My Side Of The Story: Burn

I am going to take some time to remember Antoine Fisher, who died of a heart attack while running to break up a fight between me and someone else. He was only twenty eight. After all these years, Mr. Antoine, I still feel like if I hadn't been acting out that day, you wouldn't have died like that. They said you'd been having issues with your heart for some time, but still, you wouldn't have died on that exact day. When they held a memorial for you, I went up and sang a song that I had written about you. The kids laughed at me for doing that, but I didn't care.

Back to the story.

Out of all the violence and eight-on-one fights, I have separated two events in my mind to tell you about. One, I actually caught charges for. The other I had to get surgery for.

There was a girl named Shantel that I truly, truly despised. She was cool when she arrived for she was under emotional distress. There were rumors going around that she broke nine windows when she came in, for heaven's sake. She was definitely locked up in the quiet room long enough for me to believe it to be true.

But as soon as she recovered from whatever she had been going through when she came in, the bitch completely turned into a different person. She thought she owned the goddamn place. Shantel would pretend to be friendly with as many people as she could, making you think that she liked you when she was only trying to get close to you to learn your secrets. She betrayed so many people. You'd think they'd learn their lessons, but these girls went back to her as soon as they could because there was safety in numbers. They thought she'd protect them, and she thought she was fucking taking over.

That wasn't gonna happen with me.

After three months or so of putting up with her big mouth, things exploded over a game of Spades, which I recall us getting together to play every weekend. Several times a day, actually. I don't remember exactly what was said. All I remember was that we got in an argument during the game and I stood up to go to my room and calm down.

But on my way, I remember walking past her and seeing her wig.

She wore a wig because according to her, something happened when she got stabbed in the head and that was why her hair refused to grow. I don't know if I believe that story, but that's what she said. When I first saw her I thought it was her real hair-I had no clue that she had sewn weave into a stocking cap and wore it as a makeshift wig! I had no clue she was so, well, bald.

And ever since I saw her with her wig off that first time, my hands had practically been itching.

The wig was calling me.

God, I hated that bitch.

Something came over me and I snatched it off of her head. She came after me and started pulling my hair out for some reason and punching me; but all I could concentrate on was destroying her wig. I didn't even bother to try to hit her back, except for kicking her every now and then. I only made sure that no matter how hard she tried to pull it out of my grasp, she couldn't reclaim ownership of it. I tore that wig to pieces.

Shantel was a mess after that. She didn't want to go to school for she had no wig, but they made her go anyway, so she settled for tying a scarf around her head, whining about it the whole time.

You can think whatever you want of me, but I laughed. There's nothing in the world I hate more than someone who tries to bully others.

It didn't end there. She, as predicted, kept a grudge against me. One morning while I was in the kitchen trying to get some breakfast, and for some reason she chose that moment to go in my room and throw my things around.

"Soojin, Shantel's trashing your room!" One of the other kids ran into the kitchen to tell me about it. Like I couldn't tell-my room was right next to the kitchen. That was how I routinely got away with stealing cookies.

I simply nodded my head. "Okay."

"For real, she is!"

"Like I care what that fat, bald headed bitch does. Charcoal." (I called her charcoal because she was ridiculously dark, even for a black girl).

The other girl walked out of the room, her jaw dropping. I poured some sink water in a foam cup, trying to make some tea for myself, and put it in the microwave (we did not have access to a stove so this was how we got hot water). That was when Shantel decided to show her face.

"So, what did you call me, Soojin?" I recall her asking with a sarcastic edge to her voice. "A fat what? Charcoal?"

For some reason, I smiled at her. "What are you talking about, Shantel?"

"You know what I'm talking about! Say it."

"Now why the hell would I say anything?" Still grinning at her, I removed the hot water from the microwave.

Shantel's eyes drifted to the cup I held in my hand. "Do it. Go ahead and do it, I dare you!"

"Do what?" I followed her gaze and then I understood what she thought I was going to do. "What do you want me to do?"

And I dumped the boiling water on her. Oh God, it hurt when some of it splashed on me but I was too angry to care. When you're angry, the adrenaline distracts you from whatever pain you might have felt if you weren't so hyped up.

I hadn't originally intended to burn her. That's not why I was heating up water. I really just wanted some tea. The idea hadn't even come to me until she started telling me to "do it" while looking at the water I had. Then something came to me...

They dragged me away and put me in a different unit's quiet room.

My hand looked like it was melting. Melting, I tell you. Fucking melting. They took me to the emergency room and it turned out I had second degree burns. The treatment for it was layers of thick, thick burn cream wrapped in so much gauze it looked like I was weaing a goddamn cast on my arm. I couldn't shower right for so long.

Shantel's burns were on her torso, and not very visible. I couldn't sleep in my unit; they had to separate me. I had to sleep in unit 1A Central's quiet room. Shantel pressed charges on me, but the court later dropped them for it wasn't very serious in their eyes.

Following that incident, I kept hearing about how Shantel planned to "stab" her so-called best friend Andrea, but kept quiet. I watched in the hallway while Shantel started swearing at Andrea, a bit anxious since I thought she might have been serious. And when they started fighting, let's just say that a whole bunch of people jumped in. I remember I got hit by some unidentifiable person, got mad, and then swung and hit someone else. I don't know who I hit. I kept hitting people and getting hit and during the scuffle, someone punched me in the nose.

My nose was bleeding for like an hour and when I looked in the mirror, something was off. There were two purple dots between my eyes. It wasn't a normal bruise. And when the doctor checked it out, he told me my nose had broken and that I'd need reconstructive surgery.

Seriously? It didn't even hurt that bad.

But hey, it had to be done. I was nervous about having to be put to sleep but I sucked it up and when I awoke, the surgery was over. The only problem was that I still didn't know who the hell had broken my nose. It was embarrassing.

The girl that came forward was Tish, short for Sharticia. She was a rather masculine tomboy, known for being very outspoken about her sexuality and also for claiming to be a Blood and wearing red all the time (she wasn't alone in this, quite a few of the girls claimed to be gang members and embraced all things related to the Bloods in particular).

"I feel really bad, I'm sorry." I recall her saying to me when our counselors had us meet. "I thought you were attacking staff. I wanted to tell you it was me, but I was afraid of how you'd react."

After that, there was an incident in which Shantel flipped the bird at me from behind a closed door so that I couldn't get to her. I found a small wooden hammer that I'd found in the kitchen and brought it to school to try to hit her, but we didn't get very far. Staff got to us before we did anything and all that happened was that she tried to blind me by spraying perfume in my eyes and missed.

I heard from the other kids later on that she had been crying, talking about how she's "never had to watch her back before". I don't know how I feel about that. If that's how she felt, why didn't she just leave me alone? Why didn't she stop coming at me? The only times she needed to so-called "watch her back" was after she initiated something. If she had just kept to herself like I was doing and didn't start trouble by popping off at the mouth all the time for no reason, I would never have retaliated. I'm not justifying my overreaction, but I'm saying that it's hard to see her as the victim when she repeatedly came to me, starting trouble when I wasn't even doing anything.