Xhenet Aliu - Brass

The punch from Margarita is thus both out of nowhere and as predetermined as the revolution of the planets around the sun. This shittiest of days had been decided galactically, and while, in retrospect, the NYU application seems to have been a practical joke you walked straight into, Margarita was something you had always had the good sense to avoid. Normally it was easy enough, as most of her school days are spent in the modular office trailers where they send troubled students for remedial education. If not for the weekly bomb threats called in by the same barely literate sophomore from the same school pay phone every single Monday, you might have been able to avoid her through graduation day, to which surely she would not be receiving an invitation. However, that day’s bomb threat comes during AP History, held in a classroom whose evacuation path empties straight into the lot containing the remedial education outbuildings. This is, you think, somewhat akin to placing the baby zebras just beyond the lion enclosure at the zoo.

Outside, you hear, “Bitch, what you looking at?” and while you shudder at Margarita’s voice, the one iota of gratitude you’re able to muster at that moment results from your relief that Margarita isn’t talking to you. You’re not even facing her, in fact, and though you feel pity for her target, you don’t dare look for it.

“Bitch, don’t ignore me,” Margarita says, this time closer. Still, you don’t turn. You keep staring straight ahead at the water tower past the football field, wondering if you could slip through the fence separating you from Pierpont Road unnoticed, and if you’ll ever have the guts to just walk away, or if there will ever be anything within walking distance worth taking the risk for.

The next Bitch, however, is accompanied by a push on your shoulder, hard enough to knock you into the chest of Antony, a six-foot-five freshman who frequently takes on half a dozen guys at a time on the basketball court but who obviously doesn’t want to be seen by Margarita as a collaborator with you. He pushes you back upright and walks away, his spot quickly filled in by a group of a dozen rubberneckers eager to take in the carnage that’s sure to ensue.

You still can’t get yourself to turn around, so Margarita does it for you, spinning your shoulders until you’re forced to look at her straight on.

“I saw you looking at me, bitch. You a dyke?” she says.

“I wasn’t looking at anything,” you say, trying hard to keep your voice from falling apart, knowing your fear will only make you more appetizing prey.

“You calling me a liar?”

“I literally didn’t even see you until just now. I literally was looking the totally opposite way.”

“I’m a fucking liar, is what you’re saying?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“So I’m fucking stupid, is what you’re saying?”

“I never said that,” you manage to answer.

“So you call in this bomb threat, you fucking towelhead?” Margarita says.

“No,” you say.

“Bullshit, you fucking terrorist. Yeah, Lady Taliban. How they let you in this school? This school is for fucking Americans, you fucking camel jockey,” Margarita says, stepping closer.

“My name is Albanian. Albania’s in Europe,” you say.

“What?” Margarita asks, momentarily more confused than enraged.

“Camels don’t live in Europe.”

And just to ensure that you’re doing what you think you’re doing, challenging Margarita instead of fleeing from her, you add, softly but clearly, “Stupid.”

You realize, as the word leaves your lips, that you are able to do this because you’re feeling something even stronger than fear: rage. Rage is not a new feeling to you, but it’s a new word for the feeling, which before you’d always thought of as confusion. But confusion is chaos, and in the second it takes to look Margarita in her hateful, beady eyes, you realize that your rage can have the precision of a freshly sharpened fillet knife. You decide that just as she has done for you all these years, you will make Margarita the surrogate for the world’s rejections and injustices and the stain on your favorite Target sweatshirt. You will face her, you will steal her superpower shittiness, and you will destroy her and the random unjust life forces she represents. By simply invoking a two-syllable word, stupid, you are attempting to cease being a victim and reclaim your sense of agency, a term that you’d only ever heard in the context of an AP lit class.

Only Margarita’s rage is bigger and more experienced than yours, and her practiced fist lands hard on your face.

In movies, the sound of fist on flesh is created in sound labs by men slapping their hands against hanging slabs of beef, and even after Margarita’s fist recoils, you expect to hear this same familiar effect. In reality, a well-landed punch makes very little sound. In fact, for half a minute, you hear nothing at all except for the receding waters of Long Island Sound at low tide, which is remarkable, since Waterbury, despite its name, is nearly forty miles from the ocean. And what you see when you look ahead of you doesn’t look like an ocean, except for maybe the Red Sea, if that’s a name to be taken literally.

The sequence of events after that gets a bit hazy. There are flashes of light, which turn into people, which turn into a single person, namely a physical education teacher who hadn’t run a mile in under fifteen minutes since the first Reagan administration. He remains behind in the nurse’s office to bring down his blood pressure after you’ve been ice-packed, ibuprofened, and shuffled along to the assistant principal, where you sit alone for twenty minutes, hallucinating you’re sitting behind one-way glass, waiting to point out Margarita to Jerry Orbach, who’ll send her along to Sam Waterston, who’ll get her to break down on the stand and confess to her theft of your math work sheet and her multiple abortions and her hate crimes against European camel jockeys, yelling that she would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling kids. By the time you realize you’re conflating Law & Order with Scooby-Doo, two syndicated shows you watch in succession every time you stay home sick from school, you’re joined not by any members of New York’s finest but by the assistant principal and your own mother. It’s then that the warm opiate blanket covering your body’s pain receptors is snatched off, and the fact of Margarita’s practiced fist on your eye socket is fully realized.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell did that animal do?” she cries. She is Elsie Kuzavinas, your mother, your own personal creator, and she rushes straight to you and runs a thumb over the swelling as if anointing you, as if her fingers are smeared with holy oil rather than the motor oil left over from the daily engine check that her Ford Contour requires. Instead of healing, though, her hand makes it feel as if every single nerve ending in your body has migrated to your face, which has then been doused in lighter fluid and set on fire.

Despite the pain, which is acute, you feel so entirely defeated that you can’t even muster a whimper. Your mother, of course, is the one who rails, because she’s the railer, the kind of tough broad represented exclusively by natural brunettes in movies. She could have a second career as the before picture in Botox ads, because even when she smiles, which she manages to do occasionally, the parallel lines etched between her eyes remain, making it clear which of the emotions dominate her life.

She isn’t anywhere close to smiling at Mr. DiPietro, the assistant principal. “Why is this girl allowed in school? She’s obviously a psychopath. She’s been after Luljeta for years,” she cries, her voice a half octave higher than even her usual railing voice.