she shouted. That seemed to give her the license she needed. She pushed
me in the chest, and I fell backward. I tried to get up, but all three girls
started kicking me. I rolled away into a puddle, shouting for them to quit
and hitting back at the feet coming at me from all sides. The other girls
had closed in a circle around us and none of the teachers could see what
was going on. There was no stopping those girls until they'd had their
fill.
WHEN WE ALL GOT home that afternoon, Mom and Dad were eager to
hear about our first day.
"It was good," I said. I didn't want to tell Mom the truth. I was in no
mood to hear one of her lectures about the power of positive thinking.
"See?" she said. "I told you you'd fit right in."
Brian shrugged off Mom and Dad's questions, and Lori didn't want to
talk about her day at all.
"How were the other kids?" I asked her later.
"Okay," she said, but she turned away, and that was the end of the
conversation. The bullying continued every day for weeks. The tall girl,
whose name was Dinitia Hewitt, watched me with her smile while we all
waited on the asphalt playground for classes to start. At lunch, I ate my
lard sandwiches with paralytic slowness, but sooner or later, the janitor
started putting the chairs up on the tables. I walked outside trying to hold
my head high, and Dinitia and her gang surrounded me and it began.
As we fought, they called me poor and ugly and dirty, and it was hard to
argue the point. I had three dresses to my name, all hand-me-downs or
from a thrift store, which meant each week I had to wear two of them