It started with a phone call.
I was parked in front of Edna Hill Middle School, waiting to start my day — middle of COVID, face shields, plexiglass barriers — when the New York Times rang. For some strange reason, I picked up, even though the number was unfamiliar.

They wanted a quote — a reaction.
“How do you feel about your sister Tracii Hutsona’s arrest?” a voice said.

I wish I could say I almost dropped the phone, but this was no shock. I’d been following my sister’s actions from afar ever since she was released from federal prison around 2015 — mostly through Google, and by keeping tabs on her unwatchable YouTube series, Homeless Millionaires. I knew she’d been living large — larger than she should have.

“You don’t know?” the journalist said. “She stole more than a million dollars (allegedly) from Joumana Kidd, ex-wife of basketball player Jason Kidd.”

What I said next, I was unable to censor. Instead, I began churning out truth bombs with the speed and regularity of a Pez dispenser. 

“She’s always been a con artist. Ever since she was a kid. And she’s good. She’s like a cult leader, the way she gets people to return to the same poisoned trough.”

Somewhere in the conversation, I realized: Where’s your filter? Again, it wasn’t shock. I finally had a platform — a voice. What she’d done, what they’d all done, was wrong, and it was up to me to say something about it.

“I don’t know if I should say any more,” I added, way too late.

“Then we’ll use your statement from 2008,” the journalist replied. “From when she swindled you. It’s all in the police records.”

This was a subtle threat. She knew. I knew. I’d told the officer a lot of things in 2008. Tracii just conned me for the last time. I wanted answers. I wanted Tracii to fear me. If the New York Times printed my statements from back then, let’s just say, it wouldn’t have been a good look.

I had no choice. I had to talk. I told the journalist about Grandma and the credit cards, about how at 15, Tracii had stolen my license and taken a joyride to Los Angeles, racking up tickets in my name. I also marveled at my sister’s skill. I knew she was going to make the news one day.

“You know the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Jingle All the Way?” I asked. “That’s how Tracii got one of her vehicles. She convinced a car dealer she was on the set.”

I said some things about my parents that weren’t so nice — and later walked them back. This wasn’t the time. But the more the journalist questioned me, the more shame poured in — familiar, ancestral, and uninvited. The shame wasn’t just mine. It was part of the family system, baked into the DNA — but assigned to a carrier: me. And now I’d done it, inserted myself by becoming a motor-mouth. Getting a chance to speak, not just about my sister, but about the machinery behind her — the systems, silences, and betrayals that made her possible.

I thought years of therapy had helped me get over my Tilt-A-Whirl childhood. Tracii and I weren’t just stepping around landmines; we were ducking hand grenades. But this put me in a spin. Forget the objects in a mirror — we grew up in a funhouse. Nothing in the glass was even real. In college I studied psychology (because what else?) Like most psych majors, not only did I want to understand and to help. But what I was dealing with wasn’t just academic — it was personal.