Killing Caprice

I was the third least popular kid in the entire fifth grade. My ill-fitting clothes were dated and off-brand, my shoes generic and squalid, and I ate a sack lunch. I was the third least popular kid in the entire fifth grade because my family was poor. And as if being poor weren't handicap enough, my first name is more commonly assigned to female infants, q.v., and my last name vaguely rhymes with ‘virgin.’ Which is precisely what everyone called me. Saṃsāra’s unapologetic punchline: you can’t pick your parents.  

Mired beneath me was Jeff Wayte. He wore chunky glasses with thick, greasy lenses. Jeff’s fingers were fleshen, nightmarish reflections of studies by the mercurial Rodin: rigid and curled upwards, either clutching for something unseen or shielding himself from it. He spent each day at his desk exhaling in short bursts and compulsively rubbing the sides of his head with the backs of those horribly crooked hands. A couple of times a week, loudspeakers quite publically summoned Jeff to a special class with mercifully secretive curricula. In the halls and on the playground they called him a spaz and a retard. And they didn’t whisper.

The lowest of the low was Caprice Haddad. She wasn’t poor. She wasn’t a spaz or a retard. She was foreign. Not good foreign, like British or French. Jungle gym aristocrats decreed that Caprice was bad foreign. A recent transplant hailing from some squabbling desert country where, it was said, people devoured weird food and kicked dogs and routinely murdered one another over nothing. She had an unfortunate mustache, thick eyebrows, and a mop of frizzy, electrified black hair that obscured her dark, ausländer’s eyes. It was widely believed –if unconfirmed– that she left a puddle of pee in her seat during the first week of school. Despite the absence of corroboration, Caprice became Capiss anyway. Sometimes they called her sasquatch. In sum, abominations from which she’d never escape. 

Mr. Fletcher catered to our individual defects and inferior status, to an extent. Jeff Wayte was allowed to paw at his face and grunt with relative impunity, and he wasn’t required to hide beneath his desk during the monthly drills –albeit exposed and certain to fry when the bombs finally came. Mr. Fletcher softly ignored Caprice Haddad; she wasn’t called upon to answer questions of math or geography or civics. Or compelled to speak aloud about anything at all. He artfully avoided looking in her direction when he announced that Americans had been taken hostage in Iran, just weeks ahead of Thanksgiving. 

I was tasked with operating the movie projector and running off dittos in the office. Ostensibly out of mercy. Yet for these and other as yet uncodified crimes, I was ruthlessly mocked when exposed to recess. They said I was Mr. Fletcher’s butt buddy and they called me a fag. Consequent to a screening of the Hobbit cartoon, the endearing nickname ‘Dildo Baggins’ echoed in the corridors. My critics were shod in milky K-Swiss and fresh slip-on Vans. Their ironed shirts were Izod Lacoste. They had Ataris and they pedalled around town on gilded Mongoose bikes. Their parents took them to trendy sit-down restaurants where waitresses wearing suspenders festooned with cheery buttons took your order. Some even had Vaurnets. Real Vaurnets. I was in no position to argue.

In the ides of December, Jeff was away in his special class and the rest of us were gathered on risers in the auditorium, rehearsing our songs for the holiday program. Many belted out their verses like atonal drunks at last call, grins circumnavigating their skulls. Others either mouthed or whispered the lyrics. Only a handful of us made any effort at hitting the actual notes. There was poking and there was jabbing and there was the occasional tug at a ponytail or the crack of a training bra strap. Caprice stood at one edge, lost and inexorably mute. An exasperated Mr. Fletcher lowered his hands and told us to stop. Steeling himself, he dispensed copies of the sheet music to ‘Silent Night.’ The drunks and the whisperers and those of us trying to hit the notes bellowed or muttered or sang in widely varying keys and cadences. “..all is calm, all is bright.” Then came the ambush. “Round yon BURGIN!” everyone yelled, exploding in laughter. “Hey Kelly!” someone shouted. “Hey! Dude! They wrote a song about YOU!” Bugles sounded retreat, but the Huns were already west of the Volga.

On the final day of school before the Christmas break came the annual potlatch: Secret Santa. Obligatory presents were stacked on a folding table draped with cheap green felt that was peppered with glitter in careless, hasty patterns. When this year’s winter coat comes from Macy’s and your OP rip wallet is crammed with ones and fives destined for the arcade, you don’t care about the giving or the getting because you don’t have to. When any given threadbare scrap of expired clothing in your meager wardrobe isn’t easily replaced and your family structure consists of an uncle currently doing 10 months in County on a possession charge and a mother who drinks away her paychecks in clearly oblivious homage to Bacchus and you’re the poorest goddamned kid in the entire fucking fifth grade, you tend to savor the receiving and you learn to hate the giving. Thank Jesus and Santa and maybe even Jupiter himself for anonymity.

It rarely snowed. The prix fixe winter menu options were bursts of bitter and dagger-like rain or tule fog, this, suffocating and unyielding and depressing. Bastards like Steinbeck and Pasternak may have provided slit-your-wrist descriptions of such buzzkill weather with sponsored eloquence, but they didn’t spend their holidays out in it, schlepping from phone booth to phone booth, foraging for coins. Their Christmas mornings were spent strolling the banks of the Danube, chucking spare Rolex watches into the water just to hear those satisfying plops. They admired themselves in the mirrors of Versailles, they sipped hot cocoa in Zürich chalets. Bentley limousines ferried them to Casino de Monte-Carlo, where the wealths of small nations were wagered and won or lost in a single hand. Yachts across the Channel. Haggis and gin with the Queen at Holyroodhouse. Cognac and truffles at the top of the Empire State Building. “Fancy another? Of course I do!” The hell with both of them.

Caprice Haddad didn’t return to class in January, breeding widespread and mostly cruel speculation. One morning we were all called to the auditorium for an ad hoc assembly at which news of her suicide was delivered. A cautionary tale about a now invisible girl, spiced with convincing notes of compassion and cast upon a millpond of solemn, bowed heads. The last time any of us saw Caprice, she was opening her Secret Santa gift. Everyone watched. The present was packed in rumpled cardboard and wrapped in newspaper. Her fingers nevertheless worked with the deliberate, expectant circumspection one would ordinarily reserve for silvery white ribbons tied around a box from Tiffany. Hidden inside were three items: a disposable razor, a single diaper, and a can of Alpo. Convulsive snickering was met with exhausted opposition from Mr. Fletcher and he moaned, “Come on, guys.” They resumed playing with new Mattel electronic games and headbutting new Hacky Sacks. New leather baseball gloves were donned, mouths crammed with candy, futures secure and bereft of adversity. Someone had given me a 45. I didn’t own a record player.

Fifth grade was a fleeting distraction from the crushing inevitability of middle school, where I knew a deeper, more sinister unpopularity was simply unavoidable. The valkyries weren’t coming for me –just my uncle, once he got out of jail. So I acquiesced. Targeted hits from dodgeballs went unreported, though I was never invited to play. Impulsive trips and shoves were meted out, drinking fountain first aid inexpertly administered. Crushed brown bag lunches in the trash. Homework scattered. Personalized toilet stall graffiti, replete with Paleolithic depictions of genitalia. Passive-aggressive insults proffered in the form of questions: “Can’t afford a hairbrush? Do those pants come in your size? Hey virgin, forget your tampons? Have you told your mom and dad that you’re a queer yet?” And the more direct: “Are those wash & wear pants? Yeah, wash once, wear forever! Look guys, it’s Smelly Virgin! Why was Kelly Virgin walking down the street with only one shoe on? Because he just found it!” One of my personal favorites: “Virgin’s so poor they put his picture on food stamps!” And the occasional barbed jingle: “Kelly is a virgin twat, virgin twat, virgin twat! Kelly is a virgin twat, his twat smells like a fish!” Not quite Rodgers and Hammerstein, yet universally amusing and effective. I held my breath until my lungs nearly burst. And so what if they did? Maybe Valhalla was waiting for me on the other side of fifth grade. Or maybe one glorious day, I’d wind up finding Cibola.