Poet and journalist Marina Alekseyeva shared this touching story from her school life on our website. She talked about how she managed not to become a victim in high school, how she turned the tide when she realized that the aggressor had a weak point and that she was also just a girl with her own sorrows and resentments. The events took place at a school in Yalta in 1992.
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Yesterday I was attacked again because of my cigarettes. This time it's a granny out the window. So I thought again that I would never quit smoking. That's why I don't have the energy to tell you a story that's actually about this. Not only that, though.
This was in 10th grade. I had been smoking for probably a year at that time. And our school was nine years old, and several of my students and I moved to another one. The class greeted us kindly, and everyone was seated at their desks. I got second place, next to Sveta Beloshapkina, a girl who was not liked in class. Sveta was really strange and unsociable, with a long red scythe and a cow's gaze, so at first I attributed the sympathetic glances my new friends gave me to her. However, it soon became clear that that was not the case.
I don't envy you, sighed the new classmate with whom we were neighbors, once sighed, so we started going home together. “Olya will be back any day...”
This is how the reason for my sympathy was revealed: in the absence of seats in the crowded classroom, as it turned out, I was seated in the place of a sick girl, the school's main bully. And she was about to come back from the hospital.
Everyone at school was afraid of Olya. There were terrible legends about her, mostly about how, who, and why she beat. Moreover, Olya regularly punished those who made her particularly angry by dipping her head into the toilet in the school toilet. It is noteworthy that the toilet door was scratched with a knife: “The director is sitting on the edge of the toilet like a mountain eagle on the top of the Caucasus,” and this inscription was also said to be Olya's work after one of the many visits to the director's office.
And so the class was waiting to see what would happen when Olya came back and saw me sitting in her seat.
Now I'm scared and waiting. But... soon I forgot myself: Elena Vladimirovna, a young literature teacher, came to school with us this year and started telling us about the Silver Age. At that time, it was just allowed. And of course, the entire girlish half of the class, including me, who was in a state of first love because of her age, fell madly in love with all this and started memorizing Tsvetayeva, Akhmatova, and Gumilyov by heart in one gulp. I especially became friends with Elena Vladimirovna; I showed her my poems, and she talked about the existence of a literary institute in Moscow. I still remember that feeling of happiness that intoxicated me at that time: my youth, poetry, autumn, love and a dream that I was now sure would come true.
When one sunny autumn morning I felt something was wrong. I still remember it. Feels like someone held the icy barrel of a gun to your temple. When I stopped putting my textbooks on my desk, I turned around. And I literally ran into the chilling gaze of an experienced killer with still yellow snake eyes. Yes, it was her, Olya. But wait, I'm going to talk about her eyes first. Honestly! I've never seen them again in my life! Light brown, under the sun they seemed really yellow, like ocher! Moreover, on one, right inside the gold, there was a small dark brown spot, and when you looked closely, you could see a tiny elephant with ears, a tail and a trunk! The rarest phenomenon is a birthmark in the eye, and even so unusual. Otherwise, Olya was a typical kid, with short hair painted with hydroperite, an earring in one ear and brightly colored lips, although this was forbidden at school. But eyes! They were exceptional!
The best actor is the one who pauses longer. I didn't know it at the time, but when I looked at Olya, I managed to stand it: Olya spoke first.
- You're sitting in my seat! — she said rather rudely, as if she were actually sentencing me to immediate trial for betraying the Motherland.
The classroom, which had been making joyful noise before, was suddenly completely silent. A toilet in the school toilet appeared in front of my eyes. Thoughts moved in a swift kaleidoscope. What should I do? Give up space? Suggest a threesome sit down? Start making excuses? Is it rude to answer? That's not it! It's all wrong! And that's where it is...
The thing is, when I'm thinking hard, I always want to smoke. My hand reflexively reached for my pocket, and I took out a pack of cigarettes and suddenly said calmly:
— Do you smoke?
Suddenly, Olya was happy:
— OH! And we have cigarettes! Well let's go.
We left the classroom in the ringing silence.
The smoking room was located behind school, in picturesque bushes. High school students used to graze there; many people at our school smoked. But now it was empty, and classes had begun. We smoked.
— Why were you in the hospital? - This time I was the first to ask.
Olya looked at me with interest, spat me, cleverly knocked the ashes off the cigarette with a clever click of her fingers, took a deep breath and, as if the smoke had given her a dose of trust, grinned with a grin:
— Yes, because of one goat. You know, sometimes women go to hospitals because of them.
“I know,” I said. And suddenly, as if feeling weak in her steel companion, she suddenly started reading.” Yesterday I was still looking into the eye, but now everything is looking away. Yesterday I was sitting before the birds; all larks are now crows. I'm stupid and you're smart, alive — and I'm dumbfounded...
I read with enthusiasm and fiercely, keeping my eyes on Olya. Especially since I saw that with every word, the pupils in Olin's yellow eyes dilated more and more, spots appeared on her pale cheeks...
— Damn it! What is this?! — Olya said when I finished.
— Tsvetaeva! - I said defiantly.
“Oh... no.” Olya concluded, as if in fact she were the chief official of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and ordered Tsvetaeva to be immediately published in a million copies. “Do you also know?”
I didn't go back to school that day. We skipped all classes together. We went to the beach, sat on pebbles by the shore, and smoked. And I read, read, read to Ole everything that I had learned in one gulp during her absence. And about “my chest was getting cold so helplessly”, and about “he killed my white bird”, and about “how do you live with someone else”, and about “he hurt you, I know”. It actually lasted me a few hours. And poems and conversations. And Olya asked me to read it again and again. Then the ice in her eyes melted altogether. And suddenly she burst into tears and talked about the failed abortion that caused her to be in the hospital. I stroked her on the head, we smoked, the sea was splashing at our feet. We were 14 years old each.
Needless to say, after that we became friends and became close to such an extent that one day, getting angry at another girl, Olya warned me that she was going to dip her head in the toilet, and I managed to dissuade her. Sometimes we skipped classes together again. But if it was a literature lesson, Elena Vladimirovna did not scold me, because after such walks, Olya's score in literature improved. And... after all, she smoked herself, my beloved Elena Vladimirovna, whose traces are now lost somewhere in Kiev, where her military husband serves as a high military rank. And I don't know if she still has the opportunity to talk about her favorite Silver Age. And I don't know anything about Olya, except that she became a mother of many children. It all vanished like smoke. The smoke from that very important cigarette of mine. Which, however, no one can take away from me...
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Marina Alekseyeva chose this photo and commented: “1992. 10th grade. Here's me (blonde) and three of my classmates from the same school. The girl on my left is the neighbor who warned me about Bully Ola. We later became very close friends. She now lives in Lebanon. Lesha Makarov — from above, sea captain. The smartest boy in class. His sister is downstairs. Actually, no one bullied anyone in this class—it was a good class; everyone was just afraid of Olya. This is us in Ponizovka (a camp site near Yalta). Some of the parents worked part-time there in the summer, and they called us in.”
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