The Crepe Myrtle Tree

That night when everyone was in bed, I quietly got up and went into my brother’s room. He was breathing heavily, already in dreamland while I had not been able to sleep at all. I whispered and tapped him lightly so that he wouldn’t make any noise when he woke.

“Rick, I need you to help me with something.”

I needed an ally, in the human form. I turned to Rick for help. At 18, Rick was handsome, a little taller than me with his blonde hair in long layers to his shoulders. He had just graduated from high school and was planning on living at home while attending UCLA in the fall. Rick was much more studious than I was, his only social outlet, the tennis team. When he was born, he didn’t breathe right away, a trauma my parents never got over. They coddled him, my mother tying his shoes for him everyday until he was a teenager.

Rick got out of bed, without questioning me, wiping the sleep from his eyes. The sky was black and still as we tiptoed outside. Quietly, we gathered some supplies from the garage and went to the side of the house opposite my parent’s bedroom. Standing there in his stripped pajamas, Rick started to dig a hole the dirt next to the crepe myrtle tree, the one Mom had planted several years before to liven up our backyard with its deep red booms. She chose the crepe myrtle because it’s known as a care free tree; drought tolerant, disease resistant and easy to grow.

I chose that tree as the perfect spot to bury all my cares. So under the crepe myrtle, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, Rick dug the hole deep enough to fit all the journals I had ever written. It was a warm summer night but I couldn’t help from shaking, a chill running down my spine.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, his eyes filled with compassion for his little sister. I shook my head yes. In the dim waning moon’s light, he doused my personal journals with lighting fluid. I struck a match and threw it on the pile. With a whoosh, a stack of 16 spiral notebooks went up in flames. We stood there in silence as I watched the pages turn to ash. The flames danced as they destroyed all my written memories including the one about Mrs Ring, my third grade teacher, who told me to be a writer one day after reading my story, "The Legend Of Why Frogs Are Green"; or how I rescued a bird from certain death wrestling it out of the mouth of a cat and nursing it back to health I cried when Tweedy flew away.

I didn’t feel a thing as the embers cracked and tiny bits of paper floated around me lit up like fire flies. I was completely numb determined to change and be the good girl my parents wanted me to be. When the sparks died down, Rick and I covered the ashes with dirt before going back to bed. 

I lay awake all night in the dark, listening to the crickets hum their lullaby’s. Burning my journals felt like the right thing to do but it didn’t bring the relief I had hoped it would. My stomach was still in knots. Siesta was snoring loudly. I snuggled her in my arms for comfort knowing that she would always love me.