A Book of American Martyrs(22)

In eighth grade crude, cruel things were said of Felice Sipper. Even the nice girls scorned her, and all the boys. Her name was scrawled on walls. On a concrete overpass in red spray paint was scrawled FELICE SIPER SUCKS COCK.

Boys who were my friends had scrawled these things. From an empty classroom I had taken chalk-stubs, we could use for brick walls though the chalked words washed off in the rain. There were others whose names were scrawled in public derision, both girls and boys, but it was Felice Sipper who drew the most excited attention. Our teachers would not look at her, for the sight of the pimply-faced girl in her cheap nylon sweaters and oversized skirts, that skidded about her thin waist so that the side-zipper was not in its proper place, was offensive to their eyes.

I felt sorry for Felice Sipper. I tried to rub away some of the nasty words with my wetted fist, if no one was observing.

I saw the hurt and weakness in the girl’s face, as she stood at her locker in the eighth grade corridor trying to ignore stares and whispers, and a lust came over me like a lust to kill.

Alone, I would follow Felice Sipper after school. She saw me, and looked frightened. If she started to run, I would not run after her. I would whistle loudly, and laugh to myself. I would turn in another direction but I would not hurry, for I did not want Felice to think that I had been following her, and was now not-following her.

Felice had entered the dripping underpass at Union Street. I had waited until some older girls ascended the steps and were gone and then I entered, from the other side. Felice was walking slowly with eyes downcast as if she was not aware of me even as I stood before her.

“You are a dirty girl. You will go to hell when you die.”

Felice tried to move past me. I blocked her way.

Felice was much smaller than I was. Her head barely came to my shoulder. Her hair was matted and odd-colored like straw. She had a sallow blemished dark-toned skin, she was not “white” like the rest of us. Yet her hair was not Negro hair and her lips were not Negro lips.

When she tried to turn, to run from me, I grabbed her arm that was skinny as a stick.

“Don’t you care, you’re a dirty slut who will go to hell?”

“Leave me alone! You’re a dirty slut—you can go to hell.”

It was shocking to me, and thrilling, Felice Sipper’s eyes flashed at me in sudden hatred and defiance as a cornered animal’s might flash, in the instant before it sinks its teeth into your throat.

When I saw this, I relented and let her go. It was rare—it had never happened—that a smaller child, girl or boy, had confronted me in this way, or any friend of mine. For we never approached anyone who was of our sizes, or our ages, who might so defy us.

And Felice ran, and in running called back over her shoulder what sounded like, “Fuck you, asshole! I hate you—hope you die.”

Felice’s voice was high-pitched like a bird’s shriek. Her words were so surprising to me, I did not follow after her but watched her run away where I stood in the dripping smelly underpass.

I did not tell my friends about this encounter. I did not tell anyone and yet it seemed to be known, Luther Dunphy had a claim of some kind on Felice Sipper, other boys dared not interfere.

By the store at the depot I would see her, and if she was alone I would approach her. Of the girls Felice had a way of standing like a doe about to leap and run, one of her feet at an angle, toeing the pavement.

And I would stand a few feet away, as if not altogether aware of her. Or, I might go into the store and buy a bottle of Coke and return, and there was Felice Sipper sneering in my direction, wiping her nose on the edge of her hand. “You! What the hell do you want.”

If I held out the Coke for Felice to drink, Felice would shake her head No! with a look of contempt but if I offered another time or two, she might relent, and take the bottle from me, and drink from the bottle where my mouth had been, and seeing this—that Felice Sipper was putting her mouth to the very place where I had put my mouth—made me dizzy with excitement.

“What d’you say, F’lice?”—I would say; and Felice would say, curling her lip, “Thank you.” And I would say, “ ’Thank you, what” (meaning that Felice should say Thank you Luther), but Felice would say, sneering, “Thank you, asshole.”

Out back of the depot, in a part of the railroad yard where old freight cars were kept rusting amid tall grasses, Felice Sipper would allow the older boys to touch her, and to do things to her. They shared cigarettes, beer. They might give Felice loose change, taken from their mothers’ wallets. It was different for me, that I was never with other boys, but always alone, for there was the special understanding between Felice Sipper and me.

Sometimes, Felice did not want to do the things I wanted to do, but she could not say No! for fear of angering me. Her reaction of disgust was a high laughing shriek like a bird that has been outraged but unlike a bird, she did not take flight. She did not ever scream or fight, that I could recall.

Sometimes I “disciplined” her, as my parents used to “discipline” me when I was younger—my mother with the flat of her bare hand, my father with his belt looped and coiled like a snake. This would make the sensation stronger. I was excited by her tears, her running nose and smeared mouth. My hand on the nape of Felice’s neck shoved her head down, like a dog’s head down, in obedience to her master.

There was a sharp taste to Felice Sipper, like salt. I liked it that her fingernails were edged with dirt like my own, though they were smaller fingernails, and her hands were small with bones light as a sparrow’s that I could have crushed in my hand at any time, but did not, and Felice would know this, and (I thought) would like me for this. Her older sister Beverly would paint Felice’s nails, bright red, dark purple, which was exciting to me, even when the polish began to chip. There was a dark green plastic-looking cross Felice wore sometimes, she said was “jade,” and had belonged to her grandmother, but Felice and her family did not go to church, she said nobody in the family believed in God except if things went wrong it was God’s will.