CHAPTER 3
BROTHERLY BOND
Ultimately, however, Nick and I didn’t leave. I don’t remember exactly how Jeff talked me into staying, but he did. I really didn’t want to leave my husband, and I didn’t want Nick to be without his dad, so I pushed my fears about Ben as far back in my mind as I could. What was going on with him made me profoundly uncomfortable, and I didn’t yet know if I was going to stay for good—I wanted to see if Ben was going to get his act straight before I decided.
The clothes went back into the closet, I started drinking on weeknights, and Ben went to more counseling. He continued on an erratic path of bouts of good behavior, then bouts of bad. That September, he began high school, and I was nervous about how he would make the transition.
“Be aware,” I told him. “Big school can be big trouble.”
We kept an even closer eye on him and researched the signs of gang involvement. Although Ben had sworn to us that he was no longer part of the gang and never would be again, we were jaded enough to keep our guard up.
Before long, we knew what clothing to watch out for, what hand signals, what colors, what haircuts. Ben wasn’t allowed to wear his hair slicked back, which made him upset. No black jackets or hats unless he was with us. And he wasn’t allowed to have markers.
He resented every moment of it. When he saw that we had been in his room or looked through his drawers, he would always complain. “The worst feeling in the world is the feeling of being invaded,” he told me.
As well as I could, I kept explaining to him that we were doing this because we loved him and cared about his safety and our own. We weren’t going to stop. And we weren’t born yesterday.
On Nick’s eighth birthday, I got him his own journal for us to write back and forth, just like I had done with Ben.
Mom
Thanks for the letter. By the way my day was pretty good and bad. But I will get better. I am really glad you got me this book. I think this will be fun. And I realy realy like my new desk.
Please write back
Love Nick
And underneath his name was a peace sign. The same little peace sign that Ben used under his name.
I told him I thought it would be a good idea if we always wrote in the journal in ink. “That way it won’t fade in later years, OK?” He agreed, and so it was.
When you write back, tell me what you think I should be for Hollaween pleeeese becase I don’t know what to be. What a delima huh?
I love you too
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Nicholas
When I told him once that I’d had a long day because I had to get up early to get my car serviced, he wrote back, “I am lucky compared to you.”
But our lighthearted entries were interrupted by a serious one in October.
Dear Mom,
I had a terrible day I whish wish I was dead. Sometimes I forgot my math books and my teacher said if I and a few other kids didn’t have our math done by Mon. we are in big trouble. Right now I’m crying bad. I messed up my leggo ship. I’m really sad. I think I want you to talk about it in the morning with me.
Love, Nick
I ♥ U.
Luckily, I spotted that entry right away, and wrote back immediately.
Nick,
How about if we don’t sleep on this . . .
First of all, I don’t ever want you to wish you were dead. I don’t think any of us really understands death, except for it to equal gone, “forever.” And I don’t want that ever for you, as I’m sure you feel the same way for me.
About the math books, you need to try to be more responsible for your homework. I’m not in class to hear or remind you of things. That’s your place to be a “big boy,” OK?
In the morning, I’ll help you with Legos.
Just remember I love you so much.
Xoxo Mommy
Nick often looked to me for counsel, and he was sensitive to being teased. He took it to heart when a group of kids told him his bike “sucked,” and he once told me that I was the only person he could really talk to. That wasn’t true, of course; Nick always had plenty of friends. But he cared a lot about what kids thought of him, and he was self-conscious about whether or not he fit in.
The honeymoon period where Ben was quiet and repentant after the gun incident slowly faded away, and soon he was skipping school and mouthing off to his dad. Not to me—he knew I wouldn’t stand for it—but Jeff still felt some guilt about getting divorced and breaking up his kids’ home. I think it was that guilt that made him go easy on his kids when they disrespected him, which in turn only misguided them.
Leah and her dad got into arguments about dating; she wanted to start dating at fourteen, and we didn’t think she was ready for that. One day, she just brought home this older guy who thought he was going to drive her out around town, and Jeff said no, so she called her mom and said she wanted to move back in with her. Then she was gone, simple as that.
And now it was Jeff’s turn to be petty. Instead of working things out with Leah, he stopped contacting her for a few months.
That meant it was just the two boys again, plus Jeff and me, but before long, it felt like Ben was the one who demanded all our attention, all our care, all our worry. When he didn’t get his way about something, Ben would lose control of his temper. It was like watching a Jumping Jacks firework ignite and zip all over the street, changing directions and randomly hitting whatever was in its path.
I often ran interference when Ben talked back to his dad.
“I hate it when you do this!” Ben said. “You don’t think he can handle himself against me? I’m sure he’ll be just fine. He’s a big boy.”
I told Ben that just because his dad was willing to overlook things out of a sense of guilt didn’t mean I was. I had no guilt about his parents’ divorce. And I sure wasn’t going to let Nick grow up in a household where it was OK to disrespect his parents. If Nick was going to learn the values I held dear, I couldn’t be hypocritical in how I demonstrated those values. Ben was going to show his father respect, period.
Except that wasn’t Ben’s plan. He thought we should all develop instant amnesia every time he did something bad, and he got very angry whenever Jeff tried to set rules or enforce discipline. I couldn’t be the one to do it; I was not his mother, which was held very clearly over my head. It was not my place to ground Ben or Leah or to give them a good “talking to” when the situation called for it. Every time I had tried, it just complicated things worse—they’d go running to Dad to tell him what mean ol’ Susan had done, and I ended up having to explain everything twice. So I learned to just go straight to Jeff when something was wrong and let him handle it.
Whenever Jeff tried to set stricter boundaries, Ben threatened to run away, but I never believed him. Where was this fourteen-year-old going to go?
But that became the big question in November of 1992. During one of my checks through Ben’s drawers, I found a gun clip. I stood there in disbelief for a minute. I had certainly never held a gun clip before, though I had seen one of Jeff’s. And here it was in an unlocked drawer, just a room away from where seven-year-old Nick slept.
Jeff made a beeline for the high school to track Ben down and find out what was going on.
“It’s from Kevin’s dad’s gun,” Ben said. Kevin was a friend of his from tae kwon do class. “Kevin brought it over and put it in my drawer, but I took a second thought and brought the gun back.”
Ben had taken the clip out and smuggled the gun into his high school under his T-shirt. They’d exchanged it in the school parking lot, and no one had spotted it.
While we debated what to do, we told Ben he wasn’t to see a single one of his friends or his girlfriend until further notice. As usual, Ben balked. He wrote to me in our journal:Dad is talking about putting me into another school, or taking me to work. I don’t think that’s right. Before, I would have carried it. I might have even used it. But I think I did right by second thinking it, and giving
it back as soon as possible.
You say the next place I’m going to is a home, or a school, but I see myself going someplace else not so radical. If you don’t understand, I’m not gonna live like a criminal again, and living on the streets is better than that. You would feel the same if you experienced it. You guys (dad and you) are so ignorant. You can’t even see past your own little family life, into the real world.
I really did like this little family thing going, but I don’t think I can handle it. At least like this.
Love, Ben
Ben briefly stayed with Jeff’s parents while we talked about what to do. All I knew was that he wasn’t coming back in the house again. An unusual solution presented itself soon afterward.
“Let me take him for a while,” Ben’s tae kwon do instructor told us. “I can help him.”
We thought it was very generous—and a little crazy—for the sensei to want to do this for Ben. Nevertheless, we agreed to it. Jeff would pay the instructor rent money and give him money for all of Ben’s expenses, and the instructor would provide discipline and a strict environment for Ben to get his act together. Every morning, Ben would rise at 5 a.m. and go to the gym before school. After school, he’d go back to the gym, then help train the younger tae kwon do students at the studio, then train one-on-one with the sensei until 9 p.m.
It just might work, I thought. Ben respected this guy, and tae kwon do had been one of the few things to have a positive impact on his life. We envisioned a “teenage drill camp” scenario; the instructor was tough and serious. At the very least, Ben wasn’t going to mouth off to him anytime soon.
On the day he left, I wrote in our journal:Benjamin,
You poor baby. I wish I could keep you, but it’s out of my hands now. This is the second time you have put our family in unnecessary danger. You like living on the edge. Personally, I don’t want to fall off with you. Last week’s warnings, sadly, were not taken seriously.
We love you, always will. That’s why we must remove you from this environment until you’re old enough, mature enough to understand where you’ll be headed if we didn’t stop you.
I’ll always be here to talk.
Love, Susan
Now it was just the three of us. What a tremendous sense of relief it was to wake up and not think about gang colors and weapons and calls from the principal. Maybe now that sitcom family life I had always envisioned would actually begin.
But Nick missed living with Ben and Leah. Leah’s stay at her mother’s house didn’t last long; they fought, and Leah then moved in with Jeff’s parents, and later, with her boyfriend and his parents. As much as Nick understood that his sister had made the decision to leave and his brother had been disrespectful and dangerous, he still loved them and liked being around them.
They did see each other often at the tae kwon do school, though. Because Ben was the sensei’s assistant instructor with younger kids, we were able to keep close tabs on him. We were there with Nick almost every night.
Nick was never into sports like his older brother was, but he enjoyed going to tae kwon do classes anyway—maybe more to see his brother than anything else. He was a fourth-grader then and had come in fifth place in the school spelling bee. He cherished his books more than anything, always making sure that they looked pristine, no dog-ears or marks in them. He once cried over a torn page. Among his favorite pastimes was playing with bugs, ants, and, in particular, snails.
Before Thanksgiving, Nick took to our journal again.
I am thankful to my mom and dad for giving me food and clothes, without them I wouldn’t live. I am also thankful that this is a free country, because if it wasn’t I wouldn’t have choices.
Giving thanks means appreciate something and telling people you care about them. It also means to thank someone for something they’ve given or done for you. Because if we’re not than that’s usually what starts gangs, and people get killed like that. We should also be nice to each other.
His next entry was decidedly less deep.
I don’t like roller bladeing because it bores me. I have better things to do that I am widely known for, like reading and making traps for my brother. And playing Nintendo.
I don’t think we will find Wilber. Someone will probably step on him and he will scatter across the room. Then everyone can say they found a piece of him.
Wilber was the class pet hamster that had disappeared from his cage.
After about six months with the sensei, we agreed that it looked like Ben was doing well. He never really told us whether or not he was happy, but we didn’t hear a peep about Ben getting into any trouble for all that time. He seemed to recognize that he had really screwed up this time and had to fix it.
Considering we were giving the sensei about a thousand dollars a month, Jeff decided that was an expense we no longer needed once it seemed Ben was back on the right path.
After Ben moved back home, we found out that the sensei’s influence had not been solely positive. Soon after Ben moved in, some teenagers vandalized the sensei’s car. That night, the sensei heard a noise outside. He grabbed a gun and awoke Ben from a sound sleep, telling him to come outside with him. “I think someone’s messing with my car again,” he said.
When they got outside, they found a man attacking a woman in the backseat of a car parked on the street. The sensei pointed the gun at the attacker and said, “Get out of the car or I’ll blow your head off.”
While the sensei held the man at gunpoint, Ben went back into the house and told the sensei’s wife to call the police. Police showed up and took the man away. So, on one hand, the guy was a hero that night, saving a woman from harm. On the other, this was exactly the kind of influence we were trying to get Ben away from—we didn’t want him around guns or violence.
After he moved back in with us, Ben wanted to go out one night, and Jeff told him he couldn’t go anywhere until he helped to finish painting his room—we were converting the garage into a new bedroom for him. Jeff had already put in a lot of time designing and furnishing it, and he wanted help with the finishing touches. But Ben wanted to go out now, and as usual, he flew into a rage when he didn’t get his way.
He lunged forward and slammed Jeff, and the two of them got into a physical fight. No warning. Jeff was caught so off guard because he hadn’t even yelled at Ben or said anything that he thought could provoke such a violent response; essentially, all he had said was “No.”
Jeff managed to wrestle Ben to the ground and hold him there.
“This sucks! Who the hell cares if I paint my room today? I’m not doing it!” Ben yelled.
“You’re going to spend a couple of hours painting this room with me, and then you can go,” Jeff said. Giving in at all at that point was probably crazy, but at that moment, he just wanted to cool Ben’s temper. The violent response was so stunning that Jeff later figured Ben must have been on something. Cocaine? Speed?
The next day, Jeff, Leah, and Ben had a scheduled meeting with a therapist. At that meeting, Jeff said, “I’m tired of putting up with all this. I’m not going to have a physical confrontation with my kid!” He looked at Ben and said, “You follow the rules or you get out.”
On the ride home, Jeff reiterated that there weren’t going to be any more excuses or any more allowances. As they pulled up to the house, he said, “Now, we’re going to finish painting the goddamned bedroom!” Jeff walked off to collect the paintbrushes, then turned back and saw only Leah.
“Where did he go?”
Leah said she saw him walking down the street and around the corner. Jeff and I assumed he would go to his mother’s house.
Fine, Jeff thought. I’m not following him.
About a week went by before we heard from Ben again. Perhaps he expected us to cry and beg him to come home, but that isn’t what we did.
“You’re not coming home until you’ve made the decision to follow the household rules,” Jeff told him.
Months went by. Ben would call and let u
s know he was fine from time to time, and he checked in with his mother sometimes, too, but he held out on his decision. He never told us where he was, only that he was with friends and he was fine.
We didn’t know then that a few weeks prior to his running away, he had been out walking with friends at CityWalk, the strip of stores and restaurants at Universal Studios in Hollywood. They met some guy named Eric, who invited all of the kids into his limousine. That night, Eric gave Ben his contact information and an open invitation to stay with him anytime. So Ben had just been biding his time; he knew he’d have somewhere to go if he decided to run away. Some random guy he’d met at CityWalk would take him in. It turned out that this Eric was a bounty hunter who also owned a tattoo parlor, where Ben was now a happy apprentice. On one of his calls, he told Jeff, “I’m learning how to cartoon, Dad.”
He failed to mention that he was “cartooning” in permanent ink, on himself. We were naive enough to think he meant he was learning how to be a cartoon artist . . . maybe a useful trade. During each conversation, he would assure Jeff that he was fine. We were more or less playing a game of chicken, wondering whether Ben or we would crack first.
“Had enough of this yet? Are you thinking of coming home?” Jeff would ask.
“No, I’m cool.”
He was telling people he was eighteen, though he was still really only fifteen. We had no idea if he was on drugs, stealing cars, or even worse. For now, we were just hoping he would come back home. He couldn’t possibly live on his own forever, we thought; something was going to have to wake this kid up and make him realize that the home life he had wasn’t so bad after all.
And we were very hopeful on the day that a call finally came that sounded different. It had been six months since he ran away. He had been kicked out of the tattoo parlor owner’s place because a friend of his had brought some kind of drugs into the house. Even though the tattoo owner was a tough guy, he was firm on his stance against drugs. He was also full of contradictions: he was Jewish, with a Star of David tattooed on his stomach and, inside it, a gun pointing straight outward. In the Jewish religion, it is forbidden to tattoo your body.
My Stolen Son Page 4
