I thought I’d posted this last Wednesday! I’ve been so busy that I didn’t get to this until it’s almost a week later! Sorry.
Once again I have to explain myself because I’m not a “mainstream” Christian! ARRGH!
Orthodox Christians celebrate a Lunar cycled calendar. That means the timing for Pascha (Eastern Christian Easter) is not always the same Sunday that Catholics celebrate Easter on. I’m not gonna get into how the date for Easter/Pascha is calculated, the differences, blah, blah, blah. Take my word for it. It’s different. Look it up, or get over it. I have had to.
So last year East and West celebrated Easter & Pascha on the same day. This year we’re a week apart. Next year we’ll be over a month apart. According to Dor, who is Greek Orthodox, those years are the toughest, because when everybody’s “all done with that give-up stuff” as the Catholic kids call it, she’s just beginning to fast. And kids in White Cedars don’t know anything about life outside their little box of normal, so they think Dor’s making it up, or looking for attention.
That’s why Dor was so happy to find out I’m Orthodox too. She doesn’t feel so alone. According to Dor, most kids just shrug it off when Dor can’t partake of something they’re offering, like chocolate or something with meat. Carl told everyone at our lunch table that he just thinks of it like a temporary food allergy. And Dor says most people respect that.
Notice the use of the words “most people”.
But then there’s Neena. No, that’s not a misspelling; her mother purposely spelled it with two e's on her birth certificate to make her stand out from all of the other Ninas out there.
Neena sits at our table sometimes; she used to be good friends with Ruby, and Ruby’s mom is friends with Neena’s mom, so whenever Neena has a fight with the usual group she hangs out with, she comes over to our lunch table.
Today was one of those days. It’s the second week of Lent, and Dor hadn’t said anything at first about her food choices, I just noticed that she was bringing containers with salad to school instead of the cool stuff she usually brings (like gyro meat with tzatziki sauce, or dolmades ). I don’t usually do the whole give-up-meat-totally-for-Lent thing, but Dor and I had talked about it and I decided to give it a try, at least at school, for solidarity. Aunt Lina was impressed. She said she’d never thought about a carnivore fasting, and she said she’d try to cook fish for the 40 days. I was taking peanut butter and honey sandwiches to school.
So Neena sits down, and takes one look at Dor’s plastic container of salad.
“Oh, so you’re doing that Easter thingy again this year?”
Dor just took a forkful of salad and made a “Mnumph” sound as if she didn’t want to talk with her mouth full. Amelia, our resident peacemaker, tried to change the subject by talking with Neena about something that happened in their gym class. And that worked-- for about five minutes. But Neena wanted attention. So she went to get a sandwich from the cafeteria. And she came back with a hoagie loaded with cold cuts. Ham, salami, and cheese piled on a long roll, dripping with oil and vinegar….even without enhanced senses like mine, the sandwich smelled delicious.
And Neena decides to change her seat. She plunks herself right down next to Dor. She wriggles around as if she were settling into a plush chair, then looks up from her tray with an overly-innocent expression on her face; one that would have put a movie star from the silent film era to shame.
Uh-oh! When Neena hams it up like this, there’s gonna be a performance…
“Oh my gawsh! These sandwiches are so big!” Neena picked up the sandwich and swung it right under Dor’s nose! “I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish this!”
Carl, knowing full well what’s going on, makes a grab at Neena’s arm, as if he’s trying to claim it first. He’s really just trying to keep any loose meat from falling into Dor’s salad, because then she won’t be able to eat the rest of her lunch. Yes, really. The girl is that strict.
“I think Billy’s still hungry. His dad’s out of work and his mom’s looking for a better job. Let’s go take this over to him.”
Neena loves the attention, so she follows Carl. Dor’s shoulders relax; she sighed and muttered “I wish she would just stop already.”
I tilted my head and shrugged, because I wasn’t sure if Dor wanted to talk about it or let it drop. She didn’t want to talk, but Ruby did.
“I can’t believe that Neena just won’t let it drop. Every year she pulls the same crap on Dor. She’s been doing it since we were in the third grade! One year she made her mother buy Oreo cookies just so that she could tell us how much she hates them, then she’d put them on the lunch table in front of Dor and say that Dor could have them if she wanted. Neena doesn’t like them much but she knows that they’re Dor’s favorite. She’s such a bi—”
“Drop it, Rubes,” said Dor.
“Why? You know she does it on purpose.”
“Yeah, she’s ignorant. I learned those years ago. It’s part of what I expect from Lent. It’s not supposed to be easy, and I don’t let it bother me. She’s immature. Maybe someday she’ll grow up.”
“Maybe pigs will fly,” muttered Ruby as Carl and Neena made their way back to the table.
As I ate my sandwich, I watched Neena watching Dor eat. Why was this girl so offended by Dor’s religious belief? What was the problem? It’s not her business what Dor was eating or not eating. I could sense that Neena wasn’t letting go of it. This wasn’t about food for her. It was about attention and power.
You see, Neena is semi-accepted by the “popular girls”. Sure, she’s on the outs with her group of mid-level wannabees right now, but she still considers herself higher up on the food chain than us.
Then I noticed that other girls at the table where Neena usually sat were unusually interested at what was going on at our table. Dor was almost finished with her salad, and Neena had eaten the remaining half of the hoagie. Neena glanced over at her usual posse, and then she nonchalantly reached into her purse. (Coach, of course. It’s part of the popular-girls uniform.)
Her hand comes out of the purse with a bag of M&M’s. She carefully tears a corner off the packet and pours out a few of the candies.
“Mmmm, I love having a little treat between classes, don’t you? M&M’s are soooo good.” Neena stuffs a bunch in her mouth. “Oh, they are so delicious. So chocolaty –nummy good. ” Neena pours more into her hand and shoves it right under Dor’s nose.
“Ya want some, Dor?”
Dor had given up ice cream and chocolate, as well as meat. This was just nasty. The girls at the other table were giggling. There had not been any fighting between Neena and her pals; they’d just decided to tease one of us non-popular kids. Dor. This was just bullying, pure and simple. She was picking on Dor, with her friends as an audience.
The impulse to protect Dor became a burning need; anger poured over me like a shower of icy needles. I could feel it hit me, and it felt like I was going to shift.
Oh no! Not here, and not now!
It was dizzying, trying to reign in my inner cougar instincts, but somehow I did. My eyesight sharpened, focused, and all I could see was Neena. And she made me ANGRY.
The enemy. Prey.
I snarled; the sound was wrong, coming from my human throat. My eyes squinted as I leaned over the table to get closer to my prey.
“Don’t you ever….Ever play games with Dor because of what she believes. Because if you play games with her, sweetie, I’ll have to play games with you. And…I…don’t… play…nice.”
Neena backed up and in her haste, fell out of her chair. She made a little mewling noise. Like prey. Carl’s expression was one or mixed awe and horror, Amelia was trying not to laugh, and Ruby was helping Neena get up off the floor.
The next thing I knew, two teachers were converging on our table, holding my arms back as if they had a prisoner.
Oh boy. I had to think fast. Nowadays, everything you did or said was perceived as bullying. And the school had a “zero tolerance” for bullying. That is, when they acknowledged that bullying was actually happening at DSW
“What’s going on here?”
“She…she … She threatened me!” Neena practically wailed.
“Did you threaten this young lady?”
I looked up at the teacher who was holding my arm just a little too tight, and I smiled. He seemed taken aback.
“I didn’t threaten her. I just told her that if she wanted to play games, she’d have to play them with me.”
“That sounds like it could be a threat. Young lady, I’m taking you both to the principal’s office. You’re going to meet with the bullying counselor.”
Yeah, and that sounded like a threat, too, I thought. Does that mean that you’re going to the bullying counselor, too? Part of me was riding the anger wave, and part of me was appalled at what I was thinking and feeling. And I couldn’t get either part to calm down!
It was the boy’s gym teacher who had my right arm; Mrs. Dolchick, the eighth grade social studies teacher, had let go of me as soon as she saw I wasn’t fighting Neena. I made a grab for my backpack, and my captor just yanked my arm harder.
“I need my property,” I hissed. “Otherwise I will make sure that you will replace what goes missing.”
The gym teacher started to pull me away from the table, but Ruby grabbed my stuff and thrust it at my free arm.
Ah, friends….
Mrs. Dolchick motioned for Neena to follow the gym teacher and me. This guy seemed to enjoy marching me out of the lunch room. It made me think of something Aunt Lina had once said: “Give a little man bit of power, and he can become a really big pain in the….”
In Mr. Yevetsky’s office there’s a window out to the parking lot. Mr. Yevetsky wasn’t in the office, so we waited with the gym teacher. Neena kept trying to tell the teacher her side of the story. I figured silence would be better. I had grabbed my books before we’d left the lunchroom, so I slipped a novel out of my backpack, sat in the chair near the window and began to read. For some reason, this ticked off the gym teacher.
“Hey, what do ya think you’re doing, girl?”
Hearing him addressing me as if I were a worthless piece of – of fewmets (look it up) made the anger boil over again. I tried to hold it back, but….
“I believe it’s called ‘using my time wisely’. This,” I said, lifting my book up without looking away from the page, “is a book. I read them in my downtime, when I have nothing better to do.”
“Whaddayou think this is a joke or something?”
More boiling anger. Stay calm, Randi, stay calm, I thought
"No, I think it’s Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Good book. Now let me get back to it.”
“Hey, you ain’t supposed to be havin’ fun here.”
The gym teacher yanked the book out of my hands, just as the Mr. Yevetsky and Miss du Stique, the “bullying counselor” walked in the door. Thank God for that, because I don’t know what I would have done in another second.
“Excuse me, but you just removed educational material from me in a violent manner. If you were a student, I’d probably call that bullying. May I have my private property back? Unless you are in the habit of banning Great Russian literature?” I held my hand out.
Mr. Yevetsky frowned in that way that he did when he was trying not to smile. Miss du Stique (whom the students had lovingly re-christened “Miss Dipstick”) was smiling in a predatory way.
The gym teacher looked from the principal to Miss du Stique, to me. He realized that he looked foolish, holding my book, so he gave it back. But I’d lost my page. Darn.
The adults in the room began to talk about “the incident” and decided that since the gym teacher really hadn’t witnessed anything, he was no longer needed. So he left, and the bullying counselor decided she wanted to hear my side of things, first.
I explained to her that the situation was one of defense; I had been sticking up for my friend Dor who was being bullied. That sent Neena sputtering. Both Mr. Yevetsky and Miss du Stique told her to be quiet, she’d get her turn.
I explained that I perceived this as a bias crime, because Neena was picking on Dor for her religious practices. Neena had purposely dangled meat and chocolate under the nose of another student who was fasting, exercising her right to religious freedom under the Constitution. I don’t know where the words were coming from; the anger side of me had my mind racing, thinking of how to spin this in my favor.
I said that as a fellow Orthodox Christian, I saw Neena’s attempt to coerce Dor to break her fast as a hate crime. And the last thing that DSW needed was for word to get out that they allowed hate crimes to happen at school. I also told them that Neena’s peers had been watching the little game going on at our table and that I hadn’t wanted the bullying to escalate, so I’d told Neena that she should leave Dor alone or that she’d have to answer to me.
“And what were you planning to do?”
“Oh, my Aunt Lina knows lots of lawyers. I’m sure one of them could write a nice letter or two to Neena’s parents. What’s the legal term…cease and desist?”
“You didn’t threaten her with physical violence?” asked Miss du Stique.
“No, I told her to stop playing games, because if she didn’t, she’d be playing them with me. If she chose to interpret that statement as being violent, I can’t help it.”
“What did you mean by playing games?”
"Well, isn’t this a part of the game? I got Neena away from Dor, and in front of two school administrators who can now tell her that what she did was wrong.”
“But what you did was wrong.” whined Neena. “I was just trying to be nice. I was sharing my lunch. I can’t help it that Dor’s got all of these stupid rules she has to follow. I can’t be expected to remember something as stupid as her fasting all the time.”
The principal and Miss du Stique were both staring at Neena in shock. Suddenly she realized how incriminating her words had sounded.
“Mr. Yevetsky, I have only been here a couple of months, but even I know that Neena has been doing this to Dor every Lent since grade school. And she gets away with it because she claims she ‘forgot’ that Dor wasn’t eating chocolate, or meat, or Oreos or ice cream. After a few years of the same ‘mistake’ being made (I used air quotes when I said that) it becomes a behavior. And that behavior is religious persecution. What she just said about my religion proves my point. She’s got a problem with Dor’s fasting, which is none of her business.”
“You should have come to me first, instead of trying to solve the problem yourself,” Miss du Stique said.
“You’re never actually in the lunchroom, Miss Dip—ah, I mean Miss du Stique.”
I’d almost called her by her school nickname! Mr. Yevetsky was doing that frown thing again. I guess that he knows what the DSW students had nicknamed Miss du Stique.
“I’m going to call your classmates in to hear what they witnessed. Then I will be calling both of your parents.
“Good luck with that,” I muttered, wondering how she’d get in touch with my dead father or my mother who’d given me up after birth.
“Are you trying to be funny?” asked Miss du Stique. “Just wait ‘till I speak with your mother –”
The principal whispered in her ear, and her hand flew up to her mouth.
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
“You’ll want to speak to my Aunt Lina,” I said with a half grin. I don’t know why I was getting such a kick out of making this woman uncomfortable, but I was. It had something to do with the leftover anger in my system. Maybe it was the cougar in me, but I was having fun messing with her mind; she took herself too seriously.
I was allowed to go to my next class – the bell had rung while I was in the office.
I took a pass from the secretary and went my next class, math. Amelia asked me if I was OK. She told me that she thought I’d gotten a little sick or something when I told off Neena, because my eyes had looked yellow. I told her I was OK. She said that she’d thought I was a little rough on Neena, but that Dor had appreciated it. Maybe now she could eat her salads in peace.
I hope so, too.
Right before dismissal time, an announcement over the intercom called me to the office. Aunt Lina was talking to one of the secretaries; she’d been called in by Miss du Stique and Mr.Yevetsky. We walked out to the car just as the final bell clanged.
Aunt Lina was not too happy with what had happened. When I explained about the anger, she blushed a little.
“I forgot about that part of being a teenager,” she said in a low voice. “The anger is like riding over the spring rapids in a canoe….you can’t row, you just let the water take you where it will. And usually you just shift. It’s so…so hard not to go with your spirit. Miranda, I am so proud of you!”
She patted my leg as we pulled into the drive. She was smiling that thin-lipped grin that meant she was pleased.
“How long has it been since you shifted? I know that it’s difficult here, changing somehow makes the anger easier to deal with.”
It’s been a warm couple of weeks, but between play practice and homework, I haven’t been out much. So Aunt Lina and I planned to go out together. Tonight.
At ten o’clock we set out to take a walk. It was warm for March, and a few people were walking their dogs, even at this hour. We managed to get up into a wooded part of the sanctuary without meeting anyone, and then we shifted. I stayed close by, climbed a few trees and nosed around in a marshy patch. I found some skunk cabbage breaking through the ground, and already unfurling. It reminded me that spring would be coming soon. Maybe things would be better when the green thing began sprouting again.
We managed to get home before midnight, even though we both wanted to stay out under the nearly-full moon. I wrote this out as soon as I got into my pajamas. I bet I’ll sleep soundly tonight!
Until my next post…
Randi
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