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BABY'S DEAD, LET'S EAT Even to this day, I am not sure what effect this story has had on my life. However, I am sure that I‘m haunted by the memories somewhere in my beady little mind. As I was only 3 or 4 years old, I do not remember many of the details associated with this gruesome event. I only remember one detail for sure; I was dragged around the living room with a telephone cord wrapped around my little neck by some strange man. Gee, I wonder why a kid would remember that? I decided to ask Mr. William George Lavender of White Oak, Georgia to tell me what he knew of this event. It appears that he was married to my mother about that time and they had a child together, a little girl whom they named Linda. I guess that would make her my half-sister. As the story goes, my mother, June, was going into the hospital to have another baby. Mr. Lavender was in the United States Navy. He could not make it back in time for the delivery. Besides, he had heard that June was dating several other men, so he felt the baby was most likely not his anyway. His position was that he would pay the hospital bill under his military insurance and then let June continue with her life, just as she had done in the past. This is most likely true, because even to this day I have no idea who my own father is. Several months after the baby was born, the next-door neighbors telephoned the police department. The police were advised that several children were in the house next door and that no adults had been seen at the residence for more than a week. When the police arrived, all the doors and windows were locked, so they broke out a window in the kitchen. They found Linda sitting in the corner of the kitchen crying, with human waste smeared all over her. When they walked into the living room, the police found me sitting in the middle of the floor and I was holding a dead baby! I was trying to feed it corn flakes. The only other food found in the house was several cans of beans, and they had been smashed and dented. The police concluded that either Linda or I had beaten the cans against the door jam to try to get to the food. They also concluded that Linda and I had survived almost the entire week on a large bowl of dog food that was empty under the kitchen table and that we must have drunk water from the toilet, because we could not reach the faucets. As I was about 4 years old, that would have made Linda about 3. The dead baby boy would have been several months old. To this day, I can’t really figure out why our mother has not wanted to meet with us. She lives in Cedartown, Georgia, less than 300 miles from my home here in Brunswick, Georgia. I always thought that she refused because she did not want her new family to know about her past life. I can totally understand that. In fact, her family need not know of her past. That was agreed upon by all three of us during our one and only meeting at the Shoney's Restaurant in Rome, Georgia in 1982. While I can somewhat understand her not wanting to meet with us, I cannot understand why she has never written either. She’s never even sent us a Christmas card. There has never been any acknowledgment whatsoever that we even exist or that she has any grandchildren by Linda and me. If we were to drive into Hut’s Garage in Cedartown, my own mother would not even recognize me, or my half sister. I would be just another 53-year-old man waiting to get his car worked on. Our mother had a very hard life; there is no doubt about that. She was an adopted child and was cruelly treated for years; treated like a possession, rather than a child. However, many of the terrible things that happened to June when she became older were the result of her own doing and not the fault of her being adopted or mistreated. The terrible things that happened to June's children were the result of decisions she made. Yet, she has chosen to hold her own children responsible for the terrible things that happened to her in her past. I guess my mother must be in her ‘70s by now. She has many wonderful grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They will never have the opportunity to know her, nor will she know them, all because of the selfish decisions she made. Will my mother ever realize that the past never goes away - that it will be here long after she is dead? What about the little baby she abandoned? Will that innocent child just be forgotten and looked upon as another minor mistake in June’s life? Her own grandchildren will remember her, not because of what she did to Linda or me, but because of what she did to them - because she was not there for them and there will be a void in their hearts.