When Harriett Mills got home to find the door locked, she wanted to cry but she fought back her tears for her little brother’s sake.

“Door’s locked, again.” She forced herself to sound calm and indifferent.

“I forgot my coat on the bus.”  There was a hint of panic in Jeremy’s voice.

“Jeremy, you are sooooooo stupid.  Let’s shout at Gramma and make sure she’s alright.”  Harriett led her little brother to the back of the shabby trailer that had been their home for the past four months.

Together they banged on the thin steel wall of the back bedroom.

“Gramma, are you okay?”

Gramma was bedridden from a stroke she suffered two years before and eight-year-old Harriet was her main caregiver.

“I need changing, Harriett.  Get in here.”

“I can’t, Gramma, Mom locked us out again.  Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“No.  I didn’t even know she was gone.  Just break a window and come on in.”

They all knew that Mom could be gone for days.  Every time before, Harriett and Jeremy broke out a window to gain entrance.  When that happened, the landlord covered the broken window with plywood.  He didn’t evict them because the mobile home was too dilapidated for anyone else to want it.  He received rent payments from welfare for the Mills family and spent no money fixing anything.  He knew that when the Mills left, the trailer would stand empty for a long time.

The trailer was leveled on a steep lot.  All of the windows that Harriett could reach had been broken already and fixed with plywood.  The only remaining windows were far above her head at the back.

The trailer park was practically devoid of people but filled with junk.  Large appliances and broken cars lay abandoned in the rutted dirt streets.  The elderly owner was selling cars and siding for scrap metal and in the meantime was making a small income from renting nearly unlivable homes to the town’s most desperate rejects.  Only the most insane and perverted were cast out of the city into this place and even they, after a few months, moved on to something else.

Harriett knew she had no one to turn to.  Her mother might be back tonight, drunk, with some bum following her to the bedroom; or she might be back in three days when her new boyfriend kicked her out of his place; or maybe she’d never come back.

The little girl spent several hours trying to get inside before finally giving up.

“Gramma, I can’t get in at all.  Should I stop the police car when it comes by tonight?”

“No!  I’ve still got some cereal in the box.  You and Jeremy find a place to sleep.  Everything will be okay.”

The park was full of abandoned mobile homes.  Many had doors and windows removed in preparation for sale as scrap.  Harriett chose the smallest one.  It was the least likely to be taken over for a drug party and the small space of the one bedroom gave Harriett a feeling of womb-like security.  Besides Harriett had stashed some candy bars there in preparation for this day.

***

“I can’t take any more.  I’m going to kill myself.”

Mrs. Winger looked again at the printed note that she found on her desk after the last recess of the day.  It’s neat and not quite the same as any of my children would write, she thought.  She was a young woman in her first year of teaching, so she took the note immediately to the principal who arranged an after-school meeting between Mrs. Winger, and himself.  Mrs. Greene, the school counselor, also agreed to attend.

It seemed like the hour and a half from recess to the final bell would last forever.  When it rang, she dismissed the class with relief.

“Okay, bus riders, you may get your coats and file out. Car riders next.  Now walkers and bike riders can go.”

“Ms Winger, I need to talk to you.”  Mrs. Winger looked down at Cynthia Sanders.  She was a tiny blond bombshell who at the age of nine had had more broken romances than most high school seniors.  Every couple of weeks, she had to talk to Mrs. Winger about her latest crisis. The teacher had come to dread them.  Cynthia never grew callous and reacted to each breakup with the same intense heartbreak as the last.

The child would then turn to Mrs. Winger, trapping her teacher for hours after school as she tearfully analyzed every aspect of her current failed relationship.  Cynthia couldn’t imagine that Mrs. Winger had a life of her own.  She was sure that only two real people existed – herself and her current love interest.  Everyone else occupied the planet to lend support to her endless emotional needs.

“Cynthia, I have to go see the principal right now.  I’m sorry.”  Mrs. Winger knew she should add, ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ but she just couldn’t bring herself to say it.  What she really wanted to add was, ‘So why don’t you just get lost.’  But she didn’t say that either.  She just walked down the hall with Cynthia trailing and wailing.

“Mrs. Winger, it’s Paul.  I saw him talking to Marcia Jones at recess and when I told him I was mad at him, he said he didn’t care.  Mrs. Winger, I can’t stand any more and you don’t care.  You’re mean!”

Mrs. Winger reached the safety of the principal’s office and closed the door in Cynthia’s face.

***

“So, if you think Cynthia wrote that note, why didn’t you talk to her about it?”  The principal leaned forward over his desk.

“Just in case it isn’t her.  There’s a chance it could be Harriett.  I noticed she and Jeremy came to school today very dirty and hungry.  I think their mother has run off again and locked them out of the house.”

“I’ll go by tonight and see them.  I’m trying to get them into foster care, anyway.”  Mrs. Greene made a note to herself.  “Their welfare case worker is trying to convince a judge to put the grandmother in a nursing home.  Have you ever been to their home?”

Mrs. Winger shook her head, no.  She felt as if she were admitting to being a neglectful teacher, especially since she knew the counselor was about to reveal that she had.

“Well, I have,”  Mrs Greene continued, “and it’s appalling.  The grandmother is bedridden and incontinent.  Harriett takes care of her as well as an eight-year-old can.  She changes her diapers but I don’t think her bed clothes have ever been washed.  Wherever they live soon stinks to high heaven.

She gives her grandmother a box of dry cereal and when the old woman eats all of it, Harriett gets her another box.  In fact, I think that’s all Harriett and Jeremy ever eat at home.”

“Oh no,”  Mrs. Winger interrupted. “Harriett must have written the note.”

“Probably not.”  Mrs. Greene enjoyed leading young teachers to draw false conclusions then telling them why they were wrong.  “Harriett and her grandmother and Jeremy are very close.  They lead dreadful lives but they have each other.  The mother is always either drunk or gone, but Harriett has people who care about her and depend on her and that makes a difference.

In fact, I agree with your first conclusion.  Cynthia is the most likely person to have written that note.  What do you know about her?”

Mrs. Winger felt vulnerable.  The counselor was much older and a master of a type of verbal combat that was so subtle, only she and her victim were aware of it.  A bystander like the principal would judge Mrs. Winger the loser and Mrs. Greene the winner without even being aware of it.

“I’ve spent many hours after school listening to every detail of her budding love life.”  Mrs. Winger mounted a feeble defense.

“But what do you know of her family history?”  Mrs. Greene countered with a strong attack.

“I’ve met her mother and father twice at Parent-Teacher meetings.  He’s really nice.”  Mrs. Winger searched her memory for more details attempting to not sound too pathetic.

“You know, she and George are twins?”

Duh oh!  I blew that one, she thought.  Then out loud, “Of course.”

“Did you know that the current Mrs. Sanders is their step-mother?”

“No, I…I didn’t,” the young teacher stammered.

“I’ve lived in this town a great number of years.  I knew Cynthia and George’s mother.  She was also a woman in constant crises.  At that time, we didn’t have a suicide prevention center in this town.  I guess she felt like she had no one to turn to.  She came to the school all the time wanting to talk to me but I couldn’t.  I’m here for the children, not the parents.  And then she didn’t even have children in school.

One day she blew her brains out in front of the twins.  They were two at the time and don’t remember it, of course.

Mr. Sanders was a seminary student at the Full Gospel Bible College when it happened.  He went on to graduate but switched his major to church counseling.  You know he founded and runs the Crisis Intervention Center downtown, don’t you?”

Ouch, another detail I knew but didn’t mention.  I look like an idiot.  “Yes, I knew that, too.”  Mrs. Winger tried to sound icy and efficient.

“Well, if you watch the two children, you’ll see that George is playing out the father’s role.  He’s quiet, likable and always on the lookout to help another child who is having problems.

Cynthia is playing the mother’s part.  She is clingy and needy.  She sees that her mother’s suicide changed her father’s life and that people who threaten suicide now get her father’s attention. 

Her dad is pretty influential in his church and has a lot of responsibility at his job.  He’s in demand as a speaker all over the country.  If you watch, Cynthia’s troubles always reach a crises point when he’s gone. 

Cynthia pours her heart out to you after school.  That’s just a rehearsal.  When the poor man gets home tonight, she’ll be waiting for him with the same long litany.  No matter how tired he is, he’ll hear it through and comfort her.  He expects it.

Children this young rarely attempt suicide and are very seldom successful.  This note is a cry for attention and both Harriett and Cynthia will get it soon.”

“You were right to come to us, Mrs. Winger,” the principal added.  “We’ll handle things.  Don’t worry.”

The young teacher said nothing.  She knew she had been entirely defeated in this battle for the principal’s respect but she was sincerely impressed by the depth and accuracy of the counselor’s evaluation.  Her own defeat was easier to take since old Mrs. Greene so deftly earned her victory.

Mrs. Winger returned to her classroom relieved to find Cynthia gone.  Of course she had noticed the girl’s behavior – who could avoid Cynthia – but she had paid far less attention to George.

Sweet, little George.  Now that she thought of it, he did seem to gravitate to children in trouble.  Unfortunately, he was only a child, without his father’s skill at mending hurt souls.  When he found a lonely boy who was teased or left out, he befriended him.  The two would be together for weeks, playing baseball or video games.  Then George would see another hurting boy or girl and suddenly drop his former friend, leaving a now dependent child bewildered and more hurt than ever.

It was worse for the girls to whom he paid attention.  George was handsome and all the girls loved him.  Cynthia was fortunate that he was her twin.  No one could break a heart like George.

Poor George, in spite of his goodness and desire to help, he left lonely children worse off than when he found them.

***
“Hey, Harriett.  Can I walk with you and your little brother?”  George had been following them ever since Mrs. Winger dismissed the walkers.

“Sure, George.  But not all the way, okay?  This is Jeremy.”

“Glad to meet you, Jeremy.”  George shook the kindergartener’s hand politely.

Jeremy was overwhelmed with emotion.  He, dirty little nothin’ Jeremy, being treated with such respect by a tall, well-dressed third grader.

“Would you two like to stop for ice cream?  I’ve got my allowance.”

Harriett had never been inside the ice cream shop.  Certainly no boy ever offered to take her there.  In spite of her problems, she was thrilled…but resolute.

“No.  I can’t.  I have to go home.”

So they walked on together.  George talked to Harriett as a friend and to Jeremy as an equal.  While they walked with him, they regained a measure of self-respect that was shattered by the long downward spiral of their live’s circumstances.

Finally Harriett stopped.  “You can’t go with us any further.  My Mom really gets mad if I bring company without asking her first.” 

George pretended to believe her and bid his friends goodbye.  He walked back a little way, then turned around and followed the children from a distance.  He was shocked to see the utter squalor of the trailer court.  It looked like a burned out war zone.

The boy hid in the thick weeds at the edge of the trailor park where he watched the home of his two new friends from a distance. They appeared to be stacking old tires in an attempt to climb through a rear window.  Suddenly, Mrs. Greene (mean ol’ Greene, the kids called her) drove up with a woman whom George guessed was from child welfare, and ushered the kids into the car.

He could hear Harriett’s distant shouts.  “Gramma, Gramma.  My Gramma’s in there!  Please, she needs me.”

He was still sitting in the weeds  hours later when the ambulance came.  Two burly policemen broke the locked door and soon paramedics carried out a stretcher.  George assumed that the grandmother had been rescued and was pleased.

It was after dark when George saw his father’s car drive into the park.  He watched as the car pulled up to the Mills’ home and let out Harriett’s mother.  She was drunk and didn’t even notice that the door she locked the day before was now standing open.  She would quickly pass out after she went inside. 

His father turned the car around and headed home to listen to Cynthia’s usual long, sad story.  George pulled a small pistol from his pocket.  He took it from step-mother’s hand that morning.  When he heard the shot, he rushed downstairs to the library and found her lying there.  George recognized the gun as the one Daddy used when he shot his real mommy. 

George remembered that long-ago day so clearly.  Cynthia was crying and screaming; Daddy and Mommy were arguing.  Then Daddy and Mommy fought over that pistol and Daddy shot Mommy.  George remembered Daddy putting the pistol in her hand and he remembered the police coming.  He didn’t recall much more, but soon everybody said it was a suicide and that Daddy was good for dedicating his life to preventing other people from killing themselves.  Mama was one of the people Daddy rescued by working at the Crises Center. 

Now, he had seen death again.  This morning, the boy had found Mama’s suicide note on the table along with a black and white photograph of his father sleeping in bed with Harriett’s mother.  The picture was identified on the back with the date and time it was taken and the name of a detective agency.  George put the pistol, the picture and the suicide note into his backpack, locked the library door and went upstairs to wake up his sister.

Cynthia was so absorbed in her own problems, she didn’t ask about Mama.  Mama didn’t get up early anymore, anyway.  George had been getting himself and Cynthia ready for school for months.  He fixed her a cold cereal breakfast and found her backpack and hurried her out the door.

Later at school, he tore the picture up into small bits to get rid of anything that would make his father look bad.  George thought about Mama’s suicide all day.  He should have realized how depressed she had become.  It was his fault for not stopping her.  It was his fault for not stopping Daddy.  He had known about Daddy and Harriet’s mom for a long time.

He put Mama’s note on Mrs. Winger’s desk hoping she would figure it out and tell him why it wasn’t his fault.  But it was.  Everything was so bad and it was his fault.

George looked at the pistol for a long time before putting it in his mouth and pulling the trigger.