For every Dominican family I knew back then, sending money back home was a given. My mother was no exception. Despite not having a steady job outside of caring for us five kids, she diligently scraped together every dollar she could find. My father’s unpredictable forklift job didn’t provide much stability, but for my mother, not sending The Money to her parents in Santo Domingo was unthinkable. They were alone, and those remittances were more than just financial aid; they were a lifeline, a tangible connection across the diaspora. Rain or shine, she made it happen. She’d shave dollars off the cash my father gave her for daily expenses, tightening the belt on our already struggling family. In an era where nutrition wasn’t a priority for many, we stood apart from our friends by never having juice, soda, or snacks in our apartment. Never. Eating at McDonald’s or wearing branded clothes? Forget about it. We lived frugally, and that’s how she amassed the money to send home every six months.
We weren’t talking about a fortune. Two, maybe three hundred dollars. But in Santo Domingo during those years, in my grandparents’ neighborhood, that 300 dollars was transformative. It was the difference between meals with meat and meals without, between having electricity and living in the dark ages. All us kids knew where the money was hidden – our apartment wasn’t that big – but we also understood that touching it was a transgression punishable by something akin to death. I, who could sneak change from my mother’s purse without a second thought, wouldn’t even dream of glancing at that forbidden stash of the money.
So, what happened? Exactly what you might expect. The summer I turned twelve, my family embarked on a ‘vacation’ – one of my father’s quirky attempts to make us appreciate the country, crammed into our van and sleeping in it. We returned to Jersey, exhausted and road-weary, to find our front door unlocked. Things were overturned, including the empty Presidente beer can my mother proudly displayed as decoration. My parents’ bedroom, the epicenter of the thieves’ search, looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Their tactics were simple: they grabbed a portable radio, some of my cherished Dungeons and Dragons hardcovers, and of course: the money, my mother’s carefully saved remittances, hidden in a drawer.
The robbery wasn’t a complete shock. In our neighborhood, car break-ins and apartment burglaries were commonplace. Leave a bike unattended for a split second, and it was gone forever. Respect was a foreign concept. Everyone got hit eventually; it was just a matter of time before it was your turn.
And that summer, it was ours.
Still, the burglary hit us hard. When you’re a recent immigrant family, already navigating a sea of challenges, it’s easy to feel targeted. It felt less like a random act by a couple of petty criminals and more like the entire neighborhood – maybe even the whole country – had it out for you.
I felt that sense of being singled out, and a pang of shame too, wondering if we had somehow brought it upon ourselves. But mostly, I was furious. I was deep in my Dungeons and Dragons phase, convinced it was my destiny. Losing those books felt like a physical violation, akin to someone stealing a kidney while I slept.
But nobody took it harder than my mother. My father, true to form, shrugged it off. It wasn’t his money, not his parents who would suffer. He went back to his usual routine, unfazed. But my mother transformed into a Hulk of rage, unlike anything we’d ever witnessed. You’d think they’d made off with ten million dollars, the way she carried on. It was intense. She cursed the neighborhood, the country, my father, and naturally, us kids. She swore the robbery happened because we had blabbed to our dim-witted friends, and they were the culprits. We vehemently denied it, of course. And at least once a day, usually during dinner, she’d lament, “I guess your grandparents are going to starve now.”
Just in case we weren’t already drowning in guilt and helplessness.
Now, this is where the story should end, right? No CSI investigation, no dramatic resolution. Just bye-bye money, bye-bye Dungeon Master’s Guide. Except, a couple of days later, I was venting about the robbery to my usual crew, and as they offered their sympathetic curses, it hit me. You know those moments of sudden, crystal clarity? When the fog clears, and everything snaps into focus? That’s what happened. Out of nowhere, I realized those two dimwits I called friends were the ones who did it. They had broken into our apartment while we were away and taken our stuff. I was as certain as if I’d watched a security camera recording of them in the act. They were shaking their heads, saying all the right things, but I saw the way they exchanged glances, those guilty, Raskolnikov-esque looks. I knew.
Of course, I couldn’t publicly accuse these morons or go to the police. That would have been utterly pointless. So, here’s what I did: I asked the main culprit if I could use his bathroom (we were outside his apartment). While I pretended to relieve myself, I unlatched the window. Then, we all headed to the community pool, business as usual. But while they plunged into the water, I feigned forgetting something at home. I raced back to the dope’s apartment, slid open the bathroom window, and in broad daylight, wriggled my skinny twelve-year-old self into his apartment. His mom, naturally, was at work.
Where did I get these ideas? No clue. Probably from overdosing on Encyclopedia Brown and The Three Investigators books. What can I say? I was that kind of nerd.
Because in a normal neighborhood, this is where the cops would have been called, and my butt would have been busted for burglary – oh, the irony! Imagine trying to explain that to my mother. But thankfully, mine wasn’t a normal neighborhood, and no one called anyone. The dolt’s family had been in the US for generations, and their apartment was overflowing with stuff, a TV in every room. I didn’t have to search long. I lifted the dolt’s mattress, and there it was: my AD&D books and most of my mother’s money. The dolt had thoughtfully kept it in the same envelope. I walked out the front door, and as I ran back to my apartment, I kept expecting a SWAT team to descend, but it never happened.
And that’s how I solved the Case of the Stupid Morons. My one and only case.
The next day at the pool, the dolt announced that someone had broken into his apartment and stolen all his savings. “This place is full of thieves,” he complained bitterly. And I just thought, “No kidding.”
It took me two days to return the money to my mother. Truth be told, I seriously considered keeping it. I’d never held that much cash in my hands, and who in those days didn’t dream of owning a Colecovision? But in the end, guilt gnawed at me, and I confessed everything to her, handing over the money. I guess I expected a hero’s welcome, maybe to be crowned her favorite son, or at least get my favorite meal. Nada. She just looked at the money, then at me, retreated to her bedroom, and put it back in its hiding place. I’d wanted a celebration, or at least a flicker of happiness. But there was nothing. Just two hundred and some odd dollars and fifteen hundred or so miles – that’s all the money was, and all it represented.
