It seems that offending one another is part of the human experience and can’t be avoided. People start doing it very early in life. Some even enjoy it. Consequentially, all things being fair, exacting Revenge may also seem a legitimate response to it.
So, if someone, a person or pet, takes retribution on your behalf for an offense against you, would it be considered Revenge?
Given that, supposedly, “revenge is a platter better served cold,” If such retribution is an act of spontaneous, bestial aggression, would the act disqualify it as Revenge?
Let’s find out.
My first encounter with Revenge happened when I was seven or eight years old. At the time, for eminent domain reasons—to make room for progress—we had to relocate from our home near Avenue Venezuela. We had to move fast. Everyone was in a pickle, having to find quick shelter.
My mom heard of a farmer nearby, Don Valentin, who was selling parcels. He proclaimed himself to be the owner of all the land behind the cooking oil- -processing factory, La Fabrica, all the way down to the ship-repairing dike by the banks of the Ozama River. He decided that it was “his” land even though he did not have a piece of paper to prove it. In fact, the land was state property. But as with all things Dominican, who cared? He had been working in those fields for who knows how long.- Probably since Columbus times-. Thus were “his”. It was obvious that he was heir to runaway African slaves living anonymously on the outskirts of the city.
My mom quickly purchased a small lot, a few kilometers from the Avenue, for five hundred pesos. It was a small parcel, probably one-third of an acre. I soon discovered a new facet of my mom’s attributes: I did not know she was such a builder. She quickly hired some guys and started imparting instructions about the home she wanted to build. It was even more comical, given the hard-core macho mentality of those years, to see my four foot-eleven, petite-framed mother dealing with these guys. She managed to have her opinion heard by the construction guys. She was forceful and authoritarian, never obnoxious or nasty. It turned out that she was really a good builder and had tremendous mechanical comprehension. She liked to brag that she learned to work carpentry with my grandpa Chico, who was a master of all trades.
Thus, my four foot eleven mother became the Architect, site engineer, master builder, and annoying supervisor of the construction of our new home. Just like her father had done in the past, she designed a long rectangular wooden structure, exactly the type built in those days, made from two-by-fours and longboard wood sidings. The roof was constructed of corrugated tin roof, and the floor was a cement floor. She designed it with a front door and a rear door. It also had four windows, two on each side of the house. Essentially, the house consisted of two big rooms, moonlighting as bedrooms, living room, and kitchen. The bathroom was an outer house. It was meant to be a temporary house. Well, we stayed there for almost four years.
We were adjusting well to our new humble living. I was going to a private school right off the street that took me home by Avenue Venezuela. ” La Escuela de Dona Cacha“. I loved the little place. It was more of a big house than a school. The old lady who owned the place, Dona Cacha, inherited the home after her well-positioned husband died. She decided to turn it into a school. I loved it because it had a very large yard, where our recess break took place. It became our make-shift baseball field. Routinely, we would start a game by playing two innings before class, then two or three more innings during recess, and finally, we ended the game after school. I have nothing but good memories of Dona Cacha’s school. She was a stern old lady, but the place felt like a loving extension of home. Kind of home away from home.
One day, I went home from school and was hit with a surprise. A cute puppy. I immediately fell in love with him. I named him Fido. He was a beige-colored, flappy-eared puppy, a mutt retriever mixed with who knows what else. He was gorgeous, playful, loving, and mischievous. He had a problem, though. He loved eggs.
Given that we did not tie up the dogs, they roamed around and came and went as they pleased. Fido soon discovered the taste of eggs from the neighbor’s yard. The cross-sighted lady next door, who owned the egg-laying Hen, quickly complained to my mother.
My mother blew her first complaint off easily and kept her quiet because the double-sighted woman had not seen Fido eating the eggs. However, my mother promised her that, just in case, we would take better care of my dog. Easier said than done. It turned out that Fido got to taste eggs and was hooked on it. He became “Un Perro Huevero“. My evil grandmother immediately offered her unsolicited wisdom. “You know,” she said to my mother -obviously in Spanish-. “That dog es un Perro Huevero”. She then peppered it with a quote from her hometown in the countryside: “El Perro Huevero siempre mantiene su vicio, aunque le quemes el hocicco siempre vuelve a comer huevo”. Basically, doggies that like eggs always keep their addiction, even if you would burn their snout. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.” Little did I suspect that she was egging on my mother to get rid of my dog.
A few days later, there was no more hiding it. Fido was un Perro Huevero, and the cross-sighted neighbor brought proof in her second complaint. She had been spying on Fido with her powerful double vision and caught him in the act. My mother could not justify it any longer. Anyway, the severely cross-sighted lady had a beef against me after I had daringly asked her if she saw doubles.
A week, maybe less, later after her complaints, I returned from school, and as soon as I got home, as it was my custom, I looked for Fido. “Mami, where’s Fido?”. I yelled for him, thinking that he was hanging out in someone else’s yard, “Fido, Fido, Fido!”. My mother then abruptly said, “I gave him away.” She did not even soften the blow. In her characteristic way, she just gave it to me straight. It was like whenever she was giving me a nasty med, “P.R. pinch your nose, hold your breath, and take a big gulp.” -In Spanish, obviously-. I was devastated. She got rid of my best friend. I loved that dog.
My mom must have been guilt-ridden because a few weeks later, a new dog appeared in our house. We named him Nino. Of course, he was also a mutt, but he was full-grown. No one could tell how old he was, but he was not too old. He was black and white, with pointed ears and a black snout. He stood like a champion even though he weighed not more than fifty pounds. He was not Fido, but he had a nice personality too.
Nino later became a legend. He was a stray dog, and as such, he was fearless. He was as irreverent as he was fearless and did not care about strangers’ opinions. Or other dogs. He was vicious whenever anyone he did not know got near us. He put life in perspective for me. He was a free guy. He would come and go from home as he pleased. Nino was never chained up or leashed, as dogs were part of our landscape. They lived their lives alongside us. Even stray dogs wandering the streets, completely strange to you, would go their way, and you would go yours.
The school was fine. I was an okay student, as, frankly, all I cared about was playing. I did not care about classes. But after I dealt a couple of times with my mother’s “helping” methods, I decided to apply myself better and to stay away from her help sessions.
While at school, we did not mingle too much with the girls—we were too busy playing baseball—but occasionally, we interacted with them in the classroom. That’s when I first met this sassy girl. I don’t recall her name. She was brown-skinned, skinny, slightly shorter than me. She was all attitude, always talking. We shared the same classroom, but I never paid attention to her—or any other girl, for that matter. In our radars, girls were non-existent. It was only us, the fellows. And Baseball.
One morning, between classes, out of the blue, she approached me: “Hey, P.R., I know where you live…” I was surprised. “What?” A girl talking to me, what was that about? “Yes,” she explained, “I see you when you go back home. You pass by my house and go back there, behind the Fabrica.” It turned out that she lived by the street leading to my neighborhood. “Okay”, I said timidly. I was really a quiet fellow and very well-behaved -thanks to my mother’s terror-. The sassy girl proceeded in her sassiest, sarcastic, and demeaning way to tell me, “You know, you’re poor.” I was surprised. “Me. Poor!”. She took me by surprise. A punch in the guts. I did not know what to think. I have never heard that before. I did not know what to answer. I could not wait to go back home to ask my mother.
In those days, our lives were like the reels of a movie. Always different scenes, always rolling, always something new. Around that time, we had visitors at home, so running by my mother, the sassy girl’s insult had to wait. One of the visitors was my mom’s nephew, Felix. He was a new arrival from the countryside. He was a young man, probably in his early twenties. The freaking little house and any house we ever owned was like an embassy for all my mom’s relatives coming from the countryside, where they would get free asylum. Luckily, we always lived in homes with a lot of rooms. – I guess for that reason-. It turned out that the visit of Cousin Felix was a brief one.
He was assigned to share the by-default visitors’ bedroom with another cousin who was already staying there. Given that around the time of his visit, we had not connected to the electric grid, we had to go to bed early. It was too much fighting the mosquitos, and there were only so many stories to tell at the flickering light of the Kerosene lamp. My evil grandmother had a knack for telling spooky tales. Her whisper-like, sinister voice and her cold delivery, mixed with the shadows emitted by the lamp, made me imagine all kinds of devils lurking by the shadows. I often had nightmares.
The lamp was running out of Kerosene. So, light outs, time to sleep. It must have been ten to fifteen minutes after we had to go to bed when suddenly, a rotten egg smell, like aged Limburger cheese, invaded the house. Almost at the same time, we exclaimed, “Phew!… what’s that stench?”. My evil grandma said, “Fo, carajo!…! Felix, is that you?”. We discerned that it was the stench of some seriously stinky dirty feet. The cousin Felix had a terrible odor of death in his feet. It was the stench of rotten eggs and pungent cheese. They made him wash his feet in the dark. A couple of weeks later, I came back from school, and he was gone. Years later, my mom told me that she used as an excuse that he was trying to hook up with some married woman in the neighborhood to kick him out of the house. She also had to get rid of the bed he slept on. The dude really stunk.
Finally, I was able to discuss the poverty issue with my mother. I never thought of myself as poor. I was an overfed, chubby kid who had more toys than the rest of the kids in the neighborhood. Thus, I could not possibly be poor. Well, my mother explained to me the temporary nature of our misfortunes, and that soon, it would all change. We would be getting a brand-new apartment.
My mother’s explanation was good enough for me. But the girl kept on calling me poor a few more times as we ran into each other in the classroom. I started hating her. I was harboring an intense desire for retaliation. Unfortunately, each time I went to school, I had to go by her house. Her snooty look followed me. I would look back. We would look at each other. I guess some unspoken rivalry developed between us. I reasoned that if she thought herself better than me, why would she bother with me? Unless…
Also, the girl’s family had a big dog. He always barked whenever we passed by. I hated her dog, too. He was a mutt, of course, but mixed with Labrador and who knows what else. He was light beige or tan colored, possibly ninety or one hundred pounds. He was big and had a thick, deep bark. I used to walk by the sidewalk opposite her house. Just in case.
One night, around 7 pm, we were returning from hanging out by Venezuela Avenue. It was all of us, my cousins, my mom, and her mother. And our dog Nino. We walked in the middle of the street because that is what you’re supposed to do at nighttime -so no one would jump you from an alley-. We were like fifteen yards near her home. And there she was. All of them. Her folks, her sisters, and her mean dog.
Suddenly, her mean dog noticed Nino and started barking. But he did not step away from them, but a couple of feet. I suppose that he wanted to stay in the comfort of his home. We startled. “Oh shit! There’s a big dog there”. Now, we were in a predicament because they did not seem interested in holding their dog, and we knew Nino. He did not back away from a fight. Long and behold, Nino sprang like a raging bull across the street onto their porch. All the girls screamed at once. What ensued was legendary. We were deathly afraid for Nino. The mean dog was almost double his size. The lighting was poor, but it was a clear night.
Unfortunately, in those days, cell phones had yet to be conceived. I could not record the fight. We witnessed the most terrifying yet beautiful dog fight. Nino was biting the hell of the larger dog. What Nino lacked in height, he exceeded in aggression. Because he was not a stranger to street fights, he delivered handsomely. He attacked the big dog relentlessly. All I kept on seeing was black and white tumbling all over the big dog. The girl, my nemesis, and her sisters, her whole family were screaming, “Get that dog out. He’s gonna kill Bobo!”. Nino was messing up their dog, Bobo.
Their big dog was whimpering after Nino was done with him. Luckily for Big Bobo, my mother screamed with such authority that Nino obeyed and came back to us. Nino was determined to kill that dog. I can tell that for him, it was personal. Somehow, Nino knew that girl was messing with me, and he decided to settle the score. He was clearly avenging me.
I went from being terrified of Nino’s fate to being static with joy. We were victorious! I felt indescribable joy in my heart. I knew that it was not cool to bask in others’ misfortunes, but I licked my lips with delight and flavored Nino’s victory. Revenge has been exerted!. We continued our march home. The sassy girl and I looked at each other one last time. I looked at her with the most vindictive smirk on my face. She looked down. Humiliated. Aaah, sweet Revenge!
From that night one, she never messed with me again. No more sass. No more nasty poverty comments. I continued walking to school by her home but never saw her outside. Or her dog. Maybe because Nino accompanied me to school. He was so awesome that he knew his way back home from my school. He was truly a lord of the street. I wish I had his confidence. He knew how to handle himself.
In the end, we finally moved out of there, as the government promised. I left that school and never again saw that sassy girl. Nino survived a couple of hits by cars and lived longer than twenty years. He never lost a fight. He was legendary.
Thank God he never visited a Vet or ate dog food.
I’m forever in Nino’s debt. May him eternally RIP.
P. R. Thompson
June 9, 2024