Michael Smith - Siblings

We usually helped each other make up both our beds simply because it went much faster. The first time she noticed the stiff places on my bottom sheet where I had had nocturnal emissions or had jerked off, and asked me what*that* was, I flushed in embarrassment. She could have made capital on that for weeks, but she chose discretion and shrugged.

So, we were normal kids in most respects. We simply never did anything to hurt or upset each other. "I'm telling!" was not something either of us ever said to the other. An enlightened and mature attitude, I suppose, but I know neither of us ever reasoned it out. I can't remember a time we weren't best friends. That was just the way it was between us.

We played pranks on each other, and we exchanged the usual teasing insults, and we argued frequently. We even had occasional fights and got angry at each other, but it was always over a serious and substantive issue, not just because "siblings always fight." And we always made up in a day or so and never carried grudges. It took us both awhile to realize, from visiting friends' homes, that our relationship was not the norm.

We were protective of each other in the outside world, too. When Alex was in fifth grade and I was in sixth, she chanced one spring week to get on the wrong side on three boys in my class. For several days, they pushed her around at recess and sabotaged her assignments in class. She didn't know why they had singled her out but for awhile she was half in a rage and half in tears most of the day. Typically, she kept her problem to herself and when I finally asked her what was the matter she wouldn't tell me.

I lagged behind her the next afternoon, however, and deliberately spied on her. Our house was only four blocks from school, so we usually walked home. The villainous sixth grade boys were on bikes, though, and they charged out of an alley while she was crossing a street in the middle of a residential block. They circled her like Mongol raiders, knocking the books out of her hands and jeering at her tears. Several other homebound students witnessed the raid but most kids learn early not to draw attention to themselves when one of their number becomes the focus of unwanted malevolent attention.

I was in a different situation regarding the victim, of course. I was not a fighter, not in any way. I never picked fights, preferring to use my already sharp tongue. And if my tongue caused someone to chase me, I ran. I may not have been physically courageous but I wasn't stupid either.

But this was something else altogether. I didn't stop to think about it. I just dropped my book bag and my gym shoes on the sidewalk and ran the fifty yards to the marauders, becoming more angry with every stride. My profanity wasn't very developed anyway, so I kept my mouth shut. I also knew instinctively that taking on three boys my own size required surprise tactics. I was heading directly toward Alex, though I had no idea what I was going to do when I reached her.

As it happened, one of the bastards nearly intercepted my course without yet noticing me, and I jumped in the air knee-high and kicked his bike with my feet as my body hurtled into his. He never knew what hit him. His bike and his head bounced off the asphalt simultaneously, with a satisfying double-crash.

I scrambled up and saw a hand reaching for me with an unbelieving face behind it as the next rider missed hitting me by inches. I grabbed the hand and the wrist and hung on, and the boy yanked himself off his bike by his own momentum. He landed on his knees and tried to grab my leg with his other hand, so I kicked him hard in the face and let go of him. Instinct again. Had I stopped to think about what I was doing, he would have beaten the crap out of me. But he shrieked, went over on his back, and clapped both hands over his nose and mouth.

The third boy had slewed his bike sideways in a frantic attempt not to run into his buddy, and now had gotten the cuff of his jeans caught in the chain. He had his back turned as he tried to extricate himself from his machine. I yelled wordlessly and jumped on his back, grabbed his hair, and began knocking his face against the horizontal bar of the bike. Kids don't fight "fair" when it's a serious contest; they take any advantage they can get.

He reached behind him, managed to grab my ear, and tried hard to pull it off. I yelped at the sudden pain and tried to disengage, but he hung on and twisted himself around where he could get both hands on me. I wasn't going to get out of this unbruised; some of my anger began to be replaced by fear.

But all this time, all two or three minutes of it, I'd forgotten about Alex. She was angry, too. As the third boy cocked his free arm, preparing to bury his fist in my eye, my sweet sister let him have it from behind with her history textbook – the thick, heavy one. I was focused on that fist and heard three separate thudding sounds before I realized what was happening. The repeated concussions made the third Mongol forget all about me. He was crying and yelling and trying to get away. He finally escaped by tearing his jeans, leaving part of the cuff wedged in the chain, and falling over his bike. The pointed front of the bicycle seat caught him square in the nuts and then he was rolling around in the street, clutching his crotch and moaning.

The first boy was trying not very successfully to sit up. Blood was running down his neck and across his head and he had managed to smear it across his face. At first glance, he appeared to have been scalped.

The second one was still covering his lower face with his hands and there was blood all down his shirt front and one tooth lying in the street. He saw it too, and picked it up and stared at it. The only blood on me belonged to the other three, though I had managed to rip two buttons off my shirt.

As I said, I'm not a fighter, and I suddenly began to shake, sitting there in the street. The thrill of victory was whooping somewhere in the back of my mind, but it was mostly obscured by growing fear. Mother and Dad were going to kill me. I'd probably be expelled. Maybe the police would come to the house. Alex was alternately sobbing and laughing as she hung onto my arm. When she felt me shaking, though, she came to her senses more quickly than I did.

"C'mon," she said urgently. "Let's get outta here."

She pulled and pushed me to my feet and quickly gathered up her scattered school books. We both looked around. Perhaps a dozen other students of varying ages were standing, frozen, up and down the block, some in the street and some on the sidewalk. I saw only one adult – a man who had been parking in front of his house ten yards away and was now standing and leaning over his open car door with his mouth open. I paid attention to him especially. The other kids were just kids, but adults were a different species.

The man finally found his voice. "I saw it all, kid, it wasn't your fault. You two get on home and I'll take care of these bullies." He looked disgustedly at the three losers and I felt some relief.

Alex and I hurried back to where I had dropped my own stuff, noting the nervousness or fright of the smaller children we passed. Those our own age mostly grinned, though. The boys in the street were not popular. Probably nobody here was going to volunteer evidence against me. We walked quickly down the block and around the corner, making a two-block detour to get home; I didn't want to have to walk again past the boys I had beaten up.

That's when I realized, for the first time, that I*had* beaten them. Three-to-one odds, and I had won. A satisfying thing for an adolescent boy to discover about himself. But there was also the sobering knowledge that I couldn't get away with that kind of surprise attack more than once. The story would be all over school by the end of tomorrow's classes. And I'd have to be careful or I was going to get my own self beaten up by kids who had decided I had stepped out of the pecking order. Not to mention the revenge these three losers would undoubtedly plan against me.