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  He pushed me down and then darted a few feet away, taking a fighting stance. Janella and her friends surrounded Tre and me chanting, “Fight! Fight!” And I got excited, still not fully realizing I was the fight.

  “Tre . . . I thought we were friends?” I said as he hit me in the ribs—not in a friendly way. But he didn’t respond. Instead, he looked blankly ahead determined to avoid eye contact while he blindly swung at me. Anora and Lyman approached the small crowd while Tre continued punching me in my chest and head with more force than I would have expected. I was still bigger than boys my age, but judging by the pain in my ribs, I sure as hell wasn’t stronger. The fighting finally made Anora cry, so on top of getting beat up, I was worried I wasn’t earning my allowance. When I saw Zwena approach, I felt reassured.

  But rather than defend me, Zwena coached me. “Hit him!” she screamed. I made a lame attempt to swing at his head. “No, stomach!” she corrected me. Unfortunately I was already on the ground just trying to block as his fists rained down on my face. I squirmed out of his way and managed to wiggle back onto my feet. Then I took a swing at his face that actually connected. It hurt my hand and I was so stunned by the pain in my wrist that Tre got a square shot at my nose, sending me onto the ground. The fight was over.

  The small crowd dispersed, leaving me alone and crying on the sidewalk. I watched Tre wipe his nose and march past his older sister and up into their house. My cheek was stinging and Anora was saying something to me, but all I could think was, The sidewalk feels so nice and cool on my face.

  I rolled over onto my back and could feel the aching in my ribs. The white, white sky was quiet and peaceful, and I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep right there on the street. Maybe because the blood rushed in my ears: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—like a womb. Maybe I had a concussion. Either way, I liked the way I felt. I felt the serenity that comes when things can’t get any worse.

  Zwena walked up from where she had been standing a few yards away. She looked over me and said five words that made it worse: “That’s a lot of blood.”

  I touched my nose. Sure enough—a lotta blood. Which meant Dad was gonna know I got my ass kicked.

  When I got home, the blood had dried under my nose and my cheek was starting to bruise. I walked into the house and Dad looked excited. “Looks like you got into a disagreement.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you let her know?” he asked.

  I shook my head no and his smile faded. I corrected him, “It was a boy, and he won.”

  I watched Dad’s face light up again. “My girl!” he said, picking me up in his arms. He was glad to see I was taking on boys and said that it would prepare me for dating. And for the next twenty minutes, he insisted on having me hit his fists and giving me fighting pointers like, “Move!”

  Or, “Just keep moving and never stop.”

  Or, “You be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” And when he was done showing me his stance, we watched Enter the Dragon together—like grown-ups who get into fights.

  As Bruce Lee coached a young student in the philosophy of fighting I asked, “Dad . . . when do you think the house will be done?”

  “When I have the time and the money to finish it,” Dad said.

  “Oh,” I said. “But it’ll get done, right?”

  “Of course it will,” Dad said. “You just can’t do it all at once. I had to pay the lights this month . . . Watch and see what Bruce does to these six brothers with that stick!”

  “Dad . . . ,” I said, wanting to talk about the house more, but there was a knock at the door. And I went to get it.

  When I opened the door, Tre was standing in the doorway. It was getting dark and I was worried that it was an ambush, but I figured, if he tried a sucker punch now, Dad would introduce him to the Vulcan neck grab.

  “Hi, Tre,” I said.

  “Hey, Misushna,” he said.

  I didn’t correct him.

  “It took me a long time to figure out how you get up in your house.”

  “Yeah,” I said, holding my cheek in an attempt to look lame and defenseless. “What are you here for?”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you I don’t hate you.” He continued, “I like playing with you. You are really fun and good at running, and clowning and junk.”

  “So why did you fight me?” I asked. But Tre was really upset and he started breathing hard like he was gonna cry.

  “Janella. She said that if I didn’t beat you up, she would beat me up.”

  “What?”

  “I know. It’s messed up,” Tre said, actually crying now.

  “It’s okay,” I said, feeling so sorry for him even though I could still smell my own blood in my nose. “Friends?”

  “Okay . . . But not around my sister.”

  I returned my embarrassed hand to my side and said, trying to sound cool, “Yeah, okay . . . Well, I have to go watch Bruce Lee.”

  “Okay. But you should fix your front door,” Tre said,

  “Okay. Thank you,” I said, and shut the door. And as I returned to Dad and the movie, I kept thinking, Why did I say thank you? I should have said fuck you.

  “Who was that?” Dad asked, still shadowboxing along with Bruce.

  “The boy that fought me today, Tre.”

  “Did you let him know?” he asked.

  “I didn’t have to,” I said. “He just left on his own.”

  “My girl!” my dad said. Then he looked at me for a moment. “Hey, you might want to grab some peas for your face.”

  Three

  A LESSON-LEARNING MACHINE

  ALL OF THE CAPPING I had done at the Government Subsidized Charity Club over the summer continued to pay off that fall at Kimball Elementary, my neighborhood school. It seemed third grade at Kimball consisted of capping or fighting, so I decided to major in capping and minor in fighting—knowing that I could switch it up later, should my left hook improve. My classes were crowded and rowdy, which meant I could use class time to come up with new caps. My teacher/warden, Mrs. Delgado, was a mean Filipina who thought I was retarded because she didn’t understand sarcasm. Which was fine, because no one expected much from a retard. She stood at the front of the class writing down our spelling words while I sat in the back of the class thinking up fresh caps for recess. I covered my Pee Chee folder with notes on how fat the fat kid was, or how many times he was dropped on his head as a baby as I waited for the recess bell to signal one thing—it was on!

  I was getting better at fighting, too. I wasn’t strong, but I found that I was fast, which is important, especially in a running-away situation. And when all else failed, I had long nails that, when Dad didn’t force-trim them, I filed into sharp points inspired by the X-Men character, Wolverine. And Fat Jehovah’s Witness Naomi had given me beautiful cornrows with butterfly beads, which prevented easy access to pulling my hair. I was becoming a machine—or at least I thought I was. All I know is I had purpose:

  1. Me ruling.

  2. You sucking.

  I had aspirations. I had goals. I had a lot of friends, and a lot of bruises.

  About two months into the third grade Mom showed up one day to pick me up from school. Weird. I wasn’t supposed to see her until that weekend, and in the afternoons she was supposed to be driving her bus, not picking me up at school. As I climbed into her car she said, “How would you like to go to Red Robin?” That was when I started to get a bad feeling. Red Robin was my favorite restaurant, so something was up.

  “Sounds good,” I said nervously, and I climbed into her VW beetle, “but um . . . what’s going on?”

  “Oh nothing much,” she said. “I just thought we’d sit down and talk.”

  “Talk about what?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said. “Let’s get some food and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  I spent the rest of the car ride bracing myself for whatever “talk” inspired a trip for burgers. Maybe we’ll just talk about sex, I thought. Or maybe Grandma died
.

  When we sat down in our booth and Mom said, “Just go ahead and order whatever you want,” I almost wet my chair. Someone must have cancer.

  As our waiter set down my strawberry and chocolate milk shakes, Mom started, “Honey, I have felt for a long time that we could do better for your education, that you aren’t really being challenged at Kimball.”

  That was crazy—I had many important challenges on the horizon. I couldn’t get anyone into a headlock or anything. Secondly, what did that have to do with my cancer? And as I switched from chocolate to strawberry I told Mom, “You can tell me if it’s bad news.”

  Mom stroked my face, which I liked a lot, and said, “No, I have good news, not bad news. Do you understand?” I decided to put my fears aside and hear what the woman had to say.

  “Sweetie, you’re moving schools!”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Well,” she said. “Remember all those tests you took?”

  “No.”

  “At Marshall?” she reminded me.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Those were tests? You told me they were games!”

  “Well,” Mom said. “You tested very high, sweetie.”

  “I guessed on some questions. And I like my school.”

  “The program is called ‘IPP.’ ”

  “You want me to tell Zwena that I am going to pee-pee?”

  “It stands for ‘Individual Progress Program,’ ” she said.

  “I don’t care, it’s embarrassing.”

  “Well, you’re going.” She said. “Your new school will be a chance for you to have experiences you wouldn’t have at Kimball. Plus you’ll meet new kids—all different kids, from all different neighborhoods.”

  “Listen,” I said, knowing my mother was a reasonable woman, “I really think you have gotten the wrong impression of Kimball. I am learning sooooo much every day!” And when that failed I banged my fingers with the ketchup bottle.

  But Mom brushed aside all disputes with one sentence: “Sweetie, I know you like Kimball, but I don’t think you have what it takes to be a professional street fighter.”

  My mom was a sarcastic person. That’s actually what led to the tests to get me into IPP. After my teacher tried to kick me out of kindergarten for sarcasm, Mom started taking me to get all these tests done—one a year for three years. I think it was her way of defending her personality. If I was sarcastic, I learned it from her. And while sarcasm being related to IQ is debatable, Mom felt it was now a fact. So, as I left my neighborhood school—my “behavioral problem” and “foul mouth” now a symptom of a frustrated genius (I preferred “wunderkind”)—my mom couldn’t get on the line fast enough to tell all my old teachers to go fuck themselves.

  I, however, was inconsolable. I had just started to feel comfortable with the neighborhood kids and now I was moving. Plus there was Dad—I could tell by the way this was all going down that he wasn’t happy with it. That night, when Mom dropped me home after Red Robin, he yelled at her and she got this tone in her voice like she was talking and getting electrolysis at the same time.

  And when Dad came back in, he sat down next to me on the couch and said, “So . . . I guess your mom told you ’bout them tests.” I told my dad how nervous I was to go to a whole new school where I didn’t have friends like I did at Kimball.

  “Well . . . ,” Dad said. “You keep your friends at Kimball—that’s called integrity. You go to school to learn. You don’t need to be making all kind of friends when you’re learning.”

  “Yeah,” I said, unsure. “But you need people to play with at recess and stuff.”

  “You just need to learn there. You be you at recess.”

  “What about lunch?” I asked.

  “You be you at lunch, too.” I must have looked confused, because Dad explained it to me. “Okay. You’re goin’ to a new school, let me put it this way: Your neighborhood is where you live!”

  Monday morning I decided my two-week-old cornrows were too messy and pulled them all out before I got in the shower. Then I put my wet hair in pigtails and got dressed in my best outfit to go to IPP—an outfit I thought was me being me. I headed up to breakfast in a pink sweatshirt with a super-cute quilted bear on the front, and a denim overall skirt with athletic socks and my real Nike tennis shoes. I felt confident.

  Dad was quiet most of the morning as I hurried through a bowl of cornflakes and washed my bowl. Then he put my coat on me, which he never did. And said, “I love you,” which meant he needed comforting.

  “I love you, too, Daddy,” I said as he zipped up my coat, but he just looked sad and bewildered. “What’s wrong, Dad?” I asked. “I go to school every day.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Then he grabbed one of his ugly work hats and put it on my head emotionally. I decided not to say anything about the hat as Dad regained his usual face. “Don’t you worry ’bout your dad, though. I’m okay.”

  Which made me worry about him, and I didn’t even know why.

  “Okay, Dad,” I said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “I’ll just be normal. And everything will be normal.”

  “Good,” he said, and with that he sent me out to Mom, who was waiting in her car downstairs, unwilling to come up. I got in the car with her, fastened my seat belt, and looked up at Dad in the dining room window. And then Mom drove me across town, to a new school full of smart kids who were richer than God.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the scene that morning: my classroom—a sea of shining white faces and brand-new clothes. In almost utter silence the kids dutifully worked individually and in very quiet groups while the teacher graded papers. No one was policing, yet there was quiet and order. Even Mom was weirded out by everyone’s focus. And my new teacher, from what I saw, smiled endlessly for no apparent reason.

  “Hello,” she said, walking up to Mom and me. “I’m Mrs. Lewis.” Then she extended her hand to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mishna. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Mrs. Lewis got me settled at my new desk while she talked to me like I was thirty. “Mishna, I think you’ll see that once you get used to how we work, you’ll find it very satisfying. You can work at your own pace, and when you’ve finished one project you’re free to move to the next . . . you don’t have to wait for permission or for the rest of the class.”

  I needed to clarify. “So, um . . . If I just wanted to just do nothing?”

  “I don’t believe you really want to do nothing. Do you? I don’t believe in laziness. If you are feeling bored with something you’re working on, tell me, and together I think we can find a way to make it interesting for you.”

  I knew there was a catch. “So you really mean, I can work at the same pace as the class . . . or I can work faster?”

  Mrs. Lewis looked at me as though I would understand better if I wasn’t so poor and said, “You could look at it that way, but that’s not exactly it.”

  Lesson number one, my teacher talked in riddles, and trying to make sense of what she was saying only made her talk more. Lesson number two, the more she talked, the crazier she sounded.

  ______

  I spent my first week at my new school pretending to read a book and taking in as much as I could. And keeping my integrity was proving mighty easy, because everyone was so unusual to me that I was terrified to open my mouth and divulge any information about myself besides what I was wearing—which I found out early on wasn’t good enough. I also learned my new classmates had boats and ponies, and they didn’t have to go to the library to use the encyclopedia; they had their own! Their clothes were warm enough, and their parents packed ridiculously well-balanced lunches in their plastic lunchboxes with matching soup-filled thermoses. For the first time in my life I felt a weird feeling in my stomach like a pang—like hunger. It was jealousy. Not that I wasn’t hungry, too.

  I tried to bury my jealousy as best I could—I found just hating everyone worked a little and so did chewing on rubber bands. I
also kept in mind that my neighborhood was where I lived, and that I wasn’t supposed to belong with these rich white kids, which oddly made me feel a little bit better than everyone.

  But as the days went on and I started to feel lonely, the lunches and recesses were brutal. Dad wasn’t there and neither were any of my friends from Kimball. And on day three at my new school, I had my first little moment of sorta wanting school to be more than just class.

  It was at recess. I sat alone on a playground structure near a group of girls playing foursquare. One of them, a redhead named Marylyn, said, “I’m tired of going to London, its just people doing the same stuff we do here.”

  I thought, London! Wow! I want to ask her about London. Would it be bad if I just talked to her? I won’t forget that my neighborhood is where I live. How can I live there!

  She continued, “We go, like, every summer.”

  “That’s how I feel about Disneyland,” said a brunette named Claire.

  And I craned my neck farther in to listen to them.

  “This summer I want to go to soccer camp instead,” said Marylyn.

  “I’m going to soccer camp,” said another girl.

  I was dumbfounded. Soccer camp over London? You gotta be kidding me! And at that moment I wanted so badly to be in proximity to people who could be blasé about Disneyland or Europe. I couldn’t even be blasé about soccer. And there they were below me—kids that got to do stuff no one I had ever met had done.

  It was then that the girls looked up at me sitting on my metal perch above them. I could have said something, could have asked them what other places they had been, but instead I pretended like I hadn’t heard a word they said.