And then....

Pine Ridge, Tennessee, had a record heat wave in the summer of 1975. Our little house didn't have the luxury of air conditioning and so I spent most of that summer roaming the neighborhood in search of shade trees, shallow creeks, and friends to play in them with me. I had little luck with any of the three, which resulted in lots of time lounging in front of the TV sucking on ice cubes with the box fan aimed at me. Most time the best I could hope for was a gentle stirring of the hot, humid air.

I was still an only child at the age of 9, my sister still 6 years away from her tardy (in my opinion) arrival. It would have been nice to have a sister to play with, or so I thought. I conveniently forgot all the sharing that is required with siblings, as I learned when my sister later came along. I had a mother and father who loved me in their own way, not in the involved-but-not-smothering way of Mike and Carol Brady. We lived in a neat little house in a neighborhood that first saw life in the 1930s, and I did have a couple of friends on our block.

The day I morphed from an innocent pigtailed up-and-coming fifth grader into a killer started out the same as nearly every other day that summer. Around 10 a.m., too hot to stay in bed any longer, I rolled out of bed to find myself alone in the house. That wasn't unusual at all, considering that both of my parents worked. We were lucky (or not) enough to live right next door to my grandmother, whose job it was to "keep an eye" on me during the day when I was home from school and my parents were out. "Keeping an eye" on me meant handling any minor crisis I brought to her door, and possibly making me something to eat if I showed up there hungry, which I did at least once a day. Otherwise she pretty much left me to my own devices. I imagine if she didn't see me for 6 or 7 hours she might come knocking, but mostly I was on my own.

So off to the kitchen I went, in search of breakfast. Three bowls of Cap'n Crunch and two episodes of The Brady Bunch later, I started off around the block on my bike looking for someone to play with, preferably Susan or Leecy. Either of them was OK on their own, but like any group of three girls, one of us was always getting left out of the mix. Both were only kids like me, and maybe that was the attraction. And none of us knew how to share toys OR friends, one of those bothersome side effects of being an only.

The Beginning

The summer I was 9 years old, I killed a little girl.

It's quite possible that it wasn't my fault, but it's also possible (likely, even) that I will never know for sure. Accident or not, she's still dead and nothing I can do will ever change the irrefutable fact that my hands took that little girl's life.

Guilt will do funny things to a person - make them bend over backwards trying to make amends, push them to confess their "sins" (real or imagined) just to relieve the weight of guilt. It's a cloud hanging overhead, or a millstone around the neck, or chains holding you down. All those are true, but I'm here to tell you that guilt can also be a rat gnawing a hole in your soul from the inside out.

This is my story.