Not the Usual Carping and Complaining

If you're not from New York, the name Quachaun Brown probably doesn't mean anything to you, so let me tell you about him -- four years old, a big fan of Spider Man, Chuck-E-Cheese and the movie Robots. Happy-go-lucky kid with the ability to remember names told to him even once. Known around the neighborhood for happily and with gusto saying "Hi Hi Hi" out the first floor window of his family's apartment to neighbors and friends.

Oh, and he's dead. Quachaun was killed allegedly by his mother's boyfriend, an 18-year-old named Jose Calderon, after Quachaun apparently knocked over Calderon's 27-inch flat-screen t.v. Calderon is reported to have swung Quachaun around by his ankles, and slammed him into a wall so hard that it fractured the boy's skull. Apparently, he was bleeding from his ears and his rectum, and when Calderon discovered that the boy had bloodied and soiled the sheets in his bed, he beat him some more. Quachaun's mother was not at home over the 36 hours that Calderon was brutally beating her child.

Quachaun, despite his short life, was celebrated by neighbors and friends yesterday, and then was buried in a tiny coffin. His mother, who's in jail on charges of manslaughter in connection with Quachaun's death, decided to stay away from the funeral.

I mention all of this because I have a four year old son myself, who loves Spider Man, Robots, and places like Chuck-E-Cheese, if not the place itself. And my son can be exasperating, as all four year olds can be, and sometimes even breaks things around the house. A few months ago, when Sam was being particularly naughty, I finally blew my stack and yelled at him, loudly. Instantly, he crumbled, chastened by being yelled at to be sure, but also genuinely frightened at this ugly, loud ogre that his father had suddenly transformed into. In that instant, I realized that I was wrong, no matter that he had provoked me -- when all was said and done, I was the grown-up, and he was a terrified little boy. Whatever I was mad at (I can't even remember it now) suddenly no longer mattered. What did matter was reassuring him that I still loved him, and that he was safe. I scooped him up in my arms, hugged him very tightly, and cried, as much because I had lost control of my emotions as because I had terrified my child.

And what's more, although we very quickly made up, that look on his face at the moment that I yelled has stuck with me since then. When I read about Quachaun, that looked flashed into my head -- I can only imagine the t.v. falling over, and Calderon's face twisting into an ogrish mask, and the boy crumbling in terror, just like Sam. Maybe I'm missing some particulars here and there, but I know four-year-olds, and I know, as sure as I know anything, that that's what happened. And then I thought to myself, how could anyone, seeing that look, do anything but hug the boy, reassure him and forget the damn t.v.?

Of course, I realize that's a naive sentiment, and that bad things happen, but god, wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where that was the case?