The Other Side

It was July in Michigan and on this particular day it was hot. So hot the pavement scorched bare feet, and bicycle tires deflated as if surrendering from the field of play battle before the day was started. It was the early sixties and Laura and Carla’s family moved to Mason Street. A girl named Georgie was the leader of all the kids on the block, riding her bike and taking charge of playtime. The other kids, being younger and impressed by someone marginally older, did whatever Georgie said. Laura, hanging out at their next-door neighbor’s backyard, they had a pool which was a bonus, watched from inside the pool as Georgie rode in on her red Schwinn bike with a banana seat and tall handlebars. The bike was shiny and new, and Laura was a little jealous. She had a blue monstrosity her father and mother had purchased from a yard sale last summer in their old neighborhood. It was blue, with a peeling white stripe along the fenders and body, a seat that pinched, and squeaky tires. It was embarrassing, but it was what her family could afford so Laura was grateful. At least she had a bike. Carla, her younger sister right behind her in the line of five children, ran around squalling about getting a bike, and their parents promised this summer in the new house she would get one.

“Ok, squirts we’re playing hide and seek so line up so I can decide whose it” called out Georgie.

Laura climbed the stairs in the pool, strode across the backyard yard, and struck a defiant pose in front of the red bike. She was the oldest of five in her family and used to being in charge. She led and her brother and sisters followed. Especially the younger ones.

“Hold on a minute. Who put you in charge?” Laura shouted. She didn’t really know why she shouted; her mother had sent her to charm school where she’d learned to drink tea with her pinkie finger sticking out and how to set a table with all the silverware in the correction position around the dinner plate.

“I have always been in charge. Who are you?” Georgie face flamed red and she slammed the kickstand down and hopped off her prized bike.

“I’m Laura. I just moved in next door, and I am in charge of my family. If you have something to say about that then let’s fight about it.” Laura was ready for a fight. It was the late sixties and kids played in the neighborhood innocently unaware of the dangers that lurked in shadows and darkness. They lived in a world of playtime until the streetlights came on and then started again after a breakfast of cold cereal and powdered milk.

Georgie strode forward and stood toe to toe with Laura. She looked different. She had slanted eyes, long black hair, and a long body. Laura knew she could take her. She might be skinny, but she was tough. Her time spent climbing monkey bars at the park, and any tree with branches that yawned down low enough for her to reach had made her agile and at home in her own body.

The two stood facing each other, silently sizing each other up as if a prize fight was brewing. The other kids formed a circle, anxiety riding high in the warming air as bird calls rang out and cicadas sang their raspy song. Georgie moved first. She shoved Laura, who shoved her back. Georgie’s narrowed her eyes and pushed again. Laura stood her ground and then she heard her mother calling from over the fence.

“LAURA ANN RILEY, YOU COME IN HER RIGHT NOW!” Her mother wore a housecoat and slippers and must have been awakened when the neighbor’s mother had called her. Laura’s mother worked mid-nights as a neonatal nurse at Annapolis Hospital and usually slept during the mornings. It was a rule that all five kids remained quiet and outside playing nicely.

“Coming mom!” Laura said grudgingly as she stalked off giving Georgie one last fulminating look. “This isn’t over.”

ONE WEEK later Laura was riding in her mom’s beat-up car with the hole in the floorboard in the back seat and a chugging sound that resonated through the neighborhood. The younger kids sat in the front on the bench seat her mother fearful they would tumble onto the floor and sail through the hole. The older kids knew better. It was Saturday morning, mom didn’t have to work, and she was in a relatively good mood after a visit to the grocery store. Of course, carting around all her siblings was taxing, but she loved all of them equally and was the one parent who made sure her kids got butter and sugar sandwiches on hot summer days.

“What are the plans for the day kids?” Mom asked. “What about you Laura?” Her mom was great at treating all her children as individuals, trying to instill in them a sense of independence and it worked. Each of them had their own personalities, and at times, exercised their independence much to her mom’s chagrin and impatience.

“I think I’m going to take a ride down to Georgie’s house and see if she wants to play.” Laura knew it was a long shot. Typically, her friend’s father wanted them all to himself on the weekends, or her mom would task them with digging out weeds with a wicked looking device that could spear a foot as easily as it could a dandelion.

“Well, make sure you have lunch first, ok? I don’t want the neighbors thinking I can’t feed my own children.” Georgie’s mom was always making too much food and inviting Laura to eat with them. This, for some odd reason, embarrassed her mom. The food, made by Georgie’s Japanese mother, was delicious and different, and Laura looked forward to sushi; canned tuna, white rice, wrapped in seaweed paper. When Mrs. Tanaka told her what it was Laura had balked but now it was a favorite lunchtime treat.

“Ok mom.” Laura knew better than to argue.

The car rattled and bumped into the grated driveway in front the their dilapidated garage that was hanging on to life by the sheer will of her dad’s limited handy-man abilities. Dad came out onto the side porch, arms akimbo on his hips, a smile on his thin face. He was a tall man, with black hair, thin nose, and deep green eyes. He hopped down and headed to the trunk to help with the groceries giving mom a kiss as he passed her.

AFTER LUNCH Laura jumped on her bike, riding to the end of the block they lived on, and pulled up the driveway, her tires making a sticking sound as the rubber hit the hot pavement. Laura hit the kickstand and knocked on the side door. Georgie’s mom answered and called out the her daughter in heavily accented English. Georgie raced forward, slammed through the door, and headed for the backyard to rescue her bike.

“You stay on block. No crossing street.” Georgie’s mom instructed in her broken English.

“Yeah, yeah.” Georgie showed her mom little respect. After her parents had separated Georgie blamed her mom. She talked back, yelled, and disobeyed whenever she was released from what Georgie called prison.

“Where do we go first?” Georgie asked expecting a grand adventure.

“Let’s go to Henry’s and see if we can go swimming.” Laura’s next door neighbor was four years younger than the ten-year-old friends, but Henry and her brother David were best friends now and they were all invited to swim.

“Nah I don’t feel like swimming. I say we go to the park.” The forbidden forested area two streets over. Laura and Georgie’s mom agreed it was dangerous and didn’t allow the girls to go in. But true to Georgie’s and Laura’s independent personalities, they regularly went into the park.

BOTH GIRLS rode down the bicycle paths in the deeply shaded park, the cooler air drying some of the sweat running down their faces. Georgie dared Laura to ride down dead-man’s curve and Laura was tempted but knew it could lead to scraped hands and knees and even broken bones. She also didn’t want to ruin her bike, which would get her into even more trouble which was building higher and higher at the peak of which was surely a grounding and a spanking.

“Let’s go to the damn,” suggested Laura.

“I don’t know,” Georgie hedged. “My dad is coming to get me in a couple hours and if I get too wet and dirty he’s gonna kill me.”

The damn was their summer project. The Rouge River narrowed as it entered a certain area of the park and both girls had made it their mission to build a damn and stop the flow of water. They didn’t look at it as an impossible task, more a challenge with the exuberance of two ten-year olds who believed in possibilities. The faith of youth.

They quickly maneuvered their bikes through the trees along well-worn paths and heard laughter and yelling up ahead. Both girls back pedaled to engage the brakes and straddled their bikes.

“Who’s down there?” Laura asked quietly.

“I don’t know. Sounds like boys.” Georgie said.

“Let’s go take a look,” Laura whispered.

Georgie laid her bike down in the weeds along the path and Laura followed suit, in hope of disguising their rides from anyone who might abscond with them. Laura being braver of the two, having to constantly contend with her siblings, strode forward and spied the boys tearing apart all their hard work on the damn. Laura’s face reddened and her temper rose. She bravely strode forward and stood, fists clenched at her sides. She knew these boys, they went to the same catholic school she did. They were a year older and gangly with youth.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Laura yelled the question and the boys stopped and looked at the two girls.

“What’s it to you?” The older one, with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, stared down at them. The other two boys, each sporting bruised knees and hockey sticks stood guard over their companion who balanced precariously on the old growth tree that had fallen across the leech infested water and was the base of their damn.

“This is our place. You need to leave…now.” Georgie had stepped forward and put her fists on her hips looking like Errol Flynn in one of his pirate movies her dad watched on their black and white television.

The boys laughed then the older one, Scott Schultz, jumped down off the fallen tree and began whispering to his friends. Laura prepared herself for a fight but instead the boys turned as one and smiled.

“You looking for something to do today?” Scott asked sneering at them.

“We already have something to do,” Laura argued.

“Something serious. Not some stupid damn that’ll never work. This is something special.”

Laura and Georgie stepped away, keeping a watchful eye on the boys. Laura was curious but Georgie was doubtful and cautious.

“I’m not going,” Georgie insisted. “I have to go home, and I don’t trust these boys.”

Georgie went to the public school across Saline Avenue across the railroad tracks, away from their suburban world filled with bungalows, and ice cream trucks that ran everyday just after lunch. She didn’t know these boys, but Laura did, and, while they were troublemakers, she knew Scott’s sister and was friends with her at the catholic school her parents insisted they attend even though it put a huge financial strain on their family necessitating powdered milk mixed with real milk and candy being a rare event.

“I’m going.” Laura decided.

Georgie huffed out a breath, hissed a warning, then strode away to retrieve her Schwinn bike.

“I’ll go,” Laura called out bravely as Georgie rode away as fast as she could toward home and her father.

The boys hooted and hollered and raced to get their bikes as Laura retrieved hers and they all sped off along the path that ran the length of the wider, wilder part of the river. Laura rode with care, balancing on her bike in hopes she didn’t topple into the dirty river.

“Where are we going,” she called.

“Across the road to the other side of the park,” said Scott. “Scared?”

The Other Side. The words caused cold dread to pool into her heart and her hands to sweat on the handlebars. The kids on her street never went there because they were told only bad people were there. Now here she was, venturing into an unknown part of her secret play area, and no one knew where she was going. Maybe this was a mistake after all.

THE HIDDEN path leading into the other side was steep and bumpy and Laura’s old bike moved down it heroically. The old girl was proving she was up to the task even if she was a garage sale find and probably as old as she was. As the path leveled out Laura let out a sigh of relief, which was quickly followed by a gasp of shock as it opened into a field away from the river. The area was carpeted with green grass that was low to the ground, old growth trees creating shade and relief from the hot sun, and one lone old broken tree in the center. The boys dropped their bikes to the ground, the sound of spokes and pedals echoing through the open field. They sniggered and whispered as they strode toward the broken tree, from which a high-pitched scream emitted. Now Laura was scared. A ghost? A goblin? She’d read about them in the books she borrowed on library days with her mom.

“Come on!” Scott yelled.

Laura gently laid her bike on the grassy soil and stood still. The screaming had stopped and the field was eerily silent.

“What’s in there?” She asked.

“Come and see or are you chicken?”

That got her back up and she threw back her shoulders, puffed out her chest, and strode forward. She was still scared but she wouldn’t show these boys. As she approached, she saw a small opening at the base of the tree large enough for something to crawl through. She looked at Scott and saw the same features of her friend Caroline. She was kind, and part of a group of girls that called themselves by a secret name and did secret things. The nuns didn’t like their exclusive club and talked to them individually on occasion, but the girls remained resolute. How could Caroline’s older brother be this mean?

“Watch,” Scott intoned. One of the other boys handed him a hockey stick and Scott reared back and whacked the tree. A scream tore through the air. Laura took a step back and felt her feet starting to rebel. A voice in her head yelled “run!”, but she stood stock still. Scott hit the tree a second time and a small furry creature started to emerge quickly. Scott, startled, swung down and there was a loud crack that rang through the grassy field, bouncing off trees and echoing through her head as if alive and hissing.

A small baby raccoon fell to the ground, blood rushing in a torrent of red from its head. The poor thing was dead. They’d killed it. Laura felt tears welling up and she choked them back down. The boys seemed frozen in place, then in silent agreement picked up their bikes and ran off quickly, their legs pumping as fast as possible up the steep path. Laura had never seen death. She’d certainly never caused anything to die, unless you counted the ants she stepped on inadvertently every day, she walked down the sidewalk. Everyone did that, it was unavoidable. But to intentionally kill another creature was wrong. the Bible said, “Do not kill.” That was one of the big ones. While she hadn’t killed the raccoon she’d watched.

“Are you there, God…it’s me,” Georgie said softly. There was no one around so she dropped to her knees and bowed her head the way the nuns and priest taught them. “I didn’t mean it God. It just happened. What happens now?”

She didn’t expect an answer but knew her teacher, Sister Ann, would tell her to go to confession. This sin was a big one and now she knew why the kids didn’t come to this side of the park. It was evil. Evil deeds were done here, and she’d watched one happen. The priest, Father Mackowitcz talked about heaven. One of two sides after physical death. Heaven and hell. Where was she? On the other side she knew. She was in hell.

She slowly walked toward the fallen baby creature and started to dig a hole with her hands. It took over half an hour but finally it was buried. She said a prayer, made the sign of the cross, and walked her bike up the steep path and back to her safe world, on the small street, in a neighborhood that didn’t include death and murder. She saw things differently now. She wanted her mom. She wanted to tell her what happened, but she knew all she would get was a scolding and a grounding. She could tell Georgie but then she’d have to admit she’d been wrong. So very wrong. She would tell the priest in confession, God would forgive her, and she would vow to never to do harm to any living creature. She knew now. The finality of death. The shocking truth and the abruptness of a life ending. She understood. And she grew up a little that summer day.