Moche, My Friend in Middle School
I know I said at the time it was because you were a Jehovah’s Witness. But the truth is, I never told you the real reason my grandma didn’t like you, or more precisely why she couldn’t stand you, and why she called you “that bad little brown kid.”
She started hating you when I shaved my eyebrows to look like Vanilla Ice in the bathroom at your mom’s apartment (EVEN THOUGH YOU SAID NOT TO). When I hacked off too much brow with your mom’s leg razor (and then tried to balance it out by shaving the other eyebrow an equally gratuitous amount), I went to my grandma’s afterwards. That’s why I didn’t walk with you to school that day. Anyhow, I go over to my grandma’s house and walk right into the bathroom. And I’m just making all kinds of fucking noise rifling through her medicine cabinet. I was looking for Band-Aids, because at the time I kept thinking “just cover up the half-brows with some Band-Aids.” And my grandma got up to see why I was freaking out, and she sees my eyebrows, and she asks me “why in the hell would you do that?” You remember how she got when she was mad, her face all read and her eyes bulging out and her breathing all heavy. It was scary. She was a big woman.
So at first I tell her that I got scratched by your cat, because I was over there and you have a cat and to a sixth grader that makes perfect sense on the spot. It seemed plausible. Regardless: She didn’t buy that bullshit, and she kept pressing me, and finally I told her that you made me shave eyebrows because you and your brothers were doing it, and she asked if we were in a gang, and so I told her we were in a gang, and then she asked if I was using and selling drugs, and I said yes, I was selling drugs, and she told me that I seemed like I was on drugs lately, and I told her, then promised her, then pleaded with her that I had never touched drugs, and at least that part was true. She didn't believe me, so finally I told her I WAS using drugs, but to be fair I would’ve told her I killed that old bum dude behind the 7-11 we found that one summer morning if she asked. The point is, I totally sold you out, and the only reason she didn't go to meet your mom and yell at her was because I told her that your brother Abdul had guns and would kill us all if we said a word.
Anyhow, my grandma told me that Band-Aids would never work because nobody would be stupid enough to believe some cat scratched both my eyebrows (I remember her saying "Or they'll think you're a dope to keep playing with a cat that just scratched half your face off"), and so she got some mascara out of my retarded Aunt Norrine’s make-up bag, and some eyeliner or something, and she drew eyebrows where they should be on my forehead. And it was cool until last period, when we had PE, and we had to run the fucking mile and I started sweating and all of a sudden my eyebrows running down my face.
(Also, the reason Stephanie LeBass never talked to you again was because when she started laughing at me from the bleachers I told her you used make-up too. She called us fags. Sorry about that.)
I just always thought you were really cool and a good basketball player and all that, and that somehow if I could convince other people you did the same stupid shit I did somehow that would shield me from my own dumbassery. And it never worked, in fact, it made you look kinda stupid for hanging out with me in the first place. So for real, I’m sorry about that.
