“He called me a darkie,” Ernie said.
Sister Beatrice flinched. A palpable silence filled the room and Ernie seemed to use it for dramatic effect.
“And then he called me a nigger.”
Sister Beatrice’s eyes widened. Mrs. Bateman’s head began to swivel. “I . . . I . . . I . . . I have no . . . no . . . no idea where he could have heard such a word. We would never use such a word in our house. Never. It’s the television. They hear it on the television.” She yanked David forward by his wrist. “Did you call that boy a nigger?”
“No,” he wailed.
She shook him, the flab of her arm jiggling. “Did you call that boy a nigger?”
Each time she said the word, it cut through the room like a hot knife. She said it with such ease, there was little doubt where David had heard it.
“You’re hurting me.”
“What have I told you about using that word?”
“Dad says it,” Bateman cried.
Mrs. Bateman flushed. “Never,” she said to the rest of us. Then, “What have I told you about lying?” And with that Mrs. Bateman swatted David across the back of the head. The force certainly would have caused him to pitch over had she not also maintained her grip on his wrist.
“I didn’t,” he shouted, his face beet red, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Don’t hit me again.”
Mrs. Bateman raised her hand. “Did you call that boy a nigger?”
“Yes. Okay. Okay. I threw the ball and I called him the devil boy.”
His mother shook him again, flab jiggling. “And . . .”
“And—and I called him a nigger.”
Mrs. Bateman spun, tugging her son from the office by his arm. Sister Kathleen and Ernie barely had time to remove themselves from her path through the doorway. We heard David Bateman’s wails even after the outer door to the administration office shut. The aftermath felt like the passing of a storm, the room silent and still. Sister Beatrice’s eyes focused on the top of her desk.
Sister Kathleen’s gentle voice broke the silence. “Sam, please show Ernie to the lavatory, and the two of you get cleaned up and return to class, straight away.”
I looked to my mother, who silently nodded her permission. Sister Beatrice cleared her throat as if about to speak, but my mother gave her the same withering look she directed at me if I “acted up” in church. Whatever words Sister Beatrice had been prepared to speak, my mother’s look forced her to swallow them.
18
I stood on my toes to wash my hands at the white porcelain sink. Ernie stood at the sink beside me. The left side of my face remained ruby red. I tugged at tufts of hair stiff with dried Twinkie cream and used water and a brown paper towel to try to scrub the cream out, but I was only partially successful. Pointed strands of hair stuck out from my head. Just what the devil boy needed, horns.
“How’d you learn to run like that?” I asked.
Ernie shrugged. “Where’d you learn to wrestle like that?”
His question left me momentarily confused, not having equated my clinging to David Bateman’s back to wrestling. “I don’t know,” I said.
As we made our way from the bathroom down the corridor toward our classrooms, Ernie asked, “Do you want to be friends?”
I almost didn’t respond, too surprised at the invitation. Quickly recovering I said, “Sure.” I watched Ernie run down the corridor to his classroom. When Ernie pulled open the door, a loud cheer erupted and then just as quickly silenced. I could only imagine that Sister Reagan had squelched the applause. As I approached my classroom, I initially hoped for the same reception. I was, after all, the kid who had beaten up David Bateman. But as I reached the mahogany door, I became filled with a sense of dread—if the other kids had been afraid of me because of the color of my eyes, what were they now to think of me, the whirling dervish who had attacked not just another student but the monster himself? I was certain they would be downright terrified of me, considering me some sort of crazed lunatic or wild animal. I expected them to shriek in horror and recoil at the sight of me. But when I opened the door, no sound greeted me as I stepped through. My days of anonymity might have been over, but not my isolation.