I’m afraid this extremely traumatic experience is going to be literally taken to the grave. I was about 12 or so. It was October and close to Halloween. We never had much extra but weren’t totally poor. We kids didn’t know about finances. We had fun. We made things. We made life work. We were happy, until that awful day.
Dad would come home after a long workday. He’d kiss my mom, chat a bit with the six of us kids and ease into his easy chair. Usually he’d tell us to wake him when dinner was ready and then take a nap. One weekend, my older sister babysat us and Mom and Dad went shopping. They came home with a brand new Naga hide (vinyl) ottoman for my dad. Now he’d come home, plop into his chair and put his feet up on his new piece of furniture.
A day came when he got home and was about to sit and put his feet up. He froze, staring at his foot stool. Dead center in it’s top was a tiny hole, probably from a pencil.
“Katherine!” he yelled.
My mom came running in. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
My dad pointed.
“Oh, no.” my mom said and gasped. She spun around. We kids were all there. We all came running when my dad had shouted for my mom.
“Who did this,” my dad first shouted, then repeated in a softer voice.
Six heads shook back and forth.
Dad lined us up. Hands on his knees, he bent until his face was level with my oldest sister. “Did you do it?” he said.
She said no.
Dad move to me and repeated his question.
I said, “No.”
And so it went as he moved down the line.
After six ‘no’s, he straightened and said, “You’re all grounded and no one is going trick-or-treating unless I find out who did this. Now, everyone to their room until dinner is ready. No go!”
We all accused each other and no one would admit to the crime. We figured he really wouldn’t keep us from trick-or-treating. We’d been working all month on our costumes.
On Halloween day, we all even got into our costumes. We have home movies of that day. Mom wanted pictures of us all dressed up. The movie shows six kids crying with mascara and face paint running down their faces.
We kept our costumes on but sulked, all sitting on the living room floor until bed time. We never did find the culprit.
Fast forward a few years. Sadly my oldest sister developed stomach cancer. The hospital summoned all of us to come to my sister’s room and say our goodbyes. We were all there, My sister’s berating was labored. None of us said much. Then one sister spoke.
“Bobbie, did you poke the hole in the ottoman when we were kids?”
“No,” Bobbie said in almost a whisper. “And I want to know who did it before I die.”
No one owned up.
Fast forward again. My sister Vickie had a brain tumor and was near death. Again, we were all at her bedside. Again another sister asked. “Vickie, were you the one? Did you poke that hole in Dad’s ottoman? If it was you, tell us now.
“No, Vickie said.
A nurse in my sister’s room had heard us talking about the ottoman and had heard Vickie’s denial. “Maybe it was your mother,” the nurse said.
Mom had passed away a couple years earlier. “We can’t ask her now,” a sister said. “I don’t think she would have done it. And she would have said something.
“Well,” Vickie said, “It won’t be long and I’ll be able to ask her.”
Another fast forward. I had a stroke. While in the hospital for the stroke I had a heart attack and then bypass surgery. I had visits from each of my remaining siblings. Guess what each asked me before asking how I was? Correct guess. “Were you the one who …”
