Clean Slate

I took my time walking back to class, anything to avoid the glares I was gonna get.  I felt like a spectacle, like I was show and tell for the day.  Too many people were going to have too many questions now, questions I wasn’t sure I could answer.  I knew I told Chachi that I would be strong but I didn’t need this.  It would still have been a lot easier for me to handle my problems by myself, one on one, with anyone who had the guts to ask.

The way my parents decided to handle this just created confusion as opposed to understanding.  How are sixth graders supposed to comprehend a little boy doing something for the sake of loyalty to his religious beliefs that appears to be so abnormal?  They can’t be expected to, and they simply would not be able to understand.  Hell I didn’t even know what I understood!  My parents’ generation probably thought they understood our dark world (that of young Sikh boys).  They may be able to know it and perceive it, but they can’t relate to it.  They can sympathize but not empathize.  They could not take on my pain no matter how hard they tried.  They could not adopt the feelings of a young boy living in a world that is totally foreign to them!  This boy had to live it on his own.  He had to learn how to live in this American society, for it was this society that will inescapably envelop his life.  Everything he knew was learned through red, white, and blue vision.  As blasphemous as this may sound, I had a handicap.  The general public could not understand me in the same way they could not understand a mentally or physically challenged person.  So they learned to treat me like a handicap. Man do I ever have a headache.

*

I made it through half the day before it all started.

“Hey camel, let me see your turban!” someone screamed from down the hall.

“We don’t want no towel headed camels in our school!”  Sounded like Ron.

“Let’s get the towel head, let’s beat the bunhead, get the turban!”  Yeah, it was Ron.  I started to run through the hall but it was pretty crowded. I kept bumping into people losing all of my books and binders along the way.  It was between lunch periods.  I could hear what sounded like four or five guys comin’ after me shoutin,’ “Where’s your mommy now towelhead!”

I turned a corner, swung around a few lockers, slipped and fell.  As I was trying to get up, Ron grabbed the ball of hair on my head and started to drag me down the hall.  I kicked, I screamed for him to stop, but I think it just egged him on.  It felt like he was going to pull all my hair right out of my head.  I began to cry because the pain was just excruciating.  He must have dragged me through a couple of hallways.  The cleaning crew must have been happy.  Ron was basically using me as a mop!  We stopped right in front of a section of lockers occupied by a bunch of girls.  Ron stopped, let my head fall and hit the ground, and took off running. 

I laid there, crying, staring at the ceiling, hoping for a miracle.  My hair was all over the place.  My clothes were covered with dust.  I was waiting for Guru Gobind Singh, our glorious tenth prophet to show up and help me, to save me.  He didn’t come.  Instead, a bunch of girls huddled over me and laughed.  They just laughed and pointed.  I couldn’t tell who they were as the tears swelled up in my eyes.  I could only smell the various perfumes and scents they all had on.  I remember thinking how pleasant they smelled, kinda like a department store.  But I knew that they were pointing and laughing.  As I was lying there in complete disarray, my thoughts then drifted to my father.  I wondered if anything like this had ever happened to him.  Had he ever had his turban knocked off?  Had he ever been dragged around a school by the hair on his head?  What would he do?  What could he do?  How would he feel?

“Get out of the way,” a deep voice shouted.  “What the hell are all of you laughing at?  Move damnit!  This shit ain’t funny!”  It was Wendal shouting.  I could not see him, but I could tell it was his voice.  My head was pounding and I had been tearing pretty hard so I really could not figure out what was going on.  Wendal picked me up off the ground, picked up the white handkerchief that covered my hair, and starting walking me to the office.  Everyone pretty much ran away when Wendal came.  I imagine he must have looked like a war hero, carrying a fellow wounded soldier to safety.