Words and Gifts

By Jeff Lombardo


Big Willie wears a dress.

 

That marked the beginning of the end for Esteban Nagara, the Colombian kid who’d started at St. X. in October, a transfer from some lousy Jersey shore town nobody had heard of. Este was a ninth grader and his brother, Manny, a junior. Manny with the glittering earrings and the gold tooth, the one who punched Davis Hollander, the varsity quarterback, in the windpipe during gym class for calling too many touch fouls, jogging off to the locker room before Davis breathed again and got around to kicking his ass. Manny, the short and wiry little fuck who bounced around the hallways like he’d slipped some speed for lunch, the one who pulled the fire alarm during café resource and sent everyone out in the rain, the girls with the shiny straight hair and Ralph Lauren shirts coming back drenched, jerk-off fodder for us all, that Manny. Not the other one, the loser who raised the flag every morning and spent afternoons changing the letters on the roadside marquee, PTO Wednesdays at 7, congratulations to the field hockey team, nineteen days to homecoming. Not that Manny but the other one, the one who stood up in Mrs. Harper’s history class and declared himself Napoleon, daring her to question him, she too clueless to grasp the disrespect, charmed instead.

Esteban? He stood as no bad-ass, the gulf between him and Manny far and wide, a chasm breached by the sharing of the same gradual grin, the dark hair, the mother who visited the office once a week and ranted in Spanish, the secretaries sitting terrified and paralyzed as she proselytized in the mother tongue. How were they to know that she had top sales at the new timeshare place outside Annapolis, smooth in her speech and flirty with the married men, a driver of a brand new black A4, her license plate with “MKNMNEE”. Esteban was the kid who always got bagged daydreaming or reading some novel, A Clockwork Orange that time in Hook’s class or The Catcher in the Rye in Algebra when they were supposed to be doing evens on page 89.

Big Willie was the assistant headmaster and head religion teacher, the fat bastard who sweated even if it was twelve degrees outside, his long black cassock a reminder to his calling to Jesus. The Big Willie who picked his nose when lecturing about the Virgin Mary or St. Thomas or funeral etiquette and then wiped discoveries on the edge of his podium, poster children for Kleenex, oblivious to the disgust he inspired. The same Big Willie who sent passes during homeroom to the kids who supposedly required counsel, as if they needed the advice of a likely pedophile, asking them questions like how sexually active are you or do you masturbate. The first few kids who survived this torture told their friends the right and wrong things to say, what to mention to sound honest, what to leave out so you’d escape in less than twenty minutes.

It was during freshmen religion, Big Willie dwelling on the virtues of Mary, how his own mother shared the same name, the angel, when he noticed Esteban reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

“What is that you’re reading, Esteban,” his voice tight, the words enunciated as if chiseled from ice. Esteban’s face turned scarlet beneath his dark complexion and he rose, bringing Willie the book.

“What is this trash?” Big Willie sneered. “No wonder your grades are terrible, reading this crap.” He dropped the book in the can beside his desk and looked to Esteban. “What’s with you kids anyways, huh?” He pushed his chair back, striking the chalk tray, and raised himself up with a heavy breath. “Your brother, with the big earrings.” A smile slid upon his face. “Is he some kind of homosexual?”

Esteban turned his eyes from the floor to Willie. “What?” His voice cracked nervously and a few students laughed uncomfortably, subdued. Willie sensed a chance to win their approval.

“Are you gay, Esteban?” A few kids giggled halfheartedly. “Are you a homosexual?” Willie asked again, his voice rising with enthusiasm.

Esteban stumbled back a step and caught himself. “No.” He turned and went back to his seat but before he sat, he looked back to Willie.

“Yeah, well, at least my brother doesn’t wear a dress.”

The class, usually muted and expectant of Willie’s bullying, broke into laughter. Someone had spoken the words they all thought.

Big Willie’s face blossomed into some engorged scarlet fruit, his rage instant. “Get out.” His voice was fleshy and garbled. “Get the hell out!”

Esteban grabbed his bag and scurried out the door while Willie stumbled after him, wanting to rage more but lost for the words. He slammed the door instead.

Esteban received six hours of JUG, “justice under god”, the dullest hours of detention imaginable. Instead of going, he skipped it all, got more hours, blew those off, got suspended. By December he was expelled, F’s in all his classes. Manny got kicked out two months later. He scammed his way into the handicapped elevator in the new science wing and after the doors shut behind him, he gazed straight into the surveillance camera, dropped his pants, and took a dump on the shiny floor. When he reached the third level, he yanked the stop button and the blaring alarm beckoned the students on the wing to the elevator, calling them to see Manny’s farewell present. 



Published July 2007