Relationship

it’s a secret

I have been a reader for a long time. I read with the expectation of entertainment or enlightenment. I’ve been a writer for much less time, but I readily recognize the monumental burden of these goals.

Consequently, there are two types of writers. The first can be called responsible. These writers prioritize the needs and desires of their readers. They use an outline and write with an organized plan. The second can be called cathartic. They write to discard what is inside. They don’t manipulate their words to gain a better position, they just run with it. They spit out their thoughts like tobacco from a ranch hand, sometimes they get lucky and hit the spittoon. They tell their stories as they happened, just as I do now.

Life is full of turning points, and I can clearly remember one that occurred at the beginning of my fourteenth year of life. Inadvertently and innocently, I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see; I witnessed something that was not meant for me to witness. But no one can stop seeing what is seen. Oh how many times I wished for power!

It was the middle of summer, my freshman year of high school was floating in and out of water a short distance away, and I was filled with anxiety and anticipation. My best friend Cara Hale and I spent the weekend at her lake house on the 4th of July. Her parents, whom she had grown to love, were having a barbecue with music, fireworks, and all sorts of patriotic stuff. It was an adult party so we were relegated to the top floor which contained a TV room, small kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. We were armed with movies and nail polish and expected to “do our thing” while the adults partied downstairs. Cara even suggested we sneak downstairs and “share” a bottle of bootleg beer, first.

It was easy enough, as all the adults were outside, stretched out along the lake’s edge, watching the occasional fireworks shoot their rainbow of colors across the water. We put the sequestered bottles in the upstairs mini-fridge and headed outside to join the adults for the show and for me to say good night and say goodbye to my parents and Uncle Joe, who’s been friends with Cara’s dad ever since. University.

When the group had dispersed and the noise below had subsided with each creaking of the gravel driveway, we closed the bedroom door, turned off the lights, and opened our illegal loot. After the first couple sips I realized it would only go on long enough for me to seem to be sharing the experience, and that became easier to do with Cara drinking hers bottle and then “sharing” most of mine. .

Fast forward, past the giggles and gossip, and an hour later I found myself next to a snoring Cara waking me up wondering what high school boys were like and how I would do my hair that first day. In fact, I was so awake that I decided to go into the living room and start reading “The Odyssey.” I knew I would be assigned to freshman English, and I wanted to get ahead of myself to make a good first impression.

After turning on the small table lamp, I saw the beer bottles standing accusingly as evidence of what we had done. We had never thought about how we would get rid of them without getting caught, we had only thought about how to acquire them without getting caught. She knew that if Mrs. H. saw them in the trash above, Cara would be in deep. She had very strict church-going parents (despite her own tendency to party). My life was a little more flexible.

I decided to take the bottles downstairs right then, while the house slept, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it in the morning, especially since I wasn’t sure when (and under what conditions) Cara would wake up. I gently opened the door above and, barely breathing, began to descend slowly and silently, one step at a time. Halfway up, where the stairs turned into the living room, I froze. It was the sound that first caught my attention; had it come from me? So I saw them. The unmistakable face of Mrs. H. on the couch beneath the unmistakable melon-colored polo shirt now pulled up to my Uncle Joe’s shoulders. The same broad, tanned shoulders that took me on far too many long walks with my family in the great outdoors. Those iconic shoulders that would henceforth and forever be tainted by the sight of Mrs. H.’s bright red fingernails dug into them.

Lord, please erase this vision from my memory, I thought, as I stood wide-eyed and standing stiffly long enough for the reality of what I was seeing to sink in. Then, on shaky legs and pounding heart in confusion, I quietly backed up the stairs and closed the door behind me; he still had two bottles of beer in his hands. I took my jeans that were scattered on the floor, stuffed a bottle into each leg, piled them up, and stuffed them into the bottom of my bag. I slid into the big bed next to a semi-conscious Face and tried not to look at the vision that played mercilessly inside my tightly closed eyelids.

What is a newly crowned fourteen year old supposed to do with a secret like that? Tell Cara, potentially devastate her family? Tell my father that his brother-in-law (and partner in law) cheated on his own sister? Blackmailing the culprits wasn’t even a concept, and I knew enough about the school gossip network that if I told any of my other friends, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. All of a sudden I was carrying a load that was thrown at me, and I think that was the moment my shoulders started to slump a bit.

I managed to survive the ordeal, feigning enough fatigue the next morning so as not to arouse suspicion, and quickly made my way out. For reasons I can’t explain, instead of placing the empty bottles inside our house trash bag for pickup the next day, I surreptitiously placed them in the recycling bin of the Baptist minister who lived across the street. There they sat, right on top of the plastic and cardboard, in full view of the neighborhood morning dog walkers. I often wonder what made me do that. Was he trying to change any gossip that might surface about an innocent victim, or was he a passive-aggressive attempt to fool fair adulthood? To this day, I’m still not sure.

Four years later, looking back on the horizon of my high school years and looking forward to the college experience, I was filled with anxiety and anticipation. I decided that in order to prepare myself for the next phase of my life, I needed to stand square in the face of the challenge. It was time to get rid of this burden, to free myself from this involuntary and extremely heavy load. But in doing so, would she lay him to rest or give him immortality? Is my telling of this story now responsible, cathartic, or both? That is my secret, not one that I have been forced to carry, but one that I have created of my own free will.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *