Being Spiteful

Political power is said to grow from the barrel of a gun, but we never needed those when I was seven. My primary school used The Bench to induce terror instead, a power wielded by the “playground monitors”. One of the higher-ranking of these generals was Miss Saxon, and the general’s daughter, Ellie Saxon, ran a popularity puppet-state underneath, aided by her mother’s obvious biases. I hated her sweet-cheeked, pigtail-ornamented face almost as much as I hated all the hangers-on that followed her Soviet star.

Danielle, the vice-president of the Saxony puppet-state, was the one who invented my crime, after she tried to snatch my rubber bouncy-ball and received a kick in the shins instead. She told Ms Saxon I had been spiteful, and rather than listen at all, Ms Saxon gave me a short show-trial and a long telling-off. I only needed to vaguely infringe on “spiteful” behaviour to merit use of the bench after that. I needed to be whiter than white to succeed, and it wasn’t easy to be that in my position.

I was a freckly red-haired oddball who did well in classes and poorly out of them, so bullying me was fairly easy, and I often found myself feeling quite spiteful afterwards. I remember that things really gut ugly one day when I was wearing my unfashionable shrunken denim jacket. It had a badge pinned to it that I had made myself one Sunday afternoon.  You could tell it was good because it had at least four different colours on it, and Ellie Saxon immediately took a fancy to it. She pointed, and asked,

“Where did you get that?”

“I made it” I told her.

“Liar” she said, dismissively. It was a fair point, I did tend to be rubbish at art, but mainly because all we did was stupid origami and colouring-in. I didn’t know what the hell a crane was, and certainly not how to fold one out of paper. But in my own mind, my badge-making skills were second to none, and Waqas thought so too. He was my best friend, because I was bought up vegetarian, and he was Muslim, which wasn’t really catered for by the halal-ignorant dinnerladies. He had jam sandwiches, and even though I had peanut butter, I wasn’t jealous. He said my badge was good, and he was good at making things, so he should know. You should have seen his paper-planes!

Being the last one into the hall, I was the first back into class, since I had usually just about finished eating when break ended. Ellie was talking with some of her Politburo, who seethed like angry saucepans when I went past. I didn’t care, because Ms Noel had said that if we were good, she would get out Timmy Tomato, who was, basically, a stuffed toy, but a sufficiently mystical and effective opiate for the masses.

Timmy Tomato never turned up in the end, much to the disappointment of the proletariat, and when afternoon play came along, Ellie came out just behind me.
“You’re a liar, Gene.” she opened with typical civility. “You didn’t make that badge. You stole it.”

“No I didn’t” I said.

“You did. I’m going to tell my mu--Miss Saxon, and she’s going to make you give it back.”

“You’re not!” I exclaimed.

“Am so.” At this, I started to fumble to unpin my badge, and as I did so, I said:

“Well she’ll laugh in your face, Ellie Saxon, because I won’t be wearing a badge.”
“Oh! Give it!”

“No, it’s mine!”

Two things happened. One is that I succeeded in unpinning the badge, the other is that Ellie succeeded in grabbing it, pin and all. Metal pierced her flesh, and, spitefully, I was satisfied at her yelp. She pulled her lightly bloodied hand away from my falling badge and looked at the thin red line, while I bent to pick up the badge with due care and attention. Then there was the familiar drone of words through loud, theatrical tears, more at the sight of blood than the pain:

“Gene stabbed me with his badge and it’s not even his he stole it and it’s not even his he stabbed me in my hand there’s blood” lasted about 90 seconds between sobs. I hid the badge in my pocket and decided to take advantage of the diversion with an inconspicuous exit. But Miss Saxon saw me skulking away and when I heard my full name, that was when I knew I was for it:

“Eugene Johnson! You come back ‘ere, nahh!”

My mum tried to get me not to speak in Eastendese, but Miss Saxon had no qualms with it. “What ave you done to er?”

“She tried to steal my ba…”

“My dort-ahh - ” (her hand cut the air) “ - ain’t no thief! You bein’ spiteful again?”

“No, Miss Saxon, she tr…”

“Git to ther bench, nahhh!”

There was nothing else for it. I fled like Trotsky from the wreckage of the dreams of fairness, trying to keep all the dignity I could, straight past Ellie Saxon and her friends, determined to keep my face straight. But she saw me first and almost immediately I was surrounded, Ellie Saxon’s hand in Danielle’s, Danielle’s in Brooke’s, Brooke’s in Rebecca’s, and so on, and so forth. It  seemed the whole class orbited me, chanting; some saying “thief”, some sticking with the more traditional “ginger”, some, without irony, “bully” and some just building that “ner ner ner-ner ner” seven-year-old war-cry. If Miss Saxon was the general, this was her army, and the Okhrana were keeping their eyes well blind.

I needed to escape the horrible, dizzying, maddening feeling, so I span to look for the weak point in the circle. I trusted instinct and hurled all of my four stone at one of the smaller Saxonites that imprisoned me. There was a taste of blood, and I spat something out of my mouth instinctively. I think now that it was a chunk of wrist. Whoever I had bitten screamed in pain, and everybody else responded by screaming too, in a pre-teen mixture of horror and peer pressure.

The only remotely sensible thing to do after that was to run, as far into the junior playing fields as I could get before they caught me, and when I got there, I cried and cried until some less corrupt grown-up asked me if I would like to talk about what had happened. I knew, at seven, it was just a sweet way to set a trap, but while I was marching, escorted, to the head teacher’s office, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do but wait for the show-trial to begin.