The Day the Boogeyman Got a Name

          

Yesterday, I walked through my darkened house just before I went to bed, checking that all the doors were locked and the windows shut tight. I do this every night. I have a husband who can attend to this all-important task, but I prefer to handle it.

I have to be sure.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was a child, we didn’t lock our doors unless we were leaving on vacation. In the summer, the front door would remain open to invite air flow, leaving the screen door as our only protection against the dangers of the night, few though they seemed to be. On particularly hot evenings, I would drag my pillow and sheet from my bed in the sweltering upstairs bedroom to the front door. I would lay down in front of the flimsy screen door, hoping to catch the slightest whiff of a breeze to make going to sleep possible, home air conditioning being just a pipe dream in those days.

In the summer of 1966, I was eight going on nine, living on the southside of Chicago. A very mature eight, I thought. I could go to the store by myself, ride my bike to Jeffrey Park, and stay out until the streetlights went on. In the summer, that was almost ten o’clock. My friends and I were free to roam around the 87th and Stony Island neighborhood like miniature pirates. Our biggest worry was being hit by a truck while wearing dirty underwear.

But that changed one day in mid-July. The day the boogeyman got a name.

The boogeyman. That nameless, faceless tyrant of childhood. I’ve known about the boogeyman forever it seems. He was like God in some ways. No one had ever actually seen or talked to him, but every child I knew believed in him. In some ways, he was more real to us than God. God, we knew, was only in our hearts and in church. The boogeyman was everywhere else.

That fateful day, I went to Boyce and Dumas, the local mom-and-pop grocery store/tavern, as I usually did. It was late to be doing that, almost dinner time, but I had a quarter. A quarter could buy a package of Hostess cupcakes, a can of Coke, and two penny pretzels. A veritable bonanza of insulin-spiking goodies.

When I arrived back home, my mother was frantic. “Where were you? Don’t you know you’re supposed to tell me where you’re going? How dare you go out that late and not tell me? Who do you think you are?”

She grabbed my arm and yanked me into her bedroom. This was not a good sign. This meant I was in for it big time, but I was confused. This is the same woman who started most days by telling me to get my little butt outside and don’t come home except for meals because she didn’t want me to get the house dirty.

“I’ll show you to disobey your mother,” she continued, still in a high pitch. “You’ll be so sorry you’ll never want to sit down again.”

She hit me while this lecture was going on. That in itself was not unusual. I got a good spanking about once a month. (In her defense, most of the other moms in our neighborhood parented the same way.) But the fury emanating from her was odd. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but my mother was afraid, dreadfully afraid, and I didn’t know why.

“Ouch!” I yelled. “Ma, please stop! I won’t do it again!”

But she was relentless. “Don’t you ever go anywhere again without telling me!” Smack. “I don’t have time all day to be wondering where the hell you are.” Smack. “Just wait.” Smack. “You’ll get yours someday if you don’t start listening.” Smack. Then the inevitable. “You think you’re so smart.” Smack, smack.

I was dancing around the room, hopping from one foot to another, trying to twist and turn so her hands often glanced off my shoulder or just grazed my leg. But once in a while, she got in a good one, especially once where she zigged and I zagged and I got it right in the kisser. At one terrifying moment, I was sure she was going to hurl the heavy container of Topaz perfume toward my head. Fortunately, it slipped to the ground without finding its mark. She was crying, I was bawling. We went on like that until she couldn’t lift her arm.

“You are grounded until school starts!” she shouted. “And don’t ever think you can pull a stunt like that with me again.”

We stood apart, both breathing heavily, trying to stem the flow of tears. Without another word, she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. I collapsed on the bed, snuffling and wiping my nose on the chenille bedspread. I wasn’t hurt, just angry at the unfairness of it all.

I had just finished crying when I heard Dad come home. I checked the clock. It was only six o’clock. Something must be terribly wrong.

I peeked into the kitchen where Dad was watching Ma prepare dinner.

“Have they heard anything new?” Ma asked.

“No, but they’re searching up closer to Seventy-First Street.”

Dad turned to head back into the living room, where his Daily News waited. He saw me peeking out of the bedroom.

“Hello,” he said. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” I lied. If Ma hadn’t told him about our little brouhaha, I was certainly not going to bring it up.

“That’s good,” he answered, willing to believe my lie.

My parents made sure we didn’t watch the news that night. I was sent to bed after watching Bewitched, but I didn’t have to take a bath, which was good because it was a hot and sticky night. I was crabby, my sister was too. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, I gathered my things and went downstairs to sleep by the front door.

“I’m sleeping by the door tonight,” I called out.

“Like hell you are,” came Ma’s unusual reply.

I reached the front door and stopped in my tracks. It was a hot summer night, and the door was closed. Not only closed, but locked.

Ma came over to me, far less formidable in her formless nightgown than in her daytime armor of girdled, cinched shirtdress.

“You march right back upstairs, young lady,” she said. “You’re too old to be sleeping out here like some refugee. What would the neighbors think if they knew you slept like a bum in doorways?”

“But, Ma, it’s roasting upstairs.”

“I don’t care. And don’t talk back to me. You sleep upstairs in your bed like a decent human being instead of a wild animal.”

The next day I found out what had all the grown ups in an uproar. Eight student nurses–young, pretty, living a mile or so away–were now dead. Some lunatic had killed them.

And he was still on the loose.

Between the time of the murders and the capture of the killer, our entire neighborhood underwent a subtle change in lifestyle. We kids couldn’t leave the yard. Our moms found excuses to check up on us even then. Dads came home early from work and some even called home during the day, unheard of before. We weren’t allowed to stay out until the streetlights came on. In fact, we had to stay in the house after supper.

Our parents didn’t explain why. His name wasn’t mentioned in our presence. They said simply that the rules had been changed, and we were to obey. That is the prerogative of parents.

But we learned why. We learned his name. And we whispered it in fear those first few days. He was the first mass murderer in my experience, but unfortunately not the last. As the first, though, he gained the highest measure of childhood notoriety.

Now the boogeyman had a name. It’s been sixty years this July, and I still remember the terror his name could invoke.

“Watch out or Richard Speck will get you.”

Over time, our parents relaxed their vigil, and we returned to more normal habits, although we checked in with our mothers more often and our jaunts tended to stay closer to home. But our front doors stayed locked.

As I went upstairs to bed the night of his capture, I paused on the landing to stare at the closed and locked front door, the legacy of Richard Speck in my house. Other people would hate Speck for more serious matters, but I was only a child and could only hate him for crimes committed against me. I hated him for taking away the soft breezes wafting over me on those long, hot summer nights. I hated him for being the reason for the worst whupping of my life. I hated him for locking my front door.

It was the end of the innocence of my childhood, and I hated him the most for that.