SUZY Q Bicycles covered in Paint

I was in the house helping mom with my little brothers when the banging on the door started. Someone on the other side wanted to make sure they were heard. Mom went immediately to stop the noise before my baby brothers started to cry again.

The woman standing there was someone we didn’t know. She asked where that rotten child was because she had done a lot of damage and we were going to pay for it. Mom sent me to see what the lady was talking about. Off I went down to the basement on her half of the building. Not somewhere I spent any time. I  stayed out of the basement area because it didn’t feel safe to me.

Then the lady pointed to her children’s bicycles with paint dumped all over them. Oh, my goodness! That was a mess. I could see why she was upset but something didn’t feel right about it. The lady kept raging on about little kids running wild and being destructive as we walked back up to our apartment. She was absolutely certain my sister was the hooligan that had done all the damage. As I got closer to our door, I was trying to figure out why it didn’t add up. She was yelling so much I didn’t get a chance to think until mom opened our door and she told me to go find my sister and bring her home to be punished for the damage.

Then two things dawned on me. This was a destructive and malicious act which was not what my sister would do. She might be daring or thoughtless but not mean or malicious. As I started to think about where to find my sister, I looked at my mother and said “she’s not here, she’s in Augsburg with Frau Zanker this week.”

My sister was twenty-five miles away on loan to Frau Zanker for two weeks so she could have a little girl around for the first time. Frau Zanker had two boys closer to my age and was so envious of mom having girls that after much begging, mom had given in after a stern warning that things were often not as they appeared. My sister was a handful and Frau Zanker was getting in over her head. Two boys were nothing compared to my sister.

The yelling lady stopped yelling. My sister was not in town and could not have done that damage. My mother looked at me and I could see her mind trying to wrap itself around the idea that she had assumed as everyone had, that my sister had done this deed but also how she did not realize immediately that my sister was not there to cause it.

I don’t know if they ever found out who did that damage to the bicycles in this woman’s storage locker, but I was so happy my sister had nothing to do with it. This is not the end of this story though. More on the other end.

From my heart to yours,

Marlene Herself