When I was a child, parents didn’t hover the way my generation of parents did. Back then, unless we had a place to be, my sister, Resi, and I roamed the block freely, starting as soon as we could toddle out of the yard.
One of our friends was Lawson King, who lived up the street. We played with him often because our parents were friends with his parents, who bickered in the most charming way, interrupting and correcting each other’s stories, getting all puffed up with indignation at being interrupted and corrected, and then breaking out laughing.
Lawson was a gigantic, rambunctious, and loud boy, who ran around waving toy guns and shouting that he was killing the Krauts (or Germans or Nazis). Once he threw a coffee can filled with rocks at my head and said he was bombing the Germans.
Though I was young, I saw the incongruity. He’d learned to dislike the Germans from his dad, who’d fought on the American side of the war, while my dad had fought for the Germans—considering this, how could the two men be friends? But they were. I think my father must have encountered a lot of prejudice back then. Maybe he learned to see beyond it. I think if I were him, and I knew some kid up the street was shouting about hating the Germans, I’d have been enraged every day. I wish I’d discussed it with him. I would have appreciated his wisdom concerning tolerance.
Lawson was my age, but he was more my sister’s friend than mine, mainly because she was a bit of a tomboy while I was timid and small; and I found his size to be intimidating and his booming voice to be unsettling.
When I was around four years old, he told us that his cat had kittens, so Resi and I went down to his house to see them. They were in a box in the garage, and because the garage door was heavy, the three of us worked together to raise it; only when it was about halfway up, Lawson and Resi had a brief conversation, let go of the door, and ran into the house. I was little and they’d left me holding the weight of that door. I wasn’t strong enough to hold it up, so I dropped it.
Resi and Lawson came back out with his mother, who lifted the door, giving us a view of blood smeared all over the garage floor and kitten heads and paws strewn about. The mother cat wasn’t there.
I thought I’d killed those kittens by dropping the door on them, which is nonsense. There were only parts of kittens scattered around, not whole squished kitties. But I was four with a four-year-old’s perspective. It was traumatic when I dropped the door and then the kittens were dead.
To this day when a breeze or waft carries a particular combination of odors—blood, garage, cats—it calls to mind images of that grisly slaughter.
Years later, as an adult, I was reminiscing with my mother about the Kings.
“Do you remember when I killed their kittens?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Shocked, she said, “A tom got those kittens. You had nothing to do with it.”
Well, this was upsetting. I’d felt at fault for a major portion of my life, and it wasn’t true.
“I’ve believed all this time that I’d dropped the door on them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea.”
Say what you will about hovering mothers, but if I knew that one of my kids had seen cat carnage, I would’ve talked to him about it. My mother had simply assumed that I was hunky-dory after seeing bits of dead kitten. I’d been bitter toward Lawson and Resi because they abandoned me that way. And I’d felt so guilty, a killer of cats. After I learned the reality, the incident came into focus. Resi and Lawson must have seen the mess in the garage when we were raising the door, while I was probably squeezing my eyes closed, concentrating on finding strength to help with the weight.
As we grew older new interests came along and Lawson, Resi, and I quit spending time together. Later, when we were adults, he and I ran into each other at the chicken place on Georgia. He was toting a really big baby. He and his wife were divorced. He had no job. He’d tried to get into the army, but they turned him away—which was too bad because being a soldier was what he’d always wanted to do with his life. He said he suffered from depression, and I realized that what I once thought was over-exuberance was most likely bipolarism.
A few years later, his mother called mine and told her that Lawson had killed himself.
What a weird and sad story this has turned out to be.
