Run!

What isn’t so scary when you’re older is a lot more frightening when you’re only single-digits of age.

You pump your arms and run. You’re pumping your arms so fast and hard that your fists are beating against your chest like a heartbeat but completely out of rhythm to your actual heart. It’s not rhythmic, it’s not monotone, it’s completely at odds with the calmness that a steady thrum-thrum-thrum that a heartbeat should be.

Run!

They’re almost at you and you keep running. You don’t want to get caught again like last time where you have to explain when you get home why you smell like urine and are wet and bruised except not in places where any one can see. They’re smart that way, They never hit you in places that are obvious so it looks like you’re just making it up without having to take off your tailored shirt or corduroy pants to show someone else the bruises. Or like the time you spent four days breathing very labored because you didn’t know they’d broken two of your ribs and didn’t want to tell anyone because they wouldn’t believe you any way so you sucked it up and pretended it was fine. When you couldn’t breathe any more your mother took you to the GP that always treated you since you were very little and admonished you for “playing too rough” and now you were a burden on your parents because they had to take extra special care of you for hurting yourself. It had to be fine. It always had to be fine. That was the point. No one believes you when you’re single-digit years old and brown in a place where no one else is the same color as you. You’re always lying or you’re making things up to get attention when that was exactly the opposite of what you wanted. You wanted to be left alone. Completely left alone. To disappear into the background so you wouldn’t stand out but you stood out not because you did or said anything but exactly because you didn’t fit. You had smelly food for lunch that your mother made you, you never ate the cafeteria food because it had meat and you didn’t eat meat so you were suspect. You didn’t eat their sweets or cookies because you brought them from home. You sat by yourself in the lunchroom because no one wanted to be with or near you. You stood out for all the wrong reasons. The teachers kept you out of everything except when it came to dodgeball and you were the last one they’d hit because they saved up their balls until the end and hit you all at once while the gym teacher pretended he didn’t see.

Run!

They were almost on you. You knew you’d never outrun them and the fear and panic was like tin in your mouth making even the saliva leave your body. You couldn’t breathe and you ran any way knowing they’d catch you.

You could hear them just behind you, their feet beating like Clydesdales because they were always so much bigger than you. They lauded over you when they finally did catch up to you. They’d push you to the ground and start kicking making sure to avoid your face and only kicked and punched at your body covered in clothing because you were always too shy to show anyone your bruises because it meant you’d have to pull up your tailored shirts or show them the bruises under the corduroy pants your mother insisted you wear.

You were on the ground at this point, they had caught up and were screaming and there were so many legs and fists. Who knows, maybe you were exaggerating in your head because you were only single-digits of age old. Maybe you were only thinking that there were more of them then there were. You didn’t make a sound, you just felt them punching and kicking but never your face. The biggest one kept reminding them “not the face, not the face, we can’t leave any marks on the face”. It was as if they had someone tell them where to hit you so they wouldn’t get caught and no one would believe you any way.

“Hey, sand nigger” they kept screaming, “why don’t you go back to where you came from?” they kept screaming. No one stopped them. You were certain others could hear this but no one ever intervened. You just covered up and waited for them to be finished, be bored with the kicking and the punching, be tired, and just go away. It always stopped as abruptly as it had started and you just had to make sure not to cry. If you cried, they only kicked and punched harder.

Your mother would ask when you came home smelling like urine and walking very slowly what was wrong and you’d mutter that you’d peed on yourself again and she’d just look at you with a mix of disgust and pity. She didn’t know what was really happening and you couldn’t tell her. It was already too much for her so you couldn’t add to it. So instead, you went upstairs, peeled off your corduroys and tailored shirt, washed them in sink, looked at yourself in the mirror and wonder what about brown made it so bad? There were no camels nor sand from where you were from so how could you explain that you couldn’t be a “camel jockey” or a “sand nigger” but that wouldn’t work because it made them jeer and hit you harder until you shut up and took it.

Today was over and maybe tomorrow they’d forget about you and you could come home intact for a change and unafraid of a world that didn’t want you. Maybe you could be just a little more happy in being who you were rather than hoping to wake up any other color than brown.