For all of Margherite’s years at school, different cliques of girls and groups of boys had been the norm. It had always been the girls against the boys and both of them against the real enemy, their teachers. Rivalries andmisunderstandings were as commonplace as passion and indecisiveness. Kids with immovable opinions looked down on peers who let the company they were in or the direction of the wind shape their view of the world. Serious students thumbed their noses at ones who were content to just coast along. Likewise, the coasters laughed at the “goody-goodies” and their eternal quest for extra credit. He was the doctor’s son and she was the janitor’s daughter. They came from families whose ancestors hailed from Italy, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Spain, Jamaica, Greece and Africa, yet they all donned green sweaters on Saint Patrick’s Day and red socks on Saint Joseph’s Day. The girls’ schoolyard saw Double Dutch jumpers throw pitying looks on young ladies whose feet could navigate only one rope at a time. The boys’ schoolyard teemed with handball and punch ball players, altar boys and Boy Scouts. For a boy, coolness depended upon how far he hit a ball, how fast he could run or what brand of cologne he bought. A young man who’d never even held an electric guitar wouldn’t think twice about boasting of his ability to give Jimi Hendrix a run for his money, for this was certain to boost his popularity with both sexes. There were the girls who spent their winter Saturdays haunting the shops on Flatbush Avenue and the ones who preferred a day at the ice rink in Prospect Park. Some girls wouldn’t let you in their group unless you had a particular style of dress or shoe while others shunned you for succumbing to that very same style. It wasn’t unusual to see this girl not speaking to that girl for a few weeks and then find out they “made up” and were best friends again. Even the occasional fistfight between boys didn’t create permanent enemies.

They all argued with and teased each other from time to time. Similarities and differences helped sort friends from classmates, but even the kids knew these were superficial and, when the day was over, they didn’t mean anything. No boy hated another one for not having the right brand of cologne. No girl wished harm on any other girl because she couldn’t jump Double Dutch or didn’t wear a pea coat.

But there was genuine hatred now, the likes of which Margherite had never before experienced and it was growing stronger with each sunrise. Children she’d grown up with wished her dead, teachers hoped she would disappear and strangers she passed on the street blamed her for everything that was wrong in the world.

America had the imprint of a giant fist in its stomach and an indelible line drawn down its center. That line bisected every household, church, office, classroom, street and city in the country into “us” and “them”. One side declared itself the conscience of the world as children of World War Two veterans told their fathers that the America they’d fought for in the 1940s was now a country they should be ashamed to live in. This new generation couldn’t care less what the neighbors thought of it. It gave the rights of the individual precedence over the demands of any government. It didn’t follow blindly and it trusted no evidence that wasn’t gleaned with its own senses. It had no qualms about letting its elders know how disappointed it was in the country it was inheriting.

There was the daughter who vowed she would never be just a housewife and the son who swore he would quit any job that didn’t make him happy, no matter how much it paid. She didn’t equate fulfillment with a house in suburbia. He wasn’t about to fight a war in a foreign country, especially while there were no troops battling the enemies at home—poverty, ignorance, prejudice and inequality. “Whose ‘Great Society’?” they wanted to know. Also on this side were black Americans weary of being treated like a colonized people in their own country. Having lost faith in the proper channels, they were ready to believe a more confrontational route might be their only hope. When the ones in power act irresponsibly, the powerless must take control.

The other side responded by branding them ungrateful, spoiled children. Cowardly, dirty, lazy and disrespectful were just a fistful of the status quo’s politer adjectives for this up and coming generation that had no regard for law and order and thought it knew everything. While these naïve kids were busy shooting their mouths off, they might do well to remember the generation before them pulled itself out of the Great Depression to fight a world war and secure them the freedom to get an education, run around in bizarre costumes and knock their country.

“You think money’s not important? That’s because you never had to earn any! You didn’t have to quit school to get a job. You didn’t have to wear the same outfit every single day. You never lived in a cold water flat or slept in a bed with three other kids with nothing to keep you warm but a pile of old coats. You never had to eat spaghetti and lard for supper! We sacrificed everything to make sure you had it better than we did. And this is how you repay us? We gave you too damned much. That’s your only problem. When you know what it’s like to be hungry, you come back and talk to me about ‘money isn’t everything’. When you stop sponging off your parents and support yourself, then I’ll listen to you tell me how you ‘wanna change the world’. Go to Germany and see the ruins of the concentration camps and come back and tell me all wars are ‘immoral’. And what’s wrong with this country anyway? You don’t like it here? Nobody’s forcing you to stay. Go to Russia and try opening your big mouth. They’ll mow you down in the street. Or go live in India where the cows run the country! You wanna ‘know God’? I got news for ya—God don’t wanna know you until you get in the bathtub and run a rake through that hair!”

The moment the other side laid eyes on Margherite, they recognized a despised foe. But was she the one they really hated or was it that people like Margherite were forcing them to examine themselves in front of the mirror and confront the real objects of their loathing?

 

© 2007 - Fair Mile Books