I’ve often wondered how a victim could sometimes remain silent for years. Not report their tormentor, not report the attacker, the rapist. Why bury deep inside and not reveal the tragedies one has lived through? Why didn’t I run to my father to tell him about my mother’s actions? I found the answer when I thought back to events I faced when I entered 6th grade.
My parents were able to buy the individual house they had always dreamed of. It was far from everything, but it didn’t matter. The first bus stop was a half-hour walk away, no big deal, the first store was 20 minutes away, no big deal.
My new school, which I started attending in 1978, was accessible after a long walk around fields. Pretty quickly, a friend showed me that behind the school, the fence could be lifted a bit, letting us skip a 15-minute detour. Of course, it was forbidden, without a doubt, but I was almost 12 years old now, I was grown up. I decided to take that shortcut one early morning, a shortcut that forced me to walk along an access path of a house located a few hundred meters from mine. As I reached the house, two young guys were there, sitting on a wall, probably just 18, and I instantly felt that something bad was about to happen.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you know it’s forbidden to walk on our property?” the bigger one said.
“I’m going to school,” I replied, out of breath.
Without another word, a rain of punches came down on me. Punches to the face, to the stomach, kicks. I managed to run away, turning back, and I went home crying. It was eight o’clock, and classes were supposed to start. My first thought was to head to school via the normal route once my tears had dried. But as time passed, I wondered how I would explain my lateness. Admit that I had been beaten up in front of my classmates? No, definitely not, and then I would have to confess that I was taking an illegal shortcut and climbing over a fence.
I turned the problem over in my head, and I couldn’t see any solutions. Call my parents and tell them everything? That would mean getting hit later that night for skipping school and climbing the school fence. It was ten o’clock, and I still hadn’t made a decision. Finally, I decided to stay home and figure out a way to explain my absence the next day.
I went down to the basement to look through my dad’s books to pass the time. I skimmed through them quickly and stumbled upon a book that intrigued me: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I started reading it, and I was hooked. In the end, I didn’t regret missing school. My tears had dried, and I found reading about the gulag far more interesting than listening to a math teacher talk about theorems that only felt like an assault, speaking nothing to me.
My parents came home, and no one noticed anything. The only remaining issue was how to deal with my absence note. That was easily resolved by filling out a slip in the communication book with the hours and days of my absence, and signing it. I forged my father’s signature, and off I went.
When I got to school, I presented my book at the supervisor’s office, they tore off the slip, and told me, “Go to class.” It worked, and I was pretty proud of myself.
I could have left it at that and resumed my life, going to school and studying, but sadly—or maybe fortunately, because I wouldn’t be the same person today—I was once again the victim of an unprovoked attack at school.
A few days after the first incident, I was with my classmates in a hallway, waiting for our art teacher who was late. I was daydreaming, looking out the window, and even though all the other classes had gone inside, we were still waiting for our teacher. I glanced out the window again and saw two young men who clearly didn’t belong to the school enter the courtyard. They wandered around aimlessly, and I watched them move closer. I immediately sensed that something was wrong.
They say that kids who grow up in difficult environments develop a kind of hypersensitivity, always on alert. Always alert to avoid blows, yelling, accusations. It was probably that alertness that made me realize something was about to happen.
The two boys noticed me through the window and started running toward my building. I thought I should quickly head to class, and just then, the teacher arrived and went inside. A bottleneck formed at the door as the students entered. I ended up in the last spot, and just as I was about to step inside, I felt someone grab me by the hood of my jacket. At the same moment, the teacher closed the door, and I was left alone in the hallway. Another storm of blows rained down on me, and they didn’t leave without delivering one final slap. I walked into class holding back tears, only to get scolded by the teacher.
Once again, I said nothing. Explaining what had happened meant admitting I hadn’t been able to defend myself, it would mean probably being told that I was loitering in the hallway and that it was my fault, a whole lot of bad reasons but ones that made sense to me. And it led me to a major decision: I was safer at home.
From that point on, I barely went to school anymore, maybe once a week because more than three days of absence required a doctor’s note, which, of course, I couldn’t provide.
How could a school allow a 12-year-old child to hardly ever attend classes without informing the parents? That’s a mystery. Maybe they had bigger problems to deal with, given the violence in that school. Bloody fights broke out regularly outside the school.
So, there you have it, it’s 1978, and I’m going to spend my days devouring my dad’s books, which luckily will replace everything I would never learn at school.