Fifty Minutes

Spartacus Lawrence

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake. I remember that day as if it happened just yesterday. I was in the eighth grade and the new kid in school. My family had just moved north from Florida. School was already in session. Alliances had been forged long before my arrival. Relationships built back in grade school that still stood today. Allowances were not made for the new kid. The kid with the wrong clothes and the crazy haircut. The one with the glasses that were too big for his face. No. Friendship circles would not be amended to allow someone new.

The clock on the wall read 10:00 a.m. Gym class was held in the gymnasium and it was basketball season, which meant the hoops were down and the bleachers were decorated as if it were game day. A banner on the wall had the school mascot, a tiger. A tiger paw decaled to the playing surface. There was nothing special about our gymnasium. It was simply a cookie cutter of what other schools had and looked like. The walls were painted white. They had scuff marks and smudges that were long ago ignored and the blemishes remained today. Skid marks remained where sneakers met the wood.

The final bell registered, not because it signaled the start of a new class period, but because it was confirmation that gave my bully the courage to begin his assault. Locker doors slammed shut, and everyone lined up at the edge of the basketball court. Coach Mosely checked attendance as he walked down the line. Everyone, including me, was a bit awkward in the way that pre-teen boys are. Some had acne, everyone smelled, and almost all of us had misshapen bodies.

The one thing you must understand about gym class. Yes, we were expected to play sports, but generally some leniency was given by Coach Mosely. He let us form our own teams, but often let those uninterested sit on the sideline. He was interested in the athletes in the class and what they could offer the team. His eyes paid little attention to those who chose the bleachers. And I, I preferred to get a head start on my homework, so the bleachers were where I sat.

Alone, on the bottom rung, I sat sideways with a book open on the bench, and a notebook in my lap. My goal was to lighten my bag at the end of the day. The more work I could finish, the fewer books I had to take home. That was my goal in theory. I say in theory because I was interrupted. I remember him clearly. Even at my current age, I still see his fresh face as a pre-teen bully. We didn’t use that word back then. You were just expected to endure. To not speak up. It would end worse if you told. And I didn’t want to be that person.

He was taller than me. That much is true. His hair was obsidian with forced structure. He styled it in spikes that held together with far too much mousse. His eyelashes were long and curled upward. I’m not sure why I remember this detail other than his face met mine with only tension separating us. I felt his breath behind the fiery words. He had a name he liked to call me. Instead of my name, he called me ‘Dude’. ‘Dude’ because I came from Florida and he thought that’s how boys from Florida spoke. ‘Dude’ because it was a lyric in a popular song, and that brought on other insults because the song lyric suggested that ‘Dude’ had feminine qualities.

The names and insults I could painfully ignore. They hurt because they seemed to be built on insecurities I held. I never shared them, but he knew. He may have shared a few himself, but that didn’t matter because we weren’t talking about him. I was the easy target. I was alone and had no one to defend me, stand up for me. I was not a member of a group. Coach Mosely didn’t notice, didn’t care is more like it. The only thing that separated us was empty space that he was too eager to fill.

That day was different. It held more force, something sharper. The words later turned into pokes. He wanted a reaction and he’d get excited when I said ‘Leave me alone’ or ‘Don’t touch me’. The pokes turned into something with more force behind it. A shove, a trip, anything that resulted in a physical displacement, even if only for a moment. He wore a menacing grin. The one that told me that I better get ready because something was coming.

At 10:50 a.m. the bell rang, and we all filed into the locker room to change and move on to the next class. That day was different, because that day the torment did not stop at 10:50 a.m. as it had on every day previously. It relit in the cafeteria during lunch and picked up right where it was left.

I sat alone, separated by empty seats. My watch tracked the minutes. The clang of trays meeting metal was overcome by laughter among friends. The noise never settled until the bell rang and then everyone scurried to drop off the trays before heading back to class. On that day, I did not eat lunch. I had no appetite. I sat at the end of one of the metal tables, the kind that had the chair attached with a steel arm. I had a book open, but I long ago forgot which one. He normally left me alone at lunch. I am still unsure why that day, he chose to break his routine.

He didn’t start at the beginning, like he did in those fifty minutes every day starting at 10:00 a.m. He didn’t start at the middle either. He simply picked up where he left off. He walked over to me from behind, my face buried in my book. He poked me hard and my body flew forward. “Hey, I’m talking to you,” he said. I remember that much. It didn’t take much but the heat that I had restrained and kept contained in those fifty minutes, it burst. I stood up and told him loudly to “Leave me alone.” I said it loud enough that everyone stopped and turned their attention to me, to us.

I grabbed my bag, my book, and I walked away. His eyes did not leave me though. They followed. I left the cafeteria, and he followed me to the boys’ room. I stood at the porcelain sink, my face in the mirror, my cheeks crimson. Behind me were stalls without doors and across from them urinals hung low. I pretended to wash my hands when I saw he had entered. He didn’t enter alone. His entourage followed closely behind. They wanted to see a show, and our showman was more than happy to oblige.

I could see him behind me in the mirror. His pose suggested he was ready for a fight. I was still unsure of his motive, even in that moment when I knew he wanted to fight. I could feel the air in the room collapsing. The funnel had room for only two, he and I. His fists were clenched, blazing red, he was ready. It would be fair to say that I was not prepared. I had never gotten into a fight before, but I knew I could not back down. Even in defeat, it was better to have stood your ground and lost. I knew that, so I pulled myself together, set down my backpack on the floor under the sink and I just stood there.

His next move was name calling. I said nothing. He graduated to an insult. I still said nothing. It was clear to me that his anger was intensifying. He pounded his fist into his palm. No flinch, no movement at all from me. He stepped closer. I remember that spot. I was one arm’s length away from the sink. I knew that because I took notice of the distance when I set my backpack on the floor. The distance from me to him was less.

He did not step any closer. He didn’t need to. His next move was a right hook to my face. My glasses fell to the floor, and blood flowed from my nose onto his hand and my cheek. That was all it took. Coach Mosely must have seen the accumulation outside the boys’ room, because the next thing that I remember was him inside the bathroom standing between us. Where had he been in those fifty minutes? He was supposed to be the teacher on duty. A duty he shook off but could not skirt outside the confines of the gymnasium. I do think he should have shared the blame. It was under his watch that the match lit the kindling. The fire grew from the bleachers he stood beside.

He helped me clean the blood from my face and picked up my glasses from the floor, and then he took us both to the principal’s office. We sat across from each other without saying a single word. The one thing that I most remember about those few minutes is that the heat had simmered. He was no longer ready to throw another punch. The scarlet in his cheeks diminished. Coach Mosely exited after meeting with the principal. His door remained open. We could hear the principal talk to his assistant and she called our parents—his mother and my dad.

The principal talked to him first. He closed the door and they spent a long time talking. As I would later learn, Coach Mosely did know what was going on in those fifty minutes, and he had just confessed the whole thing to the principal. I could see the principal from my vantage point. I saw him writing notes and asking lots of questions. He seemed displeased by what my tormentor was saying. His expression darkened, and his voice escalated, but not so loud that I could clearly hear what he said.

His mother was the first parent to arrive. She was ushered into the principal’s office while her son was being questioned. The principal had made my bully tell his mother in detail what he had done to me, not just that day but all of the other days that led to the one we were being disciplined for. He had to say the names he called me. The inappropriate comments. He had to demonstrate on his mother how he poked me.

I saw her sitting with her back to the window. I could tell she was in tears. I’m not sure if they were born out of shame or something more personal. She had a tissue in her hand and it frequently went to her face. She listened as the principal spoke. I could tell that much. When they finished everyone stood, and the door opened. First out was him, head down and eyes forward. He walked slumped past me, never looking in my direction. His mother was next and stopped and turned toward me. The wetness under her eyes was still in place. “I’m sorry” is all she said. She stood for a moment, and the wetness grew into new tears that raced down her face. She held my attention as she stepped away backwards before turning the other direction to the exit door.

My turn was next. The principal closed the door. He explained what Coach Mosely had told him and about the conversation he had with my assailant. He knew more than I would have voluntarily shared on my own. I’m still unsure why it made me feel inadequate. I’m sure shame had something to do with it. I had never been treated this way before, so was unfamiliar with the protocol. Was I to blame? What had I done? I honestly did not know. The only thing that held me apart from everyone else is that I was the new kid, who didn’t dress or act like everyone else. That had to be it, right?

The result was that we were both suspended from school for two weeks. He had gotten an extra week because he started the fight. I had gotten punished because I was involved in the altercation. I’m glad they called my father. My mother would have made a scene, and that would have made everything worse. My father arrived in his white uniform, that one that demanded respect. I saw the change in the principal when he arrived, as if my father were someone important.

On the ride home, my father did not speak. The principal had explained everything to him. I was not punished at home. In fact, it felt almost like a vacation and all I had to do was keep up with my assignments. In my mind that felt like an even trade.

Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. That’s a real lesson from those fifty minutes. I can reevaluate all the missed opportunities but nothing can undo or fix something set in the past. What happened is what happened. I know that.

Curiosity did catch up with me many years after that day and long after those fifty minutes ended. I did look up my bully to see what had become of him. What I found was something different. A small newspaper clipping, one that I almost missed, told of a story of a middle-aged man arrested during a robbery attempt at a wildlife store, of all things. What exactly is a wildlife store? I don’t really know, but I envision walls of taxidermy and fishing gear. I remember reading the story with interest, then I stopped because I knew the name of the culprit. It was him. It was the bully from eighth grade. He had been arrested and the story went on to say he had a warrant for unpaid child support. Divorce, alone and currently in jail. That’s what the story told me.

What was missing from the clipping, and the one thing that left a void in my eighth-grade self, was an answer to ‘why me?’ The answer wasn’t listed in the article. I wasn’t even mentioned. Why would I have been? But the thought of him sitting in jail in pinstripes doesn’t leave me with a warm feeling. No. It leaves me still wondering a lifetime later what I had done to deserve the treatment he gave me. It left me broken, and time has yet to fully heal it. Because when I think about those fifty minutes, I still see him as he was. His smirk in place. His bravado on display. He wasn’t apologetic. His mother was. Yes. But not him, and I am not sure that I will ever forgive him. The fire has slowed to a simmer, but the embers are still as hot as they were when I sat in the bleachers.