This Is Us - Chapter 9: Chapter 9

(Thomas POV)
Together we all get out of the truck, slamming the doors closed behind us as we quickly walk up to the front door of the school and Matty rings the buzzer.
"Lexington preschool, what can we do for you folks today?" A woman's pleasant voice asks through the loudspeaker and Matty puts his hands on his hips, staring into the eye of the security camera.
"It's the Jackson family, we were called about our daughter," He says with such attitude that I naturally wrapped my arm around his waist to hold him back. Scared that the mama bear was going to attack the person who unlocked the door.
"Oh yes, umm, come right in," A loud buzz lets us know we can pull the door and I open it for Luca and Matty, trailing behind them as I did so. A woman stood outside the school's office door and let us in, leading us to the headmaster's room.
"Come in please," The guy calls back and the three of us go in. Finding Jaydean sitting in a small plastic yellow chair with her head down and a social services woman with a clipboard standing behind her.
Matty quickly rushes over to Jayde and gets down on his knees to wipe her boogers and tears with his sleeves without a second thought.
"Jayde? Baby? Are you okay?" He asks and she nods, crying softly as she did but her tears weren't of sadness or pain.
It was guilt.
"She's just fine Mr. Jackson, please sit," the headmaster says as he clears his throat and I reach out my hand to his. He meets it with a strong shake and I nod.
"Good afternoon, I'm Thomas Jackson, the one you spoke to on the phone, this is my husband Matthias Jackson and Jayde's father Wesley Anderson," I introduce the crew in the simplest way possible, using Luca's old name because it was the one on our daughter's file and I didn't want to raise any more suspicions.
Especially not with social services so close.
I looked around the room and quickly realized we weren't the only set of parent's here.
On the other side of the large office sat a large tight-lipped blonde woman with her hair up in a bun and cheap pink lipstick plastered on her thin lips while she snapped a piece of bubblegum.
The person who I assumed to be her husband, stood beside her dressed in a full out camo hunter's uniform and their little boy looked up at us.
Their son's face was covered in cuts and bruises with his eye swollen and his nose bandaged up tight with bloody cotton balls stuffed up his nasal passages.
The headmaster didn't have to explain, I already had a good idea of what happened just by the looks of these hicks and their banged-up son.
But I looked over at my daughter, her arms so tiny and her body so small and fragile that I had a really hard time believing she could punch a kid that hard.
He must have done something to deserve it.
"As you can see, Jaydean's gotten herself into a rather severe one sided fist fight this afternoon on the playground and-"
"He said my baby brother was going to hell!" Jayde called the boy out at the top of her lungs and all of our heads turned towards the little boy so fast that I swear to god, our necks almost snapped.
"He probably is you blasphemous demons!" The mother replies and Matty grits his teeth.
"Don't you dare talk about my little girl in that manner you little white cun-"
"That's enough,"
The headmaster cuts through Matty's defensive roar and he stops.
"Sinve the children are only five years old, everything is he said she said. What we do know for certain is the two children were on the playground and reached a conflict. Your child took it upon herself to resolve that conflict by beating Tommy to a pulp. That's unacceptable and against our code of conduct. Therefore, I'm afraid Jaydean will be automatically suspended for the next three school days and if this happens again she will be expelled. And because Tommy beached our code of respect, he will also be suspended but for one day." He goes onto say and we all nod in unison.
"I wanna press charges!" The woman yells and Matty laughs.
"Do you know who we are?" He asks and the woman stops, eyeing us closely before gasping out and taking a few steps backs.
"Holy shit," She mutters and the headmaster narrows his eyes.
"I don't care who you are, please take your daughter home with you," He says and Luca quickly scoops up our baby in his arms. Letting her hide in his denim jacket as he did so while Matty took a sticky note and wrote down a phone number.
"Here, if you want to press charges this is our lawyer's contact information. You can reach us through him," he says and doesn't even bother handing it to the woman. Leaving it on the desk before catching up to Luca.
I pick up Jayde's backpack off the floor and face the kids family, swallowing my pride.
"I'm sorry this happened to your son and it won't happen again," I reassure them but they just look past me, almost as if I don't exist.
A chill instantly runs down my spine because I fucking know this kind of people.
I decided it was best to walk away and did just that as I closed the headmaster's door behind me. But not before hearing the words "Shameful. I thought this was a religious school?" Said aloud in our absence.
"Fuck all of that," Matty muttered under his breath and I opened Jayde's backpack. Taking out the small poster that was sticking out of it.
"What's this baby?" I asked Jayde as I opened it and she poked her head up from Luca's shoulders with her blue eyes tinted a shade of red and swollen from crying.
"I drew a picture of my family and everyone made fun of me, including that boy Tommy," She said and we all stopped in our tracks.
I opened up the small poster and saw the beautiful stick figure drawing Jaydean must have spent hours pouring over in order to draw us. It was very detailed and under each of us had our nicknames to her as well as three of her favorite things about us.
Luca pressed her head to his shoulder, nodding to the truck and we all made the unspoken decision to regroup in the warm car than have this conversation outside her school in the open.
Luca sat in back this time, holding Jayde on his lap instead of putting her in the booster seat so we could all give her our full attention.
"What did they say to you, baby?" Matty asked as he tucked lose pieces of her messy red hair behind her ear and Jaydean sniffled a little.
"They said mommies are supposed to be girls so my mommy can't be a boy like you," She said and all of us were in shock.
"Then Tommy said TJ's in hell cause I have three daddies and one of them is a nigger. So I punched him in the face cause no one says bad things about my family," She says before she bursts into tears.
Although I wasn't driving, I was gripping the steering wheel so fucking tight that my hands started to ache and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
Never, in a million years, could I imagine that word leaving my daughter's mouth and as much as I wanted to hit little Tommy with the front of my truck, I knew he was just repeating what his parents taught him.
"Jayde, don't you ever say that N word ever again okay? It's a very very bad word," Luca breaks the silence and Jaydean nods.
"I'm s-s-sorry papa, I didn't mean to say it. That's just what Tommy said," She cried and Luca cooed as he rocked her back and forth and bounced her on his knees.
"I know, it's okay baby girl. Just for future reference," He explained but I was still stuck in the same position. Matty put his hand on my arm and gave it a gentle squeeze.
"Thomas?" He calls out to me and I finally rest my forehead on the stearing wheel, releasing my hands.
The anger boiled so deep inside me that it hurt and I let out a long sigh. They disrespected me and as well as my family. I couldn't just let that go right.
"Thomas, we can't do anything. Not with them watching us so closely. They're looking for any excuse to take her away," Matty said and I knew he was right. I felt him wrap his arms around me and a third hand rested on my shoulder.
"And I don't know about you but I also don't want the Klan rally to show up at our doorstep and murder us in our sleep," he adds and for some reason I found his dark humor relaxed me.
They didn't want me to do anything. Fine.
At least my daughter did.
And I was proud.