Right to Fight

If you’re going to fight to the finish, at least make sure to have all the details before you start.

I’d messed up with that one. I’d settled on the who and why but hadn’t even bothered to think about the how, when, or where. I’d been too cocky and forgot the basics: two out of five will fail any test, will lose any game, and with utter and complete certainty will leave you bawling in the middle of the playground with a bleeding gash down one cheek and a shameful taste of defeat curdling in your mouth. But when it had all gone down that morning, the who and why were all that had mattered.

Who: two girls walking on the opposite side of the hallway on the way to the cafeteria.

Why: they were picking on the girl next to me.

I didn’t know the two girls all that well. They weren’t in my class, and I didn’t even know their names. I did know their faces—I’d seen them passing me on the monkey bars or hovering next to me during second-grade assembly in the gym. I’d played hopscotch with them a few times, and I’m pretty sure I’d been on their team during a few red rover death matches. They were two “hello”s away from being strangers to me, but I’d somehow always seen their faces as friendly ones. I guess the beautiful thing about being a child is that everyone is your friend before you learn to make them your enemy.

But those faces weren’t looking too friendly that morning. They were twisted into demented sneers as the girls jeered at one of my classmates standing behind me in the breakfast line. They kept yelling things at her and making gestures I wasn’t familiar with but knew you probably wouldn’t want to do in front of an adult or the baby Jesus.

I hadn’t paid much attention to them at first—it was pancake day, and I was preoccupied with watching Marshall Jenkins slip into the front of the line for another round of flapjacks. Every voice around me was just background noise hovering beneath the swell of rumbles coming from my stomach. I was hungry, I was bored, and I was sick of Marshall cutting in line for a third time without getting caught. But my ears eventually homed in on the sound of two laughing voices coming from across the hall, accompanied by rude words and more laughter. And with every laugh, a small, tremulous voice behind me would respond.

Two voices, one reply. Two insults, one defense. Two threats, one sniff that sounded suspiciously like crying.

I turned away from Marshall slipping an extra syrup packet into his pocket and looked across the hallway to the twisted faces of the two girls I’d thought of as friends-in-passing. My eyes slid from them to the smaller girl behind me with the beaded cornrows and glasses too big for her face. Her name was Dinah. She was firing back at the girls with admirable gusto, but her comebacks were floundering and everyone knew it. Kids around us were looking away in embarrassment, acting as though the only thing of interest was whether they would have the pancakes or go with the hash brown medley. I did the math and didn’t like the conclusion it brought me to. Two against one is never fair.

“You’re so ugly, the bathroom wall used to be a mirror ’til you looked at it,” my voice boomed.

The heads of the two girls snapped back, as if they’d been struck. The hallway went quiet. Dinah sagged with relief and gave me a grateful smile.

It was on.

It was the first of many times in my life where I acted without thinking, letting emotions take over before inconvenient stuff like thought, common sense, or a backup plan could kick in. I hadn’t even bothered to wonder who’d started the whole incident. Seeing two girls gang up on one person had set me off, and there was no time for thought, just commitment. So I committed to bringing pain.

We went at it, the insults flying. I went after the girls’ hair; they came for my skin tone. I flamed one girl’s buckteeth; she iced my large forehead. It was tit for tat, blow for blow, with the occasional “hallelujah” thrown in from Dinah—and Marshall, who’d paused on his way back from the breakfast bar to throw in a bit of moral support. The insults flowed like a swirling river lapping back and forth between us, with nothing sacred, but it was when I let loose a lethal combination of “I know you are” and “your momma” that things took a serious turn.

“We’re gonna get you,” the shorter of the two girls hissed.

“I know you wish you could,” I snapped back.

“Keep talking,” the other girl said.

I rolled my head in defiance. “I didn’t stop.”

A sly look passed between the girls, and they smiled. “Bye,” the short girl announced, and they stalked forward in line, all conversation ended.

I smirked at their backs. Dinah and Marshall shook my shoulders, swinging me from side to side in glee.

“You told them,” Dinah asserted.

“They better watch who they mess with,” Marshall agreed.

I swelled with victory.

“But you know they’re going to start something again,” Marshall said.

I shrugged. Anything those girls wanted to start, I’d finish. I had already shown them as much.

“Y’all going to be with me today?” I asked.

Dinah and Marshall nodded.

I smiled, my head doing the math and sending back the message that three against two equaled nothing to worry about.

The rest of the morning flew by, and I had almost forgotten the breakfast battle smackdown by the time recess rolled around. As I neared the doors leading to the playground, the threat tickled my memory, and I waited for Dinah and Marshall to join me before leaving the school. With them at my side, I strutted into the schoolyard.

Squinting against the sun, I surveyed my surroundings. My eyes swept over the monkey bars, noting several boys getting yelled at for hanging upside down by their knees—the usual. My gaze jumped to the hopscotch area, observing three girls gathered around the chalky outline, arguing over a rock—nothing out of order. I relaxed and stepped forward into the playground, secure in the feel of Dinah and Marshall hovering by my shoulders.

I’d just noticed an opening at the slides when I caught sight of the two girls from breakfast on the other side of the grounds. They were barreling toward me, zooming past the teeter-totters and seeming to pick up speed the closer they got. I only had seconds before impact, and I braced myself, fists clenching, ready to start swinging.

It happened so quickly. They were on me in seconds, never giving me a chance to hit back at either of them. One girl would strike at my face while the other distracted Dinah and Marshall, and when I tried to swing back, both of the girls would retreat to safety behind the giant slide. Before I could get my equilibrium back or even think about going after them, they would come at me again from a different side, hitting, then running. It happened repeatedly, a blurring circle of blows, until Marshall ran to get help. When a teacher ran over to intervene, the girls dashed away, laughing.

I stood dazed, wondering what had just happened. Fights weren’t supposed to work this way. You weren’t supposed to hit and run away. Had they won? Had I…lost?

“Your face,” Dinah breathed.

Still numb, I lifted my fingers to the itchy spot on my right cheek. They touched something warm and sticky, and I felt a long gash running down the side of my face. The floodgates opened. My mouth opened to release a keening howl, and tears flowed like a thunderous monsoon.

My parents were called to the school to take me home. I don’t know what happened to the girls; the last thing I saw before getting rushed to the nurse’s office was the teacher’s aide hunting them down on the other side of the playground. I never had another run-in with them after that, and Dinah wasn’t picked on again.

It was never determined what was used to cut my cheek, but the scar stayed on my face for most of my life, only disappearing in my adult years under an onslaught of fading creams and glycolic acid peels. If I squint really hard, I think I can still see its faint outline—a reminder of the first time I stood up for someone…and got knocked back down. Hard.

But I’d do it again.

Sometimes, when you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, yeah, it’ll get bloody. But if it means stepping up and stepping in to help someone too weak or outnumbered to help themselves: grab a tissue, be ready to wipe that sucker off, and get in where you fit in.