Bullied (8 page)

“What are you doing in there? Stop making that noise!” Mom yelled from the kitchen.

I look at my bleeding knuckles, some of the skin is peeling back from them and my hand is throbbing with pain. It is a good pain though, better than that pain in my stomach that I wake up with every day. I guess I cannot practice any more today but I will tomorrow, before Mom gets home from work or possibly tonight after dinner, if she goes downstairs to talk to Grandma. For now, there is an unusual funny warm feeling in my chest, my right elbow hurts a little and the pain from the fear is there. When the pain is at this level, I cannot think of anything else except the rotten people that hurt me, and how I am going to hurt them back.

A question suddenly pops into my mind; did I really put the line at the correct location for his nose? You know, I am not sure of this. Well, maybe I ought to go back to his house to collect one more time and look. I must wait a week before it is time to collect from his Mom again. In the meantime, I continue to practice hitting the mark whenever Mom was not upstairs. One day I forgot she was there and hit the door a couple of times before she screamed at me again. That evening, when we sat down for dinner she noticed the cuts on my knuckles and said,

“What did you do to put those cuts on your hand?” she asked.

“I fell down” I lied.

She looked at me skeptically and tilted her face slightly to the left. I do not think she believed me, I thought.

Before going back to see Jerry at his house, I measured the length of a rolled up newspaper in inches and wrote that number down. When I was out peddling papers that day, I walked up to the house with a rolled up newspaper in my hand. As I hoped, Jerry came to the door.

“Little short red ass, the little shit,” he said.

“Collecting,” I said. Then I handed him the newspaper as high as I could reach and in an upright position, while taking careful note how the length of the newspaper looked according to the difference in our heights. Abruptly, he snatched it from my hands and started hitting me on the face with it. First, he hit me first directly on the nose, then on the right side and then on the left side of my face. With my face hurting, and some tears in my eyes, I took a long look at the position and location of his nose. Then he told me that his Mother was not home and that I would have to come back to collect another day. He grinned widely. I hate this person and want to kill him, I thought. I walked away, and for the very first time in my life that I could remember, I was feeling a lot more anger than pain or fear. I am going to fix him good.

Back in my room that night, first, I drew another line that was about two inches below the previous one indicating a more accurate position of his nose. Then I took a rolled up newspaper and using it, again estimated where his nose would be. After drawing another line on the door that was fairly close to the last one drawn, the last line I drew seemed to be exactly in the right location. Next, I went through the process of stretching my right hand out with a clenched fist on the mark, and then measured the distance between the door and my chest again. After that, ruler in hand, I walked up to the door a lot of times to practice, stood the estimated distance from the door, and verified it with my knuckles on the mark. It was easier now to check if I was hitting the mark accurately because my knuckles would leave red marks on them from the blood. I think I am ready.

The next day, I tried to get my route done as early in the afternoon as possible so I would not have that big paper bag on me when I went to his door. I hope that his Mom will not be home this time but, to be sure, I have to get there as early as possible. Arriving at his house, I rang the bell and opened the screen door.

Jerry came to the door and said,

“Hello, little redhead shit, red shit, red shit” He then grabbed me by the shirt. I looked down and measured the distance between my chest and his big belt buckle, moved slightly to my left so my right arm, when extended, would be in the same vertical location as the belt buckle, and swung my right arm in a stiff arc, as hard as I could. I did not see my fist strike his nose because I was still looking at his big belt buckle to estimate the distance, but I heard a loud smacking sound and was surprised when he dropped to one knee in the doorway. Then he then began crying hysterically and walked away toward the kitchen, screaming, “Mom, Mom, Mom”. I ran away from the door as fast as I could, very pleased with myself but still surprised at the great results. Geometry sure is a great subject!

A few days later, I got a call from Mr. Garvey, my Manager at The Endicott Daily Bulletin and he asked me to come in to his office. I knew Mr. Garvey liked me because I was good at getting new subscriptions for the paper and had won a recent contest. As a prize for winning that contest, he had taken me and several other boys on a paid trip to New York City for a weekend.

The next day, before delivering my papers, I walked into the Daily Bulletin office on Main Street and asked to speak to Mr. Garvey. They showed me to his office and I sat in the chair on the other side of his desk. He said, "You know I just got a visit from one of your customers and the woman brought her son in here with her. The boy has two black eyes and his Mom is very upset with you for punching her son at their front door one day last week.”

I told Mr. Garvey the whole story about how long this kid has been hitting me whenever I came to collect for the Bulletin and that I had finally had enough. Mr. Garvey looked at me very seriously for a long moment, then finally smiled, and said, “Those were two really big black eyes you gave him, have you seen them?” “No, I replied, I just ran away so he couldn’t hit me anymore.”

“He's a really big kid, isn't he? He looks like he is at least a foot taller than you are! He shook his head with an amused look on his face.

“You really did a number on him.” he chuckled. He stood up and I knew our meeting was over.

“All right, Patrick, you be a good boy and please try not to hit any more of our customers, okay?”

As I walk out of his office, he is still standing, shaking his head and grinning as he picks up his telephone. Two days later, I got a notice that Jerry’s Mom had cancelled her subscription to the Bulletin. I was elated and never went back to collect the money she owed me, even though it would come out of my pay. I was never so glad to lose a customer.

After that, kids starting coming up to me asking how I gave Jerry two big black eyes. The bigger kids tried to persuade Jerry and me that we should “finish the fight.” This went on for weeks. During that entire time, Jerry walked around with two black eyes from my punch to his nose. He got a great deal of interest wherever he went. I heard about him and his black eyes at least once every day. One day, after finishing my paper route and I am walking home, a number of the bigger neighborhood kids surrounded me and told me they were going to make me finish the fight with Jerry. They said that the fight should happen at the Triangle, which was a piece of land between Main Street and Broad Street that ran southeast to St Ambrose Elementary School. The Triangle was too small to build a house on and so it was just a small little public park with some big trees on it. This commotion had gone on a long time now over this fight and I wanted to be finished with it. After a lot of coercion, I finally agreed that I would come to the Triangle after dinner tonight.

That evening, there was a knock on the kitchen door of my house on the second floor and it was a friend of mine named John.

“Hey, Pat, are you ready to go to the Triangle?” he said.

“Ok, I am ready. Do you think Jerry will show up?” I asked.

“He is already there, with a bunch of kids, too,” he replied

“Who else is there?” I asked.

“Everybody from the neighborhood and some kids from school”, John said.

“Oh, God, why are so many kids there?” I asked, astonished.

“Everybody knows about the black eyes you gave to Jerry and they want to see this fight,” John said.

“OK, let’s go”, I said as I put on my jacket and we walk out the door, down the back staircase and out to the front sidewalk. The “Triangle” was just at the end of this block with only one street to cross before we were there.

As we near the Triangle, I could see the large number of kids there, waiting for the fight to begin. I was amazed, this was the only time in my life that this many people wanted to show up to watch me do anything. I did not think anyone would be interested. As I was crossing the street near the Triangle, to my surprise, some of the kids actually cheered. There was a large open area in the middle of the property where we got ready.

Jerry was there and I laughed when I saw his two big black eyes. I guess punching a person directly on the nose can really cause some damage, in addition to the eyes tearing and resulting difficulty seeing that I experienced many times. Jerry did not look too happy to be there, so I assumed that a few of these kids forced him to show up, probably as they did to me.

“Start the fight, come on Pat. Come on, Jerry”, Big Bernie said, with a big grin.

Two kids actually gave Jerry a little shove into the center of the clear area.

I really do not want to fight, but I have no choice. To back out of the fight right now would cause me a lot of trouble later. Got enough trouble already, I thought.

“Ok, let’s go” I said as I neared Jerry. I put my hands up in that defensive position with my left fist in front just as my Daddy taught me and I see boxers do on television.

Well if I was going to do this, I would give it all I had. I moved forward aggressively and threw a flurry of punches. Some did connect with him in his chest but most of the punches missed. He threw a few punches at me, one that hit me on the chin with a glancing blow and then we both got into it in earnest.

He had longer arms than I did so he could punch me when I could not reach him. I tried various strategies to get close enough to punch him solidly. The one that seemed to work the best was for me to back up and lure him into moving forward. When he does this, I move quickly forward. This put me, suddenly, within his defenses so I could reach him. The couple of times I did this I was able to get in a few punches to him that surprised onlookers and me too. In the end, however, he hit me with a right cross that opened a cut over my left eye that gushed with a lot of blood, and the fight was over.

The victory went to Jerry, so John walked me home. John seemed very excited about how the fight went, except for the part about me losing.

“Some of those punches were really great. If you could have kept that up, you would have won the fight. Why didn’t you?”

“I just got too tired and, besides, he had longer arms than I have,” I replied.

“You know, you did pretty well. All the kids were really surprised!” John said.

“I’m sorry I lost,” I replied, as I held my blood soaked handkerchief over my eyebrow with my left hand. John stayed a few more minutes and then departed for home.

Luckily, my Mom was out for the evening with her boyfriend. I kept pressing on the cut until it stopped bleeding then put some iodine on it and covered it with a Band-Aid. As I thought about my embarrassing defeat, I thought about what I should have done differently during the fight.

What I did not realize at the time was that I would never have to fight most of the kids who watched that fight. I guess, like all bullies, they simply do not want to get hurt. The fight did teach me that I was getting a little better at fighting, but it did not prevent the awful fear from coming back. That ache in my chest, groin and thighs was there, as always, when I woke up the next morning. As for the cut, I just told my Mother that I fell off my bike. I do not want her to know that I have to fight a lot. It will only make things worse.

I thought a lot more about fighting better after that. I know that I am now more than willing to do whatever I can to keep people away from me. If that means I do not have any friends, either, that is OK, too. I decided I had to do two things. First, I needed to gain more weight because I was still too light to fight a big person. Right now, I was still too light, even though I had gained some weight recently. The second thing I decided to do was stop bathing. I figured if the smell of me was as bad as I could get it, it might keep some of the Bullies away from me. My few friends might not like that either but that was OK, too.

One day, weeks later, I am lying in my bed trying to go to sleep at bedtime and I had a startling thought. I had been through one whole day of traveling to school and back with lots of class work, pedaling my papers and no one had hit or punched me! I was very surprised, and told myself I would remember this great unusual day for the rest of my life. Imagine, one whole day without even a spanking! I wish every day could be like that.

The next day, I have two fights and never had a completely violence free day after that. There seems to be always something that spoils it, like a spanking from Elaine, Ernie, Mom or Grandma. Turning fourteen that January was a big event because I knew I had made it through what was definitely the worst year of my life. I pray fervently that I can make things get better this year. They certainly cannot get any worse. Life has changed for me so much recently that it feels like I am in someone else’s body.

When I was born fourteen years ago, and began my life, even with the suicide and death of my Father, life, as I remember it, was a great deal better than it is now. I cannot imagine anything worse, but looking back might help me remember how I got to this strange painful place.

I was born a few months ago to loving parents that take very good care of me. I love my mother and my father is my hero. I am lying on my back on one of two twin beds in our bedroom. My father, dressed in white Navy pants and athletic strapped T-shirt is crouching in front of the tall dresser near where I am laying and looking for something in the bottom drawer. It is hard for me to see him; I have to strain very hard on my back to look over to watch him. Suddenly, he yells at mother to help him find what he is looking for.