The Reunion

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A friend sends a message. An old classmate of ours, all the way back from primary school, is looking for me. I grew up with a different name, which I changed in my late twenties. A rather feeble attempt to cut chords with a messy childhood.

I have since learned that if you want to hold on to the good memories, precious and rare, you are stuck with the bad. The best one can do is blur them a bit.

There is a reunion in the works. I shudder at the idea. I went to a strict Catholic school in a small village in the East of the Netherlands. We moved there when I was five. Once the smell of newcomer had worn off, curiosity was replaced by cruelty. I was bullied, badly. Called names, had children spit on me and throw sand in my eyes. The worst was when kids pretended, I could play with them, be included in their games, only to be send away and ridiculed.

Teachers went along with it. Added to it. On our regular church visits I was often ordered to sit in the back row. Alone. I had not been baptised so I wasn’t a real Catholic. Communion, choir, none of that was meant for me. I don’t know if my mother said anything, or someone else, but suddenly it changed. I sat at the front with the other kids and held out my hand for the wafer-thin thingy that got stuck to my tongue. It tasted of nothing, to finally be included.

I loathed school. The kids. The teacher. The entire village. All I could think of every single day was: Please God get me out of here.

When the bullying got too bad, I would run away and go home. The head teacher would send my bullies to my house to walk me back to school. There I was, heartbroken, scared, and lonely like a little prisoner surrounded by her executioners.

I loathed school. The kids. The teacher. The entire village. All I could think of every single day was: Please God get me out of here.

One day, it must have been around 5th grade, I lost it. Some kids were playing a pinching game. Like a game of tag but instead of tagging they were pinching. I didn’t want to play. I told them. Don’t touch me. I told them again. They wouldn’t listen. I lashed out. In a blind rage I hit and kicked everyone and everything within reach.

I went home and told my mum. I felt bad. Maybe not guilt or shame. What I had done was necessary, but maybe not right. I went to all the kids I hurt and apologised. I did not regret it, though. I do not turn the other cheek.

The next day when I came to school the kids asked me what game we were going to play. A little stunned I frowned and shook my head. I retreated into one of the sand boxes with the book I had brought. I had no desire to play with any of them.

“But you are a bit bossy and they seem a little intimidated by you.”

When Anna the new kid joined our school in the last year we became quick friends. We both loved ballet. And both wanted to go to Grammar School. I finally had a kindred spirit. When I told her about the bullying, she barely believed it. “But you are a bit bossy and they seem a little intimidated by you.”

I did toughen up. I looked down on the kids who bullied me, but once beaten now pretended everything was hunky-dory. Maybe they weren’t even pretending. Possibly, this was their normal. Planet of the apes. On the upside, whenever one of the smaller kids in the playground got bullied, they would come for me to sort them out. I gladly did.

It wasn’t all bad. Gossiping about boys, learning how to apply make-up, rehearsing for the school plays. All that stuff was fun. Then there were the perks of farm life. Helping with feeding and mucking out at Mariska’s place. I will never forget how it feels to have a calf suckling on your fingers while you funnel lukewarm milk from a bucket into their mouth. The steam coming off the dung. One of my classmates, Saskia, had horses. Some Wednesdays, when we were lucky, we were invited over to ride them. Her dad’s encouragement made me gallop, and jump. I can’t remember ever feeling quite that free. Mark’s mum made the best pancakes. Ever.

None of that was enough to create any lasting connections. Except for one. My best friend. She is the only reason why I will always be grateful for going to that school. Not any lessons on how character building the bullying was. This trauma does not come with a neatly wrapped up life lesson. But it did come with the gift of a lifelong friend.

I left the village at seventeen. I went to London. My mother stayed in our childhood home for another year or so and then luckily moved, as I dreaded going home for Christmas or Easter. I have visited the village maybe once or twice after that.

I’ve been cutting ties for a while now. With my childhood, with the version of me that stayed too long in places where I never felt I belonged. The country I’ve lived in for most of my life, the motherland, doesn’t feel like home. Maybe it never did. I am not rooted in a place. My roots are in me. My ancestors. The sea. What serves me, I carry with me. Everything else is free to fade into the background, like the blurry memories.

The person looking for me now, the one organising the reunion, in my memory was the worst when it came to manipulation and meanness. Apparently, she grew out of it. People change. I know I did.

I am not curious, nor cruel, enough to go back there and find out.