It Was 50 Years Ago Today

Though not actually a lie—more of a half-truth—I understand why my mother told it. After all, I was only six years old.

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