Years, decades back, I babysat. Babies, little children. I was a teenager, then I began dating but there were a few children I couldn’t give up. Two, a brother and sister; the brother five and a half (and you know that each month is important to a five year - excuse me, five and a half year old) and the sister, three. I’d go visit the family at their farm. They had goats, horses, a pony, hens, and a mean rooster from whom I ran several times, only pecked my ankle twice before flying myself through the back door but hard enough to draw blood. They had this property fifteen minutes from the center of a major city. It’s now AT&T high-rise offices.
The parents didn’t always pay, at least not money. Fine. I received love, great meals and conversations, the novelty of hanging at a farm that shouldn’t exist. It was not the norm, none of it, but it was beautiful. One day, the family visited a friend, a wealthy woman. The youngest child, almost too young to be called a child, almost still a baby — three, remember — had recently learned how to use the toilet, and wanted to go in there by herself, proud of her new accomplishment. The friend, a nut, had guns in just about every room, including one on the back of the toilet, no safety. The parents didn’t know. The child saw the gun, picked it up, turning it toward herself, and it went off, the bullet piercing her head, going through her face, down her neck, out her side. Three year old children do not have a lot of blood; they’re small. It takes them no time to bleed out, maybe seconds, perhaps a minute or two. That child was dead almost immediately.
I sat through the funeral, a church service, closed casket. I’d attended nursery school there. I remember the teachers and the room and what we did and my mom taking me there and picking me up. I remember being four there. This child . . she’d never be four. Outside the church, before going to the graveyard, people gathered. I was with the parents and the five and a half year old brother, who’d be six soon enough. He was dancing on the sidewalk, jumping, smiling. He’d just heard people praising his little sister, a big ceremony all for her! He asked if she was coming home, now that the ceremony was done. He asked several times, over and over, and his mom finally kneeled down, took him by both arms, staring into his face. She explained and I saw a child comprehending, understanding, death, forever, gone. I watched his face crumple, his eyes blur, and then like a seizure falling to the ground, shrieking, screaming, twisting and rolling on the cement, oblivious to his skin tearing on the cement, scraping his legs arms hands face bloody. That was forty years back. As I write this I feel the horror I carry always, fresh.
No family, no child, no siblings, no friends, should ever have such a . . memory. Can I call it a memory, something which tore me so harshly then that I’m bloody too, always? This was a stupid accident. That gun owner is dead, long gone. The parents are long divorced. The brother grew up, last I heard, doing okay. He’s in his forties. I visited a couple of times after the funeral but couldn’t really go back so I don’t have much information after that time. I carry the love of those people and the horrible ache until I too die. That is one memory that makes the idea of leaving this life okay. It will end then. I wish I wish I . . those families and friends in Texas lost children and they’ll now have similar memories, except it was murder. For years, I would never have wished that on anyone but now - now I want those Republican senators and congress reps, those NRA members, those law “enforcement” personnel, that governor, anyone who defends gun rights without requiring responsibility, to suffer too. Those people deserve this pain, not those families in Texas, in California, in Florida, in all the places where mass murder has occurred or can happen, because some people who represent so few want votes, not what is responsible and right.
