Behind my desk, Rosalind plays with my hair. Gradually, I become aware of a firmer hand, a burn: blades are slicing through my abundant fuzz. How I jump! Jump!
Mrs Gosling looks up. “Jennifer! Elizabeth!” “She’s stolen my hair,” I wail, pointing at my classmate.
Mrs Gosling is crosser with me than with Elizabeth. “Get on with your note-taking.” She scrapes her domestic science board with a pink chalk.
I leap into the apron cupboard, but before I can shut the door Elizabeth follows.
“I’ve longed to do this for ages,” she hisses. She runs her floured knuckles into the dregs of my frizz: I remain still till she has finished, then slip from the cupboard to hysterical applause.
You are dismissed, all of you!” Mrs Gosling bellows. “Come back when you have calmed down.” I wait by the window for a signal to return. There is none.
On the way home, I walk fast but my namesake overtakes me and snips off my fringe. “We’re cutting you down to size,” Rosalind quips. I become an embarrassment.
Mrs Gosling concludes: “You must work it out among yourselves. You are old enough.” We are twelve. I am reminded of Samson and Delilah – even of the shorn inhabitants of Bergen-Belsen. —————
These extracts are from a much longer poem by Jenny Johnson .
Jenny writes:
The physical and verbal abuse I received from my classmates at primary school was actually seen and heard by my teacher, but nothing was done. In fact, I felt that, somehow, I was to blame for what happened - although, to this day, I don't fully understand why I did.
Stefan Freedman comments:
Why does the young Jenny - on top of the humiliation - end up feeling guilty? The unwilling victim of cruelty is made to feel complicit in creating a disturbance. She is tasked by the teacher to ‘sort it out’ despite being one child facing a gang of attackers.
I was a bully magnet for about a year at primary school. Though regularly threatened, punched and insulted I was silenced by the threat, used by bullies everywhere, “If you tell anyone I’ll kill you!”
My thanks to Jenny Johnson for vividly bringing this widespread problem to life in her poetry. To read the original (longer) version of "Hair Power", please see page 45 of her poetry collection, Dreamlines. If you would like a copy of this book, contact Jenny via her website: www.jennyjohnsondancerpoet.net
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