School Board meeting. Me. There festooned with "It Takes
Courage" and "Bully Free Starts With Me" buttons. There to support another. She was going to speak.
I was to stand beside her at the podium. Silent. Yet hoping to communicate. To the erudite board members...and
to the press. A reporter had interest in this story.
She, the target, with me. She was summoned. "Come here," said the union bigwig. "Come
talk to me."
"I won't
go without Kim."
"OK."
A surreal moment that one. A behind a curtain shocker. "If
you don't speak, you'll get what you want."
"I want a kindergarten classroom at (school's name)."
"OK. You will have that."
And so it was.
She did not speak. She, after health threatening abuse by our abuser, got out. She used to accuse
me of abandoning the school; taking the "easy" way out. Ask why I'd not stayed and fought?
My answer: "I might have died. My health was harrowingly
at risk. I could not sleep. Days of no sleep. Waiting for his next attack. Not just against me. But
children. Sad, oh, so sad. Children. The dread as I pulled into that parking lot. The building of foreboding
each morning entering. His suck ups scurrying everywhere...."
More truth.
The assistant
principal. Oh dear God, her. Her. Her. Her. Her toothy smile. The shake of her head and
her relentlessly positive attitude. Part of the evil. The problem. "What can I do?", she would
often mutter through the glued grin.
Her
to me as it became clear I was not a member of the cheating team: "You dropped the ball...; We are in different circumstances;
We're a family. We (she and the other counselor) went through fire together; I am trying to connect the dots.....; That's
his leadership style--divide and conquer."
Her
fear. Why didn't she say "NO" to any of it? His disrespect. His misogyny? His sexual harassment?
His cursing? His routine use of the word, "fuck"--as on the walkie-talkie to her with me sitting beside
her, "Where the fuck are you?" Or was it "Get the fuck over here?" Of that I am uncertain. The expletive
"fuck", however, throbs in bright red...
Her.
Ruefully shaking her head and smiling as my brow scrunched at hearing that menace. "See? See the way he talks to
me?"
Why didn't she just say:
"Uh-uh. Not me, buster. I am pursuing a doctoral degree for God's sake! I am not your girly toy. You
do not get to bat me around like a feline's catnip ball! You're the feline, mister! You are a sick cattish puppy, my
friend. I got more intelligence in my little finger than you got in that well coiffed head of yours! Oh yeah!
I am going for every hackneyed metaphor I can think of because this is feeling real good!
You're a two faced creep! A suck up extraordinaire! A
little big man stinking up the fresh air! You're the biggest pile of doo-doo I've in awhile seen! You stink to
high heaven. You stink and you're mean.
Let
me sing you a song! C'mon Kim! Sing with me! Oh yeah! You know the song! Doesn't our brute resemble
the grinning Grinch? Ear to ear nasty one, that! Squinty eyed. Leering. Heart a worm hole. Destroying careers,
why that's his real goal! Rip them apart. It's fun! It's amusing! It's better than that. It's all he's got! He and his
lot, why they document, document, giggle and grin. They send memorandums, That's the first sin! Make up stories
and lies, sent to the higher than highs!
Ah!
There is the teacher, shivering and shaking....
Now, Kim, you know, why no risk I am taking....
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