My Little Heart
Imagine a world without books. How the world would be different?
by Jonathan Michael Saucedo
We see the handsome and athletic boys are kings and the funny boys play the jester. No one bothers the jester. Then, there are the others: the fat, the ugly, or simply the quiet ones — the ones that don’t matter, but the king’s court won’t forget.
We learn early where our place is in the structure of worth; if not at home, then at school. Fat is weak, even when you try to stand up straight–putting one fat foot in front of the other through the muck, and it is messy. Messy like the blood from your arm they scrape across the lockers as they shove you, drag you, slap your books onto the floor, ruining your shiny black hair that your mom has combed and styled just so, in the morning. Mom and Dad bought me nice clothes even though they didn’t have a lot of money, never letting me know it; pressing and matching my outfits without so much as a cat hair on them. Perhaps they knew I would be on the battleground when I stepped from the safety of the car. Perhaps they wanted to give me a fighting chance.
Still, there would be a book in my backpack; to this day. Always.
In school, everything stings like fire. I tried so hard to play a different role when I joined the after school gym where I could make friends. I smiled so hard walking in there that day with hair now sticking up, and the dent in my trumpet case that they had thrown on the floor tightly gripped in my hand. My little heart, so hopeful that today would end differently. The kids were only too eager to throw that ball at my stomach, my legs, my arms, and my face when the teacher bellowed: “Play dodgeball.” They all threw those rubber balls so damn hard. A word I shouldn’t know in fourth grade, but it helps the pain to say it. I went only once. Some lessons you only need to learn once. How much can one little heart handle without someone to protect them from the bullies? I look to my backpack.
I didn’t go home for lunch the next day, but my mom came to school, making her way to the office after the principal told her he doesn’t appreciate her telling the school board he’s an idiot. “Well, you are. Do your job.” I looked up from my book that day. My little heart!
Recess rolls around again, and I sit behind the air conditioning unit on the east side of the playground where the dodge-balls can’t reach me. I open my book with hope. I have seen hope in action. “Do your job” echoes from the pages. I look up to see the teacher watching me, silently pleading with her to leave me to read the Bobbsey Twins my mom had placed in my bag. I close my book and she shakes her head and winks. I open my book and whisper to the characters: thank you, thank you, thank you for sitting with me. I’m safe for 25 more minutes; clothed in the pages where my heart is safe until I get home.
My books were where I went to live; not to escape as one might think, but to live. To be protected. To thrive. To give me a new role in which I was not Jon-a-Fat. In a book, I found my solace. In a book, I learned that I, too, had endless stories to tell. Endless ways to cope as I grew older. Endless ways to deal with the bullies in my own classroom as a teacher. Endless ways to stay hopeful as I got sick–unable to pick up a book, but the lessons of life and the characters still in heart. My little grown-up heart.
I close my eyes and I remember my world through books as I press play to hear one, or pick one up on a better day when the treatments are working. My little books keep me here on earth as my neurologists tell me to be hopeful.
My mom presses my shirts and combs my hair, now tinged with silver, on days when my arms won’t reach. We make our way to the car where she opens the door as I transfer from my wheelchair to the front seat, unable to speak. She asks where I want to go first. I tap on my phone: b o o k s t o r e. I silently whisper: thank you, thank you, thank you. No longer Jon-a-Fat. I am Jonathan.
https://medium.com/the-storytellers-vault/non-fiction-writing-prompts-week-two-2101fcd16566
