I never understood why Jesse White had hated me. I hated him because he hated me, that was just how my mind worked. He frequently liked to tease me about my haircut or my shoes, whatever he could pick at. But when he realized he could really strike a cord by making fun of my fat mama, he never let up.
“Hey, Nick, why didn’t you tell us that your mama was in the Gilbert Grape movie? Did they have to move her on set with a crane?!†We were on the black-top by the playground when he hurled this insult at me. Normally I didn’t say anything back. I was aware that I probably gave him some kind of scowl, but then I would just try to walk away.
I asked my older brother for advice a few nights prior to the incident. He told me that a bully would stay a bully until you stood up for yourself. So that’s what I did.
I was standing about five feet away from Jesse, watching him watch me, and he was just waiting for me to walk away. And then I said it.
“My mama may be fat, but at least she raised me not to make out with my sister!â€
At that exact moment it felt like there were more kids on the blacktop than ever before. Jesse’s eyes were wide at first, and then crow’s feet formed in the corners of his eyes as his forehead crinkled in anger and he charged at me. I felt his fist plant into my nose, and then the events after that were a blur of struggling until I was straddling him. The voices of the other children buzzed in my ears, and the rough black-top scraped my knees as I felt his stomach expand with each breath beneath me.
I punched him in the cheek. I was aiming for his nose in an attempt to get back at him, even it up, but I missed. He tried yanking on my clothes and scratching at my face, and I ignored it as I laid another fist into his eye. Then again into the same cheek. Next his mouth, which split open and released a small trickle of blood down his chin.
He stopped focusing his struggle on me. He pressed his elbows and hands into the black-top and started trying to push himself off of the ground, lifting me with him. I grabbed his face with the palm of my hand and rammed his head back down into the pavement. He was crying now, muttering inaudible words through heaves and exaggerated breaths the way children do. He tried lifting himself up from under me again, and again I grabbed him by the face and slammed his head into the black-top.
It happened all at once after that. It almost seems cliché anymore to describe the light as having left someone’s eyes when they die, but that’s exactly what happened when the last breath of life escaped from Jesse’s lips. His crying, struggling eyes just quit gazing at me, quit focusing on anything in particular as his whole body went limp. There even seemed to be something dead about his hair in the way it rested on his unmoving head.
I gave him a quick smack in the chest to see if he would react. I knew he was dead, I knew what I had done, but I didn’t want to believe it. The buzzing of the children’s voices had stopped. I pushed myself to my feet and stared down at Jesse, wearing his bloodstained Nike sweater that his mom would have to find him in when the school called her.
The teachers rushed past me. They didn’t even care about me at the moment. They kneeled beside Jesse and called his name as they pulled him onto one of their laps and turned his head every-which-way to check for a sign of life.
I never understood why Jesse White hated me, and I never will.
“Hey, Nick, why didn’t you tell us that your mama was in the Gilbert Grape movie? Did they have to move her on set with a crane?!†We were on the black-top by the playground when he hurled this insult at me. Normally I didn’t say anything back. I was aware that I probably gave him some kind of scowl, but then I would just try to walk away.
I asked my older brother for advice a few nights prior to the incident. He told me that a bully would stay a bully until you stood up for yourself. So that’s what I did.
I was standing about five feet away from Jesse, watching him watch me, and he was just waiting for me to walk away. And then I said it.
“My mama may be fat, but at least she raised me not to make out with my sister!â€
At that exact moment it felt like there were more kids on the blacktop than ever before. Jesse’s eyes were wide at first, and then crow’s feet formed in the corners of his eyes as his forehead crinkled in anger and he charged at me. I felt his fist plant into my nose, and then the events after that were a blur of struggling until I was straddling him. The voices of the other children buzzed in my ears, and the rough black-top scraped my knees as I felt his stomach expand with each breath beneath me.
I punched him in the cheek. I was aiming for his nose in an attempt to get back at him, even it up, but I missed. He tried yanking on my clothes and scratching at my face, and I ignored it as I laid another fist into his eye. Then again into the same cheek. Next his mouth, which split open and released a small trickle of blood down his chin.
He stopped focusing his struggle on me. He pressed his elbows and hands into the black-top and started trying to push himself off of the ground, lifting me with him. I grabbed his face with the palm of my hand and rammed his head back down into the pavement. He was crying now, muttering inaudible words through heaves and exaggerated breaths the way children do. He tried lifting himself up from under me again, and again I grabbed him by the face and slammed his head into the black-top.
It happened all at once after that. It almost seems cliché anymore to describe the light as having left someone’s eyes when they die, but that’s exactly what happened when the last breath of life escaped from Jesse’s lips. His crying, struggling eyes just quit gazing at me, quit focusing on anything in particular as his whole body went limp. There even seemed to be something dead about his hair in the way it rested on his unmoving head.
I gave him a quick smack in the chest to see if he would react. I knew he was dead, I knew what I had done, but I didn’t want to believe it. The buzzing of the children’s voices had stopped. I pushed myself to my feet and stared down at Jesse, wearing his bloodstained Nike sweater that his mom would have to find him in when the school called her.
The teachers rushed past me. They didn’t even care about me at the moment. They kneeled beside Jesse and called his name as they pulled him onto one of their laps and turned his head every-which-way to check for a sign of life.
I never understood why Jesse White hated me, and I never will.