Guilt

CRASH!!!!!  Oh my God. I just broke the window. How could I have been so stupid!? In my anger at being refused permission to watch the football game, passed over for my nine year old brother John who had been there first and had been watching cartoons, I had gone outside to throw sticks. Don’t ask me why, but it seemed like fun at the time. I just needed to throw something and release the irrational anger that swelled through my veins. But one carelessly thrown stick had crashed through the window, shattering it and making it take the shape of a giant spider web caught in a rainstorm. Images rush through my head. Images of the time in Nebraska when my brother Michele had played golf inside and broke a hole in my mom’s antique cabinet. He had been punished for three weeks and had to miss all the Corn Husker games for a month. That was the worst part. And the time when I had kicked a ball, and knocked a painting off the fire place and had been spanked so hard I cried for the whole night.

          I know what I should do. I should go inside and tell my parents what happened. That’s what Michele would have done. Damn him he would have done the right thing. But he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble for it. But I would.

          All I did was stand there, thinking of what might happen if I did tell the truth. Of course I wouldn’t get spanked again; I was far too big for that sort of crap. But I would be shamed. Here I was, the oldest boy in the family, a role model for my younger siblings, and I had just broken the window. They would take my money to pay for it, and I wouldn’t be able to go out this weekend. I didn’t say anything. I just went inside and pretended that nothing happened.

          The next day my dad was furious. He had found the window and wanted to know who broke it. He turned to me and said son, did you break this window? I wanted to tell him so bad. I wanted to be a man and tell him that it was me. That I was ready to take any punishment he would give me, because that’s what men do. But I didn’t.

          “No” I said, “I don’t know what happened.” They never figured it out. I never blamed anyone else for what I did, nobody ever got in trouble. The days went by and everyone forgot about the window. Someone came and fixed it, and it was over. I never told them.

          I don’t think I ever will.