It was probably a sunny day— most days in Texas are sunny days.  Jimbo and I were returning from the grocery store, arms full of brown-paper bags, and only one long city block from home.

The Moody boys whizzed by on their bicycles, 13-year-old Butch pulling a wheelie in the middle of the street, and his me-too sibling, 11-year-old Toffer, and for a few moments it seemed the neighborhood bullies would just keep going.

But like hawks, they circled and returned to their favorite prey.  Jimbo was a year younger than I, small and scrawny due to open-heart surgery the year before.  He had been held back to repeat the second grade, this ghost of a boy.

Butch and Toffer launched their usual taunts.  Jimbo gave them measure for measure and then some because he was bright and articulate for eight.  And I —a girl — pulled at his sleeve.  “It’s only words, Jimbo.  Ignore them.  We need to get home.”

Dad — had sagged from his disappointment; a fragile son and a girl who could not follow in his footsteps on the diamond.  “You throw like a girl, Bitsy” he had complained.  “I am a girl,” I had explained.

Mother—more rigid than he, had demanded I become Jimbo’s guardian, his defender against the Moody’s of the world, and I. . . I wanted Jimbo to shut up, tugging at his sleeve, pulling him down the street, one house, two houses closer to home.

In the distance Mother suddenly loomed, pointing, gesturing.  The words too far away to hear but the insistence loud and clear in her threatening stance and incriminating finger.

I loosed my grip on Jimbo and slammed my groceries to the ground, and in one swift move wrenched Toffer from his bike.  A full six inches taller than I and 20 pounds heavier, he thudded to the ground before I straddled him and began to pummel.

Butch’s whining voice screeched into the air “Don’t hurt my baby brother, don’t hurt my baby brother” but I flailed with that intent, my soft girl fists trying to find something unprotected to smash and bloody and when I tired, Toffer scrambled an escape.

Years later in therapy I cried:  “I was only a girl.  I did not want to fight.” 

In a group therapy re-enactment of the scene, I berated my pseudo-Mother, but suddenly and viciously turned on the classmate playing the role of my Father.  I strode across the room to where he sat and in a strident voice I shouted: “And where were you, you son-of-a-bitch?  Where were YOU when I needed you to protect me?”  From whom?  Not the boys.  Not Butch and Toffer.  “Where were YOU when I needed you to protect me from HER.”