Barry

I remember his name after all these years:  Barry.  Sometimes I can’t remember the name of the coworker who sits in the cubicle diagonal to mine.  When I get a massage I often forget the name of the massage therapist mere seconds after she has uttered it.  Amanda?  Mindy?  Caitlin?  But Barry from second grade, that name I know. 

Barry sat in the very last desk of the first row, the row closest to the door in our suburban Dallas classroom at Victor H. Hextor Elementary School.  I also remember my teacher’s name:  Mrs. Higginbotham, but what second grader wouldn’t marvel at the existence of a name so close to a word for one’s rear end? 

Barry had been held back a year.  He seemed cloaked in a sort of bitterness about that.  I don’t think that’s just my adult mind; I think I felt that even at the age of seven.  Barry never appeared happy, one arm slung on the back of his chair.  He had the indifferent slump of a much older man, with a look in his eye that could be mistaken for a twinkle if it weren’t for the fact that his lips were perpetually fixed in a snarl.  He was a year older than me, I assume, but at the time he seemed as big and imposing as a teenage boy.  If I were to travel back in time and walk toward that desk, I am certain that I would be shocked to see how small he was, small and perhaps even precious in a way that all children are, sitting there in his burgundy corduroy pants, plaid shirt and V-neck sweater vest.  I might be tempted to ask him where it hurts, or to smile at all that bravado; but at seven, I was afraid of Barry.

I no longer had the comfort or protection of my bossy best friend Catherine.  In first grade Catherine and I repeatedly engaged in the unacceptable behavior of talking and laughing together when we should have been paying attention.  We were not allowed to enter second grade as members of the same classroom.

Barry had a habit of teasing other students when they stood at the front of the class for a presentation, or if they spoke up.  His tone was sarcastic and mocking.  Perhaps I remember his name because Mrs. Higginbotham was always saying, “Barry!”  There must have been other words that came after his name but all I recall was that tired, exasperated sigh as she said it.  She seemed old standing at the front of the class in her flowered dresses and her cat’s eye glasses. 

I had watched Barry as the school year went on and noticed his comments made at others’ expense.  One day it was my turn.  I have no idea what he said and maybe that’s a kind of mercy.  Since that time I have certainly received words I can’t unhear.  I remember though that I felt alone and exposed.  I remember the sun coming in through the large windows with the khaki colored canvas blinds.  I can still smell the chalk dust and the wall-mounted pencil sharpener.  I can see him with that slump, sitting in that back chair, and feel the trembling in my heart that testifies to his power.  That moment is frozen, with no immediate context before or after that can be summoned from memory.  What I next recall from that day is the urgency and sense of purpose with which I rushed home. 

It was 1977, at a time in America when elementary school children still walked home on their own, traveling blocks and blocks.  I usually liked that walk.  There were rose bushes in front of some houses.  Occasionally I might catch a glimpse of a swimming pool hiding behind a tall fence.  One house had a large boat out front and the neighbor across the street had an RV.  The lives of strangers fascinated me – what they owned and what those possessions suggested about the lives they led. 

However, my surroundings on that day were not of interest.  I had a mission.  I rushed through the front door of our pink, brick house and headed straight to the bathroom.  I may have turned on the light.  I know I leaned my short body over the counter at the sink and looked squarely at my image in the mirror.  Something in my appearance had given him permission.  What was it?  I noted the printed calico dress my mother had made, in the style of Little House on the Prairie.  I scanned the features of my face and hair and upper body, anything I could manage to see in this half mirror.  At last I breathed out, the air releasing from my chest.  I had found what it was about me that had given Barry permission, the thing that made me an appropriate target for his sneer and mockery.  My eyebrows did not match the color of my hair.  My long, slightly frizzy hair was brown, but my eyebrows were much blonder.  I didn’t look at them with shame or self-hatred.  What I am struck by is how straightforward and almost calming this observation was to my young mind.  Barry could not have said such a thing, have picked on me, if there had not been some flaw.

Again, I have no memory of what he said or whether it was even about how I looked.  What I know with certainty is that in my mind my appearance created the open door for his mockery; it made it somehow legitimate.  From this assessment I escaped the necessity of recognizing that he had been cruel and that sometimes people are cruel without provocation.

I suspect that this may have been the first of many tiny collusions with cruelty, not premature forgiveness which would come later, but acts of stepping outside myself and my feelings to join the other in their gaze and to find the flaw that validated the impulse to say something withering. 

That seven-year-old believed that something about me was not totally normal.  Again, this finding did not result in shame.  It seemed a simple and straightforward fact:  being different attracted attention.  So be it, but best to understand, I determined, just what it is that makes you so.  As soon as I knew it was all about my eyebrows, I relaxed.

All these years later, I can’t help but notice that where my child mind began looking for difference was in my face.  It makes me wonder how many little girls move from a moment of deep social pain to some quest to understand in what way their bodies awaken hostility in others.