Then someone else chimed in, saying that in this day and age, if you don’t know that you’re not supposed to hit girls, “You’re either an idiot or an asshole,” and then the group laughed, as though being either an idiot or an asshole were a punch line.
Mike’s not an idiot. When he took the SATs this fall, he practically announced his score at the next school assembly. He acted like he didn’t mean to let it slip, and then he blushed and was all embarrassed about it, but come on—who lets something like that slip? I wanted to tell him that my score was higher. How would it have made him feel, being beaten (no pun intended) by a girl like me?
But I’m not the type of girl to pick a fight, to stir up drama, even when the people around me are saying idiotic things. Nobody likes a know-it-all.
But when someone hits you, you’re not picking a fight. I know that much for sure. And if you hit back, that’s self-defense, so it’s not your fault, but it still might make things worse. Mike’s so big and tall that if hitting him back made him angrier, a girl might find herself—or a guy might find himself, I don’t want to be sexist—in even more trouble.
I read an article that said women should take pictures of every bruise and each red mark. That way when people ask how long it’s been going on, how bad it was, how many times it happened—there’s proof to back up the claims. Unless you don’t want to get the guy in trouble, and what kind of girl doesn’t want to get the guy in trouble?
Maybe the kind of girl who stays with a guy for three more months after the first time he hit her.
Anyway, I kept all these thoughts to myself. Like I said, I’m not the type of girl to pick a fight.
Now, I take out my earbuds and turn on my music as I walk through the school, so that I won’t have to hear anyone else say something stupid. I still listen to breathy, moody folk songs like the ones my dad used to play when I was little and we went for long drives, just the two of us: Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash. (Right now Joni Mitchell is longing for a river to skate away on. She’s not the only one.) I can still hear the chatter and hum from the kids around me, so I turn up the volume. I look at my feet, so no one has a chance to make eye contact.
Maybe I won’t eat lunch today. I didn’t eat breakfast, and it’s already eleven and I’m not hungry. (The volume is loud enough now that I mostly only hear the sweet croon of Joni’s voice.) Or, I could have a small lunch—if I can keep it under five hundred calories and then I don’t eat until dinner, that’ll be a good day. I mean, even if I eat a thousand calories at dinner, I’ll throw up at least half of that, and then that’ll be under one thousand calories for the whole day so I’ll definitely lose weight.
Not that anyone is interested in seeing me naked anymore. If they ever really were. And no matter how much weight I lose, the area around my belly stays soft. Luckily it’s cold enough today that I can layer a sweater over my T-shirt and call it fashion instead of camouflage.
A better feminist would say screw it. She’d bare her flabby belly for the world to see because love’s not supposed to be about looks, and if a guy’s only interested in a girl for her looks, then he’s not worth her time. A better feminist would say that our bodies are meant to have soft spots, and a guy is lucky to see her naked no matter what her body looks like.
I mean, how can I claim to be such a good feminist when it comes to some jerk beating up his girlfriend when I’m such a bad feminist when it comes to body positivity?
I skip to another album. (One of Dad’s favorite songs now, “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young.)
I’m sorry, but if there’s a scale of what it takes to be a good feminist, I’m pretty sure that hating a guy for beating up his girlfriend counts for a whole lot more than embracing the circle of fat around your stomach.
No one would agree with me if I said this out loud, but: I think you could tell Mike was the kind of guy who’d hit a girl. When he talks to anyone shorter than he is—which is most people, and literally every girl in school—he always stands a little too close so that we have to crane our necks to look at his face, so it looks like we’re asking him to kiss us, even when all we’re asking for is to borrow a pencil. He’s the kind of guy who has his hands all over his girlfriend when they’re in public—sure, it looks like affection but maybe he just wants to make sure that everyone knows she belongs to him. And then there’s the way he acts after every race he wins. He pretends to be modest, but you can tell that deep down he’s thinking we should all personally thank him for deigning to be North Bay’s best shot at finally winning a championship.
I heard some of the girls are planning a protest to call for Mike’s expulsion. Maybe I’ll go.
He hit a girl.
He’s dangerous.
He shouldn’t be at school with the rest of us.
Friday, April 14
Thirteen
The Popular Girl
I did some research last night. Maybe I should have been curious about it sooner, but it didn’t occur to me until last night to Google: Why do men hit women? Most of the data I found was about husbands who beat their wives, so it’s not the same as what’s going on here, but I read that most men who batter as adults were abused as children, or at least witnessed abuse when they were young. So they learn that violence is how to deal with strong emotions, even if those emotions are love and intimacy. In fact, men who beat their wives—according to one of the articles I read—are less likely to lash out at strangers. They beat their wives because, to them, it’s part and parcel of a close relationship. They almost never admit that they’ve hit their partners, and they almost never see themselves as criminals.
Which means that maybe it’s not Mike’s fault. Like, maybe he wasn’t doing it on purpose, and he wasn’t doing it out of hate. I mean—I sound like Junie now—of course he has control over his actions, but maybe something happened to him that made him that way. Maybe he didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t know how to do anything else.
Like, maybe his dad beat his mom and his dad beat his mom and so on and so on and so on back to the very first male member of the Parker family, back when they still lived in the old country, which I think was Ireland, he told me once that his ancestors were Irish, even though Parker is technically an English last name (he told me that once too). But Mike’s dad always seemed so nice. Then again, I heard his parents arguing when I was at Mike’s house a few times, and even my parents didn’t argue when we had guests.
Still, no matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine Mr. Parker hitting Mike. I’ve seen him hugging Mike after a well-run race, praising him when he comes home with a good grade. (Then again, Mike always seemed like the perfect boyfriend, so maybe looks are deceiving.)