Bullied (13 page)

“And what comes after, this letter, Freddy?” “Elizabeth, what comes after G?” Sister says. This process is boring, and I do not know why we are doing it. Sister just told us that it has something to do with reading. I think I will like to read books, because Lauren and I enjoy it when Mom reads them to us. If learning the alphabet can help me read on my own, I guess I want to learn it.

My first year at school is a very calm experience but it seems like it will last forever. However, every day at 2:30 PM, the bell rings and first, we go into the coatroom, a long rectangular room behind the black boards, get our jackets on with Sister Donnas’ help, and I get ready for my long walk home. After we get our coats on, we leave the classroom in a single file line. Turning left into the hallway and then right toward the exit, we walk out the door to the wide concrete sidewalk area in front of the school. Many of the kids stop there and get in their groups, if their parents are going to pick them up. A parent or someone else picks up most of the kids in my class.

Since no one picks me up every day, walking out of the school, I quickly walk to the curb at the crosswalk, look left and right, then cross the street to walk up the next block. Across the street on my left is the public school, which has a big fence surrounding the schoolyard. I do not like walking on that side of the street, because many of the kids in the fenced yard yell at me. I just keep walking up Broadway toward home. I have about an hour before the bigger kids get out of school and then walking home gets more complicated. The bigger kids will now shove me or hit me on the back as they pass me. If I plan it, I can always go to the Boys Club, which is half way between the school and home. The rule is that I have to tell my Grandmother first that I am going to stop there after school. Grandma is always looking for me to arrive at home before 3:00PM and gets very worried if I am late.

My walk home is only four and a half blocks, consisting of one block with homes on both sides of the street, the block of homes on the right across the street from the public school, the long block where the Boys Club is, then another short block across from the Triangle. The triangle is a triangular shaped, bare piece of land at the angled intersection of Broad and Main Street. After passing the triangle I cross one more street and I am on the block were my home is. My home, the fourth house on the left, has a big wide front porch. In the summer months, my whole family sits outside on the big front porch, because it is cooler there than inside the house.

I walk up the walkway to the house, go up the front stairs to the porch and open the front door. I say, “Grandma, I am home.” She is usually in the kitchen, getting dinner ready for Grandpa at that time of the day and was always glad to see me. Most of the time, she is alone. Sometimes her daughter Elaine might be visiting and whenever that is the case I have to be very careful because Elaine was always looking for a reason to discipline me. For some reason, whenever Elaine or Ernie were there, Grandma was usually very quiet. Our family seemed to have a custom that any adult could discipline any of the kids. Elaine got mad at anything, including a simple look on my face that she did not understand. She would then launch into her dramatic act and I knew that act very well already.

If she said anything to me, I got scared and did not know what to say. If I hesitated in answering her, she would say,

“Hey, I am talking to you, pay attention to me!”

If I did not give her the answer that she wanted or would not answer, she said,

“Answer me, right now!”

Any hesitation to answer her question again would cause the next response,

“If you do not answer me I will fix you good!”, or

“Wipe that grin off your face!”

If I did not or could not get a very serious look on my face, immediately, she would get up from her chair, march to wherever I was, put her face about three inches from mine and scream loudly,

“You better wipe that grin off your face or I will do it for you!”

Sometimes when she did this I would start to cry and she would scream,

“Stop crying or I will really give you something to cry about!”

This comment meant she was going to spank me and sometimes, she did.

Surprised by this treatment, I never could understand Grandma’s silence through it all. I could not understand, based on the strict but mostly kind treatment I received from my immediate family of Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, and Mary, why Elaine, Ernie and some other family members could get away with treating me in a very abusive and mean way. I tried to avoid these people whenever possible. I was glad that they were not around me every day as I faced my new challenge of starting school.

Kindergarten is a lot of work, full of new experiences and information, and I gradually got used to it. Life is hard, getting up very early is difficult and when the winter months come, I shiver in the cold during the mornings near our family room stove while Mom gets me dressed for school. I hate walking to school through the rain, cold and snow, but there is no choice.

The year seems to be going by fast and my walk to and from school is sometimes scary when the bigger kids are around. They fight a lot but I am lucky because most of the time they do not bother me. The worst part of it is that, when many of the big kids pass me, they hit or push me. That might be the reason that I do not see too many kids, my size and age, walking to school like this. Mom and Grandma do not think there is anything to it; as they say, it is only four blocks. Occasionally I go to the Boys Club after school and play flat pool in the basement game room of the club. Nevertheless, what I like most about the Boys Club is that there are strict rules about behavior. No pushing, hitting, or fighting or you are suspended. I like that a lot, because I feel safe there. In addition, when I get older I will be able to play basketball or baseball during the spring and summer months.

What a surprise it is when summer finally comes and school is over and I can sleep as long as I want to every morning. When I finally get up, the only thing I have to do is go downstairs and have breakfast. My sister Lauren is getting bigger, and so we would all have breakfast together sometimes. After that, we can go out in the backyard and play. We have a swing on the big apple tree in the backyard that Grandpa put up for us. I push Lauren, because she is too small to swing by herself. Then I try picking some of the small apples off the apple tree, but they are not ready to eat yet and won’t be until September when school starts again. There is also a small fence in our backyard that separates our yard from the neighbor behind us. I quickly learn how to climb over that fence so I can take some rhubarb from the neighbors’ back yard garden. I liked to eat it raw.

We have many family get-togethers during the summer and my sister and I like to hang out with our cousins, Donna and Danny. Danny is still very young, because he is two years younger than I. Donna was about my age, born within a few months of me. It was Lauren and my favorite treat to have Danny and Donna come to visit us. Donna is cute and funny but bossy, though like her parents Ernie and Elaine. When all the adults are together downstairs, the four of us go upstairs to play.

The functions of our family seem to be complicated. First, of course was Mom, who is my only Parent. She is very determined to make a good life for our small family, just the three of us. As a very aggressive and independent minded female, she is a unique personality and is going through some difficult times.

Elaine, the next oldest sister, was also very aggressive, but in a different way. She liked to laugh a lot, but had a mean streak, when it came to kids. Since any adult in the family could criticize, boss or impose discipline on any of the kids, whenever Elaine and Ernie were around they would always be the first to punish me for something.

Elaine had also graduated from Union Endicott High School a year after my Mother. After that, she started dating this handsome tall man named Ernie, who had recently returned from his enlistment in the army. Ernie was an athletic he-man person that lived about seven miles away from our house before he and Elaine married. Before their marriage, he would sometimes run from his home to our home to meet Elaine, arriving all sweaty and proud of his accomplishment. He also worked at IBM, like many of the other men in our family. Ernie is a real macho man who always walked with a swagger and spoke loudly. Everything he does is loud. Elaine and he seemed to be a perfect match, because everything she did was loud as well, including talking and laughing. She would often say to Grandma, loudly, “You have to show them that you are the boss!” Then she would laugh and always seemed to enjoy her frequent dominating encounters with any of the children.

When the four cousins are together, we will play games, such as “hide and seek”. After a few minutes of playing, we might forget about our mutual fear of making too much noise that would give Elaine or Ernie a reason to scream at us. I like to get together to play our games and so do Lauren, Donna and Danny. They are our favorite people and playmates.

After enjoying playing our games for a few minutes, I heard that loud noise of someone climbing the stairs and knew it could only be Uncle Ernie. When getting to the top of the stairs, he began yelling, “What are you doing up here? You are making a lot of noise and I want you to stop it, NOW! If you do not stop, I will spank you. Do you hear me?” The four of us cower in fear as he raises his hand in a threatening manner and we become very quiet. If we did not quiet down right away, we knew he would immediately hit any or all of us with his big hands. We all knew, when Ernie hit us, he hit us hard, and it really hurt.

After we became very quiet, Ernie tromps back down the stairs and goes back to the downstairs kitchen. As he speaks with Elaine and Grandma, he is laughing at the same time, bragging about how much he frightened us. Elaine always laughed loudly at these tales along with her husband. I could never understand why both Elaine and Ernie always thought it was so much fun to terrorize four children innocently enjoying their time together.

In addition to the yelling and intimidation received from Elaine and Ernie, spankings are a normal daily occurrence. Mom spanks us all the time for anything we do that she does not like. Grandma would also spank us whenever we misbehaved. Grandpa, however, never touched us. The big difference between the immediate family and my aunt and uncle is that even when they verbally and physically discipline us they never seem to enjoy it. I never have fear when around my Grandmother, Grandfather and Mother but I always experience fear when Elaine and Ernie are around. They seem to enjoy making children afraid of them. Why do they enjoy it? When walking to school and a bigger person runs by and suddenly slaps me on the back, I also feel the same feeling of fear, so it makes sense to me that the street bully and my aunt and uncle get similar pleasure from this activity.

In spite of those brutal family members, I feel very lucky that, after the death of my father, I have such a good and protecting immediate family. When my father died, I felt very alone, even though my mother was there to protect me. Having a grandmother and grandfather close by and in our daily lives gives me greater optimism about the life ahead.

When first grade begins in September, summer vacation is over and it is time to get back to the grueling daily prospect of school. Even though now I am not happy about going to school every day, I hope to meet some new friends. As she did last year, Mom drives me to school on the first day but I will walk every day after that. Last year, Kindergarten ended an hour earlier than the higher grades, so there were not as many kids walking home from school at the same time. Now, many kids a lot bigger than me were also walking home at the same time I was. Most of them do not bother me but some of the bigger kids, walking a lot faster, hit me just for fun when they pass.

When arriving in front of the school before the bell sounds and it is time to enter the building, we all chat and play various games. This is sometimes fun, but some larger kids seem to get pleasure out of pushing smaller kids. Since I am the smallest boy of the new first-graders, this happens to me often. I can do little when a person almost twice my size pushes me in the back or chest. When they do, they also call me names as apparent justification for their actions.

I guess I am “different” than most of the other kids because of my red hair and short stature. So, some of the kids call me "Red". I also have these spots on my face, called freckles. So, some of the other kids make fun of these, too. I feel hurt by this but I try to act as if it does not bother me, but it does. Due to my small size, I seem to get a lot of attention from a great many bigger children from many grades.

School is difficult for me because there are about 50 kids surrounding me in my class and the commotion makes it difficult for me to understand what the teacher is saying. I always want to look around at the constant activity since I am aware of this motion and sound all around me. I do not know why that is.

My first grade teacher is a very nice Sister of Charity who helps me take off my jacket when arriving, and put it on before going home. Every school day is very similar to the last, as we learn many new things and take two short naps every day. I can hardly wait to get home but walking home after class with a mob of other kids is a new experience. Some of these schoolmates are nice, some are not and they come in all sizes. The four and a half blocks to home now seems like a much longer trip than it did last year. I have also met some older children that also live in my neighborhood and I see them on my journey twice every school day.

Months later

My time in first grade was OK, but I am glad that summer is finally here and I will not have to attend school for the next three months. Things are easier for me in the summer and Mom may even take us on a short vacation. I do see and recognize some local kids walking around or at the Boys Club. A number of them are always in a group, especially brothers from large families. I wish I had some brothers, especially an older one. My Mom told me once that she had a baby boy that came before me that was stillborn. That really is too bad because I could have had an older brother.