Change and Acceptance

The final bell of the day had rung, and Alex was walking to his school bus. As he lifted his foot onto the first step of the school bus, he heard a small yelp not too far away that was quickly cut off.
Two fairly large students were dragging a much smaller student around the corner to a spot where they knew they wouldn't be seen. The one on the right was withdrawing his fist from the young boy's stomach, the culprit that had silenced his call for help. The boy's head was bent down and his shoulders were shaking as he heaved and wheezed. His head slowly tilted up. His eyes were glazed over, but still searching, hoping that someone, anyone had decided to notice what was going on. He suddenly found Alex in the crowd and connected with his stare. His eyes seem to ask a single question of Alex: "Why me?"
Suddenly it all came rushing back to Alex. All of those locked away memories broke through that mental barrier that he had set up years ago. He remembered everything, how it used to be him instead of that small boy, and what he had done to dig his way out of the tomb that others had pushed him into. The massive tidal wave of pent up memories completely washed over his thoughts and Alex was lost in the current as different moments flashed across his mind.
Alexander Morozov was born in New York City to recently immigrated parents from the Soviet Union. His father had been a taxi driver while his mother was attending law school. When she completed her education, the family moved to a suburban neighborhood in Maryland, where his father found a decent, well-paying job. Alex's first language was Russian and he could not understand English until his final year at preschool. It was during that time that Alex began to receive frowns and questioning looks from the other young children that he interacted with. Even this young, they all knew that he was different from them. His voice sounded strange, and he did not comprehend anything that they told him, so most decided to avoid him all together. Since Alex did not understand why the other children steered clear of him, he just assumed that this was natural, and sat by himself and quietly played with his red fire truck.
Once Alex entered elementary school, the child-like innocence and purity of most of his classmates had disappeared, and left a gaping whole that begged to be fed an unhealthy amount of teasing and misbehavior. Alex had never really noticed anything peculiar about his ears until his first day when he heard a group of friends at a different table snickering at how far they stood out, and comparing them to those of “Dumbo” the flying elephant. The name stuck. One day when Alex’s mother came home, she found her son doing his homework with his ears taped back to the back to the side of his head.
“Alexi, what is their scotch tape on your ears?” she asked.
“So that they go normal mama,” Alex replied, “I don’t want to be Dumbo.”
“Alexi,” she said the name with pure tenderness and love, “Children can sometimes by the cruelest people of all. I’m sorry they said that about you…it’s not true at all.”
Alex’s school life went on, and he got used to the name and the quiet chatter about how he had an accent. At the end of third grade, his parents had Alex test for a Gifted and Talented program at an elementary school in a different area about a half hour away that he was accepted into. Alex was very excited for a change of place, and was told by his parents that this new place would have more people like him. Maybe for once Alex would be treated just like everyone else. He had seen enough cliques and groups to know that solidarity was not natural, and he began to desire to be part of something more than just himself.
His parents were right, there were more people like him. All of the students were bright and academically talented. Yet this program was in place for a reason: to balance out the children from the local area that we not doing well on testing, and not representing the school as the school wished. The two groups were quite the opposite, and were kept separate all of the time, except during recess. Most of the time Alex was still alone and as he was walking around the blacktop, looking out at the groups of children playing together, he was grabbed by two boys bigger than him, and dragged behind a tree. During that period of freedom and playful joy for all was when Alex was buried alive in his tomb. The critical looks and whispering was gone, now it had transformed into violence. He did not know what he had done to provoke them. He had been a good student and labored tirelessly to stand out from the group. Yet he had been awkward and uncommunicative. An easy target for pent-up frustrations. Alex was pushed against the tree as one of them sneered in his face,
“You think you’re better than us, huh? I think you’re a fat loser who’s a crybaby. And I’m gonna show ya.”

The child waited a moment for the sentence to sink in, and then punched Alex in the stomach as hard as he could. Alex felt all of the hair rush out of him as he wheezed and dropped to his hands and knees as he tried to regain his breath. He was not breathing. Air refused to go into his lungs, and to give him the vital breath needed to make the blackness that was spreading from the edge of his vision go away. Alex felt his eyes tear as he groaned and clutched at his stomach. He was barely aware of the two boys standing next to him sneering, that is until the one who had not spoken made himself acknowledged driving his foot up into Alex’s stomach as hard as he could. The pain blinded Alex and he could not hear a thing. The kicks did not stop. His stomach was constantly being battered and while his whole body screamed for breath, the only Alex could think as he sobbed was: “Why me?”

Through the watery vision and blinding moments of pain, Alex spotted a young boy standing on the edge of the playground, watching, with a frightened face that also pitied Alex. Alex moaned as loud as he could, too unfocused to pronounce words. He closed his eyes as another foot dug itself into his stomach and watched the boy walk away.

When he got home that day, Alex would barely talk unless required to respond, and never told anyone about that day, at first for fear of those two boys finding out, and after a couple years, simply because it made him seem weak.

Two years passed by and Alex was at a GT middle school with the same type of people that had been at his elementary school. He had learned how to survive socially and had almost completely gotten rid of his accent, but it still wasn’t enough. One day during gym, the class was playing dodge ball. Alex accidentally stepped on a student’s shoe and quickly said sorry and moved away. It happened twice more during the game due to Alex’s clumsiness. The third time, the student had had enough and punched Alex in the gut. Alex backed up to the wall and slowly slid down it, losing all focus as the pain coursed through him and he felt that same old suffocating feeling. He was trapped in his own mind. He relived his past experiences with everything that had happened, trapped in his own cage until he heard the bell ring, which seemed to restore his breathing.

He was done with living this way and wanted to never have to deal with it again. That summer, Alex grew taller; he exercised, lost weight and grew stronger. He became more conscious of his surroundings and got rid of his accent entirely, along with any memory of his mother tongue. Now he only used his accent as a party trick or to say a Russian phrase or two to prove that he had a Russian heritage. He locked away these memories and promised that something like that would never happen to him again. He changed himself for what he thought would bring him peace. While the change did prevent more incidents, Alex also regretted it. He missed the rich, old language that he used to know so well.
Now the boy's question still made Alex wonder why this one boy had been targeted. There were plenty of boys of the same small and frail physique. Something must have made him stand out. Perhaps he was a good, but awkward student, or had accidentally stepped on one of their shoes, or maybe he just had a nasal voice that the two brutes found unpleasant. Whatever the case, Alex knew that no one deserved to be pushed into that tomb. He became enraged at how an innocent person who had not slandered those two boys in the slightest, had to face the full force of their brutality. Now he was the boy on the playground, staring in horror and disbelief at someone experiencing exactly what he had gone through.
“Aww hell no.” Alex said to himself as he jumped off that first step and started sprinting towards the boy to dig him out of his tomb and save him before he suffocates.