I just got home from the health club. I had gone with the singular purpose of sitting in the steam room in alternating periods with the hot-tub, in an effort to purge myself of the every last trace of this flu that has been working me over for a few days. I got there at 7pm, and the club closes at 8pm on Sundays, so I’m thinking I have a solid hour to soak and steam, rinse and repeat! I get in there, the steam is nice and thick, and life is good. About three minutes into my bliss, this guy comes walking in with a spray bottle in his hand – for anyone not accustomed to steam-rooms, there is typically available, a spray bottle of eucalyptus oil that gets sprayed into the steam emitter to vapor the air with a pleasant and soothing menthol.
This guy thinks it is eucalyptus in the spray bottle, and I can see by the bright yellow color that is probably Zep commercial cleaning solution (I’m a handyman…I know this kind of stuff.) Before I can say anything, he unscrews the spray-top, and dumps the entire bottle of stuff into the steam emitter, which would be a bit of an overdose of eucalyptus, even if it was in fact. Within about a minute, the place is gagging me with the smell of cleaner. He is sitting silent and still, apparently comfortable, with his eyes closed and oblivious to what peril he has just unleashed. I’m like, “Dude, that is cleaning solution – we gotta get outta here and let this place air out!” The guy tells me he got it from the “cabinet where they keep the stuff,” as I am exiting with my towel over my mouth.
It sucks when we press the wrong button, and the shit hits the fan - When we as men, “drop the ball,” or “miss the mark,” or “fail to deliver the goods.” Shall I continue? There are plenty of tired metaphors to describe the many ways that we can botch things up. You know the cliché – “everybody makes mistakes.” It is a tough row to hoe, to feel that feeling in our gut that says “I don’t want anyone to know what I just did” and to deal with it in a healthy way. Yikes. I have a particular defensiveness that I have had to work and practice with my entire life, a specific sensitivity around accusation and blame.
I mentioned in my first installment of this blog that I was accused of murder when I was 6 years old. That is the kind of statement that begs a bit of explanation is it not? I’m more than happy to blow the suspense and reveal that obviously I was not guilty. I was in 1st grade, and there was a girl in my class named Harriet Riley – a chubby, funny, vivacious black girl that I used to play tetherball with during recess. She used to kick my ass in tetherball. She lived around the block from me, and I had a couple of friends up the street – two brothers named Jerry & Kevin – and we used to play sometimes after school. They were kind of toughies, and it was clear that, while we could have a nice time, I never felt like getting too deeply chummy with them, because their home was not at all warm and welcoming. It is funny how we know this stuff even when we are young. I clearly remember knowing that.
See, I clearly remember feeling different from the kids that did not have moms waiting for them at home. I did, and it felt like home, and I felt a bit less like a “toughie,” and a bit more like just a goofy kid. I think that Kevin & Jerry were already loosing their ability to feel like goofy kids. They were becoming toughies.
Well, one day Harriet disappeared. She simply never made it home from school. Of course, after a couple of days, it was all over the school, it was on the news, and so on. I was not really into watching the news much at that age, but my mom called me to the TV when that story came on, and it scared me to see Harriet’s mom on the screen crying. It was not more than a day or so more before they found her body in a dumpster in the neighborhood. She had been found with a plastic bag over her head and signs of trauma around wrists and ankles. Everyone in my class was pretty freaked out. I was in the same 1st grade class as Harriett. I was especially freaked out the next day, when a couple of guys from the FBI came and fetched me out of an assembly that we were having for Abraham Lincoln’s approaching birthday. I didn’t know what the FBI was when I was 6, but I knew it was bad that two tall guys in black suits & ties wanted to talk to me behind closed doors – I started crying immediately, and didn’t stop the entire time I was in their presence. Even once my mom and dad arrived at the school to provide my alibi and be at my side, I did not stop crying. I think I even peed’ my pants.
The agents had received a hot tip from my pals Jerry & Kevin that placed me as the last person seen with Harriet Riley. These kids told the cops that they had watched from their front yard after school, as Harriet and I strolled across Watt Avenue (a busy four-lane thoroughfare) to grab a burger at Lou’s Burgers one day after school. Now, I was pretty independent in 1st grade; I used to dress myself in the morning, tie my shoes, make my own bed – heck, I could even fix a pretty mean PB&J. But, even though you could see Lou’s Burgers from my front yard – it was right over yonder, just across the street – energetically it was like going to the mall or something.
The FBI had decided to interview me a 2nd time – which is a good thing when you are trying to get a job, but doesn’t feel very good at all when you are being asked about a kid’s body in a dumpster. They set up big spotlights and a white dropscreen in our livingroom, so that they could take a few mugshots for my file. They didn’t ask me to smile. Thankfully, it only took the one more encounter with me and my parents, and a few more of my tears to convince them that I didn’t really have it in me to wander on over to Lou’s Burgers with a friend for dinner, and then you know…kill said friend and leave them in a dumpster.
Actually, by then Jerry and Kevin had caved in and confessed the truth of what had taken place. Harriet had been over at their house playing after school, as she often was. They were playing cops and robbers – and Jerry & Kevin were the cops. They had tied Harriet up to the tree in the front yard, and then placed a bag over her head. When she suffocated, the kids went and got their dad, who was home most of the time because he had recently been released from prison. Do you see where this is going? Well, he decided that the best solution was to dispose of the body. In a dumpster. Around the block from his house. I know. It’s hard to imagine.
When it was all said and done, the father went back to prison, the mother of Jerry & Kevin had come unhinged and Child Protective Services was racking up visits to the house. Before long, the kids were placed into foster-care.
Now those guys – Jerry & Kevin – they really made a mistake. The bag over Harriet’s head – that was a mistake. For whatever reason, they didn’t know the potential consequences of their game. That is what I was told, and I believe it. Back in 1973, there were no warning labels on plastic bags, just like there were no warning labels on hot cups of coffee, or cigarette packs, or commercial cleaning solution. We just kind of needed to know that stuff was dangerous. I can say this; my mom pretty much hammered into my head the potentially fatal hazard of any plastic bag that entered our household. Not that I needed any reminders.
I have learned that it is my shadow of accountability to feel and act defensive, and likewise, it is also my shadow of forgiveness, to harbor blame and hatred. This applies to the plentiful ways that I can turn blame outward, and it also applies to the way I carry the message within. Usually, if we are quick to blame, it is because we have some self-forgiveness that we need to do.
I have wondered if Jerry & Kevin have ever felt sensitive to accusation themselves, defensive or secretive about their mistakes like me. It is clear that I have remained connected to them on some subtle energetic level, as a result of the experience I had with the FBI, and that of being wrongly fingered by Jerry & Kevin. Their father told them to lie, and to falsely implicate me in the scenario involving Harriett. How would that feel to be 6 years old, and have my father to force me into that?
It was such a tragic rippling outward from a fairly innocent center; three kids playing in the front yard. I have often wondered what life has been like for those two, having set into motion with a thoughtless mistake born of play, a whole series of events including the death of someone and the devastation of a family, and of course the destruction of their own home life and family. Maybe their play was modeling some hostile things they had been exposed to. Maybe their home life was not that great to begin with, and this whole situation was caused by crappy parenting anyway – it doesn’t matter – it probably still felt like home. Maybe the two brothers got placed in a home that was more nurturing and loving than that which they been born into. It I wonder if they have understood how their childhood ignorance offsets their burden of guilt.
Has any of this weighed on them, or have they completed blocked the experience out of consciousness? I won’t ever know, but I do hope they have embraced themselves with some form of self-forgiveness.
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