Margarita never liked you. In third grade she stole the math work sheet you’d been working on, and though you were not a tattle, you were also not a failure, as evidenced by the straight A’s in your aforementioned case file. You’d had no choice but to tell on Margarita, because otherwise you would have been the one who ended up with a zero for the day, which, up until a few hours ago, you believed actually mattered. Your case against Margarita wasn’t difficult to prove: though hastily erased, your name had clearly been visible on the work sheet under Margarita’s, and the handwriting on the rest of the paper was obviously not that of the emerging sociopath who claimed to have done the long division problem that would likely still be impossible for her to this day. Margarita vowed then that vengeance would be hers, and for years she doled it out in little morsels, stealing your regular bra from the locker room while you were in gym clothes for the badminton unit, somehow orchestrating an elaborate musical chairs number that ensured you would never find a lunch seat for the rest of your time in the Waterbury public school system.
But those were children’s games. Margarita was now a woman, with a body that had skipped over adolescence and landed straight on forty-four-year-old mother of three. She hadn’t actually borne any children, but there were rumors she’d recently undergone her third abortion, the first having been chemically induced and completed in the bathroom off of the food court in the mall, the second brought on by a kick to the gut near that same food court, and the third the old-fashioned surgical kind paid for by her mother’s boyfriend, who it turned out had been staying over on nights even when Margarita’s mother was working third shift at the twenty-four-hour CVS. Accompanying Margarita’s saggy, enormous breasts was the toxic indignation of someone chronically shat upon, whose rage was directed not at her perpetrators but at those who dared to be unburdened with the same traumas as she was. Her targets were those whose mothers weren’t on a first-name basis with all the street cops and methadone clinicians in the city, those who remained in school for more than the Head Start breakfasts. Even without the Great Third-Grade Math Work Sheet Caper, even if she could read all the big words in your NYU rejection letter, you would have been the bull’s-eye in Margarita’s crosshairs.
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.
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