Next, I gathered some large books from my bookshelf. Of course, all the books were lined up in order from smallest on the left to largest on the right. I stacked some of the books on my chair and climbed up. But even after standing on the books, I was still not tall enough to reach the impure bulb.
I could not disappoint Sergeant. It was important that I was obedient. He did not like to be kept waiting.
That's when I spied my gerbil tank. It looked to be just about the extra height I needed to reach the bulb.
I loved my two little gerbils. They were my cute little friends, and I loved to watch them play in the wood shreds and curls. To shield them from my cats and thus a potentially terrible fate, I'd always kept a piece of heavy glass on top of their tank, leaving a small opening so fresh air could get in but our three Siamese cats could not.
With all my strength, I got my arms around the tank and carried it over to the chair. All right, everything was coming together now. I had the chair, the books, and the glass container. Really, this plan seemed like a stroke of brilliance.
I took the stack of books off the chair and put the gerbil aquarium on it. I then slid the heavy piece of glass over to completely cover the top. I knew I'd be quick and efficient and my little guys would have more air soon. Then came the books in their perfect stack.
I had no trouble climbing up my well-thought-out stack of items. Windex and a soft cotton cloth in hand, I made it to the top, standing with my feet aquarium-width apart so as not to break the glass.
My Windex was opened, and I had it on spray. As soon as I aimed at the bulb and sent out the first squirt, I started to feel relief. Wipe, wipe, wipe the dusty bulb with the cloth. The situation was looking promising.
But Sergeant wasn't satisfied. He barked, “This job is not good enough. You need to take the bulb out of its metal base and spray into the hole where the bulb goes in. The whole area needs to be clean, not just the meager little bulb!” Craving some peace of mind, I knew I'd have to do as he said; there was no other choice. This time Sergeant really went for it. “If you ever wish to be loved again by your family, you have to complete this task.”
So, with the cloth covering my hand, I unscrewed the hot bulb and took it out of the hole. I could feel its heat through the cloth. I aimed the Windex directly into the hole and squirt, squirt, squirted the spray right in. Then, with cloth-wrapped fingers, I reached into the hole and began to wipe.
The electrical charge hurled me to the floor. From the tips of my fingers, the electricity surged through my body and straight into my toes. I landed on my back—the books, aquarium, and chair thrown in all directions.
Lying there on the floor, unable to move, I was certain that I had been electrocuted and died, like the boy I'd heard about who lost his life on the train tracks. So I kept my eyes closed for a little while. I thought that I should wait for my angels to come get me and take me to heaven.
When the angels hadn't come after a few minutes, I thought that maybe I'd gone straight to heaven. I cautiously opened my eyes. Wow, I thought, How funny! Heaven looks just like my bedroom; maybe they are welcoming me with something familiar. The dizzying effects from the fall started to wear off, and eventually I sat up and looked straight ahead into my closet. One end of the glass top had come down hard during the fall and was now inside the tank.
I got up and slowly walked over to take a closer look. The situation was awful: the glass, like a guillotine, had chopped into the exact same spot on the back of the gerbils' necks, and their eyes had popped out and were still attached to purple tendons. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. I couldn't believe what I saw, and I felt so guilty.
I could feel the complete silence of my bedroom, and a deep, overwhelming grief—not only because this had happened but because I had done it. I had killed my little friends.
Oddly enough, Sergeant wasn't angry. In fact, he was reassuring. “Don't worry too much; you did the right thing. After all, the bulb had to be cleaned.” Sergeant spoke with an incredible confidence, and I believed him.
As awful as I felt about my little guys meeting a terrible death at my hands, I also felt so good that the hole under the lightbulb was now clean and dust-free, that the lightbulb was spotless, and that the Sergeant was pleased with me. The reward of pleasing Sergeant was just about the best thing ever. And for the next twenty-three years, I did whatever he asked, no matter how strange it got.
Although I don't remember exactly, after my electrocution, I most likely headed outside to look for someone to play with in the neighborhood.
I was lucky; my neighborhood was loaded with kids, and a lot of them were close in age. If I was particularly lucky that day, my best friend Victoria, who lived a few doors down in the same townhouse, could come out and play. Maybe we would have cartwheel competitions on our neighbor's front lawn, or we'd get Oana, a girl whose family came from Romania, to come out and play, too; this way, we'd have more judges and contestants for our cartwheel competitions. Or to scrounge together some change, we could return my mom's Tab soda bottles at the neighborhood grocery store that was a couple of blocks away. Then we'd buy red licorice for ourselves and start eating it in the alley on the walk back home.
Usually, there was a game of Kick the Can starting up somewhere, or we'd jump on our bikes and go exploring. We were really living all right, and we came home with dirty, grass-stained pants and sometimes a hole in the knee from a rough landing while doing bicycle ballet.
Today I am grateful for growing up in this neighborhood and all my memories of the great adventures that took place between the mulberry trees and the old oaks. Growing up there, on the south side of Oak Park, gave me a really solid base, a core of joy.
Even though Sergeant was bobbing in and out—that was how my OCD worked at this time—there were even stretches when Sergeant seemed to take most of the day off.
Photo: Victoria Moran/Illustration by the author
Schlage Opens the Way—1977: Eleven Years Old
Like an exploding firecracker, and just as exciting, the clock did its final yell for the day. School was out. Many kids went home to their mom or somebody waiting for them at their front door. When I got home, I was alone for a while. Sometimes our front door was wide open when I arrived home, which scared me. Other times, the door was locked, and I had to use the Schlage key that hung on the thick red yarn around my neck. The reason I knew Schlage was written on the key was that every day I held the key very close in front of my eyes and stared at that one mysterious word, Schlage, engraved into the golden metal.
“Stare at that word and not at the edges of the key. If you do see the edges, start over!” the Sergeant yelled at me.
Of course, I had to do what he said. Sergeant commanded me to stop completely, even stop breathing when I stared at his chosen word. I fell into a trance, like I'd been hypnotized. I had to dissolve myself and fall into the word, so I was the word and nothing else existed. I had to do this so that Sergeant would clear me to pass into the next second of my life. He decided when I got to go forward.
I also knew the words on the toilet and bathtub because I stared at them a lot: Foster. Only when I had a Pure Experience would Sergeant let up on me a bit. My body would get to feel right, all parts, but only briefly until the next task.
If the neighborhood kids weren't home from their school yet, I would probably spend some time indoors with my three Siamese cats. Sometimes my brother Brian, who's four years older than me, would be in the neighborhood somewhere goofing around with his friends. Sometimes I was included, but some days I was not. My other brother, Kent, who's ten years older than me, was probably