The Bully

And if thou draw out your soul to the hungry; and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon day~ Isaiah 58:10


Today I was looking through friends pictures on Facebook and came across a young woman whose family I have not thought about in a long time. She has turned out to be quite a beautiful woman. Seeing her reminded me of the time my best friend Fran and I decided to rob some little kid of their candy money. We normally didn’t spend our time robbing younger children, but we were short on cash and it just sounded like a good idea when Fran said it. So we hid in this small abandon field a few doors from our neighborhood grocery store. The field name was pimp ally; I’m not sure how it got that name in our small middle class neighborhood, but that’s what we called it. We hid humming a strange tune hoping it sounded predatory to go with our new image. Finally we see our prey, a boy three or four years our junior walking toward the store with his hands slightly extended holding an overstuffed white handkerchief. We pounce on him, snatching the handkerchief from his hands laughing. He looks at us with his eyes pooling over with tears and said, “Please don’t take my money, it’s all my mommy had, she sent me to go get potatoes, me and my little brothers and sister have not eaten today and they ‘re hungry, this is all we have.” As he pleaded with those big tears, I knew. I knew how it felt to be hungry; to have to run to the corner with dimes, nickels and pennies to make sure my little brothers and sisters had something to eat. I knew all to well the hurt and fear in my mothers eyes when she couldn’t feed us. I knew a father that was too drunk or high on heroin to feed his family. I knew.
I stood there with the handkerchief with only part of the money some of the money had fallen to the ground some Fran had in her possession listening as this kid told my family’s story. The story that happened when we moved away from the security of my momma’s parents, the story even my best friend didn’t know. I handed the handkerchief back to him and said. I’m sorry, Fran give him his money back,” as I looked around on the ground for the change that had fallen.
He stopped crying and went on to the store. It took me a minute to say anything; mainly because I didn’t want the tears to start flowing that were threatening to come. When I finally spoke I said to Fran, “We’re not going to rob little kids.” She looked at me and said, “He’s just a crybaby.” “No, he’s not he’s just hungry, we should try to help his family,” I replied. I’m sure she didn’t really agree with me but she knew by the look on my face that I meant business, we would never rob another kid and we would help when we could. I did start helping after that. I once even gave away an expensive outfit, fifty dollar coat and all, to a little girl whose mother was an alcoholic and she dressed poorly. When my mother found out she wasn’t too happy with me, but I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “She’s poor and really needed it, she set me straight by informing me I was “Poor.”
There is no picture of the young woman’s older brother. I don’t know where life has taken him. I do remember watching him blossoming into a very tall handsome teenager. Every time I saw him I felt the shame of my actions that day. He never mentioned what happened that day, but I’m sure he remembered. Maybe he knew he expressed my pain that day. Maybe he knew that I knew and it gave us a certain comradery or kinship like a paternal second cousin.

Fearless