Dear Mrs Copley

It is nearly forty years since you were my teacher, a role that made you responsible for my wellbeing as well as my learning. And nearly forty years later, I still feel freshly the humiliation you put me through when I was in your class.

I am not sure what I did to deserve your ire on that particular day. Yes, I was messing around but so were my classmates, and I wasn’t behaving more poorly than they were. But you focused in on me for some reason, and decided it was me that needed to be taught a lesson. So you turned to the blackboard, raised your white chalk, and in nice big letters that were clear for all to see, you wrote the words ‘Suet Dumpling’.

The eyes of the classroom followed you as you turned to me and asked if I knew what it was. The class’s eyes turned to me and watched as I shook my head, slowly, not sure where the question was leading. Eyes turned back to you again and watched as you spat out the answer. ‘That is you,’ you said, your face twisted and your voice fierce. ‘YOU are a suet dumpling!’

Nearly four decades have passed, yet I could still cry about it. Not the tears of an adult but the tears of the child caught in that moment. But I didn’t cry at the time, which might be why they’re still stored in me now, ready to well up with the memory. I had to be brave. I couldn’t be weak in front of you, in front of the class, so I held them back. And I never breathed a word about the incident after that day, not even to my parents. Not until years later. I was too ashamed. I blamed myself. I must have warranted being spoken to in that way.

But, did I? Whenever I think back on it, questions flood in with the pain. Why did you do it? What right did you have to make me feel worthless? What had I ever done to you? I was only eight or nine at the time, and you were my teacher. Was it really appropriate for you to talk that way to a child?

It feels stupid to still be hung up on it after such a long time, but it continues to confuse me to this day. Yes, I was a fat, but was I that disgusting to you? You appeared so repulsed by me. Of course, I was well aware at the time that my fatness was disliked by the world, but that dislike was especially surprising coming from you, because you were fat yourself. That is what puzzled me most about the whole thing. You were fat, too, yet you ridiculed me for being the same.

Maybe you hurt me like that because you had been hurt too. The bullied tend to become the bullies, right? Maybe that’s what happened to you. Someone made you feel worthless because of your weight. Someone called you a suet dumpling and it hurt you, and you wanted to hurt me in that moment, so you seized on the same tactic because you knew first-hand it would work.

Who knows? I don’t, and it is too late to ask you because you have passed on. But I wonder sometimes if that incident stayed with you long afterwards as it did with me. I wonder, too, if you regretted your behaviour but never got to make up for it. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that to be the case, because I don’t know if I will ever forget that experience but I know I have to forgive it. I hope you are resting in peace.

Nazira