Making Angels Laugh Read online

  “NO! I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me run from them. It would just embolden them to do more to me. They have done everything they can to make my life miserable. I won’t let them win. If they win with me, they will only be worse to others. Most of the students are terrified of them as it is. This will reinforce that fear, give them more power over the rest of the student body, and paint me even blacker on the school pariah list.”

  The Fishers traded looks that she couldn’t decipher.

  Mrs. Fisher said, “Rita, dear, you are a brave girl.”

  “Nyet. I am not brave. I spend my days in terror of these boys. They start the day by harassing me. They end the day by harassing me. And they take every opportunity during the day to harass me. They have turned almost every young person in the school against me, because people are afraid to be seen being nice to me lest they themselves become a target for this trio. Mrs. Petit, even, hates me.”

  “Surely not!” Mrs. Fisher denied.

  “I do not lie! You should have heard the things she said to me as she marched me to your office. Apparently, I am being accused of bringing venomous animals to school and am about to be expelled for being the troublemaker that I am. And apparently I am to be deported for being a communist infiltrator and sent to Siberia for failing to be a good infiltrator...And she believes my painful death would be a matter of necessary justice.”

  “She said that to you?” Principal Fisher demanded.

  “Yes. Lord have mercy. That woman has a big imagination and a good deal of hate.”

  “I wasn’t aware that it was this bad,” Principal Fisher said, his voice strained and unhappy.

  “Why should you have been aware? I have not complained. I have merely tried to endure, to do my best, embrace the good, and to ignore the bad.”

  “You should have told someone that it was this painful for you,” Principal Fisher replied. “Promise me that you will tell someone if the boys continue to harass you. And I will deal with Mrs. Petit. She will give you no further trouble.”

  “As long as the boys keep their hands to themselves and only threaten to beat me into ‘bloody freakburger’ I can deal with this,” Margarita replied, fresh tears streaming down her face. “This morning took the harassment to a whole new level. This is criminal. But there is no chance of justice being done, not when Peter’s father, uncle, and grandfather have a firm hold of the justice in the county. Not a chance.”

  Principal Fisher sighed. “I promise you this will come to an end.”

  “No, you cannot honestly promise me that and keep that promise. You do not have enough evidence to discipline them for this. Further, you do not dare discipline them without sufficient evidence. The repercussions would be disastrous for you with the school board, at least. No one wants Peter’s or Greg’s families as enemies. We all know this. Please do not promise what you cannot deliver,” Margarita said, her voice full of tears. “Do not give me false hopes with easy reassurances. That is simply not… fair.”

  Mrs. Fisher sighed and looked at her husband.

  Margarita continued, “I don’t blame you for any of this. I knew there would be problems in placing me here. I just did not imagine the trouble would be this lethal.”

  “There is no excuse for anyone in my school to suffer this kind of harassment. I will do what I can to end it,” Principal Fisher said.

  “There’s nothing that can be done. Not really. If we are all honest, we know that to be the case.”

  “I don’t know that to be so,” Principal Fisher said.

  “What can you do? They’re sneaky. I suspect that no one saw them do this. Whether anyone saw them or not, no one is going to stand up and be a witness against them. Everyone is terrified of them, and of Peter’s family, and if they aren’t afraid of Peter’s family, they’re scared of losing their jobs with Greg’s family. Tim, well, his family has little or no influence, but he’s added ‘muscle’. Just his build and ugly personality are enough. If you discipline them, there will be a fuss made with the school board, and your job will be at risk. You can’t do anything to them without proof to convict in court. And we both know it.”

  Mrs. Fisher sighed.

  “Do me a favor?” Margarita asked.

  “What would you have us do?” Mrs. Fisher asked.

  “Do not send me back out there until I am calm again, and all sign of my crying is gone. I will not let them think they’ve scared me or reduced me to tears. I cannot give them any weapon to use against me. If they find a weakness, they’ll exploit it. And then the situation will grow worse.”

  “We will do the best we can to keep you safe while you are at school,” Principal Fisher pledged.

  “I know you will. I just don’t know what you can do.”

  “Maybe we can convince your parents to let you graduate at the end of fall term, then go to college full time in the spring term?” Mrs. Fisher asked.

  Margarita shook her head negatively. “That will not happen. They do not know how bad this is. I will not talk about school with them.”

  “Why don’t you tell them?” Mrs. Fisher asked.

  “Because they would worry. It is bad enough that I worry. They do not need to do so, as well.”

  “They must be told about this,” Principal Fisher said. “Do you want to call them or do I?”

  “I will. If you call, they will worry that I am harmed. If I call, they will know I am well and they won’t worry as much,” Margarita said. “Or I can spare them the worry during the day and tell them tonight when they get home. This would be the better option, I believe.”

  “Will you tell them tonight?” Principal Fisher asked.

  “On this, I have no choice. People will talk about this. There is no way for this to be kept quiet. Someone will tell them at Church, if not elsewhere.”

  The whole school was buzzing with the news that someone had put the snake in her desk. But none of her schoolmates spoke directly to her about this. Even with this, particularly with this, no one dared show her friendship or compassion. No one, among her school mates, dared make themselves the target for similar, or worse, gifts. No one, except Jack and his cousins, Jim and Kevin, who didn’t care about the terrible trio, befriended her. Jack and his cousins didn’t discuss this with her, because they knew her well enough to see she was barely holding onto her composure.

  As she expected, none of the terrible trio were ever disciplined for any of the gifts in her desk. They never admitted doing it. No one had seen them do it. She knew it could have been much worse. She could have been bitten by that snake.

  Still, by the following day, those ancient desks in that classroom, and every classroom, had been replaced by long banquet tables and wooden chairs, putting an end to any possibility of future “gifts” being deposited in any desk.

  The only reason anyone, except Jack and his cousins, talked to her at school was when they wanted help with homework. Using her for academic help seemed to be a safe thing where the terrible trio were concerned.

  “Why do you help any of them?” Jack asked one lunch period in December, after Glenna Neele walked away from the table with a hint about how to translate a German assignment. “They’re just using you. None of them are willing to be your friend.”

  “Kindness is never a waste,” she had replied. “We’re supposed to forgive people. It’s what our Lord demands of us.”

  Jack sighed. “Can you forgive the terrible trio?”

  Margarita remembered sighing heavily. “That’s between God, Father Ivan, and me. And if I can’t forgive them, that’s my sin and I’ll have to deal with it.”

  “You’re a better person than me, then. Because I will never forgive them,” Jack said. “They’re bullies.”

  Margarita took Jack’s hand in hers. “But you must. You must. For the sake of your own soul. Promise me that you will try to forgive them.”

  Jack squeezed her hand. “If it means so much to you, then I’ll try, Rita.”

  “Good,” s
he replied, taking her hand back and smiling at him.

  The bullying and the harassment from the terrible trio continued on a small scale, name calling, threats, but no more gifts. Still quietly, under the surface, the campaign against her escalated into more painful measures. They’d plotted carefully, to disguise their involvement. They’d taken their time and covered their tracks; sneaky, duplicitous, criminal, and ultimately deniable tracks.

  “Hey, Butter Butt,” Matt Brewster, one of the trainable mentally handicapped kids in the school, called out, angrily, as she entered the cafeteria on the last full day of her sophomore year. Nearly everyone called him “Bonehead” Brewster. She’d never spoken to him, except in passing. She’d never had any reason to talk to him. They moved in very different circles.

  Matt was eighteen, big, and would never be in any danger of being mistaken for a rocket scientist. This was his last year in school, then it was planned he’d be going to work full time at the grain and feed company his family ran, loading customer trucks.

  Still, she’d never had any trouble with him until just this particular day.

  Matt Brewster rose from the lunch table and came over to her. It was obvious that he was angry. She remembered being afraid. “You shouldn’t call me names, Butter Butt.”

  She heard the anger in his words and saw it in the way he was standing. Swallowing hard, she denied, “I didn’t... I wouldn’t. Matthew, come on, let’s talk this out. Have I ever been the type of person to call anyone else names? Why would you think that I would do that?”

  The boy/man placed his hands on her chest, just under her armpits and picked her up, raising her so he was looking her straight in the eye. Then he shook her violently.

  Adrenaline surged through her, the fight or flight reaction. But he was too big, too strong, and too enraged for her to fight off. Still, she tried. “Put me down,” she yelled at him and she kicked at him, without much success.

  She still recalled the anger in his voice and his expression. “Lying bitch! You were making fun of me. They told me you made fun of me.”

  Peter Allen Quinn, smirking with satisfaction and glee, stood there at the edge of the crowd. That smirk burned itself indelibly into her memory. There was no doubt in her mind that Peter and his friends had created this situation. This was a beating by proxy, orchestrated by them with someone else to take the blame.

  Her vision blurred. Fear made her breath come hard. “Matt, I didn’t make fun of you. I wouldn’t do that. Someone’s lying to you.”

  Matt yelled, “No one makes fun of me, Butter Butt.”

  He threw her against the plastered brick wall as he was screaming. Her glasses flew off her face. She heard them shatter as Matt stomped on them. Then the blows began. Within the haze of pain, she heard the sickening crack of bone. Realizing that it was her own bone, she started to cry out, but couldn’t move her mouth.

  She saw blood, her blood, on his beefy fists as he pulled his hands back to hit her again, and again. She threw up her arms to cover her face. He began hitting her chest and stomach. His blows were punctuated by further cracks of her bones, this time her ribs, breaking.

  “Liar! Liar! Liar!” were the last, pain filled and angry, words she heard from Matt before she passed out from the pain.

  Criminal charges weren’t filed against Matt. The county prosecutor, Peter’s uncle, claimed Matt was incompetent to stand trial, and even if he had been competent there would have been no sense in punishing him as he was “too simple to learn” from it. So, Matt was remanded into the custody of his parents, who almost immediately placed him in a shelter care facility several hundred miles away from home, to get him away from the influence of those three boys, more than anything else.

  Once more, the terrible trio had gotten off with no official reprimand or actions against them, even though it was clear, at least to her, that three of them had instigated this event by lying to Matt that she had been making fun of him.

  Margarita spent most of the summer with her jaw wired shut to allow the bone to heal. Unable to eat solid food, she lost twenty pounds that summer. The weight loss along with a growth spurt and a surge of hormones left her going into the fall term as substantially thinner and more mature looking. Of course, it remained obvious to all that she was substantially younger than most of her collegiate companions.

  Her injuries did heal. She stopped peeing blood, in relatively short order. The bruises faded. Her punctured lung healed. Her broken ribs knitted back together. She began to breathe easier. The concussion healed without any permanent damage. The only damage that never healed fully was to her soul.

  Her parents had finally honored her request to allow her to attend University full time. The school district had issued her high school diploma without any hesitation, almost immediately upon the oral request of her mother. That request had been issued in person to Principal Fisher within minutes of a young Margarita being taken into the emergency room where her mother worked. Henry Fisher had accompanied her to the hospital in the ambulance. There were times, she wished she had been a witness to that conversation between her mother and Principal Fisher. But she had still been unconscious from the beating. Then again, perhaps it was better that she hadn’t been involved in that particular conversation.

  In spite of what she had told Jack about forgiveness, Rita knew that she had never forgiven any of the terrible trio. She had not forgiven them for any of these things or for the horror of what came after. She couldn’t imagine a time when she would be able to forgive them. That sin of unforgiveness sat heavily on her soul.

  But in an odd way, those three bullies had made her strong. She had learned to stand strong from interacting with them.

  She prayed for the ability to forgive them and made a note to go to confession and to get this off her soul.

  Chapter Four

  Reaching the conference room, she knew it was time to put away the evil memories, to cram them back into the dark corner of her mind where they had been stored for many years. She had her life to live and none of these people were part of it. After the reunion, they would not be part of it again. She might go back there this once, under duress, but there would be no reason to return there, except perhaps to visit her father’s grave.

  The conference room door was closed and the light was off. That was nothing new. She was used to being the first one to meetings.

  As she opened the door, and switched on the light, cries of “Surprise!” filled the air. A large, colorful, banner reading, “Many years, Rita!” was hung on the wall opposite the door. The sideboard bore a beautifully decorated cake. Flowers and balloons added to the festive air in the room. The tables were laid for dinner service, with white damask cloths and the best of the clinic’s china and silver.

  “Now, before you say anything…” Janet began, her tone as defensive as her posture.

  Rita forced a chuckle. “How did you pull this off?”

  “It wasn’t really too hard. Happy Birthday, Margarita Aleksandrova,” Janet said.

  Rita accepted the birthday wishes from her staff members, individually, as she worked her way around the room.

  James Andrews, the head of dietary, said in Russian, “Many years, Matushka Margarita. Dinner is ready to be served, anytime that you wish to eat.”

  “Serve the meal, please, James.”

  Father Samuel, the chaplain of the clinic, led everyone in the singing of the Rimsky-Korsakov setting of the Lord’s Prayer and then blessed the meal.

  Janet and her husband, Patrick, sat beside Rita at the head table. Other staff members took their usual positions.

  “I really want to know how you pulled all of this off,” Rita said to Janet. “I don’t just mean this dinner. I mean the whole trip.”

  “It wasn’t hard. I called Alexei and asked him what they were getting you for your birthday because I didn’t want to duplicate the gift. He told me about the invitation you’d received to your high school reunion and that the boys and your mother al
l thought you should go. Then he said he’d love to take you on that Panama Canal cruise you’ve always talked about wanting to do someday.”

  Rita sighed. “That sounds like my son.”

  “From there, things just fell into place. Are you angry?”

  “Surprised.”

  “Clint will call for your bags tonight, before nine. Then he will drive you to the airport in Watertown, early, for your connecting flights to St. Louis in the morning,” Janet said as they ate their dinner.

  “I can drive myself to the airport. I’m sure he has patients to pick up,” Rita dismissed.

  “The schedule works so that he will drop you, then pick up two new patients fifteen minutes later. Besides, there’s no sense in your leaving a vehicle parked at the airport,” Janet replied with a smile.

  “I’m sure you have all this planned,” Rita replied on a sigh, trying not to be upset with her friend.

  “I do. You’ll pick up the convertible at the airport in Saint Louis. Oh, and I already did your packing for the cruise. I bought you a new suitcase set and it is loaded with cruise clothes and your favorite brands of personal care stuff, along with several bottles of lotion bug repellant. All you have do is have to put in your jewelry. There’s a small jewelry box in the weekender for whatever pieces of jewelry you decide to take. I have my ideas. But they are your things. I didn’t want to rummage through your jewelry.”

  “You certainly didn’t give me any time at all to do anything about this, did you?” Rita sighed and shook her head.

  Janet laughed. “If I had given you more time, there would have been some way for you to back out. Your sons were adamant that they wanted this to come off without a hitch. And as long as you cooperate, it will.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Patrick, Janet’s husband, and the head of physical therapy at the clinic, said, putting down his fork, “I told her she shouldn’t spring this on you at the last moment.”

  Rita sighed. “If I didn’t love the two of you so much, I’d be profoundly angry.”