The second member of the Unfortunate Fours was Mitch. He was a booger-eater, a loud-mouth, good for the jokes and a true troublemaker. Once, he glued wheels of sixth grade teacher's chair because he despised the sound of Ms. Roberts sliding across the floor. She was a 250 pound woman and refused to walk around the room. When we had a question, we walked to the desk. When we needed an explanation, she slid to the board and wrote at eye level. When we could not see the explanation from the back of the room, we had to walk to the front and stand. So, when Ms. Roberts called for a new chair, Mitch borrowed his father's tools and unscrewed the bolts. She collapsed and the class roared in laughter.
Three broken chairs later, Mitch was caught but his vigilante actions had not gone unnoticed. The principal began random sit-ins discovering Ms.Roberts lack of performance did not stop at her desk; as a class we were preforming below reading level. When the yearly standardized test came around to say we failed miserably was an understatement because the next year we had a new teacher, Mr. C.
Mitch never met Mr. C. It wasn't his fault. No one noticed the signs, but us and we were nobody. Nobody would listen to us. Nobody seen what we saw either. Nobody cared to ask why Mitch wore long sleeves in the summer time. Nobody cared to ask: Are you okay, today? Nobody listened to him cry on the brick wall after school was over. Nobody wondered why he preferred to walk home, even though his mother was always on time, waiting in the parking lot to pick him up.
Mitch's father was an alcoholic. It was the same old story really. I'm sure we all heard about the abusive parents having way too many. It wasn't the hitting, Mitch complained about. It was the cigarette burns on his skin, the killing of his three year old dog, Puff Daddy. It was the constant belittling of his mother, the excuses, the cover-ups, the maybe-if-I-tried-harders.
During PE, after the broken second chair, I noticed Mitch always doing push-ups during free-time instead of playing with the rest of us.
"You don't want to play dodgeball?"
He breathed slowly through his nose, looking as if the world was on his shoulder. "Playing is not living."
"Living is playing."
He stopped to look up at me. "You tell me if the life I'm living is worth playing."
He waited for my response, but when I opened my mouth silence filled the air. I turned my back, but remembered what the Unfortunate One would say.
"It is better to hope for a better living than to play a game."
"My mother plays the game. She is on time every day to pick me up because she has a fear clock ticking in her mind. One minute late coming in the door, she earns hit to the face. I hope every day the fear clock breaks and we escape. It doesn't happen, so I will break that clock if I have to."
He went back to his push ups. I watched as he went up and down, pumping his arms, determined to stop the clock.
The next day, I joined him.
I did my first push-up that day.
He laughed at me."You have noodle arms and your butt is too high."
"I am trying here."
He pushed my hips down. "Butt down, strengthens the upper body."
He corrected my arms and encouraged me to do more than two push-ups. I accomplished four to his forty.
What I liked about Mitch was he didn't take his issues out on others. He held his smile consistently throughout the day, he was patient with others, he shared his food with Unfortunate Three even if it meant accepting the ride home from his mother to relieve his hunger.
He was a good teacher. By the time Mr. C arrived at our school, I was able to do one hundred push-ups. The day I reached half that, I ran to call Mitch.
It was shortly after Ms. Roberts' chair collapsed. Three days had passed without Mitch. We were getting worried, but I continued to practice my push-ups to show Mitch I had graduated from noodle arms.
On June 4, I worked up the nerve to call Mitch. He had warned me to never call his home on Tuesdays and Fridays because his father did not like to be disturbed during TV shows. So, I waited until June 5th, Wednesday night after school.
The phone rang five times before a person heavily breathing answered.
"Hello? I am calling to speak to Mitch. Is he able to talk?"
Heavy breathes turn into cries. Then a rageful volcano eruption crashes in background.
"BITCH, I SAID NO PHONES. HANG UP THE FUCKING PHONE!"
"Hel--"
Dead dial tone, ringing in my ear.
I was unsure of my next actions, but I knew what I knew about Mitch's home life. I had the information. Mitch warned me. He told me, but I couldn't help the feeling swirling around in my gut that day. Something was wrong. So, I called the cops, reporting a disturbance in the neighborhood, giving Mitch's address. I remembered it from the year before, when we uses to trade jean jackets. The trade was more me taking his jacket and wearing it home but he was nice like that.
On the day I would have called, Mitch stepped between his mother and his father, who was drunkenly holding a wench. The wench was swung, blunt force trauma to the head is what the teachers whispered weeks later. Mitch laid there for a day, breathing helpless, hearing his mothers cries unable to make a decision, unable to choose her son's life over her husband's. She was unable to break the fear clock until it was too late. Mitch tried his best to hang on. I know because he gave his last breath a couple minutes before the police arrived. It was a slow internal bleed, the teachers whispered weeks later.
That summer was a dreadful one. I continued my push-ups, tried to focus on the positives and on the first day of school I arrived to Mr. C class early. I didn't care if it wasn't my first period, I waited.
I waited for the class to begin, participated in introductions, listened to the class overview and when Mr. C finally took a seat in his brand new chair, in which it collapsed, I smiled and yelled: FOR MITCH!
