The officer said “Watch your head” as he guided me, hand flat upon the point of my skull, into the back seat of the police car. I was so scared I couldn’t respond as I slid into the seat. The mesh metal screen separating the front seat from the back told me I was all alone here. Somehow it never occurred to me this was a possibility, especially at 12 years old. I was always a good girl, with no bad girl gene lurking inside. I was compliant, precocious, lawful in every way, every day. Well, almost every day.
Now I was in a shitload of trouble. I stared out the closed window of the door with no handle, anything to avoid looking at the mesh separating me from the driver. I thought this couldn’t be happening to me, but there I was in my blue jean shorts and t-shirt on the way to the Santa Monica Police Station, alone with my panic in the back of the car. The space felt close, and it was getting harder to breathe. A green piece of chewed gum on the floor in front of me said, don’t touch anything, stay right where you are and don’t move. Hands up, you’re under arrest.
This beach warm summer Sunday said everything was normal in the world, everything but me being in this cage. I know people we passed looked at me. How could they not? I always do that when I see someone in the back of a police car. But I figure if I can’t see them, they can’t see me, right? Maybe from the corner of my eye I see them, though not enough that they can see me. I was used to not being seen or heard in my daily life, so it was easy for me to believe.
There were 10 girls, including my sister and stepsister, on the shoplifting escapade that day. I was the youngest, a young 12 among the 13 and 14-year-olds. All of us had never gone out together before, let alone shoplifting, a disparate group of girls. We weren’t experienced criminals, except for sliding a pack of nylons into our binders at the market after school. Maybe a magazine or two, sometimes, not often.
On the mall that day, our amateur status was obvious to every shopkeeper in our wake. Blatant amateurs taking records, LPs even, makeup, panties, bras, clothes, jewelry. Santa Monica Mall was not a big place. Sears was the anchor store for the open-air Third Street mall, but that wasn’t where I got singled out and caught. I just so happened to be the last of our group to prance out of Woolworth’s Five and Dime, exuding confidence, when he grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the store. The girls scattered with the loot faster than cockroaches in a kitchen when the light goes on. I wasn’t holding any of the precious goods, except for the beautiful polka dot bra beneath my old T-shirt.
A bra wouldn’t mean much to most people, but it meant freedom to me. Beautiful freedom with multicolored dots. I put it on in the women’s restroom at Sears, no old bra to leave in the stall. I needed a bra at 11 years of age, buds showing and blossoming roundness filling them out. I had to stuff them in my pre-cupped navy blue bathing suit top the off days that either my stepsister or sister had dibs on the regular padded bra we shared. Every day two of the three of us would have flat chests, breasts encased in a tight cup-less bandeau. The third lucky girl would be ogled in the padded wonder, snickers behind her back from classmates who saw her the day before, breasts bound flat.
It never really fit me and occasionally a cup would get pushed in when I forgot to stuff it, embarrassing me further. The polka dot bra was something I never thought I could have. Now I was wearing my own bra and it would never be shared with anyone. I was not going to give it up, no matter what.
“Up this way,” the security guard from Woolworth’s said as he escorted me up the stairs into an airless room with a mirrored window overlooking the store. He didn’t seem a gentle man, harsh and impatient, which I’m sure he thought was more than I deserved. He motioned for me to sit in a chair, which I did while shaking uncontrollably, trying not to cry.
He said, “we’ve been following reports of you and your group stealing from stores along the mall. Who were the girls with you?” I couldn’t get any sound to come out of my tightened throat, not that I would have told him, anyway. I thought of my bra, how he might want to get it back if he knew I had stolen it, and I knew I wouldn’t tell him anything. We waited, silent, him staring at me and me defiantly shaking. I had no purse or any of the pilfered loot with me, except my new bra.
I couldn’t see out the window into the store from my chair, but he could. The room was darkened, boxes strewn about like it was also used for storage. A deck of cards lay on the cluttered desk. The door was shut, and we were painfully alone, him staring at me, disgusted. He was overweight and balding, a bulbous nose stretched to his cheeks, shirt buttons pulling against his round stomach.
I have always looked innocent, sweet and innocent, with long blonde hair, dimpled cheeks, fair skin and a sprinkling of freckles across my nose. He didn’t seem to appreciate that at all. About 20 minutes into our standoff interrogation, he pushed himself up saying he was calling the police, and I was going to be arrested for shoplifting. I hadn’t told my name or age, still unable to utter a sound.
I had a good ten minutes on the ride from the alley outside the mall to the police station. An eternity to consider what I should and could say to justify my deeds. I knew my parents, crazy as they were, would be justified in grounding me and taking away my freedom. I had no other privileges they could curtail except a bed I shared with my stepsister and occasional meals we kids prepared ourselves. I was thinking I would just go for the jugular of my poor, traumatic and ugly life saga of alcoholic and mentally ill parents, my stepfather’s chronic beatings of my mother and our lack of food on a regular basis, not even the luxury of our own clothing. Plan in place, I entered the police station, contrite, but not cowed, and the shaking stopped.
“Have a seat,” the handsome Santa Monica police detective said. I sat in the third chair around a wood rectangular table in the windowless room. A mug on the table was filled halfway with black coffee, the familiar smell filling my nostrils. Papers lay between us on our opposite sides of the table, a black pen waiting to be picked up to fill them out. Shaking curtailed and defiance simmering, I looked at the officer, ready to start my saga of justification.
I was surprised at what I saw. Was that kindness in his dark brown eyes? With my history of trauma, I already knew how to read a room and people for signs of danger. Every day when I came home, I felt the mood of the place, wherever we lived, checking for safety before entering. This place wasn’t safe, but it seemed he was. His face was smooth, lips turned down at the corners, giving him a look of sadness. Yes, that is kindness in his eyes. I wanted to cry for the safety I saw in him, to nestle in that security. I hadn’t felt that in such a long, long time. I looked away before the threat of tears could become a reality.
“What is your name and where do you live?” he asked.
Finally, hearing the kindness in his voice, I could speak. “My name is Nona Bachman. I live at 4th and Hill in Santa Monica. I’m twelve years old.”
I thought I saw a spark of surprise in his expression, but it was gone just as quickly as it appeared. “What are your parent’s names and their phone number?” he asked. I gave him my parent’s names and told him we didn’t have a phone.
I don’t think he believed me, but it was true. We hadn’t had a phone at all in our house at 4th and Hill since we moved in that winter. Come to think of it, we had lived mostly in hotels or motels for two years before moving into this house, so we hadn’t had our own phone for a long time. I felt so poor and downtrodden not having a phone number to give him.
That opened the way for my sob story, and when he asked me “Why were you shoplifting and what were are the names of the girls you were with?” it all came pouring out.
I said “I was shoplifting because my family is very poor and we don’t have food to eat most of the time, let alone money for clothes and other stuff. Both my mother and stepfather are alcoholics, and my real father is schizophrenic. My parents both work most of the time and spend their money on booze. I wanted some nice things that I would never have gotten without shoplifting. My parents don’t care about us five kids. My brother, David, is 17 and just left home. He’s living with my Uncle Johnny on Ashland in Santa Monica. My sister, Diane and stepsister Tessy, and I share a room. My stepbrother, Brad, sleeps on the sun porch in our house at 4th and Hill. I don’t know the girls I was shoplifting with.”
He looked at me with those kind eyes now tired and sad, and he said the most valuable words I ever heard in my young life. He said, “don’t you know this is your life? The choices you are making now, and your behavior are what will affect you for the rest of your life. You aren’t punishing your parents, you’re punishing yourself. Your choices are yours alone, and your life is yours alone. You aren’t hurting them, you’re hurting yourself.”
All of a sudden, I felt stupid. He was right. They didn’t care enough about me to take care of me and the responsibility lay with me alone. There were so many new thoughts and emotions raging inside me. The indignation at being abandoned and poor was a stupid excuse for not taking care of myself. I had allowed myself to become a victim of this life rather than creating my own road. I sat there incredulous, staring at him with a new sense of realization about who I wanted to become. I had never seen this possibility before. I was always stuck in being defined by my family.
He was a witness to my transformation. Tears burst from my eyes, not tears of shame or sadness. These were tears of realization, tears of power. I was smiling, almost laughing out loud.
I said, “Yes, I see that now. Oh yes, I see.” I felt giddy, excited, and almost ecstatic. I wanted to jump up and hug him, this man who had been so kind and patient, telling me the truth. This Santa Monica Police detective with kind eyes shining at me, seeing me for who I could be, not who I had been, or my status in the world. We sat there, the papers on the table blank, not filled out by the black pen, coffee just as fragrant as before. My polka dot bra is still unrevealed and giving me joy under my old t-shirt.
Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. This was a new world. A world where I could now find myself and become who I wanted to be, and it was because of him. This man, who just happens to be a police detective, changed my life, gave me my life. He touched my hand as he got up and said, “now let’s find your parents.” I was ready. I wanted my new life to start right now.
Yes, I was grounded for two months when I got home. That didn’t really mean much at our house since my parents weren’t there most of the time, and with my new realization of power, it didn’t mean anything at all. I was different. I knew I would never shoplift again. That was the first rule I made for myself. My mother always said, “never say never,” and I’ve always been a tad superstitious, but that was not the person I wanted to be anymore. The ride in the back of the police car, mesh screen and green gum, people looking at me as a low life would never happen again, either.
Sometimes you can’t be sure what your future holds, but this time I was. I was very young and uninitiated, experience becoming my new educator in life, and I was creating the person I could become. I was learning the power of my own perception of myself rather than being part of this dysfunctional family pack. I guess that’s why my police officer thought he would try to cut to my core. I was ready to accept his belief in me, his confidence, and make it my own.
I Am We 