Ericha

***Please be advised - this post contains some graphic detail.***


Ericha.

She was my friend. I first knew her as my sister’s friend. My sister and Ericha were extremely close. My family got to know Ericha well and we all grew to count Ericha as one of us. So, when Ericha’s mother threw her out of her house, she was welcomed into our home. She spent every day with us, every holiday, every birthday. She was part of our family. She helped me take care of my nephew every day. She cooked and cleaned. I wasn’t used to another person in the house cleaning. I had been a latch-key kid. Before Ericha moved in with us, I had gotten used to coming home to a quiet, empty house each day after school. After Ericha joined our family, I came home to a warmer home with more activity. Ericha would greet me and I would settle down into the couch next to her to watch whatever program she was enjoying. Or I would sit and tell her what I did at school as she cleaned. She would offer me a fudgecicle – a delight I had not known before being introduced to them by Ericha. These small things – they’re what made Ericha so important to me. Until this point in time, I had never lived with a family member that didn’t expect me to be an adult, to take care of them or fix their problems. Ericha was just there to talk with, to spend time with – without yelling, fighting, hitting, touching, blaming or guilting. She didn’t take a maternal role either – she was there as my friend. She was calm. She was helpful. I once told Ericha how pretty I thought the ring on her finger was. A few days later, she had left the ring for me – on my pillow. I took the ring back to her – protesting her generosity. “No..no,” she insisted. "You must take it and keep it," she said.

11 Years Old.

I was in Florida. I often spent a few weeks of the summer visiting my father in Florida when I was growing up. The environment in my father’s house was not one that was necessarily healthy or sound – but it was a welcomed departure from my own home environment which was still much darker, much more dramatic and chaotic. After about a week in my father’s home and around his family, I had begun my usual slow and uneasy settling into the home I would inhabit during the next few weeks. This afternoon in particular, I was at my father’s home with my stepsister – Krista. It was just the two of us, watching tv. I didn’t particularly like Krista. I found her to be crude, selfish and apathetic. Still, I kept the peace, as I always chose to do in my family. I was 11 years old.

The phone rang. It was my mother. The moment I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong. “Emily, I need to tell you something.” My heart sank. “Ericha was killed, Emily.” My jaw dropped, my mind went blank. The room went blurry as my grasp of the telephone loosened and the phone dropped to the ground. I sat down on the couch, my eyes fixed ahead of me. Krista asked what was wrong. I couldn’t speak. She picked up the phone and began talking with my mother. “Oh my God…” As Krista spoke with my mother, slowly – pain seized my chest, tears welled in my eyes, yet my body was still frozen. My mind raced – then stopped to fix on one vision. My mother had not yet explained to me what had happened to Ericha – yet in my head the vision had formed. Ericha was in her chair in the back room of the gas station she worked at. I had wondered immediately why that was the particular vision of her that came to my mind at that very moment. I later found that Ericha was murdered in that very chair in the back room of the gas station.

Ben and Matt Bryant were brothers. They had gone to high school with Ericha and my other siblings. They were generally acquainted with Ericha, although they did not know her well. Yet, because Ericha knew the brothers she had let them into the gas station after hours while she was closing up. It was then that they attacked Ericha, tied her to the chair in the back room of the gas station and held a screwdriver to her back, telling her that it was a gun. They wrapped a telephone cord around Ericha’s neck, and then pulled so hard that they shattered her trachea. When the police searched the crime scene they had gathered that the killers had gotten away with about $1,200.00 and some rolling papers. $1,200.00 for the life of a beautiful person. A person who was my friend. A person who had never done anything to them. $1,200.00 to shatter the lives of everyone who loved her.

She died brutally at the age of 18, in the dirty back room of a gas station. She died on the squeaky chair that she hated.