Karma by Diane Godfrey-Doherty (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

other day, so there would be a day to rest at home and try to forget about the first day and how bad it went. By the time I had to go back my Momma hoped I would be ready to give it another try. My Momma said she would help me feel stronger, and encouraged me to make at least one true friend. So I was determined to make at least one friend, one true friend that was all I’d need. “I’m ready; I’m prepared for the challenge Momma.” “This day will be different and if it’s not, I’m not gonna let it make me into a cry baby.” “Or at least no one will see me cry.” “I’m really gonna try my hardest.” “I know you will Karma; I know you can do this.” “But remember I will be there for you when the day is over and that I love you.” My mother was always good for that. Telling me she loved me and that she would be here for me but I knew my momma didn’t really know what to do either when it came to being bullied. Me too momma, I told her.
The next day was different right from the start. Mrs. King had everyone sitting waiting in the coat area. And once everyone had on their indoor shoes and was ready to start the day she just stood there looking at all of us until we all stopped talking. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize that she was staring and waiting. I had no one to talk to so I just sat still and kept my eyes on Mrs. King and waited for her to start the day.
All right children, hush up now and listen very carefully. Everyone sat in silence watching Mrs. King pace up and down the corridor of the coat area as she spoke. I will not have a repeat of Monday, I will not have anyone say or do an-y-thing! That will hurt someone else’s feelings. Today we are going to learn what it is like to care and what it feels like to be hurt so that we all know how it makes us feel. We are going to talk about what happened on Monday and why we should not behave the way that Freddy and Billy did. Mrs. King took a long look at Freddy and Billy as she spoke their names and many other students turned to look at them to. This made Freddy feel uncomfortable and he couldn’t help but look down at his feet while she continued to talk. So today everyone we will now go into class and sit in a circle on the carpet, I will be putting you in groups of two and then we will begin.
Once on the carpet everyone settled down, Mrs. King made the groups of two and I was Freddy’s partner. Somehow I had a feeling that was gonna happen, Freddy didn’t say a word he couldn’t even look at me but I didn’t want to look at him either. Mrs. King said this exercise would be good for us and maybe we might even become friends, Freddy and I. Well I doubt that, but I know what I told my mother this morning and I was gonna really try.

Chapter 3

The sweet smell of late summer faded into crisp autumn as October was in full swing. Things for the most part had settled down at West Park Public School. I would spend most of my free time during recess helping in the library or helping Mrs. King clean up our class. I still didn’t have anyone to play with outside in the yard and I felt better indoors where I could be needed by my teacher. I felt excepted there and not judged. Adults were so different, almost kinder than the kids on the playground. But I did occasionally come across a mean teacher who would just bark orders at me and make me feel intimidated. But I knew I wasn’t the only one getting the brunt of that nasty behaviour. So it didn’t sting that deep. I never did become friends with Freddy but he was nicer to me and he didn’t say mean things anymore. Once he learned that hurtful things could hurt him too, he seemed to soften up a little. Most of the kids just played with the same kids every day. I was so scared to make any new friends I just kept to myself for the most part. I would see my sister Lucy at school only once in a while when she stopped by the kindergarten class to help at lunch time. She always made me feel special because she would sit with me and we would talk just the two of us. I liked that time with Lucy. But when she was at home sick with the flu I missed her a lot during lunch. Every day I felt alone in a class full of children, they would be nattering and laughing away about something and I would just stare at them. Sometimes if someone caught me staring, they would snap at me to look somewhere else, or tell me I was being weird or something. I felt a sour empty squeeze in the pit of my stomach most days and the same emptiness that I felt when my grandmother had died and I realized I would never see her again. Such a lonely dark empty feeling would creep up on me almost every day I had to go to school, I thanked heaven it wasn’t every day of the week. Would this be what school is like for me, alone and lonely looking for a place to fit in, looking for friend? I wondered. My mother began to tell me the best friend a person could ever have, was themselves. So that’s just what I did. I was my own best friend. Well my teddy and the stuffed rabbit my Momma made for me when I was born were my best friends. When I started to talk I tried to say bunny but it sounded like bubby, so my bunny‘s name was now Bubby. And this is all I had to sooth my loneliness of wanting to just have a friend. My sisters and brother were always around but we were only as close as regular siblings usually got. Lucy and Jennifer are older and it wasn’t long before they became interested in boys and were no longer interested in little sister stuff. But I still had Liam and Katie the twins. Katie loved to play babies and house with me. It was so much fun playing dress up with Katie, but most of the time Liam came in search of her to do something else. Katie would sometimes go with Liam but most times she’d stay doing what we liked to do. Things changed a lot around my house as everyone grew up and started doing different things and being interested in different stuff. But I loved my sisters and my brothers even though the boys were icky sometimes and want to play with worms and stuff. Matthew was 16 by the time I completed my first year of school and so mom and dad said he could now babysit us if they went out. I wasn’t so sure about that. Matthew’s head was always buried in some XBOX game; I don’t think he’d even hear if the house exploded.
Well at least we had Jennifer who had just turned 14 two weeks ago. I think at times she was more responsible than Matthew was. Well I heard Jennifer telling Matthew that girls are smarter than boys, and I think it’s true.
Some days my tummy was all in knots and that sour feeling in my stomach would be there long before breakfast. I knew momma would make me go to school and face the world as she said it, but on those days I just really didn’t want to. I really didn’t see how I was going to make it though the day, through the long, long, lonely day. I knew today would be no different than the last, and that if Lucy were away again I might end up eating my lunch in the girl’s bathroom stall just so that I could be alone and not see everyone else in my class laughing and talking and being friendly with everyone else but me. I knew I was different but I had feelings that were the same as them. Didn’t the other kids ever feel this way? I wondered these things when I was alone in my silent world during 9 am and 3:30 pm. Come Friday at 3:30 in the afternoon I wouldn’t give those kids another thought until Monday morning and my week of silence would began again. I would often try to sneak my stuffed bears that I named Bunny and Teddy into school with me just so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. I knew that if I hid them in my packsack I could bring them out at lunch when no one was around to see. And just knowing they were here with me in the classroom, helped me to feel less alone.
My first year past much quicker than I thought and when summer came I was so happy to be away from school and all the kids who where there. Some kids like Billy Hamilton couldn’t help themselves but to pick on me from time to time, and I always felt sad because no one ever wanted to play with me during recess. It was a very lonely time for me. I spent a lot of time reading books and getting lost in fairy tales. Soon I found myself looking forward to having time alone to read so that I could get lost in the fantasy of what I was reading. I would pretend to be one of the characters, usually the one that was the most pretty or popular. Even though I was just finishing grade one I could read better than many grade three kids. I was already reading short chapter books, with lots of pictures. But they were still far more advanced than some of the books my classmates were reading.
If they were reading at all. I looked forward to summer time, because I was sad a lot of the time during the school year. But when summer came I didn’t want to be sad anymore. This was time for me, my brothers and sisters to have all day to do whatever we wanted to do and we would do it together. I loved my family, and they loved me and I didn’t feel so lonely then.
Every summer Momma always wants to plant a vegetables garden in the far back of our yard. We have a lot of property and when my Grandpa built this house many years ago he also built a small tree fort in the large willow tree near the garden. During summer days Lucy, Katie and I would go up there and claim it as our girls club. No boys allowed, the sign Lucy made, would say, although, we did let David and Liam in all the time. A lot of time I would