Searching for Abby Fisher

There are people in this world who say they have no regrets: not a one.  That they don't waste time wishing they could take back their mistakes, because of the lessons learned.  That even the lowest and saddest moments are not to be disdained, for it is the entire course of their lives that has made them who they are today.  For the most part, I am in agreement with this way of thinking.  Yet I cannot truly say that I have no regrets.  When I look back, there are many, many things I wish I could change, though they aren't what you might expect.  I don't regret doing the things I believed I needed to do at the time to survive my sometimes difficult circumstances, even though some of them only got me deeper into trouble.  I don't regret showing kindness to anyone, even to those who took advantage of me brutally.  I don't (for the most part) regret my one romantic relationship, even though it left my heart broken.  What I do regret is some of the selfish actions I have taken that have hurt or damaged others, innocent bystanders who didn't deserve to be driven off the cliffs by my demons.

If I could change one thing - only one thing - if I were granted the power to take back only one action, it would have to be the way I treated Abby Fisher when I was in the tenth grade.

Abby and I were in British Literature together, but she was a quiet one, a slender senior with long wavy reddish hair, and I never noticed her at all until the end of the year.  Our last writing assingment in that class, at the end of May, was to write an essay dealing with some aspect of language.  The only requirement was that it had to include a personal anecdote with at least two lines of dialogue.  Within these broad limitations, anything was permissible.  One of my classmates wrote about his irrational unease around mimes.  One girl wrote about being bilingual, and a boy wrote about the etymology and usage of the word "fuck."

The reason I know what others wrote about is that after we turned in our essays, we each had to stand in front of the class and read them aloud.  It's not as if I had talked with any of my classmates about their essays.  I didn't have any friends among them.  I didn't have many friends to speak of in the whole school - or, for that matter, in the whole universe.  And that was the way I liked it.  I didn't need any messy emotional entanglements to bring me down.  Affections of any sort were a liability, a weakness.  I didn't need anyone dragging me into the mud, diverting me from my course.  With my intelligence, I was meant to aspire to better things than mere human attachment.

I wrote my essay on the frustrations of my life as a grammatical purist: my endeavor to speak and write utterly free of any trace of solecism; my audacious penchant for correcting handwritten signs in public places; the way my mother, annoyed with my elitist airs, mockingly suggested that in addition to split infinitives and prepositions at the end of sentences I might wish to eliminate contractions from my speech - a suggestion I met with a wistful, "I've tried."  I concluded in the end that perhaps the most important thing about language was using it to communicate thoughts, not adhering so obnoxiously to the rules.  It was a nice essay, a smart smug little essay, well-written, something a young Henry Higgins might have composed, and I was properly proud of it.

Abby Fisher wrote about how words could hurt.  Perched on a stool not far from my front-row seat, she read what she had written about her emotionally abusive father and how expertly he knew how to tear her down.  As she read about his cruelty, his endless dissatisfaction with her, I could feel the mood in the room shift.  My classmates had listened to my essay with polite interest, but to Abby they were listening with their hearts, with their compassion.  How could anyone be so harsh to this quiet, gentle spirit?

How indeed?  "Nobody wants to hear your whining," I blurted out suddenly.  "If he tells you you're not good enough, it's probably because you aren't."  For a second there was shocked silence in the room, while Abby looked down and fiddled nervously with the papers.  Then came the chorus of outrage.

"Don't listen to her, Abby."

"Quit being mean."

"We love you, Abby."

Oh yes, bring on the outpouring of support for poor weak useless little Abby!  "None of these people really cares about you," I snarled.  "They're just supporting you because it's the nicey-nice sentimentalist popular thing to do.  When push comes to shove no one really wants to hear about you and your stupid little problems."

I don't honestly remember whether I finally stopped because I'd had enough, or because the teacher threatened to call a proctor and send me to the principal's office, or because the bell rang.  I do remember that I spent the rest of the day huddled shamefast in my little cloud of self-righteousness.  I knew I had been cruel, and I felt awful about it, but I'd be damned a thousand times before I was going to hang my head and admit that I had been wrong.

We finished the essay presentations as the school year wound down to its close, and after a few days everyone's mind turned to other things and I no longer imagined I heard a fresh rustling of whispers when I came into the classroom, no longer felt thirty pairs of eyes boring spitefully into my proud back.  We took our finals, and then we were turned loose into June with its endless possibilities.  If I thought about it at all, I might have felt some relief that I would never have to see Abby again, never find myself face-to-face with the flesh-and-blood reminder that I was neither so noble nor so cold as I liked to imagine by turns that I was.

I would have been wrong.  She was the farthest thing in the world from my mind that summer day when I saw her one last time.  I was walking in the Claremont Village, headed to the library probably, when suddenly she was right there in front of me.  I wouldn't have blamed her, I still wouldn't blame her, if she had looked at me with the purest venom, if she had spat on the ground at my feet, if she had slapped me across the face.  Instead, she blushed a little as she smiled and softly said "Hello."  And then she was gone.

It was a proverb of Solomon, quoted by Paul in his letter to the Romans: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."  With Abby's gentle smile, I was stricken with shame as never before.  I had to admit, in my very heart of hearts, that she was the noble one, the strong one.  I was a bully.  No, there's something about a bully that demands to be taken seriously, at least.  I was just a nasty little shit.

I've never stopped wondering what Abby was thinking in that moment.  Perhaps she was trying to do exactly what she did: take the high road, and in so doing, let my conscience condemn me to myself.  Perhaps she would really have liked to glare or spit or slap, but was too intimidated by me to do more than smile appeasingly.  I don't think that's what it was, and I wouldn't want it to be, but, being a timid soul myself under all my elitist posturing, I know the feeling well and have to admit that it's a possibility.

Perhaps it was neither of the above.  I like to think that somehow in that second when our eyes met, she saw inside me as no one ever had, deep into my raw truth.  I think in my eyes she saw herself reflected: the girl wondering at times if she really deserved to be hurt; if love was always a license to emotional brutality; if the years of torment would ever, ever end.  I believe she understood, truly understood - and therefore forgave - the displaced wrath of one who knew as the school year was ending that she would not even have the sheltering excuse of scholastic obligations to serve as a buffer between herself and her tormentor, looking at someone who knew similar pain but was about to graduate and go off to college and get away from it all.  I believe she understood the invidious trembling that such a one would feel, hiding her anguish away from an indifferent world, watching another speak openly about her sufferings and receive the compassion of others.  I believe Abby decided, in that fraction of a moment, that I was "more to be pitied than censured."

I didn't want anyone's pity, of course, even more than I didn't want their compassion or their sympathy.  Really, I didn't.

My experiment in brutal stoicism lasted a few more years before I abandoned myself to a life of quiet endurance.  I searched for Abby online once, a couple of years ago, and I found pictures of her in a wedding dress.  I haven't been able to find them again.  I hope she has finally found the happiness she so richly deserves.

I hope she's forgotten me entirely.