| 'Do not ever fight back'
As Tewolde and I got older, the violence at school continued. So we kept defending ourselves--until the school administrators had no choice: "This notice is to inform you that your children are fighting almost every day. Especially Tewolde. If they continue to fight with their classmates, we will have to consider expelling them from Longfellow Elementary School." Signed, Ms. Cobb, the principal. My father sat, saying nothing, as he was known to do in moments of great crisis. Then he proclaimed his iron verdict. YIIIIIEEEEEE. ALL THIS COMING FROM ADI FOR THE SAKE OF SCHOOL AND EDUCATION, ALL FOR NOTHING. LISTEN TO ME, MY CHILDREN. I AM YOUR FATHER, RIGHT? THEN LISTEN. I KNOW THAT IN SUDAN, YOU HAD TO FIGHT OR THEY WOULD KEEP BEATING YOU DAY AFTER DAY. WE ARE NOT IN SUDAN ANYMORE. HERE IN AMERICA, THEY TAKE A SIMPLE THING LIKE A BRUISE AND KICK YOU OUT OF SCHOOL AND EVEN THROW YOU INTO THE HOUSE OF IMPRISONMENT. SO FROM NOW ON, LET THEM HIT YOU. COME HOME BEATEN AND BRUISED. DO NOT EVER FIGHT BACK. My brother and I were dumbfounded. At best, we had expected screaming; at worst, the leather belt. But we had never imagined a betrayal of this magnitude. Our father, better than anyone, knew the importance of standing up for yourself. We begged. We pleaded. We reasoned. What if they knock our teeth out? What if they make us bleed? What if they break our bones? If we let one kid beat us up, they're all going to beat us up. DO YOU THINK THAT I WISH HARM ON MY CHILDREN? WE HAVE NO CHOICE. WE ARE POOR. IF YOU GET EXPELLED, WHO WILL DRIVE YOU TO YOUR NEW SCHOOL? IF YOU GET EXPELLED, WHO WILL GIVE YOU A SCHOLARSHIP? DO YOU THINK THAT THEY GIVE SCHOLARSHIPS TO STUDENTS WHO GET EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL? REMEMBER THAT THIS COUNTRY RUNS ON COMPUTERS. ONCE YOU COMMIT THE SMALLEST CRIME, YOUR NAME WILL BE STAINED FOREVER. SO I'M TELLING YOU: IF THEY COME AFTER YOU, RUN. IF I EVER HEAR THAT YOU HAVE BEEN IN A FIGHT, FEAR FOR YOUR BEINGS. I WILL MAKE YOU LOST. We feared my father more than anything in the world, so as painful as it was to stop fighting, we stopped fighting. We learned to take taunting and small beatings. There were a few isolated incidents, though, where we had no choice but to defend ourselves. There was the time that I was in fourth grade and my brother had graduated to middle school. Our neighbors, the Panther family, gave my sister Mehret rides because they had one extra seat in their station wagon. That left me to make the one-mile walk home by myself. One day, two of my classmates, a light-skinned black kid named Dennis and a skinny white kid named Marc, jumped me on the way home. They would have given me a black eye and maybe more, worse than anything that awaited me at home. So I tightened my face into an angry scowl. Feigning toward Dennis, I kicked Marc, hard as I could, XJ-900 right in his groin. Marc hunched over and whimpered to the ground. Dennis tried to run, but I caught him. I made sure that there would be no next time. Dennis and Marc were easy pickings, but a year later, my brother met a more serious challenge: Jake Evans. Tough, mean, unstable, Jake was the deadliest kid at Franklin Middle School. He was the school's head burnout, one of those heavy-metal white kids who did drugs and didn't care about anything. He struck fear in the entire student body. And he hated my brother. Jake started telling everyone in the school that my brother's days were numbered. I rarely saw my brother tremble, but he trembled when he heard Jake's threat. He was right to tremble. Jake had about eighty pounds and a foot on him. But what terrified us wasn't Jake's size. It was his illegal-length switchblade. We knew Jake had it because we had seen him practice with it, setting up targets in the grass near Triangle Park, hitting dead center almost every time. Even if my brother could have taken Jake, Jake had seven or eight burnout lackeys who followed him around. My bro couldn't possibly survive all of them and their knives. Eventually, the day came, as in one of those movies where the whole school knows that a student is going to get whooped. My brother fidgeted all day long, trying to figure out an escape route. But there was no escape route. Too many people were watching him, talking about the fight. By the end of the day, everyone followed him home, including Jake. Jake and his friends surrounded Tewolde about a block away from the school. My brother had a few friends around, but not nearly enough to save him. So he made a desperate prayer: Dear God, please save me. Dear God, please save me. Dear God, just don't let them use their knives. I guess that God must have heard my brother because He sent some friends down to help him. A van pulled up, carrying four tall black guys. They looked like high-school students, maybe older. They strutted toward us with dangerous confidence. "What's going on here? Does someone have a problem with our brother?" No answer. Confronted with someone larger than himself, the school bully became the school coward. "Why are you so quiet now, you little punk? Yeah, you. Don't look around like I'm talking to somebody else. I'm talking to you. If you touch this kid today or any other day, you're dead meat. You got that? Good. Now get the heck outta here." Jake and his friends slunk away, never to be heard from again. They understood violence and they understood threats. Those four rescuers? They were the older brothers of Tewolde's friend, Kawaun. Kawaun had told his brothers that all the white burnouts were getting together to gang up on his black friend, and his brothers had come down to help the black kid out.
'Do not ever fight back' |