When I Was Five I Killed Myself

She grabbed my hair and pulled my face back.

“Do you hear me?”

I came back. I opened my eyes. “If you touch her,” I whispered, “I’ll kill you.”

I don’t know how she got the number but she called my parents. She said I said I would kill her.

I didn’t know what to do. I stood and watched and was angry. Because I am children too. And I hate it too.

“I hate being children!”

“Knock knock,” I said (it was a joke).

“Who’s there?”

“Boo.”

“Boo who?” said Jessica.

“You don’t have to cry about it,” I said.

Jessica looked at me. “I’m not,” she said.

“No, see. You don’t have to cry about it.”

“I’m not, Burt.” She stopped laughing.

“No, it’s a joke.”

“What is?”

“Peter Pan is a girl.” She was looking out the window still. “They made her look like a boy but she is a girl, they just cut her hair short and made her wear a tight brassiere.”

“And then I decided that I wasn’t going to be children anymore. I took Raggedy Ann and killed her in the wastebasket by the elevator.”

She said that there are some things children don’t understand.

I went across and grabbed her on the arm and shook her. Sometimes my mom says she gets mad at me because she loves me and I never understood it before.

“Yes,” she said. “But what if it isn’t? It would be like when they run the Air Raid sirens on Saturday as a test. Maybe the man is really getting smaller.”

. I feel he should retire to Borman Hall where Gramps lives, it is like a hospital where you stay while you’re dying but it’s kosher.