Bullies aren’t ouija proof.

What would Billy have done?

I think it was 2nd grade when I started growing at a slower pace than everyone around me, in those days I was obsessed with hero stories, and always wanted to be the person who stood up for the little guy. Then suddenly, I was the little guy.

My mother and I immigrated from Mexico to Tishomingo, Oklahoma when I was in the 1st grade. It was my first experience of a school in the United States and I was one of only two non-white students on campus. The other slot belonged to a little boy named Billy of the Chickasaw nation, who had such a spirit about him that it made me feel special to be different like him. Billy had long black hair which flowed behind him during recess when he ran full force in the direction of a tree he’d climb or a bug he’d catch. He howled when he laughed and never backed down from anyone who pointed out he was different, or “wild”, which I came to recognize as free.

I was a lot more timid than Billy, and my mother, in all her wisdom, knew that as I stood out from the rest of the students, especially as I learned the language, needed to give people a reason to want to be patient and kind to me so she made sure I was the most polite kid enrolled at Tishomingo Elementary. Within a year of being surrounded by only English speakers and watching Family Matters religiously I was fluent. I then won the citizenship award for three consecutive years.

When my mother and I moved to the small village-like town of El Tejar in Veracruz, Mexico a few years later I stood out for a different reason. I was the only child at school who had lived in the United States, spoke English, and didn’t cuss. My skill set worked against me at my new school. Where I had looked different in the United States and was able to win over my entire class, surprised at the big turn out for my birthday parties, in Mexico the simple fact I had spent time abroad caused me to have the ire of my classmates, who, I imagine, saw me as a stuck up gringo.

“Gringo” is what they called me when they chased me around the playground. It was 4th grade and I remember having a crush on a little girl a grade below me who had shoulder length light brown hair the same color as her skin tone and big hazel eyes. Her tongue was always a different color from the lollipops she loved to eat. I would only see her during recess and was never brave enough to speak to her, much less when she eventually joined the small mob of kids who teased me.

What would Billy have done?

I came home from school everyday crying, pleading with my mom for us to go back to the US. I didn’t know that we didn’t have the choice to do so. My step father, at the time, had been incarcerated and all my mother and I had was a small plot of land he had bought which had a few mango trees we eventually learned to harvest from and sell their fruits at the beach city of Veracruz a half hour away from our small town.

I finished out the school year and my mom decided two things had to be done.

1) I would change schools to have a fresh start.

2) I would need to learn to be tough, cuss the other kids out, and not be shy to throw a punch if need be. The exact opposite our strategy for school in The States.

The following year I started 5th grade at a school about a mile walk from our little patch of land. The language change and constant bullying had made my grades plummet. A proud teacher herself, my mother would not have her son be in the bottom percentile of the class and so we would study everyday after school in our little trailer parked under a mango tree, occasionally distracted by the sound of a mango falling on top of the roof, making a sound like a cannonball hitting its target. Parking a trailer under a mango tree had been another one of my step father’s brilliant ideas. Some nights the ants drawn to the rotting mangos lodged on the roof of our trailer would make their way inside and my mother would stay up all night by candlelight making sure they didn’t bite me as I slept. My mother, proving to me that even if everyone is bigger than you you can still be a hero.

By the second semester of school I had climbed the ranks of the class and now had the second highest score. However, I still wasn’t very popular or very big. I was still the “Gringo” but now I outscored most of my classmates, adding “teacher‘s pet” to the target on my back. My teacher had a pretty good solution to my problem.

She paired me up with the school bully.

“Sergio, you are pretty smart, but everyone messes with you. Jesús, your grades need a lot of work if you ever want to pass the 5th grade, but no one messes with you. You two should become friends and help each other out.”

Jesús was about three years older and a foot taller than everyone else in school. A farmer’s son, and a future farmer himself he didn’t see the importance of school.

“Why do I need to learn any of this stuff? I’m going to inherit my dad‘s land, and none of this stuff will help me; I should be home right now helping him with the crops and animals“, Jesus would constantly complain when I tried to help him with our assignments.

Nobody liked Jesús and I couldn’t blame them. He constantly picked fights with the other boys in our grade who were helpless to defend themselves since he was much further into puberty than we were and he was a menace to all of the girls, hitting on them in a way that was beyond even how old he was.

Jesús was despised, and finally the kids took action.

Schools in small towns in Mexico are typically surrounded by tall concrete walls with broken glass bottles cemented on the top to keep thieves out, or students like Jesús in. They failed at the ladder. Jesús’ one saving grace is that he’d been a student at this school for more years than perhaps anyone in the history of the town and he knew exactly where to place his hands to jump the wall when we kicked the soccer ball over it. He also used this skill when he wanted to cut class.

One day Jesús asked the teacher to go to the bathroom.

“Jesús, you have 15 minutes to come back, no cutting class today.”

15 minutes went by and no Jesus.

20 minutes went by.

30 minutes.

No Jesús.

“Kevin, go check the bathroom and see if Jesús is in there. I’m not sending you Sergio, you’ll just cover for him.”

Kevin got up and headed towards the bathroom, a little building separate from the classrooms. When Kevin returned his face showed an expression I wasn’t very familiar with, panic.

“There’s something wrong with Jesús.”

Instantly five little boys and five little girls in my classroom started weeping.

“We did it! We are sorry!”

Our teacher knew something serious had happened and sent one of the few calm kids in my class to get the teacher next door. As a teacher myself I don’t know how I would have reacted, but I imagine calling for back up would have also been my first choice. The teacher from the classroom next door was a man who had come to work once or thrice smelling of booze, but was sober enough today to help. Our teacher frantically caught him up to speed, and he went off in search of Jesús.

While he was gone the weeping children confessed.

“We hate Jesús so we took a few of his hairs and played the ouija during recess asking for the devil to come and get him, but we didn’t think it would come true!”

The playground was a small field at the back of the school, it’s outskirts being taken back by the thick tropical vegetation Veracruz was known for. That’s where the kids had taken a home made ouija board, wrapped Jesús’ hair around a fork and invoked whatever it was that had kept Jesús from returning to class.

A few minutes later the male teacher came to the door of our classroom carrying Jesús in his arms, he laid him by the door as to not cause more panic than was already spreading through the small school. Rumors have legs in small towns, but witchcraft has dark wings. It wasn’t long before the school was in full panic.

Jesús laid at the foot of the classroom convulsing, his eyes rolling back and foam spewing from his mouth. His left hand reached all around him while his dominant right scratched at his shirt. Every student in my class not crying was knelt down in prayer.

School was cancelled for the day and the town had its new story to tell for years to come.

A couple of weeks went by and, truthfully, I felt bad for the five little boys and five little girls who had wished ill on Jesús, the town had shunned them, people around town called them “brujos”, witches. Stores refused to let them enter, their families were spoken about in low tones, and the younger children at the school would flee from them at recess. Their lives in that small town were ruined, they had been marked and all because they had been driven to malice by being bullied. I knew what that felt like, to want to get back at those who hurt you. I could have been one of them.

What would Billy have done?

Class was quieter after that day, Jesús wasn’t around to make dumb jokes and the “brujos” kept their heads down. Everything was still, even when Jesús finally returned.

He had changed, different, more mature even or just more aware of his mortality, a lesson most of us don’t learn until our first brush at our aging bodies once we hit thirty. Jesús stopped speaking out in class, interacting with other students, even speaking to me. All he would do, all day, everyday, was trace a small cross on his hand.

One day I finally had to ask.

“Jesús, what happened that day?”

He turned to me, emotionless, his hands still tracing the cross on his hand, his body having memorized where it was, it’s exact size and placement.

“I went to the bathroom like I said. When I got to the entrance of the building I noticed a shadow at the corner of my eye. It shifted quickly, faster than anything I had ever seen, I turned to try and follow it with my eyes and suddenly it was in front of me, shapeless, dark, soundless and loud at the same time. It hit me in the chest. Hard. I’ve taken a punch from my dad when he’s had too much, I’ve gotten kicked by a horse, but nothing had ever hit me as hard. Thats the last thing I remember.”

The memory of that day came to me; Jesús rubbing his chest with his right hand. The male teacher had unbuttoned his shirt to see what he was grasping at. He had a bright red bruise, a perfect circle in the center of his chest like a wooden post had almost been driven through him.

“What’s with the cross on your hand?”

”I was taken to a church after it happened, the priest put a cross on my hand and said that if it ever leaves my hand, He will come back for me.”

Jesús didn’t speak about it more or ever again. He just traced the cross on his hand, broken.

A week later my mother and I moved back to the US and I never knew what happened to Jesús. He had been a bully to so many but a friend and a protector to me. Sure he was crass, but he never cared what people thought of him. He was free.

What would Billy would have done?