Lunch

I was about to foam at the mouth with rage when I saw these freshmen making fun of the handicapped kids. The cafeteria was full and it was the first day of school. I hadn't found one of my friends who had the same lunch as I had, so I was sitting alone and across the way the special kids were sitting down not bothering a soul trying to have their lunch with dignity. Just then there was a tap on my shoulder and it was a friend of mine that who was in my same situation; first day of the semester and didn't know anyone in that particular lunch period. He smiled and I extended my hand to shake his. He sat down.
So there we were and a little bit down from us was a table full of freshmen. The freshmen were looking over to the table where the handicapped kids sat, making faces and acting spastic ridiculing them. I sat there looking at them, letting my blood boil and seeing if there was going to be an explosion. I had that gut feeling that someone was going to get hurt and I was the one who was going to do the hurting.
On my right was Omar smiling and asking how it was hanging, what was up and all that jazz. Omar was a nice guy always joking around and trying to make his friends smile. It was hard to smile when you went to a school in the south. We are not talking 1960's. It was the 90's but being a minority, and in particular being a Latino meant that your were a dope dealer, a gang member or a future correctional institute inmate. They, as in the staff of the school expected the worst from the Latinos. There were exceptions.
We were Latinos. I am a Latino, and at that point I was about to make the staff's expectations come true. Omar was throwing his best material at me to get a laugh out of me but my face was dead set on the white freshmen peckerwoods that were mocking the disabled kids. I kept repeating in my mind that it wasn't their fault for their disabilities. Then I felt that Omar caught on. He saw that I would look towards the freshmen and then towards the disability kids.
So he asked me what the problem was. I told him to look at how the freshmen were making fun of the handicap kids. He saw how it bothered me. I told him my outrage and he said a few words that I went along with.
"Well let's do something about it." He got one of his napkins and rolled it into a ball and threw it at the freshmen. It hit one of them and they turned towards us as if they were going to do something. The good thing about being a Latino is that people walked on egg shells for you. We had a reputation of being a bit violent. Omar stared at them and so did I. I asked them:
"What?"
Omar took all his food off his plastic tray and got up. Lets stop right there.
When I was a child about 4 years old my mother and I were prisoners to and alcoholic father. He was a military man and felt he was a real man when he would beat my mother. He would put his nine millimeter gun to her head when he was drunk.
One weekend my father's younger brother had come to the house to stay with us. My uncle, my father's brother's name is Alfredo which I'm named after. Alfredo was handicapped. He could not speak only make sounds, he was not a mute. His right arm was twisted and could not walk straight. He was the best playmate I had in those days, he never grew up you know, in his mind. His left arm was good and strong.
This in particular weekend like most my father got home drunk and felt like taking out his frustration of being a total loser out on my mother. He came home and Alfredo knew what was going on. My father immediately found a reason to start a fight with my mom. Before we knew it he had hit her across the face. He hit her in front of me and Alfredo in the living room of this small house we lived in. It was a house mostly paid for by my mother seeing as my dad spent his money on whores and booze.
My mother went down after that first hit. Holding her hands in her face where she had worn the punch my dad had dealt her. I was so little and helpless. I began to cry and so did Alfredo. Alfredo with all the strength he could gather got up from the couch and tried to get in the middle of the fight and stop my father from going any farther. He caught a punch in the stomach and fell to his knees crying. He cried in such a way that broke my heart in such a way that has not been repaired to this day.
With the most dignity I have seen anyone have he got up and wobbled over to where I was. With his good left arm he grabbed me as I was crying hysterically. >My mother was taking kicks in her stomach. My father got down on one knee and pulled her hair and screamed so many things to her that I don't remember.
Alfredo picked me up and took me wobbling towards the kitchen where the pain in his stomach defeated him and he kneeled down careful not to hurt me. Both of us were crying and he held me and said things to me that I couldn't understand since he couldn't really talk. He kissed my head and with his good arm would stroke my hair as if to say that everything was going to be alright.
I don't remember how that night ended. I guess I blocked it out of my mind, all except for what Alfredo did. My dear sweet uncle Alfredo, I will always love him, he was my savior. He was my comfort. I think this is the moment that I learned that there are weak and those who believe that they are strong. Alfredo was the strong one and my father was the weak one believing he was the strong one beating my mother within an inch of her death. This was my first moment of rage. Rage towards those who want to abuse those who are defenseless. This is the moment that would define my purpose in my life.
Soon after that my mother and I left that house and that tyrant behind. I didn't see Alfredo for many years after that but I always remembered him.
At the moment that Omar picked up his empty tray I did the same. I remembered my dear uncle. It wasn't his fault he was afflicted. I remembered this incident and my rage awoke with a vengeance after being dormant for so long. Those freshmen were going to pay a bill that was long over due.

We walked over. Omar took one side of the table and I took the other side. There were four freshmen and only two of us. When they saw us come over they got really quiet. It seemed as if their pulse went flat line. I raised my tray and swung and hit this peckerwood over the head and nearly broke the plastic tray.
When I looked Omar had one out of his chair on the floor and the peckerwood was trying to protect his head. I didn't know Omar had it in him, you know being a joker as he was. He backed me up. The other two peckerwoods ran off and of course got their white teacher protectors.
When they pulled me off the white kid I was tenderizing I think I was foaming at the mouth. All I could remember was my uncle Alfredo, how I loved him and how those handicapped kids never hurt anyone and were trying to have their lunch with dignity. In them I saw Alfredo with his good arm telling me that everything was going to be alright.
They separated Omar and me when they interrogated us. I sat in the dean's office waiting for the white man to come in and say what a bad kid I was, starting trouble for nothing. I felt no remorse. I still don't. He came in and sat down with his cocky attitude and looked at me. He gave me that look like it was nothing new, another Latin kid in trouble. He probably thought I was going to look at the ground in shame or something, but I didn't. I sat there arrogant as he was and I looked at him in the eye.
"Let me understand", he said.
"You can't ever understand I told him", I said.
"Try me", he said. I looked at him with the rage still raw in my eyes.
"Those peckerwoods were mocking the disabled kids who weren't bothering anyone. I guess you allow that here at your school. Just like when we (Latinos) take the blame for everything that has gone wrong and you can't explain. Other than that there is nothing to explain." I sat back and waited for his answer and sentence. He looked at me.
"That's no excuse for violence." He said as if he was a priest.
"You can't understand. Ever." After that I didn't say a word. I didn't need to explain to this old peckerwood why I had to bust one of his younger peckerwood's head. He wasn't worthy of even knowing the story of Alfredo. Alfredo was above him and those peckerwoods. I got a week of solitary detention, a prison within the school, as well as Omar did.
I'm eternal thankful to Omar for backing me in that fight. He could have ratted me out but he didn't. We were friends till our lives parted ways. After that incident I didn't stand by doing nothing when I saw injustice, till this day I don't stay quiet. Till this day I fight for what I think is right, and will continue to do this until I'm dead.
Last time I saw Alfredo I hugged him, and being who I am now it took all my strength to hold back the tears. He is still at that age, the age when his brother hit him and beat my mother in front of us. With my father, there a bill over due as well and sooner or later I'm going to collect that bill.