Assigned to the afternoon kindergarten class at Long Beach
Elementary in the fall of 1963, I’d watch Bozo Circus while eating a bowl of
Franco-American spaghetti or Campbell’s chicken noodle soup before getting
ready to go to school. Mom would call out for me to hurry or you’ll be late.
Mrs. Miller, my teacher, was a kind-hearted woman close to
60 years old with beautiful white hair. Each month, with artistic flair, she’d
draw a different color chalk illustration on the blackboard—apples and
back-to-school books in September, pumpkins and fall leaves in October, and a
great big gobbler of a turkey for November. In April she drew a huge pink and
white Easter bunny. I remember because in our class picture my best friend
Shaun Johnston is pointing to the bunny with her left hand. Her eyes are shut.
When I look at the class picture, I get the eerie sensation
that it’s going to turn into a video any second and play the scene. But it’s
just wishful thinking because I really just want to see Shaun open her eyes.
Carol is perched at the top of our indoor slide, shaped like a giraffe’s neck.
I’m sitting at a desk with a chalkboard top, my hair in a pixie-style cut. I
know I have a hand full of candy in my lap because I punched the skirt of my
dress down between my legs to form a pouch just before the picture was snapped.
We’re surrounded by 20 other six-year-olds. Shaun’s towhead hair is blunt cut
like a little Dutch boy, and her eyes must have blinked just as the shutter
clicked. If the scene were to play out,
Shaun would open her eyes and smile at me, Carol would slide down the long
giraffe neck, and I would quickly scoop the candy out of my lap to keep it from
falling on the floor.
My neighborhood was full of boys, so Shaun was my first
girlfriend. We played together every school day. Sometimes we’d roll up drawing
paper into cone-shaped crowns and pretend we were princesses, but mostly we’d
just sit next to one another during art activity or get in line for the giraffe
slide together. We’d also place our little pink sleeping towels on the floor
next to each other for rest time. Mrs. Miller let us arrange our sleeping towels
under her desk one time. Excited about such a privilege, we giggled through the
whole rest time.
I asked my mom if Shaun could come over to play but she
pretended she didn’t hear me. I kept asking until Mom finally said with
irritation in her voice, “Stop asking me, I don’t know her mother at all.” This
seemed to be a logical explanation at the time but years later I found out that
Shaun’s family was Catholic—a word my maternal grandmother whispered whenever
she absolutely had to say it—and probably the real reason Shaun could not be
invited over to my house. I think we weren’t supposed to associate with
Catholics.
A few days before the end of summer vacation and the start
of first grade, I woke up as usual, got dressed, put on my red PF Flyers, and
ate a bowl of Cheerios. I kicked myself away from the table and headed for the
door. It was gloriously sunny and soon we’d all be back in school.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked suspiciously.
“Outside,” I said with a shrug to indicate the unsaid, “Of
course.”
“Not this morning,” she said with great finality. “Go
downstairs or in your room and play.”
I didn’t think I was in trouble for anything but I wracked
my brain just the same trying to remember if I’d done something I wasn’t
supposed to. I could tell Mom was in one of her moods, but risked asking the
question, “Why?”
She stood holding a dishrag that she now began twisting
tighter and tighter. I could tell something was wrong and I was expecting her
to outline my latest transgressions to explain the punishment. I was,
therefore, surprised when she said, “Because, there’s a bad man outside.”
A bad man? “Where is he?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Out on the beach somewhere. The police are looking for him
and when they catch him, you can go outside.”
A bad man. The police. I hopped up on the sofa in our living
room to look out the picture window and started imagining the bad man running
along the sandy lakeshore with the police in hot pursuit. I imagined him
tripping as a wave rushed up over the sand giving the police a chance to catch
up. I wanted them to catch him quickly. I wanted to go outside.
It seemed like a long time but in truth it was probably no
more than an hour. I’d crawled off the sofa and watched a baby show, Romper
Room, where Miss Somebody was talking about being a “Do-Bee” and a “Don’t-Bee.”
The only thing I really liked about this show was the big rubber ball with a
rubber band attached. You wrapped the band around your wrist and then hit the
ball with the heel of your hand. If you got it going fast enough, it was a lot
of fun. I also enjoyed the magic mirror. “Romper stomper bomper boo, tell me,
tell me, tell me do. Did all my friends have fun at play? Tell me, mirror, tell
me, who?” Miss Somebody would then say, “I see Timmy, and Jennie, and Linda,
and Sam.” Every day she’d name a bunch of new names but I don’t ever remember
her saying Debbie. After Romper Room, I hopped back up on the sofa and joy!
Gerry Beres was outside on his scooter. “Mom,” I shouted, “Gerry’s outside. Can
I go out now?”
Mom gave a quick glance out the window, saw Gerry and said,
“Just a minute.” She then went and called Mrs. Beres who must have told her
that they’d caught the bad man because Mom said I could go out.
The first week of first grade was hectic. There were kids in
my class that hadn’t been with me in afternoon kindergarten and only a few who
had. Miss Hill seemed very nice but things were a lot different now. We were in
school all day long for starters and we were going to learn how to read. Some
kids already knew how, like Keith Mulligan who bragged about it all the time.
“That’s baby stuff,” he’d boast, “I’ve been reading since before I started
kindergarten.” It took me a few days to realize that Shaun was not in my class.
In fact, I hadn’t seen her during recess either.
“Hey Mom,” I chirped one afternoon while eating an
after-school snack, “Shaun’s not in my class and I haven’t seen her at recess
either.” Mom was busying herself with preparing dinner but I saw her lips press
together. Both Mom and Dad had this mannerism. If either one of them were about
to have to say something unpleasant or confrontational, they’d press their lips
together like they were swallowing the bitterness of the words about to be
said.
Mom scraped some chopped up onion from the cutting board
she’d been using into a skillet and said, “Shaun’s gone to heaven now so you
won’t be seeing her at school.” I stared at the quarter-inch of milk left in
the bottom of my glass and at the two slices of skinless apple still on my
plate. “Did you hear what I said?” Mom asked when I didn’t respond.
I heard the onion start to sizzle in the oil in the skillet
and replied, “Why did she go to heaven?”
Mom adjusted the heat on the stove and started stirring the
onion with one of the wooden spoons she used to spank me with when I was bad.
She pushed her glasses, which had slipped down her nose a bit, back into place
and answered, “Because God wanted her and her little brother Cary to be with
him now.” I knew this meant Shaun and her brother were dead. I knew that dead
meant I would never see her again but I could see her so clearly in my mind.
Our kindergarten year memories came rushing back and I could see us as if
someone had made a movie I could watch. We were sliding down the giraffe’s
neck, skipping around on the playground, playing fairy princess, giggling on
our rest towels, standing in line to go to the toilet, crouching together
against the wall in the hall during air raid drills, and dipping our paint
brushes in the same color poster paint. I brought my plate and milk glass to
the counter and left it there for Mom to clean up. She didn’t say anything
about my not finishing the snack. That night, I said my prayers as usual.
First, “The Lord’s Prayer,” which I had just learned and now said instead of
“Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” Then my made-up prayer: “God bless Mommy and
Daddy and Susan, Auntie Beth and Uncle Dick and Cousin Karen and Michael John.
God bless the grandpas and grandmas and God bless Shaun and Cary up in heaven.
Amen.” Mom listened to my prayer but didn’t comment on the addition of the two
new names.
About a year later, I was very excited to learn that the
family that had bought the Beres’s house next door had a girl just about my
age. The thought of having a girlfriend right next door after all these years
of just boys with their war games, police games, and cowboys and indians games was a dream come true. My paternal
grandmother was visiting when I told her the news of the new girl coming to our
neighborhood. As we walked around the neighborhood hand-in-hand, for the first
time in nearly a year, I brought Shaun’s name up in the conversation. I told my
grandmother how much I missed her and how much I was looking forward to having
a girlfriend. I could see the pain in my grandmother’s eyes for something I did
not have the capacity to comprehend as she squeezed my hand in hers and sighed,
“Yes, that was quite a tragedy.”
I looked up at her quizzically and asked, “Why are Shaun and
Cary going to heaven to be with God a tragedy?”
Grandma must have realized in that moment that I didn’t know
the whole story but she covered up by saying, “No, going to heaven’s not a
tragedy. I just meant that I understand why you miss her. I’m sure this new
girl will be a great friend and you’ll enjoy having a girl in the neighborhood
for once.” After I did find out the truth, my grandmother told me she felt
terrible about not telling me herself what had happened, “It’s just that you
were so young and the crime so hideous, it just didn’t seem right to let you
know those kinds of details at such a tender age.”
I was 13 years old before I found out all the details. It
was during home-ec class in junior high. There were three home-ec components
each girl was to take during seventh grade—cooking, sewing, and child care. We
were in Mrs. Satterley’s child care class talking about the various
responsibilities of caring for children when somehow the subject came up.
Always more interested in getting off-topic than staying on the subject of the
class, the girls who already knew the story of the Johnston murders started
spilling out the details.
The Johnstons lived next door to a single mother and her
16-year-old son. The son had been in trouble with the law for petty things like
setting firecrackers off in mailboxes and building a small fire on the golf
course. He was one of those kids that liked to pull the wings off flies and
enjoyed torturing helpless animals. One afternoon he coaxed the Johnston
children over to his house presumably to see something delightful in the crawl
space beneath the house. There, he tied them up in such a way that as he
applied pressure to the ropes, they suffocated. After seeing what he’d done,
he’d fled the scene on his bicycle. When the Johnston children did not show up
for dinner, Mrs. Johnston called the police. An investigation took place, the
dead children were found, and a man-hunt began just as the sun was setting on
September 2, 1964. Shaun was six years old and Cary was three. The next morning
as the sun rose in the east and illuminated the sky over Lake Michigan, the
police found the boy sitting alone in the sand, his bicycle in a heap next to
him. He was arrested and tried as an adult. After his conviction, there was
great talk of the death penalty. He was 16 years old and psychiatrists attested
to his state of mind. He was found guilty but not by reason of insanity. He
received a life sentence and was sent to the Indiana State Prison.
I sat in Mrs. Satterley’s class stunned by the details. I
tried to conjure up happier images of Shaun and me on the giraffe slide in Mrs.
Miller’s class but all I could see was a dark dug out space under a house with
ropes tied around her little body. I started crying. I had never mourned for
Shaun, and the flood of tears surprised and embarrassed me. Mrs. Satterley came
over and placed her arm around me. Handing me a tissue, she apologized for
allowing such a sensitive subject matter to be discussed in the class. I shook
my head back and forth and sobbed out, “No, you don’t understand.” She squeezed
me closer and Abby, who was sitting behind me, leaned forward and put her hand
on my shoulder. “Shaun was my best friend but I didn’t know until now how she
died.” There was a bit of a gasp as several of the other girls reacted to the
revelation.
I think it was just one of those terrible things that Mom
and Dad thought would just go away with the passing of time. I think they had
absolutely no idea, even though I said “God bless Shaun and Cary” every night
in my prayers, that I felt things as deeply as I did—that I loved her. I loved
her for being my first girlfriend and for wearing black paten leather when I
had to wear sensible saddle shoes.
Coincidentally, at the end of seventh grade, I received an
invitation from Long Beach Elementary School to attend Mrs. Miller’s retirement
party. It was to be held at the school on a Friday afternoon. I decided I would
go, so on the appointed day, I hopped off the school bus and ran up the street
to dump my books off at home. I then opened the garage door and got my bike
out. I rode my bike the mile over to my old school and parked it in the bike
stands outside. There were a lot of people there. The auditorium was packed. A
refreshment table was set up near the stage and happy volunteers were pouring
little plastic cups of punch for the attendees. There were cookies and brownies
and Mrs. Miller was shaking hands with people who stood in line waiting to
congratulate her. All around the perimeter of the room I noticed there were
large poster boards. Each board had a year stenciled in black magic marker at
the top and then the sheet was filled with little wallet-size photographs. I
looked around and saw that from 1941 to 1970, Mrs. Miller had made a picture
poster for each year she had taught at Long Beach. The morning kindergarten
photos were stapled to the top part of the poster and the afternoon photos to
the bottom part. Each student photo was labeled with a name. I scanned the room
and found 1963. There were a few photos missing from the poster. I puzzled over
the reason since one of them was mine. Just then I felt a presence behind me
and turned to find Mrs. Miller standing next to me. She gave me a hug and
welcomed me. “Why is my photo missing?” I asked her.
She smiled, “You must have an admirer. I’ve told the guests
that they can take their photos off the posters if they like. That’s why when
you look around you’ll see so many empty spots.” She swept her arm around the
room to emphasize the fact for me. I turned back to look at the poster for my
school year and saw the little picture of Shaun Johnston smiling back at me. I
reached out and carefully detached it. Mrs. Miller smiled benevolently and
said, “I thought maybe you might like that one.”
I looked up at her and exclaimed, “Her eyes are open.”
Mrs. Miller said, “Yes, they are.” She gave me another
little hug and then went back to shaking hands with the people who were
standing in line.
Shaun’s photo, which now sits on my dresser along with my
children’s baby pictures, is a constant reminder of my very first best
girlfriend. It was 50 years ago today that she died.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2014
