The Girls’ Room

By Ameenah Abdur-Rahman

Everybody else thinks I am scared of Masha or her friend, but truth is I just don’t like trouble. They say “she is finally going to give you what you deserve” and “watch your back when you go home.” They are the ones who are afraid. She has humiliated all the girls who talk about her in secret in more ways than one. I just haven’t done anything up to now, telling myself it’s because she hasn’t actually put her hands on me in all this time. Her words follow me down every hallway, sit on my lap while I am riding the train home and curl under my pillow at night. Terrorist, rag head, she is going to kill me before my father does, my parents should definitely kill me, go back to my country…

The words have resounded in every silent moment I’ve had since the start of my freshman year, making me forget about things that are supposed to be more important than some girl’s opinion of me. But what do you do when that girl’s opinion is as good as law and everyone else just keeps their distance, just in case what she says is true? For two years it’s always been something. My locker has been broken into many times, her nasty friend and her suddenly possessing the things that went missing. I have even seen her friend wearing my green glass dhikr beads as a necklace; they were a gift from my grandparents just a few days before they disappeared from the locker room along with my purse. My throat nearly choked me to death when that same girl showed up in gym class with my lilac palazzo pants dangling off her bony rump. Masha wasn’t there, so the girl just acted like they were always hers even though I had them on just a few days before and everyone had seen me. It ended up almost pathetic: most of the class started calling her a bum amongst other things, ended up being the only one without a partner.

What else? Both of them have spread countless twisted rumors about me, and the other students just go along with it figuring I must have been marked by the beast for good reason. A reason other than jealousy or simple ease of target. Some guy said to me that it must be true that my family beats me and I must really eat rats because if it wasn’t I would have defended myself by now. She tries this with a lot of girls, for many reasons, and it doesn’t get this far with most. That is why Masha has new fights to post online just about every week. Her friend tags everyone they know, but especially people she knows are friends with whomever Masha and/or she are beating up. Still, her opponents rise to the challenge and get the dignity of at least having stood tall. I sat alone for a year before Henna graciously switched schools to here. She and I grew up in the same neighborhood before her illness made her family move closer to a specialized hospital. Now they are back and she is fine, but not completely better. She is my only friend here.

Yesterday, Masha’s friend spit on the back of my scarf as we all left the lunchroom. Nobody told me, they just laughed. Henna pulled me aside when we got to math lab, cleaned it with wipes before the bell rang to go in. I didn’t go in. I knew the whole class was waiting on the edge of their seats, their swallowed laughter holding for the moment my foot crossed the threshold. Mr. Phelps gave up control of this class a long time ago, his silence letting me stand alone every single day. Henna’s open kindness is probably what had spared her until now, I thought, but maybe they just never thought to pick on her in my absence until then. Nobody knows she’s sick, an even easier target, but her downcast eyes must have put the scent of blood in the water. I will forever wish I had stayed. Instead, I escaped out the side door by the lab and cried all the way home. Once there, I locked myself in my bedroom, falling apart in an empty house.

The constant ringing of my phone jolted me awake. 6:00 pm and I was still on the floor, still home alone. Henna’s mom was yelling into the receiver before I could even get the phone up to my ear. She wanted to know what happened. What happened? I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew it couldn’t be about me being spit on. My own parents hadn’t even returned my messages about that yet. My phone chimed, someone commenting on whatever my name was tagged in. My blood formed ice when I saw the video was already very popular. After school, Masha and her friend jumped Henna. They knew I had left. Masha beat her, took her bag and snatched off her scarf. She didn’t want it, but because she had already broken Henna down to the ground, it was easy to walk away with more than blood under her dirty nails. The nasty one kicking and punching, trying to make a name for herself in Henna’s blood. All those familiar faces cheering her on, not knowing or caring that Henna could actually die from this. I was nauseous at the cruel comments that just keep coming. People giving extra points because Henna needed an ambulance. An ambulance. She was in the hospital, her whole family with her and her mother sounded more captious with each word she forced through her teeth before hanging up in my face. I understood. How could I not have thought more about this happening? Was I so eager to hide my own face that I left my best friend to take the blast? Truth is, I hadn’t thought about any of that, only of running away again and burrowing further in my own misery. I hadn’t tried to find any strength.

My useless tears again sat with me in the dark corner of my room, the last bit of the sunset finally failing. Then it came over me as clear as the night sky. There is no victory, no dignity, for one who doesn’t stand up for anything, not even for herself. Slowly, that yellow feeling of profound helplessness that had crawled deeper into my soul with each incident began to harden, drop by drop, into something unbreakable, unavoidable. By the time night came, my eyebrows formed a calm and bold line where distraught commas had been. The comfort of a new and formidable resolution.

Masha is missing today; girls stare at me openly whispering to their friends as I make my way to the girl’s room. Today I meet her eyes, which shift away quickly. I’m not scared because, either way, this will end today. Cement seems to fill my legs, keeping me steady at times when I want to sprint home, back to the shadows in which I have lived, complacent. I arrive late in the locker room, only pretending to change for the relay match; undoing no buttons, unpinning nothing as the last girls make their way into the gym. Soon I am waiting alone. Someone saunters past as I place my bag on the bench instead of a locker. Today, I dare someone to try to take it. Glancing back, my eyes lock onto the tiny violet flower pattern that covers a black background, Henna’s favorite scarf, now hung tastelessly around the girl’s neck. Henna’s bag dangling across the girl’s body. She stops washing her worn face when she sees me looking. The friend.

“Give me that scarf.” The words stack themselves evenly in the space between us without a quiver.

“What?” She looks like I can’t be serious, but she doesn’t go back to facing the sink either.

She turns all the way around to face me, her tiny back to the porcelain, evaluating the brave new girl now less than two feet apart from her. She puts Henna’s paisley bag on the bench beside her with caution. In my heart I don’t want to fight, but my hands are tingling, mere seconds from deciding to wrap themselves firmly around her throat. She knows it and tries to take a step back, but the sink is there, making her face me or else dart to the side to get away. Our eyes burn into each other’s faces and in hers I see the same desolation seeping through a paper wall of rage. Neither of us wants to do this, but in this moment we are both willing to pound our anguish into someone else if it will provide even just a small way out from the torment of constantly being picked apart. Everyone knows that a bully is always a coward first.

“If you want it, come and take it,” she tries to snarl, her voice letting loose its lack of confidence, trying to make her sad eyes mean again.

My hands steadily rise to the scarf around her neck, and her eyes get big with surprise and fear. I want to choke her, make her suffer, but I undo the scarf and gently pull it off her thin shoulders. I hadn’t realized how much taller and stronger I am until now. She is actually terrified. I don’t want to end up like her or Masha, with anger boiling over onto others, onto myself. But I am also done letting others scald me and laugh about it. We continue to stand face to face, neither willing to back down, she wishing I were still afraid of her legend. That façade in pieces on the tiled floor.

By then a few girls have come back in hoping to use the bathroom and get water, but happy to find a more interesting show. They know what this girl has done to me, everyone knows. They all know what happened to Henna yesterday. Many of them have fought her or wanted to. The word of the standoff spreads within seconds and soon nearly every girl and a few guys were surrounding us, threatening to push us together. Many start calling her names, knowing she never stands up by herself. She needs Masha, like I needed Henna. Like Henna needs me. Everyone, no matter how sheepish or cruel, needs someone to lean against. They cheer me on, saying I shouldn’t let her get away with her mess any longer. Saying I should make her even more ugly. The boys hoot filthy names to her. The girls are laughing. Someone throws a wet roll of toilet paper at her. I look at her, trapped in her silence, but I don’t feel sorry for her right then. There are too many people to feel sorry for. I pick up Henna’s bag and sling it across me, cheers getting louder because they think I am stealing her stuff. She and I both know the truth and she just watches from a very lonely place. Again I look at her, wanting to somehow let her know that I don’t feel powerful in this. I didn’t seek to make a fool of her in front of people. I get my stuff and the shocked crowd parts as I make my way to the door because I am bigger than what they expect of me and I am done here. By the ooh’s, I know someone, needing to give the masses a fight, jumped on her. But I keep moving forward until I slip out of the building unseen, security being called to the locker room over the P.A. system.

The sun feels good on my face, as if I have been released from a small dungeon into the free world to again feel untroubled by small queens in paper crowns and sand castles. At the train station I overhear other kids, who’ve probably slipped out the same back door, talking about how Masha got arrested last night. Henna’s parents are pressing charges for this and being that Masha is already eighteen, she is probably going away for a while. I exhale out deeply and it seems that every icky emotion goes out. The train comes and I am on my way downtown to the hospital.

Henna is not angry with me and her mother holds my face in her warm hands. Like my own parents, she had no idea what I was dealing with until yesterday and it feels good to not have to swallow it any longer. I tell her everything and she just holds me as I cry waters from a deep place. A place that is on the mend. I know that I must do something greater than just personally rising above this, however long that will take. For the first time since I left the girl’s room I remember the look on that girl’s face, the full return of her desolation. Maybe I could be there for the many girls and guys backed into a wall by others, ignored by those who are supposed to care. Maybe I can do something to stop the bleeding. Heading back uptown, I write out my plan for a new club that I plan to take to the guidance counselor for approval first thing on Monday. A group to buffer those chafed raw by bullying, led by me, since my own skin seems to be growing back. I’m going to ask Masha’s friend if she would like to join.

 

Ameenah Abdur-Rahman is a social worker, writer, jewelry artist, and a life-long crafter from Buffalo, NY. She is also a student of Islamic knowledge, a wife and a mother. She currently lives in Ohio.