Why I hid from Heaven

When I was a child I was led to believe that Heaven was a place you go when you're good. Its very specific location was just above the fluffy white clouds. A white towered castle that lay just beyond huge ornate gates.
At first, death wasn't mentioned as the ticket to get punched to enter into this Heavenly place.

No, to get there you just had to be good.
And not just any kind of good either, it had to be Christmas-good, only catch was- you had to be Christmas-good year round.

Now that was a virtual impossibility to a small Sicilian Kid from the poor part of East Boston.
I knew Id never get to be anywhere near close to being that kind of good. So I immediately put Heaven out of my mind as a place Id visit anytime soon.

One strange sweltering summer day I witnessed my 6 year old friend Anthony get crushed in a horrible Ice cream truck accident. This was the first time I had met Death, he looked at me, and I could tell from his stare that the place Heaven we learned so much about in school was not a place full of candy, ice cream and fluffy white clouds. No!
Death, and this white fluffy Heaven were not related in any way shape or form!

I watched as Death drove over Anthony's head.
I stood by as death dragged his mother outside her apartment- screaming and running towards the huge red and black wet spot on the street wrapped in a pink terrycloth robe with a white towel around her head shaped like a huge beehive.
Death grabbed her by the arms and shook her hard, making her scream and whine uncontrollably as it whisked her away to a place where Anthony was brought bleeding and half mutilated.

I stood on the sidewalk with my PF Flyer's hanging off the curbs edge, watching red thick syrup with white eggshells float into the sewer while the fireman hosed Death's mess off the street, it gurgled down the sewer finding its way out into the Ocean.

Soon after everyone left and the street was scrubbed clean of Anthony, I went home and lay behind the couch shivering, wondering when it would be my turn to have the last lick of ice cream while Death found his way to run over my head.

I hid behind the couch and cried for hours. It could have been more.

When my dad came home from working his second j0b, he would take a few extra minutes between three or four Millers to beat me for not going to school.

It didn't matter why I lay behind the couch for days on end without eating or sleeping, or even going to the bathroom. He was the father, and dammit, he was the boss. And he'd be damned if he he didn't let that shaving strap fly and dole out the appropriate punishment. It was the American way.

I had no way to find the words that would have broken through the drunken fog my dad lived in. There was no way to make him understand what had happened to me that day, or anyone else for that matter.

It was way beyond too late.
Death was just next door licking ice cream and biding his time. He would be coming here soon. I saw what he was capable of. It haunted me night after night.

In the fall when school started again, everyone in the neighborhood said Anthony went to Heaven.
I didn't believe them. I was there. I saw what Anthony had to do to get the ticket, and there was no way it was a ticket to Heaven.

Heaven was supposed to be beautiful fluffy and white. But I knew better.

What I saw was grey, red, white and pink terrycloth all gurgling down a sewer on its way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Back Bay of Boston.

I occasionally find myself lying behind a couch today. Its not the same orange dusty couch I hid behind as a child, its more of a frame of mind now. I'm older, and I'm not hiding, I'm waiting. Not a bit scared, but dammit Pissed! I'm not a kid anymore, and when that fucker gets here, Ill kick his ass before he takes me.
Not for me you understand, but for Anthony. He was a good kid, and he never got to finish that ice cream.