Bullies

After a few years of moving around, my family settled down in the relatively new suburbs of Rockland County that sprang up quickly during the 70s. We were city kids first, then rural kids in a tiny Pennsylvanian mountain town (for a brief year), and finally we landed in a place called New City, which I thought was odd. It was close to New York City in proximity and name, but it wasn't a city in any discernible sense. We lived near an interstate, and not much else: no stores, no town, no main streets within walking distance, nothing but track homes and cul de sacs, and this inertia that felt like the taut tension that precludes a fist fight. It was quiet but not peaceful, like a coil waiting to be sprung, and the house we lived in seemed like it grew out of a patch of dirt. 

It's what is now called a "Bedroom Community", created for city dwellers fleeing the expensive and rapidly worsening urban areas for a version of the picture perfect American life, ostensibly for the kids. My Mom still jokes that we moved there for the dog, because many places in the city didn't allow pets. My father gave more serious reasons, like the excellent school district and low crime rate. But I knew what it was really about: convenience. A hop on a highway led us straight into New York City, yet we were technically out of harms' way. It was a Mad Men reality, as our very ethnic parents pretended we were just average white folks movin' on up. Except that wasn't actually true. Money and jobs had not given my parents the escape they had hoped for, because family roots went deep. We were still tied to the very tough working class relatives who came up and made fun of the country, and so did I, because in my being, I knew we didn't "fit" in here; we simply didn't belong.

Before this last, big move, I didn't have much experience with bullying during my brief time on Earth—the almost constant teasing and harassment, the vicious, sudden onslaught of hands flying at me to do me harm, plus the shock of that, and finally the sickness of uncontrolled violence brought on by nothing other than just being there. The more my brothers were teased at school, the more brutal they (and I) became. The more my parents were worn down by this grind we were in, the more snappish they became, and the more they lashed out at us. After awhile, it simply became my reality and my home life. My friends were going through either similar or exact experiences with their families, too, so it wasn't like I felt like this was exclusive to me. I just knew it was completely illogical and unfair. I was a very good kid, with the same spirit that I have now. I was blessed to have been born with everything that would carry with me through this gift of a life that I have: curiosity, logic, talent, fairness, generosity, a sometimes wild energy, and an innate intelligence that protected me when so many of my childhood classmates had no such buffers.

My classmates and I are planning our upcoming 25th High School Reunion online, through a wonderful social network we have made. I watch eagerly as we reach out to one another, trying to reconstruct our group. It is with sadness and a heavy heart that I write this to you, dear readers: we know of at least 10 deaths within our class, so many that we have decided to hold a time of silence for their passing. Many of them are the results of violence or suicide, within a group that is still under the age of 45. I have heard over and over from my friends first-hand, their stories about growing up: the horror, the alienation, the abuse, and the mental illnesses that surrounded us which marks Generation X forever. As I look back now, I can remember vivid events that I realize defined my first encounters with the brutality of our upbringing, like my middle brother dressing for the funeral of a classmate while I was still in elementary school. His family said he died from electrocution through a faulty ceiling fixture while changing a light bulb. Years later, his cousin would commit suicide in Florida by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, while he was on the lam from the authorities. He went out into a deserted field, put a gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. It must have felt like peace to him.

Another classmate lost her twin sister through domestic violence. The father of her children bludgeoned her, while her back was turned—injuries that she later died from, as a result of complications from that incident, leaving her children without parents, who are being raised by loving, supportive, but ever-grieving family members, like my classmate. It is heart-breaking, tragic and leaves me aching in a way that will never heal, but this is what we were born into; this reality that's like a scar upon the skin, always reminding us of our circumstances. Unlike the "We" Generation, the "Me" Generation, and Generation Y, we of hearty New York stock have never had the luxury of losing ourselves in fantasies, as our worlds caved in around us. I became adept from an early age at assessing troubled people, a skill I have honed to perfection, like a Sixth Sense. There was my friend from elementary school who left high school for many weeks because of a late, hard bout with chickenpox (that many of us had before we could remember), who came back to school broken and damaged. 

Not too long after, she ratted me out to my parents for our benign experimentations with cigarettes and, very occasionally, weak pot. This disclosure was designed to take the heat off of her and she disappeared, never to be part of our group again. She, like every single one of the girls around me, was actually far ahead of me with her life experiences. She already lost her virginity, and worked at a cleaners that had tons of coke circulating among the employees, trafficked by the young store manager. I guess she panicked as she down spiralled and was desperate to inflict some damage on someone else. I was not your average kid (which I've written about here on this blog), and I was often accused of things that I was innocent about, because I stood out from the pack. This betrayal though, this was different.

I can remember clearly an incident in class—she sat behind me and laughed as I made jokes, then her eyes got wide, she covered her mouth, looked down at her desk, and cried with a look of shock on her face. After school one afternoon, she played "American Pie" for me over and over in her bedroom, as she sat rocking gently to the music on the floor. She was angry with me when I said I didn't understand her connection to the lyrics. Her family said that she was sent away upstate to rehab, to get her away from "bad influences", and for a time glares laughably came my way, but in my heart, I knew she was lost forever because of mental illness, and that hurt more than the act of a scared teenage girl.

The worst aggression by far occurred during elementary school, before kids learned to hide their dysfunctions and construct elaborate lies around the abuse we were either a witness to, a party to, or a victim of. Many of our home plots were built on the former farms of the original Dutch families who worked the land for generations, prior to our arrival. A lot of those families simmered with resentment over the loud influx of foreigners. I had friends whose parents spoke with brogues at home, African friends with Ghanese parents, Jewish friends who kept Kosher at home, Norwegian friends with sad, quiet parents who mourned the loss of their youngest sister to drowning—a rowdy patchwork of ethnic New Americans who must have been an affront and assault to those of Dutch farm stock. Our house had been built on land adjacent to the old farm family. My neighbors loved to remind me that I lived on "their uncles land" and they constantly violated our property boundaries in defiance of the land sale. I knew how they felt. Years later I felt the same keen sense of loss when the last of their uncles' farm land was sold to a developer to build more ugly track homes. We looked through the apples trees that marked the last of his orchard, to see headlights eerily passing passing underneath the trees in the darkening dusk. For years, I had the jarring sensation that teenagers were driving through the corn field on a joyride.

The kids next door were true farm kids. They spent much of the year shoeless and scrabbling around in the dirt. In the summer, we picked pea pods from the fields, wiped them off on our shirts, and savored their natural sweetness. I remember the day Elvis died, because their mama called to them from their porch, crying and holding their newborn baby brother. Their father had left recently, because the baby came out dark-skinned and afro-haired, not at all like their Dutch-extraction father. Their mom rarely came out of the house after the scandal broke, so I relished this opportunity to get a closer look at the baby wrapped in a blanket. Oh, there he is! Yep, he definitely had a different father from their dad. After they moved away, I wrote to the oldest sister as a pen pal, and we have since reconnected. Their younger brother Eddie had been born disabled, but I never knew the cause, just that he couldn't speak properly, which we teased him about and laughed over. He died in his 30s. They were odd to me in many ways, and as I learned at school with breakneck speed, I quickly outgrew them. 

One summer afternoon, a group of "cool" kids from the development across the field sent a girl over to my backyard with an offer to play. I ditched my neighbors quickly, and the trio of them went back to their yard, casting somber looks at me. As I ran across the field behind the girl who lived there, I saw her talk to a circle of girls, many of them taller than me. Almost immediately they surrounded me as a group, jeering at me and mocking the ease with which I cast my neighbors aside. "I told you she would come over." she said to her friends, "What makes you think we want to play with you?!" The pre-planning involved in this cruel trick knocked me for a loop. I tried (as a rule) not to cry, but I couldn't hold back my embarrassed tears. I ran back home with a pit in my stomach, to tell my mom what happened. She snapped at me, "Well, what did you expect? You shouldn't have left your friends to begin with. Go back outside and play. I'm busy.", then went back to her cooking or cleaning in the kitchen. She hates being interrupted from these chores. I did indeed go back to my neighbors under their big shade tree, but my mind was elsewhere. On Monday morning, as our classes passed by in the hallway of our elementary school, the girl who had tricked me pointed me out as she passed by, laughing, "Haha! We made you cry." As their line moved down the hallway, I turned around to see her twisted, jeering face. Diane, this little girl never forgot you, or that episode.

Another time, we were in the cafeteria practicing for a recital or chorus or play or something for Parents' Day. Two girls sat on the edge of the stage that we used in school, whispering furiously. I guess at this point word had spread that I had composure, which drew bullies to me like a magnet. They started kicking me in the calf, saying to each other "I know, I know! It's so weird!! She doesn't even move, or notice it!" But, oh Becca and Mara, I did, I sure did. It was then that I started to get a sense of myself, my nerves of steel, my extraordinary resilience, and my ability to ignore the grossest distractions with this incredible focus that still amazes me. There were other incidents, other showdowns in the playground. One year my best friend Peggy and I coincidentally shared the same winter coats, which I thought was great, but apparently my classmates did not. My friend Lisa told me that there was graffiti in the bathroom about me and her. I read it, baffled by the slang, and asked what a "lesbian" was. Oh...but wait, because of matching coats? I thought that made us, like, twins or something. I was a late bloomer throughout my school days. Another time my friend Abby was surrounded by a group of bigger girls, who dangled from a jungle gym as they taunted her. I quickly tried to form a group with my friends Cathy and Peggy. I turned back to confront the girls, then said "Yeah, well there's a bunch of us, too."

"We don't have a problem, with you, Marie. (well, that's a change) Just your friend. You can leave now and we won't touch you." Oh, fuck that. Abbie had recently moved up from the city, and she was very small, a nerdy, smart girl with thick glasses, into plays, musicals, dramas, and she was also very Jewish. "Look," I said to Karen, a big country girl, "you have a problem with my friend, you have a problem with me. Right, guys?" I turned around to see that I was talking to air. Cathy and Peggy had gone to the swing set, sitting in seats with their heads down, avoiding my gaze. Ok, well, I guess I'm not a coward, either. Good to know. The big girl tried to reason with me again, "It's OK, Marie. We think you're cool." Since when? These kids were like animals to me; one day they hated you, the next minute they switched allegiances. I remember every detail of that recess; Karen wore painter pants, and it was the trend to stick a colorful comb into the small tool pocket. I looked her right in the eye, as she and a bunch of other girls loomed over us on the bars of the jungle gym, like a group of menacing orang-outangs. I jerked my thumb at my small friend standing besides me, "You have a problem with my friend, you have a problem with me." 

The leader of their gang laughed, hesitated, then grew uncomfortable, because my eyes never strayed from her beady blue ones. I could see her mind change in that instant, and her eyes reflected her uncertainty. "Ok, Marie," she turned around to with her friends to laugh at me, pretending I was a mock threat, "Ok, it's cool. We'll let you guys pass." Yeah, no fucking shit, kid. I grew up fighting, and I was starting to get a sense that I could throw a mean punch. When I was threatened, my hands automatically curled themselves into fists by my sides. I noticed there wasn't any laughter in her eyes. I won this stand off, and I knew it. In junior high, a girl finally told me the truth as I defended Abby for the umpteenth time, "Marie, you can't protect her, forever. Besides, she IS a nerd. Do you really have anything in common with her?" You mean besides her swimming pool? Uh, no. I told Abby the bad news, that I was walking to junior high school with two very large and rough Italian/German girls who had just moved up from the city. Her mother called mine, and I felt awful as I watched Abby being driven to school by her Mom, but truth be told, she lacked the sense of adventure I had, though my sense of nobility was troubled for years. I'm happy to report she forgave me years later (thank you, my friend;)

After that, the boys came after me. One afternoon the younger cousin of my brother's dead classmate started razzing me hard in class, talking smack as he sat behind me. God knows what his family life was like after the death of his cousin. His family lived in an old stone Dutch farmhouse across from a street named after them. Outside the house there were always motorcycles, bombed out looking car wrecks, and redneck types who came banging out of the front screen door, wearing leather jackets and kerchiefs tied around their heads with American flags on them, smoking cigarettes. The men were tan, skinny, and mean-looking, so when I walked past their house, I avoided their leering gazes. Groups of them sat outside on the front steps drinking and cursing. I didn't need anyone to tell me they were a hard lot. Their son must have worked my nerves extra hard because I turned around in my seat to confront him. He must have been shocked at my hubris, because he challenged me in front of the entire class when the teacher left the room. Like any movie, I watched in horror as the clock zoomed its way to 3 pm. He had set our fight for 3:15 in the schoolyard. If you've never experienced a situation like this, I don't know if anything can accurately describe the heart palpitations, sweating, nervousness, and adrenaline that courses through your body in shock waves, causing your heart to clench in fear. It's something you never forget.

At the ring of the bell, I contemplated my options: 1) I could wait by my older brothers' classroom and walk home with him 2) I could tell someone, but who? My mom was at work 3) Hope that my grandparents surprised me in the schoolyard to walk me home as they sometimes did, and then finally, reality. There was no one to rely on. There was no one to help me. I was utterly and completely on my own, and I was 8 years old, a skinny little girl. I took a deep breath, and walked to the spot where we would meet. I had on my tan and brown knitted bag slung across me that I used to carry my books, which I took off and sat down on the ground to await my fate. As I sat on the grass, a group of boys climbed up the small hill to meet me.  I wondered if the boy who challenged me could see my shirt fluttering from the hard thumping of my heart in my chest. I was shocked that he felt he needed two other boys to even approach me, but then I realized....he didn't have the "stuff" to meet me alone. OH! Gasp! He knew he was in the wrong. And, he probably had a crush on me. All this information I took in visually, in about ten seconds.

"Alright, Doucette", he sneered at me and turned to his friends who stood behind him for encouragement, "Get up so I can beat yer ass." As I stood up from the ground and wiped the dirt and grass off my pants, I turned around and cast a sweeping look about the schools' grounds for my brother or my grandparents; one furious, desperate, last glance as I pleaded inside for someone to see me, or at least turn their head my way to notice me, so I could call out for help. Nope. No one. There was no one to help me. I took a deep breath as my heart did double time in my chest. I was alone. But I still had me. I narrowed my eyes to meet my fate and walked slowly towards him. He arms shot out, and the next thing I knew, I fell hard on my ass and was sitting on the ground. Oh! That's it?! I been on the receiving end of a lot worse than that at home, kid. OK, he ain't gonna throw a punch to my head. 

Now I was into it, so I put on a crooked, lopsidded grin, rose up from the ground, and slowly walked right up to his face, never taking my eyes off him. He look unsettled, huffed out some air, then turned to his friends for guidance. "Ah, come on, Mike. She's not gonna do anything to you. Forget about it." He grabbed the lapel of my jacket, gripped the fabric tightly, pulled me right in to him, and raised his arm into a fist by the side of my had. I didn't flinch, and I continued to look him right in the eye. He looked....scared. He was scared!! He hesitated and pushed me to the ground and onto my butt for a second time, "Ah, you ain't worth it. You're not worth my time." and laughed with his friends. As he walked away, I sat on the ground ecstatic. I won! I was in one piece! I survived! He turned around one last time to look at me sitting there as they walked away, and the smile rapidly left his face. He looked like a terrfied, hurt kid. I'll never forget his face. He looked like he was about to burst into tears. It had all been for show. 

I am so grateful that I did not raise my hands in violence, though God knows I've done so countless times before and since, always in self-defense. But on that one sunny, beautiful afternoon, I didn't fight with anger in my heart, and I am grateful for that. Wherever you are, Michael G, thank you for making me a fighter. May God Bless You, and heal the hurt your family has endured, while you must have suffered in silence. Know that you, in particular, will be in my prayers this Sunday. I walked home from school alone that afternoon knowing exactly what I was made of. Thank you, a million times thank you.

I am forever in your debt.