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I Don’t Want to Live Anymore

Jon Brunette

    Kimberly sat on her father’s lap. She cooed into his ears, “I don’t want to live anymore, Daddy.” She had just turned eight, her legs were stumps, and her fingers had been cut off. Although it had probably hurt, she couldn’t remember anymore. She tried to walk that day on her new artificial legs and found the attempt painful. Her knees were knobby, and, thankfully, she hadn’t begun to think about sex, friendships, and everything else that made youth so fun. Yet, she looked into her father’s eyes, and said, in a voice that didn’t really understand what it said, “I don’t want to live anymore, Daddy.”

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    Kimberly had a brother. He had just turned eight; Kimberly was two years behind. Trying to become a big boy, so his parents would trust him like an adult, he wanted to use the new lawnmower. Like a kid would, her brother had argued and pleaded and made a lot of promises that he would never fulfill. The mower was big, with a thick seat and a knobby wheel that turned it, and massive blades that had impressed Kimberly. Her father had turned it upside-down to show her the metal prongs that would cut the grass, after he bought it at SEARS. She was impressed, naturally; her father wouldn’t have believed her if she had told him that she wasn’t.
    Everything impressed her. The fact that her dog messed the floor tiles with urine would open her eyes widely, until her Daddy would tell her that dogs did that and no one could prevent it. Kimberly would stare, wide-eyed and jaw-dropped, at Fluffy, who would look back lamely, tail behind its butt, head drooped.
    When their father went to take Fluffy for a walk, circumstance finally put her brother, George, on the lawnmower. He had wanted to cut the grass so badly that their father had finally relented. It probably could turn him into a young man instead of the nuisance that he had become lately. He had told their father that he could do it without pay to drive the big machine like their Dad. Although their father hadn’t taught him yet to use it properly, he had decided to let his boy try anyway. Actually, he had always had his hands full with Fluffy, who had to be walked, with a plastic bag and a small metal scooper. It had to be done, and no one else would but him. Kimberly wouldn’t, naturally; she just had to sunbathe like their Mommy always would.
    As George came around the house with the mower, he actually did see Kimberly on the grass, head back and bare feet kicking to a tune on Radio Disney. She wore earphones to hear the music better. George tried to yell, but his voice couldn’t carry very far, scared because he couldn’t yet control the mower properly. In sheer panic, he couldn’t scream loudly at all. Really, just a hoarse whisper escaped his lips. His sister didn’t turn around or try to run. Like anyone would, she took for granted that whoever rode the mower would use it properly.
    After their father came back, with a small bag of doggy-doo, Kimberly was sitting on the front porch. She told her Daddy that she got hurt. He could tell that she had: thick blood trailed behind her, and her feet looked a little too ugly. Like any parent would, he spanked George, hard, with a wooden paddle, yet he couldn’t have realized that he would spend the next two years trying to help Kimberly with her fake legs.
    When she finally told him that she wanted to die, he did the only thing that he could do: he did what any father who loved his baby would do; he did what his friends in Iraq had done when survival had looked impossible to another soldier.
    Eventually, she would think about sex, friendships, and everything else that made youth so fun, and like his baby-faced friends in Iraq, she wouldn’t get to enjoy any of it. What else could he do but help to carry out her final request?

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