Slights by Kaaron Warren Page A

don't know, don't love, aren't married to," the teacher said. I pinched Lisa Sargeant. "Ask her if she's married. Go on."
      "Are you married?" Lisa said. The class tittered.
      "Are you?" said the teacher. The whole class laughed at the idea of any of them being married. When Greg Something went to a wedding a few weeks later, he took up the whole show-and-tell to describe the event.
      "And my sister was called the bride and everyone thought I was so little and they smiled at me and said you were a late present and I said we gave our presents at home. I gave a card with shells on it. They said No we meant oh it doesn't matter. And Robin call me Rob was called the groom he had to wear a suit and a SCARF around his tummy."
      Greg had brought wedding cake for us to look at and pass around. He didn't care what happened to it. He hated fruit cake. The pigs in class plucked candied fruit out and sucked on it. Whoever passed the cake to Lisa Sargeant said, "Here y'are, bride," and that remained her name throughout childhood.
      The teacher told us a stranger was someone whose name you didn't know. I never forgot this. As a child I asked people their names when they offered me lifts. Later in life I always introduced myself, and enjoyed seeing faces open up as if I was a friend now.
      That's what should have happened.
      When Peter came to find me in the playground, not long after I had told the teacher where I lived and received my clay, I was very happy. I had clay to mould and play with, I had streaks on my clothes and face.
      I was eating my play lunch (a very nice homemade lemon biscuit. I can still conjure its fresh taste, feel the crumbs on my tongue) with clay fingers. Peter came from behind and knocked my biscuit away.
      "Filthy girl," he said, "eating with dirty hands." Luckily no one heard him call me a girl. I was not ready to be one just yet.
      He dragged me to the taps, where he forced my hands, then my face under. As I spluttered, I heard voices, and knew half the school was watching.
      I didn't know what death was. I was so well protected from grief. Our ginger cat Muffy had gone to visit its mother in a cave in our backyard and not returned, guinea pigs stiffly rested in their cages, fish were drinking from the top of the tank.
      So when I coughed and spluttered, I felt no fear. I didn't know I could die. I didn't know such a thing existed. There was a weird smell though. Not the playground or the school room. Not quite the toilets.
      I was uncomfortable, and I couldn't breath. I saw blackness, and stars. I still had my carton of milk. Most kids didn't drink it; the crates of milk were left in the sun for an hour before distribution, so they were warm and smelled faintly of sick. If I didn't drink the milk I saved it in my desk. The day the teacher found it all there I got in trouble because she thought I had stolen the milk. She said, "We better share your loot around."
      The milk smelt terrible when everyone opened the cartons.
      I was famous throughout school for that one. Brenda Green was sick in the hallway and they had to get the sawdust out and everyone had to go a different way to class. That's what she became famous for; we called her Brenda Green Face.
      Cry Bobby cried because he wanted to drink his milk, and Neil got milk all over him as well. Belinda got a headache and had to go home.
      I raised my arm over my shoulder and crushed my milk carton against Peter's head.
      He let me go. The children laughed at him, beaten by a kid in kindergarten. His eyes were squeezed tight; I think there was milk in the corners.
      "Aw, Steve," he said. He sounded weak, like he was not the boss any more. So I pushed him into the scary bush, where the spitfires sat and waited for victims.
      Peter's best friend, a boy shorter than me, came to his aid and was splashed with the milk and pushed in the bush as well.
      "Oh, Steve," he said.
      "Oh, Darren," I said. By