Scaredy Cat

The Scaredy Cat

One cold dark Halloween night, a group of children went out to trick or treat. They lived in a very safe neighborhood in a small western town. This was a time when no one locked their doors. Everyone knew everyone else, or at least they thought they did. No one worried about poison, or foreign objects like razor blades or broken glass in any of the candy. EVIL is something that resides in the cities, at a safe distance, far away from the hearts and minds of the townspeople and their children.

However there is at least one notable exception and that is a well kept secret. It is hidden out of sight in a dark place. When it must come into the light, it obfuscates its image with sleight of hand, and misrepresentation. It wears the face of propriety masked by a friendly smile.

I know the secret; it eats away at my insides and makes me afraid to be in my own skin with myself. Unfortunately dear reader, there is no one that I can tell about this, EXCEPT YOU. Be careful don't let them see you talking to me.

See the dark apparition, hovering like a silent bat in the air, watching patiently as our little group goes from house to well lighted house, His is the way of the hunter, He watches patiently for weakness and opportunity. Do not catch your foot on a branch or fall in the snow. He will pounce if he can.

We do have a protector; he possesses both age and stature over the other third graders of our town ensuring his rise to a position of responsibility. He is our guardian, with his calm goodness He dutifully steps forward and rings the bell. He protects a bevy of children clad in simple homemade costumes. It is nice to be needed and appreciated. Each child waits his turn, according to the established pecking order, and then steps to the head of the line.

Each child carries a double strength, brown paper bag with extra strong jute handles. "Meyers Grocery" is emblazoned in black across a large orange pumpkin, printed at a cost of an extra three cents per bag. "HAVE A SAFE HALLOWEEN" is printed on the other side of the bag in large orange letters outlined in black. By Halloween every child in the township has a bag and becomes a walking advertisement for "Meyers." A huge cardboard box of them appears at the entrance of River Bend Elementary School. TAKE ONE and HAPPY HALOWEEN say poster size, hand-lettered signs. There definitely is method to Meyer's generosity. He has sold tons of wrapped candies, and the ingredients for popcorn balls, caramel apples, and homemade candy like fudge and divinity. Besides some of the bags hang around for months after Halloween constantly reminding people to shop at Meyer's.

"The protector of children and keeper of the peace," steps boldly to the door booming in his deepest voice, "Trick or Treat?" The children line up and thrust their bags forward with their minds full of expectation. Who knows what delicious goodie is being dispensed at this particular house? Not one child will risk being sent home, for an opportunity to rise in the pecking order. Not tonight, it is Halloween, the time to get candy. No fights allowed!

I stand in the shadows. I am alone, just one small boy watching, and really powerless to do anything about what I know. I am a threat to its very existence I know its name. I have no costume, and no coat to hide behind, I feel totally exposed in just a white tee-shirt topped with a long sleeved olive drab tee that Uncle Matt left behind when he was home on leave. Perhaps it is his love and not the shirt that keeps the cold crystalline air from freezing me into statue of Ice.

I have attempted to conceal my identity behind a dark brown rag that I wrapped around my face from my nose to above my eyes. I marked the eye positions with chalk and carefully cut eyeholes with the pocket knife that uncle Matt gave to me. I meticulously applied Kiwi boot polish to my face and hands. This was the only costume I wore.

I never voluntarily expose myself to public scrutiny if I can avoid it, I carefully wear my hair covering most of my forehead. I hope to hide the mark I know is there. Ridicule and brutality seemed to emerge spontaneously whenever anyone sees me. There is something different about me. It must have left a mark for I have become a magnet for the beast that dwells silently in the hearts of ordinary people.



Tonight mother thrust a "Meyers Grocery," special edition Halloween bag into my hands. "Here get you some shit, kid." She is sitting at the white enameled steel table in the kitchen with a bottle of cheap Whisky and a glass in front of her, toasting the demons that haunt her life. "She only talks like this when she is drunk, you know, at night and on weekends when she isn't working."

When situations like mother's obstinate insistence force me out of the house, I seek refuge in the deepest shadows that I can find. Tonight instead of seeking the first good hiding place and then waiting a respectable time till I can sneak back, past my drunken mother, I venture out. Something is about to happen. I feel it deep inside my soul and I know it will affect me. I want as much time as I can get to decide what to do, if there is anything left for me to decide. I am terrified, yet I know I can't avoid what will change my life. It is cold enough that instinct keeps me moving to keep warm. It is snowing again, large feathery flakes that twirl like graceful dancers in the cold frosty air. The wind chill is ten degrees above zero F. I cannot feel the cold; I am straining to carry an empty bag that weighs 1000 pounds to me. The vulture of guilt is waiting patiently on the wires above my head hoping the weight will eventually drag me to the ground.

I can never allow myself to be seen by any "goodie giver." A car, hedge, or garbage-can allow me to look without being seen. I can only imagine what wonderful things are dropping into the bags of the other children. Sometimes my mouth waters as I smell the delicious spicy holiday smells emerging from the open kitchen doors. I guess some kind of cookies might smell like that, perhaps gingerbread men just out of the oven. Mom never did anything like that. She claims that she can burn water. With good reason I believe her.

I know not to expect anything; it only causes the pain of regret, when things do not happen like I want. Life kind of happens to you! There isn't really very much I can do about it. I have learned how to avoid my older brother as much as possible, and how to sit on one cheek, or find a reason to stand, when my backside is oozing blood into a wad of toilet paper, that I carefully stuffed into my butt crack. No one can be allowed to see evidence of my unpardonable crime, my unforgivable sin!

It has left a kind of indelible mark in the center of my forehead! Something sure keeps me separated from others. It is a unidirectional barrier. Things come through from outside, taunts, hits, rocks, and sharp sticks. One rich kid even set his dog on me for rescuing a naked rubber baby doll from a garbage can. I did manage to get it home and get it washed and into a diaper made from an old rag. What really mattered to me was the smile on the tiny face of my little sister; a dog bite is a small price to pay for that. I do what I can.

The barrier surrounding me makes it impossible to ever really connect to anyone. What if they were to find out the painful secret I hide so carefully from everyone else?

I stand for hours in front of the mirror looking desperately for the mark. I stare until my eyes go blind and I can't see anything. Then I remember reading somewhere that we always have more difficulty seeing our own faults than those of others. Perhaps that explains it! It might have been one of the three times I have been to church, that planted this idea in my little heathen mind.

I certainly never cultivate expectations that anything besides pointed objects, pointed fingers and sharp sticks, will penetrate the barrier around my naked soul. Surely If I go up to a door it will be obvious to the "goodie giver". No one will want to give anything to anyone like me, ever. I know I am unworthy of any treat. I feel filthy, like a leper in the bible, marked for life, untouchable, slowly rotting away in plain sight.

My bag, which seems to weigh as much as if it were filled with stones, can't be described as empty for it is filled with a thousand pounds of regret, a ton of self loathing, and a heap of self deprivation, and so much pain that I walk with a stoop, my back screams to my brain that it just weighs too much for me to carry.

The happy pink cheeked children frolic in the night with their bags filled with sweets. They are fulfilled by, or perhaps filled full of a plethora of delicious treats. They cannot see the black specter floating above, waiting, patiently. They all live in warm safe places.

I straggle far behind the others repeating a litany to myself, "If only I could be like the other children." I know it is time to go home if I can make it. I am so cold and I see the black robes of the apparition stirring. It is standing on a power transformer. Two vultures land on the power drop. Three sets of black eyes, as deep as the pits of Hell, are watching me.

Once innocence is lost it can never be regained! What has been stolen from me is beyond price. I am bright and understand that, I am incapable of doing anything about it. I know that I am powerless and it fills me with a deep unrelenting despair. I cannot imagine the terrible things which would happen if I were to try to do something about it, like use a butcher knife on the bastard while he was asleep. One quick cut movement with the knife and I would never have to hurt back there again. But I do not want a new mark to appear right beside the unclean mark, MURDERER!

When I reach the house, I sneak quietly up the back to avoid the front door and the drunken barrage of unanswerable questions which would spew from mother. I sneak into the back door and quietly creep up the stairs. I have to pass within inches of my mother's chair. Half a cigarette lies in an ashtray just beyond her fingers. The glowing end is sending smoke signals to anyone who watches. I barely breathe as I reach the stairs and spider walk to the top making sure to avoid the places that squeak. I finally reach the safety of my room. I have disturbed no one in our drafty little house.

I breathe easier; I know the cost of discovery! "Why don't you have any treats? Didn't you go trick or treating? Where have you been?" On and on would come questions I could not possibly answer. I imagine my older brother coming in and taunting me. "He has no candy because he is a Scaredy Cat!" My older brother knew exactly what to say then he would give the LOOK! It grows more and more powerful, as memories of every kind of abuse a fifteen year old could impose on an eight year old boy, accumulate and burn like coals right at the center of my being.

The ingenuity my brother exercises to avoid detection by a parent, or teacher, or some responsible person reflected his exceptional intellect, and his total lack of conscience.

"See you ain't really dead, you little pussy, but I could kill you anytime I want, and no one would know. Lots of kids die in their sleep, for no apparent reason, remember Eddie?" He smiled cruelly knowing much more about the death of his friend Ray's little brother than anyone ever suspected.. Knowing that I would never dare to say a word to anyone else, he mentions it as a terror tactic.

I am busy gasping trying to get air to my oxygen deprived brain. My brother came close to smothering me with a pillow. He still holds the pillow in his hands, not near as menacing as he was. He scared himself, not because he had almost killed me, but because of the hour of the day it was. When mother came home from work, it would be hard to explain. Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome striking an otherwise healthy eight year old at 4:30 in the afternoon? That was supposed to happen at night. Even Mom could figure it out, all of it. That would cause unthinkable problems.

I understand what does not need to be said again, "If you say anything to anyone you will be dead," A very real possibility which I cannot deny.

I undress in my room silent as a ghost passing. I place my carefully folded clothing neatly on the seat of an old creaky chair at the foot of the bed; I take care not to stress the old glue joints in the chair enough for them to issue audio protest.

I carefully place my shoes under the chair, left to the left and right to the right, taking a moment to wipe a scuff of dust off the toe of the right one with one of my socks.

I carefully cross the floor to the bed side, stepping on a new squeaky board. I dive for refuge under a down filled quilt that grandma made for me down on the farm, the summer before she died.

I finally let loose the silent acid tears that etched my face beyond its years. My shoulders shudder with squelched sobs which consume me. I look at the empty sack on top of my chest of drawers.

I doze and I have visions of crowds of children and people of all ages cringing away from me as I walk past. "Scaredy Cat", "Scaredy Cat," "FILTHY!" followed by Joe calling me a "Scared little PUSSY!"

The stair creaks. My brother Joe begins to creep up the back stairs! I say the nearest thing to a prayer that I know "Please God not tonight."

Joe's obvious lack of coordination as he comes up the stairs betrays that he is SHITFACED drunk, and barely able to navigate to his bed. He flops on it fully clothed and lets the empty "Buffalo Trace" whiskey bottle slide from his hand to the handmade rag rug beside his bed. Sleep takes immediate possession of the inebriated teenager.

Thanks, I breathe a silent prayer.

My Mother had received the quart of "Buffalo Trace" from a male friend who had visions of drinking it with her and getting into her pants.

Someone will catch HELL in the morning!

I walk stealthily across the hall, through the open door to Joe's bedroom. The moonlight from the window shines brightly on the top of the chest of drawers next to his bed. A hunting knife our deceased father gave Joe lies in its leather sheath in plain sight.

I suddenly can't resist it. I am drawn to it like a moth to flame even though I have been forbidden to touch it. My fingers unsnapped the strap which holds it in the sheath. I look at my brother passed out on the bed, his head is askew, and his throat is fully exposed. I look at the edge of the knife and watch the moonlight dance up and down the edge as I tip it slightly side to side. My mind carefully weighs the possibilities.

*************

A loud crash follows the sound of a large 15 year old falling down the stairs. Moments later my mother stands in my room, rubbing her eyes, trying to cope with her hangover headache. Then she focuses on the empty bag on top of my chest of drawers. "What the hell?" She crossed the room purposefully wanting an immediate answer to the questions flooding her mind. She pulls on the down quilt exposing me. Everything is crimson! My hands are covered with blood and still clench the knife!

She screams and grabs the phone. 911 she dials. She grabs my ragged pillow case and wraps a strip around my bleeding wrists. She manages to stem the flow of blood just enough to keep my brain alive.

The next thing her eye falls upon is a torn page from my school tablet. It lies on top of my neatly folded clothes stacked on the chair.

My message is written with a symbolic red crayon. "I ain't no Scaredy Cat."



*****************************



It is now many years later, the authorities decided I must have pushed my brother down the stairs, that night. They took both me and my little sister out of our home. We went through the layers of the system, I sank faster than she did, but, she visits me regularly here. My brother spent thirty years in a wheelchair living with mother before he died. Sometimes I think there are different kinds of Hell to punish each person for his own particular sins.