I loved my Grandmother’s cooking, I still craved food that didn’t have soy saue, garlic or ginger in it. So I went to the grocery store and bought a box of Pop Tarts. I kept them in the cupboard in the kitchen.
One morning I woke up and went into the kitchen. My Grandmother was sitting at the table eating MY Pop Tarts. She had a terrible look on her face. She spit out whatever Pop Tart was in her mouth. A pink pile of mush on a napkin. She balled this up and tossed in the trash along with the rest of MY Pop Tarts. “Bu hao!” she said. Not good.
For some reason, this angered me to no end. I was already on edge for having wasted half of my summer with my friend who never got me a job. Then I was stuck living with my Grandmother being her slave for the rest of it. I had no money and now she had thrown away MY Pop Tarts. I didn’t say a word as I went to work.
When I came home, my Grandmother wasn’t there. This was back when she could still walk on her own so that meant she was probably at the grocery store. I went upstairs but instead of going to my room, I stopped by her bedroom. She locked the door to her room when nobody was in the house. I looked at it and noticed she had not pulled the door all the way shut. I pushed at it and the door swung inward.
In February, my mother told me I had to visit my Grandmother for Chinese New Year. When I arrived, she beckoned me up the stairs to her bedroom. She opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a giant wad of $100 bills. She didn’t believe in banks apparently since nobody except Hong Kong gansters kept that much cash on hand. She peeled off a crisp bill and gave it to me. “Gong shi fa tsai!” Happy New Year.
Now I stood at that same dresser. I opened the same drawer and there it was. The wad of hundreds. I picked it up, paused, then took two bills and stuffed them in my pocket. I put the money back, shut the drawer and closed the door behind me. Then I left to meet my friends at the movie.
The thing is my, Grandmother would have given me ALL of that money if I asked. I don’t know why I did what I did. Partly it was because I wanted the money. Partly it was because I was pissed about the way my summer turned out. The other part, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a natural born dick.
I obviously never told any of my family members about that. And she never found out, I don’t think so anyway. I mean, did she really count her money every night before she went to bed? Come to think about it, I wouldn’t put it past her. But if she did know, she never said anything to me or my parents about it.
When I was at her funeral, over a year ago, watching her being lowered into the ground, all I could think about was stealing from her. It’s probably one of the things I’m most ashamed of in my life. It’s not that it affected her. It’s not like I took her last $200. But it’s just a reminder of what a snotty brat I was at 19 years old. A reminder of when I had the choice to be virtuous, I chose to be an asshole.
