Mostly Unlady

Part 30

Dear Mum,

It was my 13th birthday at the weekend. I invited all of the children in my year, making 15 of us schoolkids, in total.

Nona brought Felicia along. Other mums helped us by dropping their kids off at the park and then coming back to pick us up. Dad is away on a business trip for 2 weeks.

We had ice cream cake and I got my first ever lip gloss. Now, don't worry, I only wear it at the weekend and never in school. It doesn't have a sweet taste but it's black grape scented, which I love. I didn't do the Gigli thing of requesting everyone to chip into an expensive gift because I prefer for my guests to be creative and give me something that they feel means something to them too. I guess I got what I asked for because most of the gifts were mini footballs that come free in bags of crips, which is fine.

We got changed into our swimsuits in the public restrooms and then splashed around in this big fountain in the park. Everything was going great when this man runs up to us, shouting and panting.

He's speaking super-fast in Spanish, so I don't catch most of what he says. My friends are exchanging stares, then eventually, they point at me. They respond to this guy in Spanish and I understand them really well. Lola is saying: "Ask her! Not us! She's the foreigner." Then Gigli says: "Yeah! We're all Argentinians except for Zelia, here," pointing at me. I could tell my friends were scared, but suddenly, I got really scared, because this guy took a big step so that his belly was almost touching my chest. He looked like he would have picked me up by the collar if I'd been wearing anything other than a swimsuit.

I looked around for help, but my friends had stepped away and were looking at me from a short distance back. No one was getting help. The guy spouted a question that, even if I'm sure I got it, I was unable to respond to. He then turned to my friends, and he asked them how long I had lived in Argentina, and Gigli told him, which just made this guy swell and turn almost inside out.

He demanded I tell him how come I wasn't speaking perfect Spanish, like the other girls, by now. That's when my friends turned on me, real bad. 

First Gigli, then Lola, and eventually everyone. Some kids grimaced at me and I heard Lola say: "Zelia can't even string two words in Spanish without making a fool of herself." Someone else laughed. The only person who didn't chip in was this teenage boy, on a big bike, who left with the angry guy. 

Was that his son?

The guy had left but the other kids made jokes for a while after.

Finally, in the afternoon, Lola got separated from the rest of us. It happened while we were playing tag in the park, so no one noticed for a long while. I was putting on a brave face, all this time, since the incident with the angry man. I don't know why but I didn't help look for Lola. She had 14 people looking for her and I didn't think anyone would notice me, lying flat on my back in the grass, just re-living the moment I took my first bite of ice-cream cake. How could a day that started so well, wound up like this? Happiness is like the smell of baking. It just takes one draught.

Love

Zelia

Have you even been picked on by a full-grown adult? Were you with other people at the time and how did they react? Is Zelia a bad person for not rushing to find Lola? Vote to show your support against all and any form of abuse!

Photo by Spemone (Pexels)