It's Just a Word

Reader advised: This story contains coarse language and/or racial slander.

It's not my fault I didn't know what the word "nigger" means. It's not my fault that quoting a movie I watched with my dad yesterday has led me to the punishment of a lifetime. The movie was "42: The Jackie Robinson Story", a biographical movie about Jackie Robinson’s life, and it was pretty good too. There were some big words and a few boring parts here and there, but the baseball scenes were pretty great, except for this one that’s been on my mind all day. It was the scene where the Brooklyn Didgers were playing against the Philadelphia Phillies and one of their team members kept encouraging Jackie, calling him a nigger. Over and over again he'd yell that at Jackie, until Jackie got mad, had to leave, and let his anger out swinging his bat against a hallway wall leading in and out of the park.

I never heard that word until then, and I wasn't really concerned why he kept calling Jackie a nigger, but rather what the word meant. I thought it just meant you were a bad ball player for black people. I asked my dad what it meant, but he told me that even he didn't know what it meant. I thought If dad didn't know what it meant, then how could anyone know what it means? I don't get it, why would Jackie Robinson or Derek McCall get upset about being called a nigger? Derek McCall is one of my friends that I was playing baseball with at recess, and we were on opposite teams. He was playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, chosen by Luke Peterson, and I was playing for the New York Yankees, chosen by Wyatt Whitley. Derek’s a damn good ball player. He’s almost always the first pick at recess, and is the only one in our grade to hit a home run in a real game when we’re playing real baseball in the summer. Besides his mean swing, he’s tall and fast which makes him a perfect center fielder. Nine times out of ten whenever a ball is hit in the outfield, even if it’s nowhere near centerfield he’s usually the one to catch it. We were losing five to one, courtesy of Derek who had four of his team's points, and I had had enough.

He was up to bat, tapping the wiffle ball bat on the rubber home plate, right arm bent at a perfect 90 degree angle, posed like a true Major League Baseball Player, and for no particular reason right then and there I chose him to be my Jackie Robinson. Right as the pitch was released, I called him a nigger, like that one player from the Philadelphia Phillies did, and boy did it throw him off his game. A few guys gave me a weird look. We always hassle the other team when they’re batting, but it seems like they have just found the perfect chant. Nobody joined in right away, but when they noticed it was causing Derek to swing at a high ball, giving him his second strike, everyone on my team started joining in like a choir to the lead singer. Here comes the next pitch. Everyone shouted nigger at the same time, and what happened next shocked all of us.

Derek didn’t swing!

It was a perfect strike too, right down the center, for Derek to whack it into space. He was handed a perfect ball, and didn’t swing. Something was wrong. We thought we broke him. We looked at him still in the same position, except his head was down, and, shaking? He finally looked up at us with his face as read as a tomato and tears streaming down his face. Before we could assess him, he threw the wiffle ball bat down, told us to fuck off, and ran off to Mrs. Mitch over by the swing set; she was the supervising teacher for recess. She was a near 70 year old woman who had a scowl that could turn your stomach inside out, and a small wart on her left cheek that the older kids claimed was the mark of the devil himself. Ironically, Derek was the one who noticed earlier in the year that her wart gave her the appearance of a witch and unofficially dubbed her "Mitch the Witch".

None of the kids liked her because she would give you the dumbest punishments for the stupidest reasons. One time in the Fourth Grade, Becky Harowitz placed one of the school laptops in the charging station, but forgot to plug in the charger, and unfortunately that same day Mrs. Mitch was the substitute teacher. When she went to make sure all the computers were plugged in and found Becky’s unplugged, she scolded her in front of the whole class calling her every mean name in the book. Irresponsible, inconsiderate, inconceivable, impatient, and everything in between. Becky cried like a child who lost her mother, and none of us blamed her. It was a miracle she even survived, and for that she unknowingly gained more respect than hate that day.

After two and a half minutes of whining like a baby, Derek started leading Mitch the Witch in our direction in a quick walk that somewhere halfway turned into a march of death. My death. Her beady eyes held me in a trance all the way from the swing set as they walked through the courtyard, all the way up to where my team and I were standing, minding our perfect little Sixth Grade business. There was nothing I could do! I was locked in her tractor beam, paralyzed with fear, my bones turning into cement, my brain a numbless mass. The ground shook with each step she took, each step intensifying the dire consequence of death, my death, my pre pubescent life flashing before my eyes. Oh God, humanity!

The hour of death rang its bell as she stopped in front of me, looming upon my gaze with her short grey hair, thick black glasses, scowl of despair, and her Godforsaken little wart which I could have sworn was leaking puss. She looked left and right before bursting out into a frenzy, giving me and all my teammates a chewing out with more chomps than a crocodile careening a cove of carp. She was yelling, screaming, exclaiming, overdemanding in an under demanding scenario, causing all the kids on the playground to stop everything they were doing, except breathe, and look over at us. None of us had been more quiet in our lives, not Wyatt Whitley, Chase Grover, Jeremiah Kruse, Harry Garfield, Alonso Albani, or I made any noise out of fear that she would whip out a potion and turn us into slugs. We all just stood there with our heads sunk into our chests and staring at the grass, listening to a crime we didn’t know we had committed. I looked to my left to see Carly Frieden staring at me in disbelief, developing secondhand fear from Mrs. Mitch’s outburst.

After 10 minutes of getting our character’s torn apart, Mrs. Mitch ordered us to stand in line and follow her through the school to Mr. Steele’s room. My stomach was doing somersaults. There we were, a bunch of first time offenders in a line following each other through the prison to meet the warden. Chase led the way, followed by Harry, then Jeremiah, Wyatt, Me, and then Alonso. If I was in Alonso’s shoes I would have made a dash to escape; he was last in line and no one would have seen him leave, but he was the new kid from Guatemala and didn’t want to set himself up for failure right from the beginning. I don’t blame him. He was mumbling something underneath his breath the whole time we were walking. It sounded like the Lord’s prayer. I don’t speak Guatemalan, but I recognized from his tone of words that it sounded more churchy than not.

The walk to Mr. Steele’s office was possibly the longest walk of my life. Each classroom we passed was a check point, and the red lockers with everyone's names on them were a reminder of what we had done. Each step felt a little heavier, probably from the guilt. It’s funny how people say you feel guilt in your head and heart. My guilt sinks right to my toes. We took a left turn from the hallway of shame and started heading to the front office where Mr. Steele’s room was. The amount of stories that were born from that room.

My older sister told me once of how her friend, Macy Turner, accidentally knocked over her Solar System project in Science and yelled the F-word without thinking. She said she got sent to Mr. Steele’s office and 15 minutes later came out looking like she just lost a fight to a bull, and she’s in the 8th grade! Imagine what he’ll do to me, to us. He pounded her for saying a word we all know the meaning of, God only knows what he’ll do to us for saying a word of such anonymity.

We finally entered the office and we all sat down in the three, 80’s brown shaded couches that lined the cubed shape cove of the office. I sat to the left of Alonso facing the wall where we entered, with Chase and Harry across from us, and Wyatt and Jeremiah in the middle facing the front desk where Ms. Gladstone worked. Mrs. Gladstone was a sweet old lady who had been working at our school since the beginning of time, and had a smile that could make every little worry fade. Even as we sat down, she smiled at us with simple generosity. Her affectionate joy quickly ended when Mitch the Witch barked at us to sit up straight and fix our posture so we couldn’t lean our backs against the loveseats, nor have our arms rested on the arm rests, but on our laps. It was humiliating. We couldn’t even move our heads. Mrs. Mitch proceeded to walk around to Ms. Gladstone’s desk and began whispering to her of what we did. I tried tuning out the air conditioner and other electronic appliances operating our school facility to hear what they were saying. I could make out our names, the baseball game, and then said nigger to her to which Ms. Gladstone responded with a gasp of denial. It was like dishonoring Mother Mary herself.

They proceeded to chat for about five more minutes until Mrs. Mitch told us that Mr. Steele was shadowing a class room and that he would be back soon, before she gave us one more qualm about our verbal murder of the century, then left. No one spoke, but half of us let out a collective sigh of relief. God bless the man who married that wart. Our inability to turn our heads, move our arms, lean our backs, or even tap a foot turned us into statues of remorse. All that we could do was move our eyes. I looked to my right at Alonso, just right out of my peripheral vision. Although I couldn’t see him, I could hear him sniffling and crying. First week at a brand new school and he’s already sent to the principal’s office. Ay caramba. I looked at Chase sitting across from me, his eyes down in regret. I looked to his left, my right, at Harry staring at the wall behind Alonso. I looked left at Wyatt, his rotating in all directions. Up, down, left, right, clockwise, counterclockwise, making eye contact with everyone until locking eyes with me for six whole seconds then repeating his process. I forgot about his ADHD up until now. Mr. Steele would have to wait until Wyatt gets done fighting his inner demons.

Then I looked at Jeremiah facing forward, but his eyes were already on me. They weren’t happy eyes either, his eyebrows were burrowed, full of rage. I raised my eyebrows in response to his, communicating like a couple of CIA agents held in captivity. He told me he was angry with me, that I was the reason all of us got in this mess, and he was right. I started the chant at recess, I knew that nigger wasn’t something you should say, and I knew Derek was an easy target. As athletic as he was, he had a bit of a soft side that didn’t require much effort to poke through. I looked down in regret like Harry. I kept pleading to myself I’m a good kid, it wasn’t all my fault, and that it was that dang Jackie Robinson movie that got us here in the first place, but it didn’t match up to my guilty conscience overruling my idiocracy. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t care. I did what I did and there’s no denying it.

Then to pour salt on the wound, my conscience decided to reach full maturity, and told me I had to take the fall for everyone. No way! The captain must go down with the ship, why not take a few crewmates? Wyatt was the first to join, but he’ll probably be excused on his ADHD, Harry was the second and he’s averagely smart to have proper judgement, just like Jeremiah and Chase who joined, and then Alonso. I’ll vouch for Alonso, he was just trying to be included. Plus he can’t fully speak English yet and probably thought nigger was some special, inclusive chant. And so did probably everyone else. Damnit, I have to accept responsibility. Every good man does.

But what does it mean!? I’ll admit, I knew nigger was a bad word directed at Jackie and only Jackie because he was black, but Derek is white! Why would he be offended at something that doesn’t even pertain to his skin color? Cracker, that pertains to him. Mayonnaise, ghost, moonlight, those all apply to him. He’s just soft. A pillow with arms and legs that would have burst open had we called him nigger just one more time. A Grade-A pussy some would call, and I am. And why did he wait so long to get Mrs. Mitch too? We were calling him nigger for minutes before he cracked and had his fit over losing, which even that didn’t happen. Since we had to leave, they won five to one which meant they had bragging rights until tomorrow's game. Damnit. And all because of the word nigger. God I'm sick of it already. One day later and it's already led me to slaughter. Screw it, you don't have to know the meaning of a word to if it holds good or bad value. We only said it a few times and look where its gotten us already. if one things for certain, I'm never saying that word again. I've learned my lesson, truly, now please let me go!

But wouldn’t you know it, right on cue Mr. Steele walked through the office door, looking at us stone cold delinquents with confusion. He was more than six feet high, had a gut the size of Connecticut, and a black and gray beard that reached down to his chest, compensating for his nearly bald head. He was wearing a black suit, grey dress shirt, and a black tie. His appearance told you he was all but warm hugs. His demeanor relaxed and rolled his eyes once he realized this was the work of the Witch. Mr. Steele walked to his office door, looked at us, and motioned with one arm letting us know to enter. We all stood up at the same time and I was the last one to follow. My feet felt like cinder blocks. This is it boys, see you on the other side. Forgive me for being a little late Alonso; Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name….