THE REAL LJ IDOL SEASON 7 WEEK 14 -- CRACKS
BROKEN MEMORY
I'm standing in a bathroom over a sink while a woman washes blood off of me. I don't quite remember how I got there, but I am deeply shocked at how red the water is turning. Everything seems remote and distant, like I'm watching a TV show.
One thought keeps echoing in my mind: It wasn't an accident.
The last thing I remember was being with my best friend, Thomas, standing in the garden in front of his house, playing a game. At least, it was supposed to be a game...
"How could you?" the woman says as she washes my scalp. I vaguely remember that the woman is Thomas' mother. "How could you?"
I don't understand why she's so upset with me. Not really. It was Thomas' idea, after all.
Thomas was the only boy my age who lived on my block. All the older kids in the neighborhood delighted in bullying me and calling me a "retard". Thomas never did that -- he was always very polite. That's why he was my best friend.
Tell the truth, shame the devil: At the time, Thomas was my only friend.
I had gone to Thomas' house that morning to spend time with him. We briefly played cards, but his mother sent us outside while she cleaned house... and it was too windy to continue playing cards. Since it was just Thomas and myself, I had difficulty thinking of what else we could do together.
Thomas thought of a "game" we could play together. When he explained it to me, it seemed like an odd idea for a game, so I figured it had to be make-believe. But even for make-believe it was pretty far out there...
"What were you thinking?" Thomas' mother demands. "Were you even thinking at all?"
I remember thinking that Thomas was pretending. He had to be pretending...
Thomas' house had an elevated porch in front, with a little rock garden below it. Thomas' idea was that we would carry some of the larger rocks up from the garden onto the porch, and then we would each take turns: one of us would stand in the garden while the other dropped a huge stone on the head of the boy below.
At first, I thought Thomas was joking... but he kept insisting it would be fun. Thomas even offered to stand in the garden first.
I felt very uneasy about the whole idea, but Thomas was both persistent and persuasive. And besides, he was my best friend. So if he wanted to feel a thrill from pretending to drop rocks on each other's heads... well, there's no harm in pretending, right?
So as agreed, Thomas went down into the garden, and I went up to the porch and picked up a stone twice the size of his head...
Thomas' mother is growling angrily at me. "How could you do it? How could you?"
... and I deliberately dropped the stone at least 5 feet away from Thomas. After all, even in make-believe you need to be careful.
I thought little of it as Thomas and I exchanged places. Once I was in the garden, I did feel uncomfortable when Thomas kept asking that I get closer to the porch. I didn't understand why I needed to be so close if he was only going to pretend to drop a rock on my head. And therein lies the problem:
I thought Thomas was pretending. Thomas was "playing" for real.
"How could you?" Thomas' mother asks me again. "How could you agree to such a thing?"
He was my best friend. He was my only friend.
It wasn't an accident.
Thomas' mother sent me away, saying I should never come back. Like I needed to be told that. But honestly, what do you expect from a woman who assumed a five-year-old boy with a head injury would be able to find his own way home alone?
There are times when I look back on that day, and think that I must have imagined it. I mean, such things just don't happen in the real world, do they? They sure as hell don't happen in nice neighborhoods, like the one I grew up in.
But if you touch the right spot on my head, you can feel where the bone plates were separated by the impact; a crack in my skull hidden by skin. And while the scar has faded over the last forty-odd years, I've lost enough hair for it to be visible. If that weren't enough proof, my older brother (who I shared a room with) remembers me coming home all bloody that day, and my parents being in hysterics over what Thomas had done to me.
And people wonder why I find it so hard to trust...