Orfe Read Free Page B

they still returned and circled me in the hallway or on the playground or at my desk. I still hunched down over my desk until I wept with their words.
    Orfe at her desk next to mine had her own head bent—as I now understood—so that she wouldn’t have to witness my shame.
    Until one day she raised her face and it was anger shooting out of her eyes. “Cut that out,” she said. “You, Rab—what you’re saying is—horrible, you’re—”
    Rab’s cheeks were pink and his eyes were bright. “Lookit that, will you?” he asked. “ ’D’joo hear? The Creature speaks.”
    Orfe pushed herself up from her seat. “The things—what you’re saying—”
    I didn’t know what she was going to do, I couldn’t imagine.
    They were laughing. Orfe was about halfway standing up, leaning toward Rab with her hands flat on the desk and her face pushing toward him—when shethrew up. She vomited—it was sickening—hard, so hard that some of it spattered onto Rab’s face from his chest. You could hear the vomit hitting his chest.
    I stopped crying. I wiped at my eyes. I was worried about Orfe, if she was sick and how I could help.
    Orfe vomited again, like a hand pump when the pressure comes right and suddenly water pumps out.
    I remembered that she’d said she could do it on purpose. I sat dumb and wondered.
    Rab tried to leap back, but the boys were in his way. “Goddamn it!” he bellowed.
    Orfe leaned forward, turning her head to one side, like pointing a hose. The boys behind Rab scuttled away. “You fucking did that on fucking purpose!” Rab shouted in a fury, his chest dripping, chunks falling, and a stink rising from him.
    Rab was of course sent home. The teacher dragged him out of the room by his arm for swearing like that. The principal suspended him for two days. I accompanied Orfe to the nurse’s room and sat with her while she recovered. I had the foresight to bring my lunch box with me, and we shared the sandwich, cookies, and fruit equally between us.
    *  *  *  *  *
    Orfe had routed them and I was proud of her, but the day Rab returned they were back, and Orfe was sitting with her head bent, and my eyes were filling with tears. It was as if all of Orfe’s victory was good for nothing, except that they stood a safe distance back from her desk now. All the trouble she had gotten Rab into was worth only a few inches in the end. As if what Orfe did wasn’t worth anything.
    So I took my lunch box and tried to hit Rab in the face with it, or over the head. My lunch box was metal and had sharp corners. He grabbed it, but I wasn’t about to let it go. I kept my hold on the handle even while I was pulled up out of my chair, and I came around from behind the desk—where I could kick at his shins while he held my lunch box over my head and danced his legs free. I don’t know what he was saying because I was crying. But now I was crying from the sheer excitement of hitting at Rab and kicking him.
    I had detention that day, copying over one hundred times, “I will not fight in school.”
    The next day I got a good clip in, across his cheek and nose, a wide broadhandwith the lunch box, before he could block it. Blood poured out of his nose, and I spent the afternoon sitting on a chair out in the hallway. I sat alone, with nothing to do, no books or papers, feeling glad. Feeling as if I had been shut up in a little closet, but now I had broken down the walls and broken myself free.
    After that, a couple of times, I was sent to the principal. I didn’t care and it didn’t make any difference to the way I acted. If Rab came near me and jabbed his nose at me that way, I would go crazy. Sometimes I would cry and go crazy, and sometimes I would not cry and go crazy. But every time I would try to club him a good one—on the hands or head, ears or elbows,