Barry was holding his Adam’s apple. There was nothing of an apple at all in there, only cartilage and meat! The apple’s skin was clearly human skin, and the apple’s juice was recognizably warm and red. Segments of thin lip skin dangled in my mouth like that fine outer skin of a peeled onion. My new braces had grated my inner cheeks like a Parmesan shredder. When my mother heard on the radio that overbites could cause migraines later on in life, she had finally given in. Before Mr. Liverpool had quite reached us, Barry tackled me again.

Barry, Cecilia and I were suspended from the school bus for the remainder of the year, such was Mr. Liverpool’s verdict after weighing each of our tearful versions and wounds. He saw that my front tooth was chipped. (It had been chipped against the driveway years earlier, but if Barry’s pulling of my hair didn’t show, I was forced to substitute it with something else.) Barry had a bite mark around his apple. The gap at the base of the throat between the clavicles swelled outwards like a blood-filled blister.

Mrs. Ramsey picked up her son with the silence and rapidity of one accustomed to his behavioural problems. Once again, Mr. Liverpool dialled our number. I never should have told him where my mother was.

When they arrived, I think my mother wasn’t aware that she was still holding onto her bowling bag, nor that one of those one third fractions of a pencil you get in bowling alleys and Yahtzee boxes was still behind her ear, squishing a soft, blonde curl. Ursula nodded to each of us apologetically, as if she had just barged in on a sacramental service because she’d opened the wrong door. They listened to my side of the story, which was the filtered truth, but my mother’s face flushed so excessively that I found myself continuing my descriptions more mildly.

My mother confronted Mr. Liverpool, “So! You! Why you punishin’ my daughters?!” Her index finger was like a dagger ready to stab him in the face.

Mr. Liverpool explained how we were to serve as examples that you do not take authority into your own hands.

“You hear her! De boy, he was both’ring her! An’ she, she defen’ her sis’er!”

Mr. Liverpool was the frail, pallid Protestant type, with white hair and a three piece suit, who had never yelled or been yelled at in his life, even as a child. His strong principles made him insist that I should have gone to a superintendent for assistance.

“Someone, dey attack you, you wait ’til you are murder-ed dead to go to de super tendant??”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“You do? You wait ’til you are murder-ed dead?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Mr. Liverpool returned his face to his paperwork on his desk so my mother would get the hint it was time to leave. He pulled a ballpoint pen out of a tight bouquet of pens and pencils; paper-clips thrown in here and there were stuck between the wooden and plastic stems like petals.