The ringleader was a fat girl named Wendy Woyt. Back in 1982, fat girls were few and far between. Wendy was neither popular nor despised. Boys didn’t like her. And she didn’t care what girls thought. She was mean, she was brash and she didn’t give a shit about much. She was one of those girls in fifth grade with absolutely nothing to lose.
The notes got passed in Mrs. Cooper’s class. So many tiny, folded notes. Day in and day out. The notes. Mrs. Cooper is a fat old bitch. I think Tom Harrison is sooooo cute. Want to come sleepover my house Friday? So many kids with so much energy and no supervision. I was younger than everyone and only ten years old while my classmates were all eleven by a long shot. Mrs. Cooper was tenured and oblivious to everything in that little room. We saw her rinse her dentures in a cup like on those Dentu-crème commercials. She returned our tests and essays all wrinkled from moisture and stained with coffee rings. She was like the living dead and gray in every possible way. Head to toe ashen with false teeth, silver, dried-out hair, and endless chalk dust on the ass of her dark polyester, pilled pants. Devoid of all signs of life at the prospect of being around us, much less teaching us, Mrs. Cooper should really have been permanently at home knitting, watching soap operas and sipping brandy by the fire. Instead, she was our teacher, responsible for a secretly potent room of children on the verge of adolescence, with the powerful surge of hormones and crushes on classmates lurking beneath every chord in a Pat Benatar song.
I remember riding the chairlift with Joe Bailey after school, chewing grape bubblegum, in the late afternoon light and the bitter cold. Joe Bailey was a seventh-grader. He had no business being with me at all. But his eyes were so blue. And grape bubblegum, after all, is just like non-fermented wine for a ten year old. I was intoxicated by Joe Bailey. And, at the same time, I was madly in love with his younger brother, Danny, who was with me in Mrs. Cooper’s class. But Danny liked Jean Beanlenn. Jean Bean as we all knew her. And who could blame him? Jean Bean was my friend but she was probably the most adorable, cutest, prettiest girl in the world. Well, at least in our class. She had those dimples, the cute retainer, the crinkly eyes when she smiled. I was no Jean Bean. I was cute to boys who were older. Younger boys didn’t see the cuteness in me apparently.
Boys like Joe Bailey on the chairlift did, though. I’ll never forget when he leaned over to kiss me. My lips were practically frozen. I was frozen. I jerked in reaction to his gesture, faced forward quickly and adjusted my skis as if nothing had happened. I went on chewing my grape bubblegum, looked the other way. No one said anything. We reached our destination, put our skis up high, shimmied our butts to the edge of the chair and dismounted the lift, each of us skiing off in separate directions. I never sat with Joe Bailey on a chairlift again. Years later, in high school, he told me he always had a crush on me. I feigned ignorance but we both knew we recalled the grape bubblegum, frozen lip, chairlift incident. It went without saying. Our smiles at “such a long time ago” said it all.
The afternoon droned on. “Put another dime in the jukebox baby,” Wendy sang under her breath and winked at me. I knew from her wink that I was dead meat. The notes were passed. Notes I was usually in on. But not this time. These were notes passed deliberately by my desk. Hand to hand. Little yellow notes on lined paper. Notes I was certainly meant to be aware of but not part of. Then the cupped mouth whispers and mean smirks from Susan Derney to Tammy Mccullouch and then between my beloved Jean Bean and Candie Miller who were my friends damnit, and I knew they were all suddenly in cahoots with the big fat girl. They all looked at me, all of them in on this big secret, all thrilled at the idea. This big plan. But why? To this day, I don’t know. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It happened once and it never happened again. At least not like this.
Mrs. Cooper sipped her hours-old coffee. Slowly removed her oversized bifocals and cleaned them, deliberately, calculatingly, watching the big clock above the door, one lens she rubbed with the cloth, then the other. We all watched her. Watched and waited. “Alright class, time for recess.” We had no bell in our school. It was too small a school for things as fancy as bells. We all got up, grabbed our parkas and headed out into the winter cold. Sudden freedom made the outdoors perfect no matter what the weather. The sun was shining brightly on the snow, crystals like sugar, something I will always love. I looked for Jean Bean and Candie but didn’t see them. I went to the monkey bars near the swings and grabbed onto the painted black iron to hang upside down. Years of gymnastics made me quite comfortable with hanging upside down by my feet, and the cold metal refreshed me as my Jordache™ jeans fell towards my knees exposing my bare skin to the biting wind.
Suddenly there was something big, puffy and red, like a down pillow suffocating me and making me lose my grip, and before I knew it, my legs gave way and I fell to the ground. When I looked up, there was Wendy, laughing at me. I got up as fast as I could and began to run back inside the school but she caught me. She dragged me back and that’s when I saw all of them. So many of them. My friends. My best friends. And even a few girls from class who I barely knew at all. Girls nobody even liked. Girls who weren’t invited to our sleepovers. Girls who were just glad it wasn’t them. What the fuck was this, my ten year old brain wondered. This can’t be good. They were the hunters and I was the kill.
“Get her! Kick her!” Wendy screamed as she wound up her fist and punched me in the stomach as hard as she could. I doubled over in shock and pain and then I felt them passing me, one to the other, tossing me like a ball in a circle, kicking me, slapping me, shoving me. No one punched me like Wendy did, though. No one else had the gaul to hit me quite like that. Also, no one was quite as big and fat as she was. They lacked the heft and girth required to deliver a beating of Wendy Woyt’s caliber.
Somehow, after what felt like forever, recess ended. We all lined up to head back in, single file, to our respective rooms. I stood in line, frozen, not crying, not feeling much of anything. I didn’t say a word. I kept it all in. I was relieved it was over. Then somebody shoved me from behind. They shoved me right into Danny Bailey. Joe’s younger brother. The boy I really liked. Eyes just as blue. Hair just as dark. As cute as a boy should ever be. As cute as any boy had any right to be. He had the first Atari of anyone I knew. He was good at sports. He was funny and everybody liked him. He was perfect. Perfect in every way.
Before I could utter, “Danny, I’m sorry,” he turned and wound up his bright green ski glove and punched me in the face.
Later, at home, my little brother asked, “What happened to your eye Jess?”
“Nothing Richard!” I hissed, “I fell at recess.”
“Fell on what?”
“Just fell.”
“Looks like somebody punched you,” he said.
“It does? Why?”
“You don’t fall on your face, dummy. You’d catch yourself first.”
“What do you mean?”
“So who hit you?”
“Danny Bailey.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. But promise me, swear the most excellent swear that you won’t tell Mom.”
“I won’t tell Mom.”
“Promise me, Richard.”
“OK.”
Upstairs, as I was looking at the bruise, the redness, the unmistakable injury I was wondering how I was going to explain this. Then I heard the car door slam. Mom was home. Shit. Shit. Shit. I was ten and I was terrified. Terrified of my entire day. Nothing made sense anymore. I felt like a failure in every way.
I stayed up there as long as I could, until she called me for dinner, on my bed with a Judy Blume book and my cat, Chube. Chube was a made-up name. Chubert. Originally Sophie. I was always making up names. It was so dark outside. Looming sadness hung in my little room, so out of place with my cheerful green carpeting. I felt a million miles away from ordinary and all I wanted was that: ordinary. It was like the very moment I realized that I was different somehow, different from other people. And not the sort of different that meant I was special. Just that I wasn’t like everyone else. But all I wanted was to be like everyone else. Pretty and cute like Jean Bean and Candie. Quiet and unobtrusive like the dorky wannabe girls in class. Or, hell, even callous and brave and fuck you like fat Wendy. It would be better than this. Better than this.
“Jessie!” I heard my mom call. Shit. Fuck. Shit and fuck. Goddamnit! I swore like a banshee when I was ten. I really did. I had swearing thoughts. I wrote dirty stories inspired by the Sidney Sheldon and Erica Jong books I snuck from my parents’ bookcase and secretly read. I knew more about sex than I should have, in a cerebral way that relied heavily on imagination. And no, my imagination was not demure and shy. In fact, it was rather accurate as I later discovered. I can’t imagine growing up with the Internet. What a shame that must be.
“Jessie! Please come down here!” But before I could hop up from my cozy bed, I heard her ascend the wooden staircase. And then I saw her in the doorway of my room. And I saw her seeing me. She came to me and sat on the bed, touching my face and looking at my black eye.
“Richie said Danny Bailey hit you. Is this true?”
“Oh my god! I can’t believe he---“ and then I saw my little brother in the doorway of my room, waiting there to see what our mom was going to do.
“I can’t believe you told her!” I shouted at him. “You promised!”
He didn’t say anything.
The next day, in art class, Danny came over to me and said he was sorry. He really looked like he meant it. All I could imagine was Mrs. Bailey whipping his ass somehow. Or, at the very least, taking away his Atari for an extended period of time.
