My First Felony

“There she is,” the brown-haired woman pointed at me, “That’s her, that’s the girl who did it!” It was the worst thing I had ever done, and I was only eight years old.

Our house in Wiesbaden had a spiral staircase that wound from floor to floor. Five horizontal wrought iron square poles that ran the entire height of the house braced the staircase and the individual dark cherry wood steps were frosted with a perfectly centered half-moon of white carpet. If you put the side of your head flat against one of the cold poles you could see each floor’s landing. Every floor and every room had a designated function: we ate breakfast in the breakfast nook; we had dinner in the dining room; we read books, entertained guests, or listened to music in the living room; we watched TV in the TV room not to be mistaken for the den where we did art projects and played games; we had a foyer for the piano; guests had their own bathroom and bedroom; my parents had an entire floor; my father had his own office; complete with a door, the washer and dryer had an individual room; each child had their own room and unique bedroom sets (Doss, her name is French for Dorothy, had a rich Victorian set, Jo-Ann had a deep chestnut loft with a coordinating office, Richie had a modern bedroom set with obtuse angles); I had a light blue and white little girls room which looked like it had been ripped from a magazine; it was so perfect, down to the matching sky blue toy box. There was ample space for everyone, and I was always lonely.

Covering a quarter acre of land, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, the property that hugged ours was an interesting space; it spanned the entire length of our property and the replica property next door. It was a refuge of sorts for all of us, but a German family was the rightful owners and owning land in Germany was as precious as owning land in New York City. The visiting family next door probably lived in some stunning penthouse that overlooked the entire city somewhere downtown and would drive the ten minutes or so to this plot of land so they could all run free. There were six of them: two parents, two daughters, and two dogs. The dogs were longhaired. The dogs stood about two and a half feet tall from the ground and their hair, I swear, was over two and half feet long. They were afghan hounds; show dogs I’m sure, with long straight, silky smooth hair that brushed the ground as they walked. One was midnight black and the other was a dirty blonde with almost white highlights. I don’t remember ever petting them but I admired them so much. They were loved. I had no pets; my father’s allergies wouldn’t allow it.

We called the neighboring property a garden but it wasn’t. Always gorgeously green with lush, thick, soft blades of grass, it was more like a fenced backyard with no house to call it home. There were two walnut trees on the southwest side and two cherry trees on the southeast side. A garden shed sat centered in the garden. I imagine that it had gardening tools, rain gear, a small barbeque grill, and what-nots except, as a child, I was sure that it held fresh picnic baskets filled with fresh bread and cheese, red and white plaid picnic blankets, toys for eight year olds, and other delightful things.

I met her at the PX's Laundromat. The Laundromat had two very important machines: a candy machine and a soda machine. Other people went there for the other two types of machines but for me the Laundromat was a rich source of food and friends, and I could usually buy a friend or two when I went there on the weekends. The PX guaranteed receipt of the American dollar and that each merchant spoke English. The Laundromat was a bookend to the long L-shaped shopping strip and the bookstore (where my brother could always be found in the back reading comics) flanked the other end. There was a barbershop, a bookstore, a furniture store, a clothing store, restaurants, and post office. The Post Exchange itself was only one of about thirty-five stores, sandwiched between a German bakery and Burger King, but for all intents and purposes whether we wanted a Berliner, a book, a haircut, or a burger, we said we were going to the PX.

When you walked around back of the Laundromat, you had two choices: either turn right into an overflow parking lot that was lined with tall, dark green bushes dotted with wild red raspberries, or turn left following the sidewalk up the hill toward the Commissary. I had a third choice. I could go straight through the overgrowth on a private path, between the electrical service station and the parking lot, and then past my father’s vegetable garden to go to my house. There was a lot of underbrush and trees surrounding the station so you needed prior knowledge to access the garden or get to my house (the vegetable garden wasn’t on our property, my father figured it was there for the taking, like a lot of things). My father’s vegetable garden was between the electrical service station’s chain link fence and our deep, dark wooden and woven eight-foot blockade that separated us from the outside world. My house stood hidden like a secret that wasn’t to be shared. I was lonely.

At the Laundromat, I was probably a welcome distraction for both parent and child as there wasn’t much for a child to do other than pester their parents for a full wash and dry cycle. I would quickly befriend someone and play outside on the railings. The bars served as a fence of sorts creating a barrier between walkers and riders but really, you could do tricks and other fun things on them. My new friend and I would sit and drink orange soda and eat chocolate on the steps leading to the walkway behind the Laundromat. Sometimes we would play in the always-empty overflow parking lot with chalk I had brought from home. Really, the possibilities were endless for my transient friends and me.

One particularly lonesome day in June, it had to have been June because the cherry trees next door had just started to come on with their first tart batch of cherries. I met a little girl with big brown eyes and we played just like any day while her mother did laundry. She was two years younger than me, which made me an idol and her up for anything that I had in mind. We began our excursion inside the Laundromat watching the clothes wrestle in the dryers that were stacked in two long rows along the entire length of the Laundromat. The washing machines were not any fun except during the spin cycle when you put your ear flat on the side of the machine so that you could feel the noise. Beginning what would be an unforgettable friendship, I bought soda and chocolate for us to eat on the outside steps.

The girl with big brown eyes and soft freckled skin and I eventually ended up eating cherries from the cherry trees. I showed her how to scale the lattice fence and lower herself into the neighbor’s garden. I taught her how to find the best ones by judging on color and feel, and that you would have to be patient and keep eating until you got that one really sweet cherry. We chased after the sweet cherries for a while. Out of every ten cherries we ate, only one was sweet enough to call a cherry.

We had fun—not real fun or exciting fun, but fun that two little girls could have when they were always in agreement with each other. After climbing the lattice fence back onto my property, I took her across Abraham Lincoln Strasse away from the PX and showed her the industrial-sized dumpster that sat filled to the brim with shredded documents—I would end up lighting that dumpster on fire later on that summer. Flames shot over twenty feet high (that was my second felony).

Then we moseyed back to my house. I didn’t take her into my house. There was nothing to show her. No one was home.

About an hour later we decided to go back to the Laundromat. We stepped out of the huge blockade of a fence that lined our property. I bolted the hidden entrance behind us and skirted my father’s stolen plot of land. We carefully wound our way through the underbrush next to the electrical service station and once we hit the sidewalk we held hands and started skipping; but instead of just merrily going our way, each skip was a leap high into the air. We were giggling at each other when a woman came running around the corner of the Laundromat with horror and anguish on her white, taught face. Her eyes were a hundred years old.

The mother saw the little girl with big brown eyes, her daughter, and convulsed onto her knees grabbing her daughter in one fluid motion. The brown haired woman moved her hands all over her daughter’s body from stroking her hair, a hand flat on her back, grabbing her arms, holding her hands, lifting her up and ever closer to her—it was like her mom wanted to hold all of her, wanted to make sure that every little piece of her was real, but was limited with only two hands.

I could see her face peeking over the little girl’s shoulder. Tears streamed down the contorted face as her body was wracked with sobs.

I just stood there watching this movie unfold. I didn’t know, exactly, what had happened. Sure, the lady didn’t know where her daughter was; I knew that. I had asked the little girl at the cherry tree if she told her mommy where she was and the little girl, with lying eyes, nodded
hesitantly; I knew and I was selfish and I was lonely.

There was an electricity that hovered in the air above them, like her mother’s spirit had swollen with worry, sorrow, fear, and heartache and ever so slowly the electricity dissipated in her daughter’s presence. The little girl with no other recourse, solid and standing, soaked in the hug.

Her mom, in one breath, exhaled how worried she was, how grateful she was, and how much she missed her daughter. This is where I disconnected. When my mom called the police because I was missing (yes, it happened often—I saw no purpose going home, ever), my parents would only tell me how bad I made them look. And, yes, they rhetorically asked and accused: “what will the neighbors say?” I didn’t know why this little girl wasn’t in trouble for causing her parent’s pain. It was like the little girl was a person and her mother’s pain came from love not pride.

I never missed my parents and my parents never missed me. Earlier that year, I was home alone and called my mom at work. After asking for my mom, her co-worker’s voice changed, it got soft, quiet, compassionate, and filled with pity, “She’s in Belgium, honey. She’ll be there all week.” I said thank you like a polite little girl and hung up the phone. I felt silly that I had forgotten that she was in Belgium. Even then, I didn’t miss my mom and my mom was not going to call me while she was out-of-town. Once she was home, I got in trouble for calling because it made my mom look bad. I wasn’t wracked with sobs.

I stood there looking at this alien occurrence in front of me.

Then, I saw the MP’s and, oddly because they rarely if ever came onto the military base, the German police accompanied by their police dogs. All of the policemen wore black armbands labeling who they were in big white capital letters, one said Polizei and the other MP. They were everywhere. The German police stood in their dark green slacks and light green shirts with machine guns strapped across their chests, and the MP’s drowning in their camouflage uniforms and hand guns on their hips looked prepared for war. But, we weren’t going to war; we were outside the Laundromat.

There was so much commotion around the little girl with big brown eyes and fair freckled skin that it was easy for me to melt away and take the third option (open only to me) home.

I walked home unaware of the monster I was. In their mind for the last hour, I was a kidnapper, a potential child molester, a freak who preyed on little girls; I stole joy, comfort, and love. I was a kidnapper and a thief.

I walked through the underbrush, glanced at my father’s squatter’s garden, lifted the bolt on the fence, closed the eight foot tall gate and walked to the front of my house. I opened the heavy, stained-glass embedded dark wood door. I passed the guest bathroom, the foyer with the piano, the living room, the dining room, the breakfast nook, the kitchen, walked up the winding stairs with freshly cleaned half-moons of white carpet (the maid must have come), past the rectangle doorways of the Victorian set, the chestnut Loft, and the Modern angles, and went into my room. I laid down on my silky soft duvet cover that was sprinkled with tiny light blue flowers and picked up a book. It was King’s Firestarter, one of my favorites. Wishing that my father would love me the way Charlie’s dad did, I read.

Months later, I was walking up the steps to the Laundromat when I saw the little girl with big brown eyes, her mother, her father and I think a brother and sister walking from the parking lot to the PX. “There she is,” the brown-haired woman pointed at me, “That’s her, that’s the girl who did it!” It is the worst thing I have ever done.