Threads of Life

Chapter 1-2

“He’s going to play with his dolls,” the other one joined in.

“I don’t have any dolls. Let me go.” I tried to lurch my bike forward, but it didn’t budge. Now they were both holding the handlebars.

“You and your brother are faggots.”

“No, we’re not. Let me go.”

“I bet they sleep in the same bed together and f**k each other every night.”

“Yeah. You and your faggot brother f**k each other.”

“No, we don’t. Let me go.”

A few other kids walked by quickly, trying to ignore what was going on. And, in truth, I would have done the same thing.

“Look. The faggot’s going to cry.”

“Let me go.”

And it went on like this for another five minutes. They told me that my bike was a girl’s bike and that my shirt was gay and that they were going to punch me in the face because they were allowed to punch faggots in the face. Then they must have run out of faggot jokes because they told me that the path belonged to them and that I had to pay them money to use it every day, and one of them reached into my pocket and took my change and house key.

And then the red-haired bully twisted and shook the handlebars up and down, and since I had been standing with the frame of the bike between my legs, the bar that ran under the seat to the front of the bike slammed into my balls, and I fell over onto the path, scraping my knee and crying. And then he threw the bike on top of me, cutting the back of my neck.

“You better have five dollars for us tomorrow, faggot. Or else we’ll beat the s**t out of you. And you better not tell your parents or the principal, or we’ll tell everyone that you tried to hump us like a faggot and that’s why we beat you up.”

The red-haired bully waved the key he had taken from my pocket in front of my face. “If you don’t bring us five dollars tomorrow, maybe we’ll just walk into your house and steal anything we want.”

After that, they ran off laughing. I was bleeding from my neck and knee, and still crying when I got home.

I was too embarrassed to tell my mother what had happened. I told her I fell off my bike and that my key and two dollars must have fallen out of my pocket.

The next day I pretended to have a stomachache. I reached into my throat with my finger and made myself throw up. The evidence was irrefutable and I was allowed to miss school.

On the second day, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself throw up again. Since I was unable to fake a fever, I was told to go to school. I took five dollars with me.

Our house was in a small court called Hampshire Court, off Old English Lane. Instead of turning north on Old English Lane to the path that led directly to school, I was able to avoid the two kids who attacked me by turning south on Old English Lane, then taking Steeles Ave to Laureleaf, and Laureleaf to Limcombe, where the school was located. And even though it turned my two-minute trip to school into fifteen minutes, I arrived safely. And I took the same roundabout route on the way home.

* * *

So, where was Simon, my protector, my guardian angel? It was early in the school year and since he was on every athletic team, he usually left early in the morning for one practice or another, and then stayed after school for another practice or a game. For the next two days, Simon wasn’t around to witness my circuitous route which, along with recesses spent inside the school, helped me avoid the two bullies.

On the third day, however, without an extra-curricular activity to drag him to school early, Simon left at the same time as me. And without realizing what I was doing, after we rode our bikes down our driveway and through Hampshire Court, Simon turned right onto Old English Lane, and I turned left and sped off in the opposite direction.

“Auden? Where are you going?” He’d turned around and easily caught up with me.

Our bikes were the same size, but because he rode standing up like he was sprinting, with his long powerful legs pushing him high in the air, it looked like he had outgrown his bike years ago.

I rode seated and my feet barely touched the pedals when they were at their lowest point. “I like to go this way to get more exercise.”

“Since when?”

“Since a few days ago.”

He was riding alongside me. “You hate exercising. Are you trying to skip school? Are you running away from home?”

“No. I just want to go this way.”

He reached over and grabbed my handlebar and applied his brake until we both came to a stop. For the second time that week I wanted to pedal away, but someone was preventing me.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Let me go.”

“Something’s wrong. You’d rather do anything in the world than ride your bike an extra mile.”

“Just let me go.”

“As soon as you tell me the truth.”

I started crying. “I can’t.”

“Don’t be a baby, Auden. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I can’t.”

Simon was immovable, a picture of unchallengeable conviction. My whole life, any attempt to deceive him, to conceal anything from him, was a house of straw. Then and now he gave the impression that he could stand in one spot awaiting the truth for two hundred years without losing an ounce of determination. How could I stand up to that? How could I ever stand up to that? So, I told him everything.

“Those assholes.” He started to pedal away from me toward the school and yelled over his shoulder, “You don’t have to take the long way anymore.”

* * *

The red-haired bully and his accomplice were sitting against one of the goalposts on the soccer field behind the school. Mr. Wilson, one of the younger teachers at Greenwich Park, the school Simon and I attended, was on yard duty that morning. When Simon sped past him at full speed onto the pavement behind the school and over the faded yellow basketball lines and red four-square lines and then onto the soccer field, the teacher sensed something out of the ordinary was about to take place, and since everything out of the ordinary in a schoolyard is bad news, he began walking, then jogging after the grade-six student.

Without slowing down, Simon jumped off his bike and landed in front of the two older boys. He’d been going so fast that the bike continued in the same direction for another ten yards before falling over.

The red-haired boy was the first to speak. “What the f**k do you want?” He was on one knee and about to stand up, when Simon’s foot shot forward and smashed into his face, caving in his four front teeth and sending blood splashing from his mouth and broken nose.

Mr. Wilson, followed by every other kid in the yard, was speeding toward them.

The red-haired boy was rolling on the ground, crying. His hands were holding his face and blood poured out between his fingers and covered his neck and dripped onto the grass.

Simon grabbed the stunned accomplice by the hair and lifted him to his feet and then put his hand around the boy’s neck, raising him to his tiptoes and pressing him against the goalpost.

The boy’s jaw was forced closed and his eyes bulged. He was struggling to breathe, and his feet kicked weakly against Simon’s shins.

Simon drew his face close to the boy’s ear and spoke in a calm voice, unaffected by the turmoil around him. “If either of you ever touch my brother again, I’ll kill you.”

And that’s when an out-of-breath Mr. Wilson arrived, in front of a mob of students running or on bicycles. He grabbed Simon by the shoulder and shouted, “Let go of him!”

Before he released his grip, Simon drove his knee into the boy’s groin, dropping him to the ground.

Mr. Wilson pulled Simon away from the two boys lying at his feet. One was holding his balls and gasping for air and the other, who had lost a lot of blood, was whimpering and about to pass out.

* * *

Simon explained his behaviour to the principal, then to my parents and the police. He told them that the two boys had bullied me and, though he was only ten years old, he wanted to “teach them a lesson”. He received a two-week suspension from school, a visit with a school psychologist, and a stern warning that further violence would result in permanent expulsion. During his interview with the police officer, he was told he was lucky not to be charged and thrown into juvenile detention. From my parents, who had to pay five-hundred dollars to repair the red-haired boy’s teeth, he received a grounding of epic proportions that kept him in the house before and after school, and on every weekend, and off every athletic team, until January.

And every adult who reprimanded him couldn’t help but not-so-secretly betray admiration for this boy who stood up for his feeble brother.

On the way out of the principal’s office, the principal pulled my father aside while my mother and Simon walked ahead, and I stood listening in the next room.

“I didn’t want to say this in front of the boy because I can’t be seen to condone any behaviour like that on school property, but what he did was right out of the Bible. I know this sounds odd, but I think I would be proud of him if he were my son.”

My father, who was just as conflicted, shook the principal’s hand, smiled, and said, “Thank you.”

The same thing happened with the police officer who came to our home. After threatening to throw Simon in a jail for children that probably didn’t even exist, the officer was on his way out the door when he turned around and said to my parents, “That’s some kid you’ve got there.”

And even the red-haired boy’s father told my parents that he would have done the same thing “if someone f****d with my brother.”