After that incident, I went about a week without checking the box. When I finally did, the twenty on top was gone and some coins were missing. It was then that I realised how careless I had been, but I had never had money stolen from me at home before, so I didn’t think it would happen. It was obvious to me who did it, but he was at school at the time, so I couldn’t confront him yet. I was mad, but not too mad because I still had a lot of money, and the kid was dumb. When I put someone on a high pedestal and they do something very stupid, I actually feel bad for them instead of getting mad.

When Gift returned from school, I nicely asked him if he had stolen my money and he said he didn’t. I smiled, hoping to make him more comfortable, and I told him I wasn’t going to do anything bad to him, I just wanted to confirm if he was the one who “took” the money. He still denied it. It was still obvious that it was him though, and if I told mom about it, he was going to be in a lot of trouble. Having lived in a high-crime township my whole life, I knew that serious criminals never admitted to their crimes even when they were caught red handed, so, again, I decided to just lecture the kid. I liked being the bigger man.

“Okay, fine, it wasn’t you, but you should still know the consequences of stealing from your own family,” I said. “You already have a bad reputation with your mother’s family, and they warned us that you steal. Your step-mother doesn’t like you, so you can’t live with your dad if you get kicked out of this house. If I report you for stealing my money, mom will probably chase you out and you’ll get shitted on wherever you go. You’re a smart kid, Gift, you’re too mature for someone your age and I respect you. But please man, play smart. If you drink, don’t come back home drunk and if you do, make sure your grandma doesn’t see you. And if you steal, steal anywhere else but not home. Don’t shit where you eat man, you’re too smart to do that.”

He agreed, but continued to deny stealing the money, “I really didn’t steal your money, I wouldn’t do that. I understand why you suspect me, but it really wasn’t me,” Gift said, but I still didn’t believe him.

Though he didn’t admit to stealing the money, I felt like my lecture was a success, I felt I had made him understand the risk and boosted his confidence, I expected him to make better decisions from then on. Just to be safe, though, later that day, I counted the coins in the box and started hiding my papers somewhere else.

I checked the weight of my coins for the next two days after the conversation with Gift, and they were okay. The plan was to count them if I thought the box was getting lighter. Eventually, I forgot to feel the box for probably a week and a half, only dropping in change from the spent paper money I no longer stored in that box.

One day, around nine in the morning, when Lars, Gift and Pumpkin were at school and mom was at work, I lifted my box and found it was empty. My heart almost stopped. The biggest changes in our lives come from the most shocking moments in our lives, like winning the lottery, or walking in on your wife/husband having sex with another person, or finding out that you’re back to being flat broke because of a piece of shit kid who has no fuckin’ respect for you.

Normally I wouldn’t maintain being mad from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, but that day, my anger only grew as time passed. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to control myself when I saw him, I knew I was going to just sink my teeth in his neck and eat like a homeless person until his head was separated from his body, so I tried involving adults in the hopes that they would deal with him for me and I’d get my money back. I told my older sister and she told me I should beat him up, but I think she was talking about a belt, a hiding, or a spanking: I wanted to murder the fuckin’ thing.

I called his dad and told him the whole story, and after I was done, he said “Yesterday he called and asked me for money and I told him I didn’t have it. He must have decided to steal it.”

“I tried to be cool with him. I let it slide a few times, but I guess he took me for a fool; I’m no fool,” I said, tears burning in my eyes.

“Beat him up, he doesn’t respect you. You’re his father too, take a belt and beat him up. I’ll come continue where you left off when I come back from work,” he said.

Everybody thought I was just a bit mad, my sister didn’t see it in my eyes and brother didn’t hear it in my voice, but I felt it, the devil had gotten me. The good me was nowhere to be found. I went to my room, locked the door, looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw a different me, a me I had never seen before. It wasn’t about the money, it was about how much I had avoided trouble, how much I had avoided black on black violence, how I had always rationalised and saw the good in people and tried to be nothing but good to everyone, including Gift. When you do good, you expect good. Gift had not only stolen from me repeatedly, but he had also looked me right in the eyes and lied about it, repeatedly.

“Why is this happening to me? In my own fuckin’ home? This is where I’m supposed to be safe, this is where I’m supposed to be happy! Why am I being tempted like this?” I muttered to myself. And then, for lack of a better thing to do to pass the time, I cried. There’s something they say about crying, they say it helps, they say it calms you down, but that’s not always true: crying made me angrier.

Tell us: Has there ever been in your life that has made you this mad?