By Victor Greto
My hands are cold and feel as though they’re sticking to the gray fence. I think I’m crying because I can taste the salt. The sky is gray and looks as though it’s covered by one giant cloud.
Donna’s fists are like a pig’s. She’s holding them before her like Jack Dempsey or Rocky Graziano. She has no knuckles, only small creases where the knuckles should be. She has already hit me twice and now she hits me again. I simply hold on to the fence, squeezing the coldness. She stops hitting me and laughs, the large roll of fat under her chin shaking. I sit on the hard concrete of the playground, wiping my bloody nose.
“Nicky,” Jackie cries, touching my shoulder gently. “What are you doing? God, look at you.”
Jackie’s hand is warm while it rubs my cheek. She puts her hand in mine and takes me inside the school to the bathroom. She takes me to the girls’ bathroom. It smells different, like a sour odor worse than the usual. She puts my head into a sink, bumping it against the crusty faucet. The water is cold too, I’m shivering, and I begin to cry.
“Nicky, no,” Jackie whispers. “We’re all alone now.”
I hold Jackie’s hand as I look up at myself and notice a trickle of blood going down from one nostril. I sniff and it jumps back up. I bring more water to my face with my left hand and then put my head back, like what I see other kids do when their noses bleed.
I stop crying. I feel Jackie’s other hand on my neck. I suddenly feel good holding my head back. I got my shirtsleeves all wet, and Jackie loosens my tie. It hangs down low. I look in the mirror again. This time no blood comes down, and I look at myself for a long time. I smile at Jackie’s profile in the mirror, looking seriously at me.
We walk out the door and into the cafeteria. It is large and filled with folding tables and different colored plastic chairs. Now it is empty and seems fake because nobody is there and the chairs look like cartoons. We sit down, Jackie sitting on a blue chair and me on a red one.
“I’m tired,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Why’d you let her do it, Nicky? You could beat her.”
I shake my head like the way she did. “No,” I say.
“Do you know what they’re gonna do now?”
“What who’s gonna do?”
“The boys. They’re gonna kill you.”
I rub my eyes and scratch the side of my cheek. Then I run the palm of my hand over my left arm; it is only slightly hairy with light fine hair. I like my arm a lot. I smile and feel good. “They won’t touch me,” I say.
She sighs and touches the side of my face.
Jackie is strange. She says she is the only ten-year-old in school who can read a novel, and she says she loves me because I’m cute and have black curly hair. I read a lot, too, but not novels. I think I’ve read Thomas Jefferson, Virginian about five times. I am Thomas Jefferson because I know that in the course of human events all men have become equal. It’s a big book with a colored hard cover of Tom walking down a country lane with his red hair and smiling freckled face. I’m glad I don’t have freckles or red hair – mommy says it’s ugly. And the book smells like the library, like old dusty shelves and Pop-pop when he was alive. I don’t remember much about him, only I sat on his knee and he liked watching Red Skelton when he said, And may God bless, because he would smile and rub his eyes, and mommy would look across at him and smile in the same way. That was good because the only light in the room would be the television, and I would be lying on the rug and it would feel warm, and Pop-pop would be on the pink couch, and mommy would be on the gray rocker waiting for daddy to come home. It was dark and the television had such a soft color glow it could make you feel warm just looking at it, and although I could barely see them both in the darkness, I could feel them there, feel his old dusty plaid shirt, and her dress clinging to her veiny legs, fun to run your fingers along when you weren’t watching television. They were there and that was as good as reading about Thomas Jefferson, because I love Tom and I love them.
Seeing Jackie sitting across from me with her blue and white girl’s uniform on, touching me with her soft white hand, makes me feel really good. But I am tired and my mouth stings when I lick it. I touch her and say, “Let’s sit in class now – recess is just about over.” She looks at me the way mommy sometimes looks at me when she gives me a thermometer, and nods her head.
We have to walk outside and into another building to get to our room. The sky is still ice, and it is days like these when I sometimes wonder how Tom could do the things he did. It was sunny in 1776 when you could be brave, and now it is like ice and city streets and old people. We both ignore Donna, the fat girl.
Horace comes up to us and stands in front of me shaking his head with his arms crossed. He is acting like his father who comes to school sometimes to bring him his lunch.
“Nicky,” he says. “Robert told me Donna beat you up.”
I like Horace; he and I have lots of fun just walking around the school yard imitating people on television or in the old movies. His favorite is my impression of Captain Bligh. I stick out my lower lip and make it look twice its size and drawl, Mr. Christian, what is this mutinous behavior?
“Yeah,” I say, feeling Jackie standing beside me with her head lowered. “So?”
I look into his eyes. They seem very black to me and I cannot tell what color they are, if they are any color at all. His face is narrow. For a moment, I don’t like him at all.
“I just think you’re a faggot, that’s all.” He smiles and walks off. I look over at Jackie and smile, too. She looks at me the way mommy looks at me when I don’t eat dinner.
“You see, Nicky,” she says. “What I tell you? That’s what they’re gonna call you from now on.”
I smile and feel my cheeks burn. My insides have butterflies, and I pretty much think Jackie is right. But I think of Captain Kirk and am suddenly happy. I squeeze her hand because I like Jackie so much.
The classroom is almost empty when we get there. Lisa is in the first row first seat studying for a spelling test next period, her brown glasses at the edge of her nose. She doesn’t like me. Jackie and I walk by her and she presses her lips together, changing her face into a bunch of wrinkles.
“Gonna fight her, Nicky? Gonna get her for what she did?” she says.
“Fight her?” I say. “You mean Donna? Hit her?”
She presses her lips again. “Yup. That’s what Horace said you were gonna do.”
“Horace? I never talked to Horace about that. I ain’t gonna fight no girl.”
She shrugs and glances at her spelling words.
Lisa is smart and is the teacher’s pet. She always gets hundreds on her tests. Jackie hates her guts, but I liked her after she wrote something called The Constitution of Love. It was very dirty and nasty. The mother superior beat the hell out of her the day after Miss Romero found it. I like Lisa because she stood there like she didn’t care, and although you would think she really hated the pain and cared a lot about being hit, you knew, somehow, she didn’t care. That’s nice to know and see someone who doesn’t care about being hit. Everyone else does.
Jackie and I sit down as the rest of the class come into the room. I feel chilly and cold again like when I was in the girl’s bathroom. Several people are looking at me.
When Miss Romero comes in, her short black hair almost like Jackie’s, frizzy against the blackboard, she smiles and sits down, her eyes looking into mine. My butterflies start, and I hold the sides of my desk as though this will make the butterflies flutter back outside.
She says “Nicky” so softly that no one hears her except me because I am expecting it. I walk up to her and stand beside her desk feeling old – then I remember Jackie, and hang my head like George Washington did at Valley Forge when a lot of the soldiers died.
Miss Romero is still silent, her dark eyes like Jackie’s, still but shaking a little like water in a sink. Her look reminds me of the time I flunked one of her history tests on purpose because it was so easy. She had walked around me with her hands behind her back, like my imitation of Captain Bligh, and shouted about me being lazy. I hated it and almost cried three times, but my stomach could feel my heart beating so fast and hard that I felt almost good, like an adult.
She reaches out her dark hand, like Jackie’s, and touches the side of my face, running a finger along one of my curls. Her lips are deep red and full and she licks her lips and her tongue is like a snake’s. Then she stands up and tells me to sit down as though nothing happened at all. I am happy because Jackie does the same thing with my hair, just before I sit down at my seat, just like Miss Romero, running her finger along a black curl that is sticking messed up over my forehead.
© 2023 Victor Greto