1975, Harrisonburg, Virginia

By Jayne Pupek

Wayne stinks of urine. His clothes look disheveled, as they do most days, leading us to believe that he probably sleeps in them.

Sometimes we speculate over lunch, tossing around ideas about what his home life is like in the same heated way we gossip about trivial things that matter to junior-high kids: who cut class or smoked cigarettes; which teacher might be having an affair; where Judy Griggs bought her jeans, or who she’d let into them behind the bleachers after Friday’s game.

Our ideas about Wayne are just as shallow and cruel. We think, perhaps, his father’s a drunk who beat him until he pisses himself.

“Maybe his mother is crazy,” one of us says. “Yeah, and Wayne’s afraid to take off his clothes around her,” another says. “I know, I know,” a third voice adds. “Wayne’s afraid to unzip his fly to pee because he’s afraid his crazy mother will take a knife and whack off his dick.”

At the mention of the word dick, we all erupt into laughter.

The principal walks by and reminds us that the bell is about to ring; he suggests that we ladies get to our assigned classes. We stop laughing and move off in opposite directions.

Later that afternoon, we’ll congregate in the hall again. Wayne will walk by; his presence will set us to laughing again. None of us will care that our voices reach him or that our laughter will cause his face to redden with shame. We have already decided that he isn’t human like the rest of us, but rather something less – more animal than boy. That is how we treat him.

We make up a nickname for Wayne. Because he is ugly and has red hair, we dub him Holly Dog. It isn’t enough that we call him Holly Dog; we also bark behind his back, loud enough for him to hear.

Since that doesn’t seem cruel enough, we go a step further. We take turns bringing dog food for Wayne. We deposit handfuls on his desk and under his chair. We toss some at his back when no one is looking.

Sometimes, the hard pellets hit his head, and he turns around, his face a knot of anger and shame. He looks as if he doesn’t know whether he wants to cry or come at us with his fists. Instead, he spits nasty words and runs away. The pain we cause him does nothing to soften us.

When the semester changes, I have a class with Wayne. None of my girlfriends are in the same class, but they commiserate, especially when I tell them how the teacher, who is new, has assigned us seats.

Who sits directly in front of me? Wayne Dean, of course. And since this is a class where a lot of work is done in small groups, I am forced to sit next to Wayne – aka Holly Dog – and actually have conversations with him.

I do what I can to keep a safe distance: avoid direct eye contact, turn my body away from him, focus on other members of the group.

Over the weeks, I discover that Wayne is smarter than any of us gave him credit for, and while he still reeks of urine and wears the same clothes many days in a row, he’s actually pretty funny. He seems to like working in a small group and does more than his fair share. He’s even polite sometimes, moving a desk that might be in someone’s way or offering to sharpen your pencil when he goes to sharpen his.

A few weeks into the new semester, I am in the hall with friends when Wayne walks by us. He accidentally bumps into me, causing me to drop my book. His face darkens berry red as he stammers an apology. He picks up my book and hands it to me. His face is open, hopeful.

All my friends are watching. I hear snickering behind me, the sound of privileged girls who don’t know what it’s like to come to school wearing the same clothes or to live under conditions where you can never get clean. I want to turn around and yell at them to leave him alone, but I am one of them, not strong enough to forfeit my place and become like Wayne.

I reach out and take the book from Wayne without even saying thank you. I blow on the book’s matte cover, as if I am ridding it of Wayne’s filthy hands. I turn my back on him without a word. My friends continue to snicker and bark.

Many years later, after high school and college, after I complete graduate school and begin work in mental health, I will cross paths with Wayne again. A small deaf woman will come to the women’s shelter where I work. I will listen to the details of her life and discover that she is Wayne’s wife.

She is afraid of him, afraid of the rage that lives inside him. She says he is like a smoldering fire and that anything can make him erupt into flames. She believes that he carries a lot of hurt deep down.

“Look,” she says, showing me her body. She has bruises to prove what he does. I see the blue marks on her forearm, the red imprint of fingers circling her neck, and I know that these are not Wayne’s hands alone who have done this.

Although I have never touched her, my hands mark this woman too.

Jayne Pupek is a novelist and poet from Richmond, Virginia. Her first novel, Tomato Girl (2008), is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Primitive, her chapbook of poems, is available through Pudding House Press (2004).

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, June 25th, 2007 | Email This Post

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