Words Much Like Poetry
Apparently, no, it wasn't (oh, and Antony, this is another tale entirely).Before the Birth of Dear D.D. and shortly after the Wrath of the Red Bird, my heart, young as it was, found its first object to desire. In the grand scheme of things, I spent little time in the pursuit of his affections. And what emotion I bore for him died an ugly death at the hands of a girl I considered a good friend when she betrayed my secret.
I cannot be sure how true my reasoning is, but it seems that as human beings it is in our nature to consider those we know who have knowledge of our deepest, sometimes darkest, secrets to be our friends. Those we know who do not share in knowledge of the caged, murky parts of ourselves, we term acquaintances. At the age of ten, the word acquaintance had no meaning, to me it was merely a long, hard to spell word that adults used to describe certain people. And since I knew nothing of acquaintances, all my friends knew my one big secret.
The girl who eventually betrayed my secret was new to our town, new to our school. Not that I was much of an "insider" myself. I was born in the States, Florida precisely, but at the age of two, my parents separated (for the first and not last time). In 1990, after living for five years in Kenya with my mother, I came back to the States to live with my father (he remained in the States while my mother, brother and I went to Kenya because he was a teacher), my brother had returned the previous year. So, having spent part of my early childhood in Kenya, my place in the already established social hierarchy of Moore Haven Elementary School was "outsider".
A few years of being an "outsider" taught me certain things, among them the true depth of cruelty that lay in my peers. I befriended most of the new students that came and went during my elementary school years as a result. That was before I became a snob, before middle school bred my protective apathetic shell, before high school honed my rage. Anyway, I befriended the girl and told her my secret in order to solidify our friendship. A few weeks later, during lunch, I saw her sitting with the "in" crowd whispering something to one of the "popular" girls.
I've always trusted my instincts, in my youth they very rarely led me astray, and my instincts were shouting at me, "Run! Hide! Find cover!" Of course, that was hardly possible, there was nowhere for me to go. After lunch came recess. Recess was a period of time to be endured, not exalted. That day...well, that day will live eternally in my memory. The object of my heart's desire came up to me that day, his very mien confrontational and I knew, knew that I should have found some way to run, some way to hide, some way to find cover from the inevitable embarrassment. Apparently, for someone like me to have feelings for him was an insult not to be borne. She tried to interfere, this girl who had sold my secret to our peers as an "in", but it was much too little, much too late.
Image: Wamuhu Mwaura, Hush Now Little Bit, 2009
