BULLYING

 (This is either the Prologue or Chapter One of my novel in progress.  Your comments will be appreciated.)

APRIL FOOL

(A novel by Mulanipril Rogero)

 

There was something unsettling by the way the merriment around me suddenly stopped.  The sound of school children’s feet rushing home came to a halt and I sensed something familiar—that recurring menace in the air that I could never escape from.  My eyes wandered, and there I saw them.  My heart was beating wildly, but I refused to be intimidated.  I walked briskly with my shoulders, back and chest out, exuding confidence, but they kept up with me.

Children watched scattered around while a band of four bullies now blocked my way, daring me to penetrate their juvenile wall.  I clutched my books against my chest with crossed arms. Toto, the leader, a fifteen-year old diminutive punk who behaved as if he were ten times his size, stepped cockily forward and thrusts his index finger at my arm--once, twice. I did not budge. I glared at him, pretending to be braver than I really was. I kept my composed facade, even though my knees started to feel like jelly.

“What’s up, April Fool? What ya hiding behind those books?” Toto jeered, eyes disappearing into two narrow slits, like pencil-drawn lines.  I smelled rotten sardines in his breath. Rumors were that they ate canned sardines all the time since his mother gambled their life savings away. But no one dared talk about that in the barrio, lest they suffered the consequences.  It was a different story with my Mom and me.  Thirteen years since I was born out of wedlock on April 1, 1993, and we were still paying for it.

I tightened my grip over my books.   The gang had a new mission for harassing me.  It was no longer to just taunt and provoke me with insulting gibes as the town’s bastard child, child of sin, April Fool, or any other derogatory names they could coin.  Now they teased and mocked me for having developed early.  I had tried to conceal my generous chest with loose sweaters even on hot days, but it was still noticeable.  Wearing layers of clothing in this tropical setting meant I was twice as hot and uncomfortable most of the time. 

“Get out of my way, you punk,” I said with a challenging tone, which his gang only returned with a scornful laughter. 

“Punk?”  I’d rather be a punk than a bastard child, a whore’s daughter.”  Toto’s smirk on his lizard face made me think of a little devil. 

Being called a whore’s daughter was the hardest thing for me to take.  My mother is not a whore.  She is a good and virtuous woman.  Yes, I was the product of my mother’s one-night stand, as they called it. I don’t know who my father was. I was not sure my mother knew either.  She had apologized to me many times for her lapse in judgment that night I was conceived …one lousy drink at a party, her first ever, did not metabolize in her system and she got drunk right away.  That was her story, and yes, I believed her.  She had never lied to me.

I took a deep breath and planned an escape.  But how?  I was surrounded.  This was really different this time.  They looked twice as menacing.  This was not going to be the usual name-calling, ponytail-pulling, arm-poking harassment.  I noticed how the other children had stayed back and out of the way to avoid them.  They usually joined in the vicious entertainment at my expense.  Yes, I could sense it in their eyes, there was trouble brewing beyond the usual childish pranks.  It was something more serious, and it had something to do with the elevation in my chest.  As if it hadn’t been bad enough to be born in sin, I had matured physically, much earlier than most girls.  I had been cursed to develop breasts that did not look proportioned to my young body. I bound my chest to flatten my breasts, but even that was not enough to hide them.

No one was going to come to my rescue.  A teacher always came too late; by that time, the bullies would have skittered away laughing, and no one dared to snitch; everyone was afraid of what would happen if they did.  Toto’s father was a professional boxer and the ruling Barangay Captain or village head of this community of a few hundred families.  He talks and acts as though he were the provincial governor.  People feared retaliation from him at the slightest provocation to his son: their garbage did not get picked up, and their water and electricity were turned off.  No, to avoid the consequence of fighting Toto, it was best to ignore him, or let him do what he wanted.  With me, after all, being constantly taunted the whore’s daughter by him was no different from what everyone else called me or thought of me.  After years of being called these derisive names, I had trained myself to be stoic and ignored it all.

“Why don’t you show us what you’re hiding behind those books?” Toto demanded as he and his boys began to surround me in a semicircle.  I hugged my books even more tightly to my chest.  Toto poked at the books and my arms with more force this time, determined to send my books flying off my arms and exposing what was hidden behind them.

I looked around in search of a sympathetic face to come to my rescue.  No one came forth.  It was all up to me, as always, even though Mom and Grandma had spoken to the teachers and principal several times about it.  I felt my eyes moistening, but I managed to stop the tears. “Never show your weakness,” Grandma always advised. “It will only empower the enemy.”

“Show your oranges,” Toto ordered aggressively, his hand reaching for my sweater.  I slapped his hand away, loosening my grip on the books, allowing him to push and knock them down.  His cronies cheered.

I froze in horror.  I stood there, feeling naked and exposed. The moment I had feared was now becoming a reality.  Someone was going to touch my breasts!  I tried to make an escape and run, but I could not summon my feet to move.

I was about to be groped by a skinny, disgusting dwarf, and my mind went blank.  I sank deeper into a murky quagmire.  I was wetting my underpants now.  Soon they’d see it trickling down my legs and there was not a thing I could do about it.  I was humiliated beyond belief.  Everything became blurred to me.  I heard the snickering noise from Toto’s sidekicks as his hand came closer to my chest as if in slow motion.  I saw only him, only his hand. I closed my eyes to prevent seeing the hand of the satanic dwarf pressed against my breasts and forever be called puta--like mother, like daughter.  My cheeks were wet from tears and sweat.  I was all wet.  I seemed to be drowning in a lake.  I wish I were. 

Just then, I heard someone yell, “Keep your hands off her!”

I opened my eyes and I saw Jimbo--the only kid in the barrio who never even once mocked me, because he, too, was born out of wedlock, but he was spared of ridicules because his mother had died shortly after giving birth to him.  He was not much taller than Toto; in fact, he was featherweight and looked as if Toto could simply flick a finger at him and he’d be airborne.

I felt awakened from a dream.  I saw Toto’s face only an inch apart from Jimbo’s face, each painted with animosity, but only Toto’s eyes were filled with violence, ready to beat his enemy into a pulp.  I could see through the fear in Jimbo’s eyes that he wish he could run and race the wind like a scared bunny.  Poor, pathetic fool,  I thought, What made him think he could defeat the beast?

“You pick on a girl instead of picking on a boy,” says Jimbo to Toto’s face.  He didn’t sound convincingly brave.  “Oh, I see, it’s because you’re only a midget, like me.”

Midget--the M word that no one dared to call Toto lest he’d run to papa.  Who would want their home smelling like a garbage dump and their electricity and water supply cut off?

I saw the forked tongue of the tiny dragon shoot fire at Jimbo, sending him to fall backward, landing on his bottom in a pool of mud.

The huge laughter from Toto’s sidekicks awakened all my senses.  As I watched Jimbo’s dark brown face turn red from humiliation, I suddenly felt courage surge through me.  I was taller and bigger than the midget.  Why shouldn’t I put to use the heavy weight that God had cursed me with and let Toto discover the power of my early womanhood?  Possessed suddenly with hate, my mind was filled with ugly things I could inflict on the bad hobbit.  I imagined disintegrating him into tiny particles and reducing him to dirt for all he had bullied to walk all over him. 

A primitive roar rose from my gut, sending an electrical charge shoot through me.  Like a leaping dragon, I charged forward and jumped Toto from behind, tackling him like those wrestlers do on TV that Grandma loved to watch. We catapult through the air and fell onto the ground on tandem.  My chest on his back, my arms around his neck, I was a raging force; releasing all the anguish of years of heartbreak and humiliation.

I felt a sense of freedom from years of captivity--imprisoned for a single moment in time when fate brought a man and a woman together and created me in a Garden of Eden while the devil cheered on.

A flash of lucidity returned when I heard Toto wail like a girl, screaming for his father.

I’d be suspended for a week, our water and electricity would be cut off, and maybe our garbage won’t be picked up for a while, but having anticipated it, we would be ready for it.  We’d eat baked cold beans from a can everyday, or cook from a wood stove.  There was no television for a week, which would only help me focus on my studies so that when I returned to school, I’d be far ahead of my classmates.

Weeks passed—

For the first time since I could remember, I felt good about myself.  Something fundamental had changed in my life.  I no longer felt the outcast, but a heroine in a novel as the story of my bravery was circulated and spread through the barrio and stitched to such flattering embellishment that the humiliated Toto had ceased to be a bully.  Meanwhile, Jimbo became my closest and only ally.

I basked in glory everyday, enjoying the look of admiration from those around me.

But it would not last long.

Fact was fact.  I was still the same girl born out of sin, no father to call my own, my mother was still the barrio’s puta.  I was still the little girl with the big chest.  Soon, everything returned to normal.

“April fool.  April fool,” shouted the cruel children.  I tried to ignore them and feign bravery.  But sometimes it became unbearable. I ran home in tears, passing Mom and Grandma in the kitchen; I said nothing.  They said nothing. They understood.  I went straight into my room and threw myself onto the bed; folding up into a fetal position, sobbing.  I thought of the man who shared my DNA.  I wanted to hate him, but I could not. I loved him even though he didn’t know I existed. I had never had a father figure in my life.  Grandpa died before I was born. In a way, I envied Toto because he had a father who loved him and protected him even to the point of being feared and hated because of it.  I dreamed of my father materializing into my life and affectionately soothing my pains.

Grandma and Mom waited a while before they came into my room bearing a cup of warm cocoa and a small plate of my favorite peanut butter cookies. They took turns in hugging me. I felt loved unconditionally, and nothing else seemed to matter anymore.

(To be continued.)