The Playground (A Parable)

"God say, ‘No.’ Abe say, ‘What?’ God say, ‘You can do what you want, Abe, but the next time you see me comin' you better run.’” - Bob Dylan

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Someone had been very careless indeed – had left lying around every single thing one can think of that should not be left lying around where these things were left lying around. Or if not merely careless, then someone had been very purposefully, unforgivably cruel.

Someone had. But I’m not to that part yet; that part’s still coming up ahead in just a minute or two.  Just you wait and see.

Just a wee little girl still, forced to hold someone bigger’s hand at all times once outside the perceived safety of the family home, I was dragged through the store by my father, brothers in tow despite themselves. 

My brothers were idiots. Still are, truth be told, but a couple more decades on the planet has taught them how to imitate competent adults, if somewhat poorly.  When they’re playing grown-ups, you can still see their lips move.

Back then, the door, the one that said – “Do Not Leave Children Unattended” – was opened by my father.  He flipped on an interior light, exhaled with force, staring at the indoor playground. The most cursory of most cursory glances would have revealed some serious, not-so-hidden dangers, potential pitfalls and pratfalls that could render even the most careful and graceful of children permanently…

…scarred…

…maimed...

…mutilated…

…blinded…

My father seemed not to notice the broken bottles, however. He certainly did not acknowledge the large pack of rodents gnawing on the carcass of large, decomposing fauna of some sort I could not recognize.  I think it might have been a hyena at some point several weeks before. Before the maggots came.

No, but blind to the cesspool staring him in the face, my father ushered us into the indoor playground with orders to “Go play – have fun”  and rushed back out without so much as a glance behind him, closing us inside with a hollow thud.

I’d never seen a sandbox that disgusting. Admittedly, my sandbox experience was exceedingly limited at that time. But I’d definitely never seen one indoors with prickly, frowning weeds growing in it.

My brother Jeff immediately leapt straight into the mysteriously wet and stinking sand of the box, resurfacing with a deep gash on his hand.  My brother Mikey hadn’t made it into the room yet, having made a pit stop at the restroom. Solo.

As for me, I climbed some stairs into a giant rusty hippopotamus to read and color. 

Something slithered out of the giant rusty hippo and into an enormous nearby tree as I entered.  I kicked aside the hypodermic needles and made myself comfortable.

 

I don’t remember how long it was before I heard Jeff howling. I don’t remember how long after I’d heard him howling that it occurred to me I should maybe check on him.  He was several years older than I was, after all. Ten-year olds should be able to take care of themselves, more or less, shouldn’t they?

They should, they should, but that doesn’t mean they can, so I grudgingly hauled myself back out of the hippo and witnessed my brother, within a dank concrete pipe across the twilit room, snarling and rubbing mud upon himself.   In my mind, at least, there was blood involved.

Then the door to the playground room opened and Mikey ran in.  I couldn’t call to him in time before the door shut behind him. 

“We’re all going to go for ice cream when Dad comes back!” Mikey raced in, impossible smile permanently affixed to his face.  “Dad is coming back soon to get us, and we’re going for ice cream if we’re good! He is going to be back soon, I know!”

Rusted metal.

Broken swings hanging from one chain.

Creepy dwarfen dude in the corner offering us candy out of the back of a miniature van.

Barbed wire (some of it obviously cut with snippers). 

A mangled human skeleton near a stone wall covered with tally marks (more than a girl my age could count).

I climbed the hippo stairs and called out to Mikey.  Be careful.  I don’t remember when we got our last tetanus shots. This place is like Lockjaw Central.

I could hear faraway voices in whispers that sounded not so very far away at all.

Mikey ran in and started staring at a spot way up on one of the walls. “Dad is watching us, Adri. He’s watching us to see how we behave. See that window?  He’s up there!”

I hopped up a ladder to take a look.  But it’s not a window, Mikey. It’s not a window, it’s a mirror. I know you can see red hair in it, but that’s not Dad, that’s the reflection from the top of my head. It’s a mirror and I can only see myself.

“But Dad’s behind the mirror,” Mikey insisted, smiling and raising up the palms of his hands to show off their cleanliness. “It’s a two-way mirror, and he’s watching us, Sis. He sees how clean I am and how dirty Jeff has become. And when he returns, he will remember. And me, he will take to get ice cream, while Jeff has to go to his room.”

I was not convinced. I tapped on the mirror, listening for an echo.  I gave my reflection the middle finger, trying to get some sort of reaction from the other side.  I looked around for something sharp and hard I could use to break out a tiny piece of the mirror and peer on through.

Mikey warned me to stop, saying I would ruin the trip to get ice cream for us all if I kept it up.

Meanwhile, Jeff ran by chasing a wounded rodent of unidentifiable origin with what looked to be a spear.

Mikey, I’m going to tell you the truth: I don’t think there’s anybody back there. I’m not saying that we’ve been abandoned, that Dad is not coming back. I just have no reason whatsoever to believe that he’s behind this mirror watching us.

None whatsoever.

And neither do you.

Smiling up at the mirror, palms up, he said, “You two are going to be sorry when I’m the only one eating ice cream.”  Smiling up at the mirror, palms up, I’m pretty sure he meant it.

 

But now Jeff was in trouble. He was bleeding. Really pretty profusely. Much more blood than one would hope to see from an unattended child in a playground.  I wasn’t a doctor then, and I’m not a doctor now, and I can’t even estimate how many pints of blood are in an eleven-year-old’s medium-sized body, but it seemed to me that more of it had made its way onto his shirt and the surrounding ground than I was comfortable with.

…Than I was comfortable with?  Ending a sentence with a preposition is not something up with which we should put.  I knew that then – why don’t I know it now?  Is it just my own lame attempt to sound a little folksy?  There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you….

 

And it wasn’t long before the howling and the bleeding got the better of me, and I descended down the stairs again to retrieve my brother, Jeff, and try to think of a way to help him.  And despite Mikey’s refusal to dirty his hands and his refusal to help and his refusal to do jack squat except stand there smiling like a lobotomy patient and showing off his cleanest of all possible hands and spouting off about his promised future ice cream cone, I managed to get Jeff over to the door and start cleaning his open wounds.

Our father hadn’t even gotten the door all the way open when Mikey was running up to him and “Father! Father! Look at me! Look at me! Oh, Father, I am clean! I did just as you told me. I am clean!”

Our father spotted Jeff, furrowed his brow, grabbed Jeff by the collar and started hauling him out of the playground area forcefully.  Dad was clearly pissed.

And I lost it. I did. I yelled at him, running as fast as my little legs would carry me to catch up with him. Shouting at him the whole way.  Hey! What the hell did you think was going to happen, leaving your young children here unattended like that for so long?  What could you have been thinking?

I accidentally kicked one of the blackened crack pipes that had been lying on the ground, kicked it straight out of the playground and onto the store’s sales floor.  I kicked it and I yelled at my father some more. You can’t punish Jeff for your own mistake! Did you even take a single moment to look at where you were leaving us? 

Did you see the discarded rusty knives?

The stagnant pools?

The rancid carcasses?

Why should Jeff get punished for your own negligence?

If I could help my brother, Jeff, help him avoid undeserved punishment for what had transpired back there, then I would.

“Look, Father! No smudges on my shirt! I did way better than Jeff did.”  Mikey was still vying for a second scoop on that ice cream cone.  “Do I get my ice cream now?”

Dad stopped briefly to look around at Mikey.  “What ice cream? I never promised anybody any ice cream…”

What the hell? You mean I could have been rolling around in the dirt, too?  You mean I could have gone ahead and broken a piece out of the two-way mirror to see what lay beyond it?

I stopped and took in the scene.  My dirty brother bleeding and crying.  My clean brother bragging about his cleanliness. My father trying to herd us out of the store and not really paying very much attention. 

I shook my head, put it all out of my mind, and began intently leafing through my coloring book.