The Truth About Aaron

by Jonathan Hernandez

  “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  Everything fell silent. I was numb.

  I stared at Aaron on the screen. When he heard the words “guilty of murder in the first degree,” I saw him deflate and thought he was going to fall. He was in shock, I felt it. He turned to my mother and Shay, who had their hands over their faces, sobbing, their bodies shaking. Aaron mouthed, “Be strong.”

  It felt like my own life was over. I tried to hold myself together but then I couldn’t suppress the emotion. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I felt hands pat me on the back and heard someone asking me if I needed to take a walk.

  But I couldn’t. It would have felt like I was leaving my brother, so I continued to watch the television, continued to cry with my hands on the side of my head like a horse wearing blinders. I knew this meant that Aaron might never be free again.

  Coach Kirk Ferentz came to me and placed his hands around my shoulders and whispered into my ear, “If you need anything or need to take time off to be with your family, just let me know.”

  I kept thinking of my mother, who had driven by herself to the courthouse for the first time that morning—the family members she usually went with couldn’t attend. Now I worried that she wouldn’t have anyone to be with as she made her way home on the two-hour drive.

  I called my mother as she was waiting for the elevator outside the courtroom, but she said she couldn’t talk. I told her I loved her.

  After I hung up, I saw the TV cameras bombard her as she pushed through the heavy courthouse doors to leave.

  I gave her a few minutes to get to her car and called her again to ask if she was okay to drive home.

  “I’m okay, D,” she said. “How are you?”

  I didn’t have the strength to respond. For what seemed like five minutes, there was silence between us.

  Finally, she said, “You’re going to be okay.”

  I started crying again.

  I somehow attended an 11:15 a.m. coaches meeting—I don’t remember one word that was said—and then I finally took a walk. I went downstairs to the coaches’ locker room to be alone, trying to clear my head and balance my emotions.

  I looked up at a television in the locker room, tuned to ESPN, and saw commentators talking about my brother and his case. They kept going on and on about the $40 million contract he had signed and how Aaron had everything but threw it all away.

  I heard the door to the locker room open. I tried to bury my head deeper into my locker, hoping to look preoccupied.

  Coach Ferentz approached me again. “I’ve been trying to find you,” he said.

  I looked at him, but I couldn’t find any words to say.

  “DJ, I can’t imagine the pain you and your mother are feeling right now. I’m so sorry and I am here for you if you need anything. Hang in there.”

  Crying, I stammered, “Coach, would you mind if I go home for the day? I’m just so exhausted right now and I need to be alone.”

  “Of course,” he said with kindness in his voice. “Just don’t do anything stupid, and make sure you touch base with me in the morning.”

  As I drove to my apartment, I wondered what Aaron was thinking.

  Chapter 33

  SUMMER 2015

  THIS WOULD BE THE first time I would be seeing Aaron since he was convicted and sent to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, located in Lancaster, Massachusetts. It was a rare contact visit, and I wondered if I would be able to hug my brother.

  After clearing the security checkpoint with other visitors, I walked through the green bulletproof doors and then down a long narrow hallway. Along the right side of the white walls, through the windows, I could see the barbed-wire fence and an outdoor picnic table that sat alone in the sunshine. The sky was blue on this August morning, and I wondered if I was going to meet Aaron out there at the picnic table. I had no idea; I was just following the few visitors walking in front of me who seemed to have experience with the contact-visit protocol.

  An officer opened another door and guided us into a large open room filled with chairs lined in long rows facing each other. Four officers roamed the area. I watched inmates enter and embrace their loved ones.

  Then Aaron entered the room and our eyes met. We both lit up. As soon as Aaron was close to me, I looked at the officer who was escorting him to see if it was okay for me to hug him. He nodded. We embraced and then sat down.

  We were directly across from each other, four feet apart, a blue line of tape on the floor between us. For the first few minutes we didn’t say much; it was like we were two shy people trying to make conversation. It took time for me to process the entire scene and comprehend that this was where Aaron would spend the rest of his life.

  Aaron asked me if I liked his outfit—he was wearing a gray prison uniform—and his watch, which he wore on his left wrist and featured a thin black silicone band with a small digital face. He showed me his all-white prison-issued shoes and told me he had cleaned them to look fresh for my visit. His prison clothes looked ironed and pressed—his shirt and pants were wrinkle-free. He’d recently gotten a haircut.

  “How are you doing, Aaron?”

  “You know. Every day is the same.”

  He was much calmer and less talkative than the last time I had seen him in prison, eight months earlier. It was like his body was recovering from the shock of the verdict four months ago. He seemed heartbroken and internally wounded.

  I leaned in to Aaron as close as I could without going over the blue line. I had to ask my brother if he did it. We both knew his letters were monitored and his phone calls were reviewed, so I knew he couldn’t fully open up about what transpired the night Odin was killed. But now it was just brother in front of brother. I needed to hear his answer in person, face-to-face, eyes to eyes, without glass separating us. I needed to know Aaron’s truth.

  “What the fuck happened that night?” I quietly asked.

  Aaron shook his head slowly for several seconds, back and forth, back and forth until my head started moving along with his rhythm. Then he whispered, “It’s craaaaaaaazy.”

  He was getting more upset as we looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Aaron, I’m your brother and I love you no matter what,” I said. “I need to know: Did you kill Odin?”

  With tears welling in his eyes, in a voice no louder than a whisper, he said, “Drugs will fuck you up, but not fuck you up enough to kill someone. I didn’t do it, D. I did not do it.”

  Chapter 34

  MY TIME AS A graduate assistant coach was expiring and I was about to be out of a job. Unable to find another coaching opportunity, I packed my life into a U-Haul and left the beauty of Iowa City. For fifteen hours I drove south across the plains until I reached Dallas, Texas, where one of the Hawkeye coaches had a connection with a local roofing and remodeling company. They had a sales position available and I accepted. Still in the beginning phases of our relationship, Karen stayed back in Iowa City, but we vowed to continue a long-distance relationship. It was time for a new beginning.

  I moved into an apartment. The challenge of starting over—and leaving the true love of my life, football—was nerve-racking. Besides lemonade sales as a kid with Aaron, I didn’t have any sales experience.

  After a few months, I started a company called High Rise Roofing and Remodeling. Shortly after, a massive hailstorm pounded the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. I was about to perform a roof inspection when the storm hit. I quickly climbed down my ladder as hailstones the size of golf balls hammered the ground.

  Within hours, I had dozens of homeowners calling me, panicked by the hail that had blasted through their roofs, smashed through their windows, and ripped apart their siding. As I drove through the pitch-black neighborhood—the power was out in this section of the city—my headlights beamed onto cars that were flattened as if massive oaks had fallen on top of them. Shards of glass were everywhere, covering streets, sidewalks, and lawns.

  I parked my truck and worked
with others to tarp roofs. Then the rain began to fall and it became too slippery for us to maintain our traction. With a flashlight in hand, I inched down off the roof and down the ladder. We then boarded up windows and swept up glass.

  Helping others lifted me out of my funk; these new relationships gave me a sense of purpose again. I relished sitting in living rooms with families, drinking coffee and listening to them talk about their lives and the progress they were making in returning to normalcy after the storm.

  IN JANUARY 2016, I flew with Karen back to Bristol to introduce her to my mother and Aaron for the first time. After arriving at the prison in Massachusetts, we stepped out of the car and proceeded toward the front entrance. Holding hands, our grip was firm as we walked alongside the barbed-wire fence.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  An officer met us in the waiting area and directed us through a doorway and into the visiting room. We sat down and I rubbed Karen’s knee, trying to ease her discomfort. Sitting upright, she was as stiff as a board. Then a buzzer sounded and Aaron walked in. Karen didn’t know what to do or say, so she just looked at me—even as Aaron was looking at her with his big smile.

  Aaron asked Karen how she was doing. She turned her head toward him and said, “I’m fine.” Then she smiled.

  Aaron and I started talking as Karen watched. She didn’t know what to say, but she later told me that she had no idea that Aaron and I had such a strong bond, that we could effortlessly pick up a conversation as if we’d never been apart. She noted that we had the same hand gestures, facial expressions, and the same crease in our small foreheads when we laughed.

  At one point Aaron pulled out his fake front teeth and started smiling. We all laughed because he was so goofy.

  The visit lasted an hour. As Karen and I got in our car, I asked her what she thought.

  “The time went so fast,” she said. “I wanted to bottle it up. I saw so much love and emotion. I’ll never forget that.”

  Chapter 35

  OCTOBER 2016

  TANYA SINGLETON—OUR COUSIN WHO was the person that Aaron confided in the most—was incarcerated for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating the death of Odin Lloyd. After spending a few months in jail, she pleaded guilty to criminal contempt and was placed on house arrest.

  She was suffering from stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. My mother and Jeff remained distant from Tanya, and my mother continued to seethe. “I thought Tanya was brainwashing Aaron to be against me all those years,” my mom said. “She never said no to him and she would allow Aaron to do anything he wanted. She didn’t teach him anything or discipline him. Instead, she would accept anything he wanted to do.”

  In October 2015 Tanya passed away in a bed that was set up in her living room. After she died, my mom spoke to Aaron and noted that “karma is a bitch,” that Tanya’s death was payback for her past actions. Aaron was deeply hurt by the comment, and he wrote her several stinging letters, spelling out the pain it caused him.

  One year later, my mother felt uneasy during her two-hour car drive to Lancaster, Massachusetts.

  “I really didn’t want to go,” she said. “I hated seeing Aaron in that prison environment. I thought about how strange our lives turned out. I would have never believed that one day I’d be visiting my son in jail for murder charges.”

  Whenever my mother visited Aaron, she never knew what they would talk about—or whether Aaron would be angry, happy, sad, spiritual, or ambivalent. On some visits, she couldn’t wait to leave; on other occasions she never wanted her time with Aaron to end. It all depended on Aaron’s mood, which was unpredictable. What hurt her the most was saying good-bye after a positive interaction with Aaron.

  This conversation began with a normal exchange of pleasantries.

  “How are you doing, Aaron?” my mom asked from her side of the scratched Plexiglas.

  “I’m good. You look good, Mom,” Aaron said.

  At first, Aaron was aglow, a big smile stretching across his face.

  Aaron continued, his smile slowly disappearing even as he tried to hold it. “You don’t know me, Mom.”

  “How could I possibly know more than you show or tell me,” my mom said. “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Do you remember when we used to get dropped off at the babysitter’s house near the cul-de-sac?” Aaron asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Aaron finally told her about one of the demons that had been haunting him all these years. He told her how the older boy would force him to perform oral sex. Aaron said it started when he was six years old and continued for several years.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Aaron?” our mom said as she began to sob. “I could have protected you.”

  “I was afraid,” Aaron said, as he put his head down and began to cry. “There’s more.”

  For the rest of their time together, Aaron spoke in a whisper, occasionally just mouthing the words to our mother, so the officers and other visitors couldn’t hear.

  “Mom, I’m gay,” Aaron said.

  “Oh, Aaron,” my mom said, still crying. “I can’t even imagine having to hide this.”

  “My biggest fear was the thought of someone finding out,” Aaron said. “Growing up, Tanya was the only person who knew. She was the only one who knew for a long time.”

  “Oh my gosh, Aaron.”

  “I’ve been hiding my true love from everyone,” Aaron said. “Before I was even a teenager, we had sleepovers together and sometimes we would just cuddle and sleep with each other. As we got older, I’d go over to his house and we’d go into his bedroom and fool around. I saw him whenever I could. Once I was in the NFL, I’d call him every day after practice. If he was free, I’d go see him, and we’d just cuddle and talk for hours. I wanted to leave the league so we could start a life together.”

  Aaron said that in order to become intimate with a woman, he needed to be extremely drunk. He loved Shayanna, but it had crushed him that he couldn’t give her the intimacy that she deserved. Aaron said he would stay out late with his friends, hoping that she would be asleep when he returned.

  “I hated living a secret, and I hated all the lies, but I felt like I had to do all those things because people wouldn’t accept me,” Aaron said. “There was no way I could come out as an NFL player.

  “I know it’s wrong and that men aren’t supposed to be gay,” Aaron whispered. “You think I like being this way? I don’t. If it got out in jail that I was gay, I’d be killed.”

  Aaron told our mother that he didn’t want me to know either of his secrets. “I can’t let DJ down,” Aaron said.

  “Aaron, your brother loves you regardless of anything,” my mother said. “You should tell him.”

  “I can’t, Mom,” he said. “I don’t want to let anyone in our family down. I don’t want to let my friends down. And I don’t want to let the fans I have left down. I just can’t.”

  “I love you more than ever,” my mom said.

  Tears in his eyes, Aaron said, “I love you, too, Mom.”

  Then a prison guard said time was up. The visit was over.

  Aaron wiped his tears, stood up, and hardened his demeanor before walking back and joining the other inmates.

  Chapter 36

  MARCH 2017

  FIVE MONTHS HAD PASSED since Aaron had opened up to our mother, and now I was going to see him for the first time since he had let his walls down. I walked through the prison’s thick green doors, down the narrow hallway, and sat on the stool. In the non-contact visitors’ room, on the other side of Plexiglass divide, Aaron appeared.

  Before Aaron picked up his phone, I wanted to blurt out: I’m here for you. Your sexual preference does not matter to me. My love for you is unconditional.

  But I didn’t. With the phone to his ear, Aaron sat down, subdued. I asked him how he was doing.

  “It’s Groundhog Day,” he said. “Every single day is t
he same.”

  Aaron had to open up and give me the chance to listen—he had told our mom not to tell anyone, but it was too much for her to handle by herself, so she phoned me. Hearing the news had been horrifying. I was angry that I had been blind to the molestation, his hurt and his inner conflict. I hadn’t protected my brother. It devastated me to learn how much pain Aaron’s secrets were causing him.

  In the visiting room, Aaron didn’t have much to say, so I started telling stories from our childhood. He looked at me like someone who was hearing this information for the first time. He tilted his head to the left, but his eyes were focused on something past me, through me, mimicking that thousand-mile stare he had on the rooftop in Los Angeles.

  I could feel his pain on the other side of the glass. He looked lost. Aaron never opened up to me.

  RETURNING TO MY MOM’S condo, I felt like I needed to be closer to Aaron. There was a distance growing between us that made me uneasy.

  I started to think that I should move home. But back in Dallas, Karen was three months pregnant. I wasn’t going to make any major decisions until our baby was born.

  Chapter 37

  NOVEMBER 4, 2016

  TWO DAYS BEFORE AARON’S twenty-seventh birthday, Karen and I checked into Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. We sat in the waiting room and spotted another family who had sleeping bags spread across the floor. It looked like they were tailgating or waiting in line for coveted concert tickets. I pictured what the scene would look like if my childhood family had been with us: my father would be crying, my mother would be next to him, Aaron would be at my side, and my aunts and uncles would be pacing the halls waiting for updates.

  Karen was in a lot of pain. Sitting next to her, I felt helpless because I was unable to ease her discomfort. Doctors came in and out of the room, and at one point they asked me to step into the hallway so they could give Karen an epidural. I knew what an epidural was because of how often my brother was given one for his ongoing back pain in football. The birth was getting closer.