October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Being bullied was a significant (to put in mildly) part of my childhood.
Being bullied and shamed was my everyday experience in a public school where no one had ever known a Jew before. My hair was searched daily for the horns believed to be hidden there. I was hit when they couldn’t be found. In third grade, a particularly antisemitic teacher joined in; the shaming became much worse.
Thankfully, my childhood was also touched by experiences that brought profound joy, most especially my intimacy with and solitude in nature—and writing.
I write about about a child’s vulnerability, creativity and resilience in the presence of intergenerational trauma and her own direct experiences of being made “other” in Angels on the Clothesline, my forthcoming memoir (to be published in April 2023).
RECESS, a vignette from Angels on the Clothesline, shared below, captures a scene on a playground of bullying and of resistance.
This vignette and the entirety of my memoir are being offered in service to awakening greater respect, kindness and harmony among us.
Listen to Ani read RECESS:
Watch Ani read RECESS:
RECESS
Recess again. The boys playing dodge ball. The girls
jumping rope. Cinderella dressed in yella, how many times
did you kiss your fella? One. Two. Three. Four.
They don’t ask you to jump. You stare up at the row of birds
on a wire, high towards the sky. Next to each other like friends.
Mrs. Rousin is around the corner of the building and can’t
see what is about to happen again on the hard playground.
How some kids will gather round you because
it’s recess. First they’ll pull off your warm hat, throw it
in a muddy puddle, step on it a lot of times until it gets soaked.
Then one of them will grab it. Force it back on your head.
After that is when they knock you down, pull your skirt over your face.
They’ll shout See the little Jew who comes to school without
panties. Your face covered with your skirt, you will hear not see
them laughing hard. The first few times you yelled
I do have panties on! These are flesh color tights. But they
yelled louder and you gave up trying to tell the truth.
You asked your mother for different color tights but
she said No then Why? You didn’t
tell her why, so she wouldn’t go back to Poland in her mind
and remember worse things than kids making fun.
Kids she’d say just to ignore and your daddy would say
to punch. But you don’t do either thing.
You tried Just Ignore Them. It didn’t work.
Ignoring doesn’t change a thing. They know
you can hear them. That what they do makes you sad.
And you aren’t strong enough to punch so many of them.
Now, a few fourth graders mixed in with third and
some second from your grade come towards you, faces
scrunched up mean, ready to bother the little Jew
who never fights back. You feel your face get hot,
which usually doesn’t happen. Red hot.
Like something inside you is about to explode.
One of them shoves your shoulder. Another pushes your back.
What they always do to get ready to knock you over. But this time
your legs don’t wobble like usual. Instead they become like steel.
You stand up straighter. Taller. You think of what your daddy
hollers when he has no more patience. When you better
leave him alone or else: Hak Mir Nisht In Dem Chinek Arahn!
They won’t understand it in Yiddish so quick you
think of how to say it in English.
STOP BANGING ME ON MY TEAKETTLE!
Except for not hollering in Yiddish, you
yelled it just like your daddy does. Ordering them to stop. Now.
To leave you alone.
Not one more word. Not one more push.
Just once is enough when your daddy hollers it.
But you yell it one extra time to make sure they hear you.
Even stamp your foot. STOP BANGING ME ON MY TEAKETTLE!
The loud angry way you yelled it, not only one time but two,
means they will listen and finally leave you alone. They
will know you mean it, will know how much you hate
when they take your hat, tease about your tights
and all the other things just because
you are Jewish not a regular American like them.
For a second, they’re surprised and don’t do anything. Then
one of them shouts Don’t bang me on my teakettle! On my teakettle!
The little Jew has a teakettle. They laugh so hard they hold their bellies,
can hardly catch their breath, yelling the words over and over
like they are not the angriest thing a person can holler.
But instead like it was a funny thing.
A joke.
Maybe you said it wrong. You must have said it the wrong way,
so instead of them seeing how angry you are and how strong
and leaving you alone, they are making fun of something else
Jewish about you. How you say American expressions wrong. Get things
mixed up. Let Yiddish words and ways of saying things slip in.
When your mother asks how your tights got torn, how they
got blood on them, you say you tripped. It didn’t hurt at all.
But maybe, you ask careful as you can, you should get red tights
instead, just in case you fall again. She shakes her head. Dabs
mercurochrome on your naked knees. Just be careful
not to fall. Then, while she puts the little bottle
in the medicine cabinet, Maybe red tights someday. Maybe
for a special occasion.
You never yell again that they should stop banging on your teakettle.
You don’t know how
to make them leave you alone. To stop their teasing.
Disappearing seems the best idea.
But for that you would need a miracle. And if God
didn’t give miracles to your grandmothers when they were
forced into gas chambers, why would he give one
to a girl in second grade in America
who is only
getting knocked down.
______________________________________________
More from Angels on the Clothesline: listen to Ani read ORANGE STARS.
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Yours in resilience,
Ani
G'Mar Chatima Tova
I close with this customary greeting whose literal meaning is: "a good final sealing." I will add to that: May you know the love of which you are made. What better than to know this?
With gratitude,
Ani
Your comments make this blog a conversation!
I would love to hear from you.
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Dear Ani,
Wow, Knowing you and having read “the Tremble of Love” I am touched by the compassion and understanding that has emerged out of such unkindness and persecution. You have found your strong voice and it moves and blesses.
Thank you. Thank you. I look forward to reading your new book
Linda ,
Oh Linda, thank YOU for this kind reflection. It is so true that understanding and compassion can arise from our pain. I know you know that.
Your words about a strong voice that moves and blesses bring tears to my eyes and so much gratitude if that be true. What more could I ask? One so longs to contribute love to this world. I know you know that as well.
Much love to you, dear Linda. I look forward to sharing Angels on the Clothesline with you!
🤎
Ani
Ani, that was a very excruciating recall of a child’s agony and so much deliberate cruelty. I wanted to race into the story and give her a big hug and hold her for a century.
In your writing workshop I had written of a birthday party I went to and was call a “Jew!”by a sister, ten years old, of the brother who invited me. I was twelve. I wasn’t hit or made fun of, but the family didn’t have to; just the disgust in the sound of “Jew!” made me quiver and cower.I didn’t eat my cake, running out of their apartment. I didn’t tell my parents either. I don’t know why she was so cruel or why being a Jew was so bad.
One evening when I was eight, I heard kids out on the street outside our house yelling, “Jew! Jew!” That incident is vague to me, just a bit of strange howling.My parents were silent. Those
same kids I would play ball with, and tell scary stories in my neighbor’s barn like we were friends.
It was all beyond my comprehension, but it’s phenomenon of hate, the shadow of townspeople projecting into a race, and it will go on forever until people accept their shadow and stop projecting, which sadly I don’t believe will happen; it’s been going on for thousands of years; but your inner light, strength and love can be a pocket of light that will encourage others and maybe, just maybe, we will overcome.
Thanks for story,
Joseph
What a beautiful message to receive, Joseph. Your words about racing into the story are so moving. Hug delivered!
I remember from your writing in our Dance of the Letters group how deeply compassionate you are and how deeply you allow yourself to feel. I believe that is what is so lacking right now. People are projecting and wounding from, as you point to, their own unexamined shadows and lives. Every one of us that does turn within and take responsibility is adding to the light in the darkness. You are certainly a vessel for a kinder, wiser world.
I am sorry that you experienced that disgust and also that you heard the children yelling as they did. I too cannot comprehend how seemingly decent people can be racist and ignorant as they can be. Texting earlier with a friend, she said the fear-mongering misinformation they consume is a driving factor. My deep deep hope and longing is that my memoir might help some of these (not entirely lost) people awaken to more compassion, to more open-heartedness.
Let’s hope together for a more loving, compassionate, wise world!
With gratitude,
Ani
Oh Ani. This breaks my heart ….. especially knowing how many children even today are treated so cruelly. You are a miracle to have learned how to deal with all these memories, yours and your parents’… Your kindness and gentleness is indeed a miracle.
Dear Susan,
It is so heartbreaking how many children are suffering in their varied circumstances.
A primary intention in sharing “my” story is to awaken tenderness and compassion for the lives and stories of children all over our world, that we become more aware of their vulnerability, their sensitivity, their needs and their right to be respected and protected.
I hope the book also helps readers turn to the inner child inner who may feel abandoned, frightened, angry—who needs love from the best most potent source there is: oneself.
Bridging time, as I do in my memoir, to be the presence missing then, did not change what happened to me, but the compassionate witnessing changed and changes me.
And, speaking of kindness and gentleness: how needed and welcome these naturally occurring miracles. Medicine for what ails our world right now.
May we be and make the miracles our world needs right now!
Ani
What a powerful piece as we see more and more anti-semitism today. Any way I could share it on FB?
I hate that this happened to you. Thank you for telling your story!
Dear Mary,
I know that by now, you have shared the post on Facebook. I thank you for that.
I have also hated that this happened to me; I hated it at the time and for decades after because of the wounding. I no longer wish it has never happened; for one because it did, so not much use in wishing it had not, but also and perhaps more importantly, because these experiences in fact helped to form my heart. As Linda wrote above, compassion and understanding grew in the soil of this pain.
And I do trust you know but will share here for any who might now: I do NOT share this to evoke any feel sorry for me stuff, but rather to invite us to turn towards “the other” with greater understanding and compassion, as well as to turn towards our own wounds that way.
The wounded can wound or heal themselves and help heal our world. May we choose love.
Thank you, Mary, for choosing love in action,
Ani