I’m doing what he told me to. I’m walking behind the older boy, the blonde one who moved into our neighborhood a week earlier. I’m trying to move silently, stopping every few steps to stifle the sound of my empty thermos knocking around inside my lunchbox. I don’t think it matters if I’m silent or not, really. The older boy has such heavy footsteps that probably anyone, no matter how loud they were being, could sneak up behind him. Still, it feels right to creep along silently. Each step feels purposeful. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to punch him or just jump on his back. My brother didn’t really say. I think I’ll punch him, though. I just hope there’s no blood. I won’t be able to stand it if there’s blood again.
——
The first act of violence I ever committed took place inside a church. On Christmas Eve, after the second service, my older brother and I played tag, chasing each other through the church’s empty aisles while waiting for my mother, a deacon, to clean up. We weaved in and out of coatrooms and careened down long concrete hallways. The lights in the parking lot flitted through stained glass windows, gilding the dull wooden pews in reds and yellows and greens. Above the altar, where the priest doled out grape juice instead of wine, hung a sanitized Protestant crucifix. No blood, no look of anguish. Death by torture never looked so banal.
My brother began to harangue me in the middle of our game and I started to cry, which only goaded him on more. Then, for the first time in my life, or at least the first time I can remember, I stood up to him. I can’t explain why I chose that instance, or what exactly pushed me over the edge, but at that moment, in that cavernous church where every Sunday I sat bored and bristling while platitudes echoed all around me, I silenced my brother’s taunts by splitting his head open. I pushed him, his head hit a pew, and blood started streaming. I felt righteous. He had only himself to blame. His words had caused the mess, not me. As he staggered up the red-carpeted aisle, shrieking and sweeping the blood from his forehead with trembling hands, my insides clenched, and my righteousness was quickly replaced by dread. I felt small, powerless. The blood spanned two aisles.
My mother was counting the day’s collection plates in one of the church’s tiny backrooms. When she heard my brother’s wailing, she sprang through a door next to the altar, a coin-filled envelope still in her hand, and rushed towards him. Scooping him into her arms, her eyes met mine. To this day the speed and fluidity with which a mother’s face can switch from pity to judgment amazes me. We spent Christmas Eve in the emergency room, my brother receiving stitches and motherly coos while I garnered only iciness.
——
Afternoon walks home from school with my brother and his two friends, Nick and Jeremy, tended to become highly choreographed explosions of juvenile rage. Under the clement gaze of houses left empty by working parents, we flicked off the crossing guard and hurled new and exotic swear words at each other and anyone unfortunate enough to draw our ire.
It was a way for us to create personas loosed from pleases and thank you’s and hand-me-down Sunday morning attire. Any other time or place besides those few blocks from school to home, we were well mannered. It surprised me, then, when my brother one day singled out a classmate of his and decided, along with his friends, to fight him.
There was nothing particularly disdainful about the new kid, nothing to make him an object of our scorn. He had never slighted us. Nothing offensive had ever come out of him mouth. In fact, I don’t think anything had come out of his mouth. Not during that first week, at least. He was new. New and solitary. Easy prey, my brother and his friends figured. I’m not sure if there was much calculation or forethought that went into it. The only explanation I can come up with is that they figured they had something to gain, a way to climb a few rungs on the social ladder. It surely wasn’t about revenge or passion.
The plan was for me to start the fight, and then my brother, Nick, and Jeremy would run up and start throwing punches.
“You okay with this?” my brother asked.
I said I was. It felt like a bonding rite. I would’ve agreed to anything.
While my brother spoke about the impending fight, his lips settled into a snarl. He looked bemused, dangerous. It was thrilling and terrifying. It made me feel the same as when I rode the Ferris wheel with my friend Chris and he rocked our car back and forth. Swinging wildly in the night sky, I stopped caring. Chris laughed maniacally, streaks of neon light glinting off his braces, and I started rocking the car with him. I was scared of heights but at that moment I ceased to care about gravity, concrete, the frailty of the human body. It was strange to experience such feelings of transcendence and freedom while yoked to hulking steel arms whose sole function was predictability. The speed, direction, and duration of the ride were all predetermined. Disaster was the only variable. Perhaps that was the thrill of rocking the car: not the adrenaline rush but that tenuous line between predictability and chaos and our ability to exert control over it. Below us, the people milling around game booths and food stands looked small and insignificant. The new kid now looked small and insignificant, too.
In actuality, the kid was anything but small. He was over a head taller than every one of us. He had a large build, the kind of physique that in a few years would shed its doughy innocence and propel him onto football fields and wrestling mats. But at that moment, on that street, in the shadows of empty homes, the kid looked more awkward than strong.
Trailing behind him, readying myself to begin the fight, I started to lose my nerve. Every gardened pathway between houses became a potential escape route. I considered quickening my pace and plunging headlong into flowerbeds and bird fountains, my thermos knocking away uncontrollably inside my lunchbox, each defiant stride bringing me closer to home and my much anticipated half hour of pre-homework TV. I didn’t want to fight. My parents had always told me never to hit anyone unless they hit me first. But I wasn’t thinking solely in moralistic terms; I was also worried about what would happen if I got caught fighting. My parents’ iciness toward me after my brother’s hospital visit still weighed heavily on my mind.
Looking back over my shoulder, my brother and his friends shooed me onward with their hands and mouthed, “Go, go, go!” The kid was almost at the corner of the street. His shoes, Reebok Pump knock-offs, squeaked horribly. He continued ahead, alone and heavy-footed.
If I didn’t jump him by the time he reached the corner, I decided, I wasn’t going to go through with it.
Three houses before the corner it happened. I don’t remember jumping on him, only dangling from his back, one arm hooked around his neck, the other swinging wildly at his head. He bucked me off, reeling around and landing a punch to the side of my head. I collapsed in someone’s lawn and he got a look at me for the first time, realizing that I was younger and much smaller than him. I was crying. He looked apologetic, like he might start crying too. That’s when my brother, Nick, and Jeremy pounced on him.
We walked down Green River and took a left on Cutters Mill, heading toward our homes. A bright white flash of pain ran loops inside my head. My brother’s friends were hurt, too. Jeremy had a giant welt beside his eye, growing redder and puffier by the minute, and Nick held his hip, the spot where he landed when the kid picked him up and tossed him. My brother was the only one left unscathed. The big, blonde kid had fended us off, but to my surprise, my brother and his friends started celebrating, congratulating themselves and each other. I joined in. My brother patted me on the shoulder, asked if I was okay, and told me I’d done good.
—-
Over a decade later, around the time I started frequenting bars, I found myself in Chicago with friends, at a bar I’d never been to before. The place was crowded and I headed outside for some air. Shortly thereafter, the bouncer hurled a drunk out by the collar. The man stumbled off into the night slurring threats, only to stop midway down the block, turn, and run back towards the door with his fists primed. A melee broke out. Patrons and bar employees streamed outside, spilling into the street. Taxis swerved around them. People kicked out windows. Pedestrians gawked. Backing away and sidestepping tangled bodies, I kept my distance. A friend of mine appeared in the doorway, reached into his pocket, and pulled out brass knuckles. He disappeared into the crowd, and when I next saw him, he was running back into the bar, blood on his hand and a satisfied smirk on his face, celebrating bruises he’d never have to account for.
