The Playground Massacre
We didn’t think it would get so out of hand, the fighting. We weren’t hippy-dippy liberals, despite what you’ve been told. Some of us even came from ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’ We fought to get where we were; we fought each day for a living. You try being a teacher, when your salary is lower than what the average intern in the Financial District pays for rent! We knew that toughness and fortitude were needed if you were going to survive this world.
So when the fighting started on the playground, we didn’t do anything. We wanted to see how the children would react.
This wasn’t some slap fight that ended in sheepish tears, either. For one thing, they were organized. The children divided themselves evenly into sides: the students who were a part of the school lunch program, and the students who brought their own lunches. The Students Who Were Part of the School Lunch Program (SWAP-SLAP, for short) accused The Students Who Brought Their Own Lunches (SWB-TOL) of stealing their food.
More specifically: the Tate girl accused the Murdoch boy of taking her Sloppy Joe.
To retaliate, she took her brother’s Swiss Army Knife and stabbed him in the eye.
Thankfully the Murdoch boy’s eye was fake, the result of a freak boating accident with his oligarch father. He sat there on the blacktop laughing as it rolled across the ground, looking like some grotesque lychee. Before any of the other students or teachers could pick it up though, Abigail Bronson (the class mean girl) commanded one of her lackeys to snatch it.
When some of us teachers asked whether we could have it back, the Bronson girl said that the eye was now the official property of SWB-TOL, and if we wanted to see it, we would have to have our lawyers file a discovery request.
“How do you know what a discovery request is?” I asked her. “Is your father a lawyer?”
“No,” she said. “A defendant.”
“A defendant?”
“His company goes to court all the time. Apparently, they kill lots of kids with their bug spray.”
“What the heck is a discovery request?” asked Donald Taubes, the gym teacher. Before anyone could explain to him this is the reason you teach gym, the SWB-TOL students began congregating on the far side of the playground. Someone brought over a milk crate, which Abigail Bronson jumped atop, starting an impressive rendition of George C. Scott’s opening speech from Patton, using the Murdoch boy’s eye as a prop.
“We want to get the hell over there,” she screamed, pointing the dangling eye toward the students on the other side of the playground. “The quicker we clean up this God-damned mess, the quicker we can get back to the classroom for movie time!”
Not to be outdone, the Tate girl brought her confederates towards the flagpole on the opposite side. Compared to the SWB-TOL students they were scrawny, their clothes hand-me-down or bought off the discount rack. As the Tate girl began giving them directions, I saw three asthma inhalers sucked on, two noses picked, and one set of balls scratched and sniffed.
“They don’t stand a chance,” said Helen Goggins, the English teacher. “Look at them!” I wanted to tell her the whole thing started because the Murdoch boy stole the Tate girl’s food but thought better of it. Goggins was a snob, Yale graduate, failed poet, and racist, to boot. Better to let her drown herself than get drawn into a worthless argument.
Besides, she seemed the only one to side with SWB-TOL, besides Donald. The rest of us teachers – or at least, Felix the librarian and I – were drawn to the other side. Mostly because of the Tate girl, whom we found magnetic. Where Abigail Bronson was always screaming, marking her territory like some rabid cat, the Tate girl was silent. She commanded a room with her eyes.
We didn’t know much about her, other than her mother was a nurse, and her brothers were in prison for unspecified crimes.
“I hear they blew up the Young Republicans club at their high school,” Felix said. “I think that’s kind of romantic.”
I agreed. Though we could never say it openly – until now, at least – we were fans of the younger generation’s direct action. When we were kids, we thought the best way to deal with our bullies was to write about them.
Kids today prefer to shoot them, or at the very least, stab them in the eye.
“Why didn’t you confiscate the knife?” Helen asked me, in that snotty I told you so tone of hers.
“I didn’t know she had it!” She smirked and gave the rest of the other teachers ‘a look.’
“Then do you condemn her actions?”
“She’s not even in my class!” Which was only partially true: sometimes she joined our film club after school, where we watched age-appropriate films like Salo and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Helen puffed up her chest. “I’d like him fired!”
“Calm down,” said Felix.
“I’m with her,” Donald Taubes said, putting his arm around Helen. What a prick.
While we argued whether or not I should condone the Tate girl’s actions, the students of SWAP-SLAP surrounded the flagpole, working quickly and efficiently on unseen tasks. Their concentration was so great our attention was diverted; without a word we turned and watched SWAP-SLAP around the flagpole.
These were good kids, I thought to myself. Sure, they weren’t as polished as SWB-TOL, and sometimes I found their home lives a bit grim. But they deserved to defend themselves!
It was only when we heard his screams we realized they were trying to crucify Edgar, the Korean boy.
“Don’t you think that’s barbaric?” Helen asked, lighting a cigarette.
“What’s barbaric,” I said, “is SWB-TOL’s frequent, ongoing history of abuse and degradation.”
Across the playground SWB-TOL loaded stink bombs onto sling shots, working with a factory-like precision.
“And it’s more than just stealing food, or making fun of their clothing” I continued, now wanting to prove my point. “It’s how they talk to them.”
“How do they talk to them?” said Donald.
“Like they’re animals!” Felix replied. He tried to put his arm around me; I shook him off. Felix was a nice enough person, and a good librarian, but his frequent attempts at caressing me, his puppy dog eyes following me as I checked out books for students before class, was starting to get annoying.
“Their children,” Helen said, blowing smoke in our faces. “That’s just what children are.”
I considered this while listening to poor Edgar’s screams. I had to admit to myself that I didn’t like what SWAB-SLAP was doing. I know they had their reasons, but Edgar was one of the better ones, a sweet-sickly nerd who had a habit of bringing his action figures to school. I didn’t want to think the children naturally had this in them, this violence and punishment and division, though I had to admit they took to it with ease. No matter how much Edgar screamed, no matter how hard he begged, they remained stone-faced and steadfast. Nary a one flinched as they drove nails into Edgar’s hands, or when Tony Mavrogordo – the class bully – hoisted him on a rope.
Suddenly there were cries from the other side of the playground. Ellen Wein, Edgar’s ‘girlfriend’, was being restrained by several SWB-TOL members. Everyone watched aghast as Edgar did his last pathetic convulsions, silhouetted by the summer sun. I found myself – against my better judgment – marveling at the beauty and the tragedy of the image. SWAB-SLAP had made a grave mistake: by martyring Edgar, they had given the SWB-TOL members a concrete reason for fighting (other than stealing poorer students’ food.)
Abigail Bronson’s response was swift and furious. In a moment she had her lackeys fire stink bombs in the direction of SWAB-SLAP. Driven mad by grief and rage, Ellen Wein found a shard of glass and charged with the full might of her four-eleven, ninety-pound frame.
She was met on the battlefield by the Tate girl herself, who met Ellen alone, dodging the stink bombs with an elegance that was breathtaking.
To say she cut Ellen Wein down would be an understatement. With one hand she grabbed Ellen by the hair, karate chopping the shard of glass out of her hands with the other. Lifting the smaller girl off the ground, Tate offered Ellen as a trophy to her cheering followers, who were arming themselves with anything they could find: ballpoint pens, Ticonderoga pencils, Christopher Chen’s chopsticks.
The Tate girl drew something out of her pocket – a hairbrush! But not just any hairbrush: the SteelTooth 3000. A comb made of steel sourced from the best blacksmiths in rural China, with blades so sharp and thin that the FDA banned children fourteen and under from using it.
“Oh,” said Felix, shaking his head. “That girl is dead.”
It was well known that the Tate girl had difficulty controlling her unruly hair, which bloomed from her head like luscious, dangerous foliage. Most students chose to sit in front of the Tate girl during class, for fear of missing what was being written on the board. Ellen Wein was sent home last semester for stealing the comb and parading it around the classroom, telling Abigail Bronson: “Only an island savage uses that kind of thing.”
Seeing the comb now, however, Ellen Wein struggled violently, screaming for her mother, us teachers, anybody, help her, please!
Her cries went unheeded. At that moment police cars whizzed down the street, a riot of bullhorns and candy-colored lights. Smoke rose above buildings in the distance, and a faint popping sound – almost like firecrackers, but not – could be heard.
This was the third, maybe fourth week of civil unrest. We had been informed at our staff meeting that very morning to prepare for more protests. Just the other day a masked figure had lobbed a Molotov cocktail into the Science Room. The teacher, Marko Maas, caught fire, burning alive while his students looked on, fascinated.
The Wein girl was right to scream -- it was what we taught the students to do in a situation like this. Yet there is a difference between theory and practice. What worked in the classroom didn’t necessarily work in the world outside.
And the world outside had invaded our classroom, it seemed.
“Freedom!” the Tate girl shouted, as she took her comb and cut open the Wein girl’s neck.
“Jesus,” Helen muttered.
As Ellen Wein’s blood showered over the Tate Girl, the SWAB-SLAP students cheered her on, thrusting their makeshift weapons into the air. Once she was fully lacquered, the Tate girl turned and pointed her sword-comb in the direction of SWB-TOL.
“For Freedom!”
“For Freedom!”
The carnage that followed was unlike anything we’d ever seen (except on television.) Tony Mavrogordo speared the Staunch twins with a broom from the supply closet. Elise Riker collected her classmates’ eyeballs with a nail file she wielded like a pair of nun chucks. All Billy Petro had to do was take off his shoes to send several students to an early grave.
After a while it became hard to tell which side was which: covered in blood and viscera they all looked the same, a writhing skin-heap shitting, crying, throwing up.
Felix, the sap, started to cry. “What are we going to tell their parents?”
Helen, through smoke: “This is a part of life.”
As the dust settled, Abigail Bronson and the Tate girl found themselves face to face on the battlefield. Quiet filled the playground. The only sound was the injured, moaning.
“Couldn’t this have been avoided,” I asked the other teachers, “if we punished the Murdoch boy for trying to steal the Tate girl’s food?”
“Shouldn’t we have punished the Tate girl for stabbing the Murdoch boy?” said Helen.
What comes first in this situation, the chicken or the egg? The Murdoch boy, with his oligarch father, didn’t need to steal the Tate girl’s food. Her lunch had been nothing more than Sloppy Joe meat applied to what the cafeteria called bread (more like cardboard leavened in an oven.) The Murdoch boy’s packed lunches were far better than most Michelin star restaurants: cacio e pepe, Devonshire crab and smoked haddock, Thai green curry pineapple and Granny Smith apples.
Yet he stole the Tate girl’s lunch as though he would have given anything in the world to have it.
And as much as one wanted to blame the Murdoch boy, the Tate girl did take a knife and pluck out his eye.
Should we have punished both of them, the thief and the vigilante, making an example of not one, but both? Letting the students know that neither was tolerated, that what we taught here was, if not peace, then detente, an unstable stability that said: None of you will ever get along, but when here we’re just going to have to pretend?
Abigail Bronson and the Tate girl traded blows on the playground. The Tate girl was the stronger of the two fighters: her punches quicker, posture more controlled. But Bronson fought like a cornered animal, clawing with wild abandon at the Tate girl’s face.
Perhaps it wasn’t so much a question of chicken or egg as whether this problem needed to exist in the first place. The Tate girl shouldn’t have to protect her food, and the Murdoch boy should have lunch made by someone who loves him.
As for the Bronson girl – well, I’ve never liked her, and didn’t care what happened.
Felix: “Jesus.”
The battle reached its unseemly conclusion. Abigail Bronson lay strewn across the ground, bleeding from every pore of her body. The Tate girl stood above her, her entire being swelling with pride. This was how it was always going to end, no matter how many speeches Abigail Bronson gave, no matter how Edgars the Tate girl had to crucify.
Felix, turning away: “I can’t watch.”
But the rest of us did. Watched as the Tate girl brought her fist up-down-up-down right into the Bronson girl’s face. At first you couldn’t tell whether this had any effect. The Bronson girl laughed maniacally through it all, her bright eyes growing wider and more intense. Then we saw crimson streak across her face. Her nose disappeared into a blood-lake; her shattered teeth littering the ground like flower petals. Finally her laughter stopped entirely.
The others looked at me, desperate for some sort of answer. Each of us knew we had to come to a consensus before the final bell. We had bodies all over the playground, and parents to answer to.
“All of this can be explained,” I said, trying my best to remember a quote I’d just read. “Violence is a cleansing force: it frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction."
“Is that Fanon?” said Felix.
I nodded. The group groaned.
“We can’t teach Fanon!” cried Helen.
“Why?”
“We were told to cut back on critical race theory.”
I racked my brain for something else. “How about – ‘Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted’?”
Felix placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. “Also Fanon.”
Helen: “Did you just read him or something?”
(I decided not to mention I had just downloaded Black Skin, White Masks on my Kindle.)
Donald raised his hand in the air. “Yes, Donald?”
“There are known knowns,” he began, “things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know.” He took a deep breath, then continued: “But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.”
Felix threw his hands in the air. “Are we seriously going to go with Donald Rumsfeld?!”
Helen shrugged. “We can always say it was a school shooter.”
Eventually we decided that was best. We would tell the remaining students – the Tate girl, Tony Mavrogordo, Billy Petro, and the one-eyed Murdoch boy – that lies give meaning to life.
No – that death gives meaning to life.
Scratch that: lies give meaning to senseless deaths, so that those that died won’t have done so in vain.
Or something like that.
As we trudged back into the building, I felt a tiny hand pull at my shirt. It was the Murdoch boy, grinning, his empty eye-socket a gleaming black pit.
“Yes?”
“Sir, what are we having for lunch tomorrow?”
The Tate girl perked up. “Yes Mr. Fred, what are we having for lunch tomorrow?”
Soon all four remaining students circled around me as though what happened hadn’t happened, and wouldn’t happen again. They nipped at my ankles while the other teachers went back to their rooms, dazed looks on their faces. The clock on the wall in the hallway read one p.m., which meant there were still two hours left to this interminable day.
“Sir,” the Murdoch Boy repeated. “Could you please tell us what we’re having for lunch tomorrow?”
“We’re so sorry about today!” said the Tate girl. “It won’t happen again!”
Helen and I looked at each other from across the hallway. She rolled her eyes. Even though we didn’t much like each other, I knew she had a thing for me. Maybe after all this was over, I’d invite her out for drinks. We’d go to that Mexican place by Astor Place and down so many margaritas that we’d have no choice then to fuck on the restaurant’s bathroom sink.
“You’ll eat whatever we serve,” said Helen, before shutting the door to her classroom.
And despite everything that happened, I agreed.
Jack is a queer writer and visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His prose and poetry can be found / is forthcoming in JAKE, Ghost City Review, Bodega, and Whiskey Tit.
Artwork by Sam Keshishian