Dear Bully (8 page)

Being half-Jewish

Being half–Puerto Rican

Not being Jewish enough

Not being Latina enough

Having less money than some of my classmates

Having more money than some of my classmates

Being taller than everyone else

Being shorter than everyone else

Being fat

Being thin

Being top-heavy

Being bottom heavy

Being “religious”

Not being “religious”

Getting good grades in English

Getting bad grades in math

Dating boys who weren’t Jewish

Dating boys who were “too Jewish”

Being a prude

Being a slut

Being a freak

Being a conformist

Loving my parents

Hating my parents

Loving my brother

Hating my brother

Hating myself

Loving myself

There’s a Light
by Saundra Mitchell

I don’t know why I was different. We were all poor. We all lived in public housing. We all walked to school; we all had white-labeled, black-lettered government peanut butter on our sandwiches.

No, I guess I do. I had buck teeth and crossed eyes and a stutter. The eyes straightened out with glasses, the stutter straightened out with speech therapy. Not much to be done about the buck teeth, but the funny thing is, nobody tormented me over any of that.

Saundra has lights.

It started showing up on chalkboards before class. It was written in the bathrooms, on the desks. I heard people whisper it, and whispering is menacing, but mostly, it was baffling. What did it mean?

Maybe I did have lights! If somebody would tell me what they were, I could get rid of them, right? Pinches in the water fountain line, not allowed to play four square at recess, sitting by myself at lunch because nobody would sit with me because

Saundra has lights.

Dodgeball again in gym, glasses broken again—three pairs in a row, until my mom wrote a note telling the gym teacher I couldn’t play dodgeball anymore because I was just too careless with my glasses, which were expensive. So I sat on the side and got hit anyway, and nobody wanted to be out because they’d have to sit next to me, and

Saundra has lights.

I ran away from school. I told my mother it was because people were mean to me, because everybody made fun of me, because I was extraordinarily, completely, and entirely alone. But you can’t run away from school, she told me. I needed to ignore them. I shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a response.

So I put up with it for as long as I could, and then I ran away again. That time, my mother delivered me to my principal, who paddled me. Yes, I got paddled for running away from people who were tormenting me. It builds character, you know.

It wasn’t until sixth grade that I found out what it meant. Dionne wrote, in front of me, on the board while we waited for our teacher to come back from the office—

Saundra has lights.

And then she turned and scratched her head in demonstration.

Lice.
Lice!
I had been teased and isolated and pinched and pushed and building character over an insult they couldn’t even spell! They weren’t even smart enough to spell
lice
, L-I-C-E, lice, lice, lice! I was eleven years old and full to bursting with self-loathing and hatred and they weren’t even smart enough to spell a four-letter word!

It didn’t occur to me how many people must have known it was spelled wrong but just went along. And I learned to just go along, too. By the time I got to high school, I was quiet and odd. I didn’t know how to talk to people or look them in the eye—

Saundra has lights.

So I didn’t, and I managed to unnerve people all the way through junior high, all the way into high school—the place where people still threw ugly words at me, but added their fists to it.

Nobody gently put a hand in the middle of my back at the top of the stairs and pushed.

It was a
pap
, a concussive blow—
pap
into the front of my locker,
pap
at the top of the stairs,
pap
when I was standing too close to the benches in the locker room. I learned to lean against walls and creep down stairs. I learned to be afraid if people were standing behind me. And I believed them when they said if I got on my bus with them, I wouldn’t get off.

I quit going to school. I spent all day—all winter—in homes that were being built near my bus stop. I quit thinking about later and next week and when I grew up. I gave up one Friday night and swallowed all the prescription pills that my mother kept on the kitchen windowsill.

Lights out.

I was fourteen. I was a freshman.

My brother found me before it was too late. He called my mother; my mother called the doctor—they didn’t feed me charcoal; they fed me mustard until I threw up. But we never, ever talked about why I ate those pills.

But I’m talking about it now. Twenty years after my attempt, I realize it’s still happening everywhere, and everywhere people keep wondering how this happens.

Here’s the answer:
learning to fit in, learning to get along, ignoring it
, and
being the better person
don’t work.

Asking victims to save themselves doesn’t work. People need to intervene. They need to give up on disbelief, on stupid, gossamer lies—
oh, it’s not that bad, you’ll survive, high school is only four years
.

They need to start listening. They need to hear us say: It’s
that
bad. Four years is
too
long. It
has
to stop. Putting faith in the idea that it will make a difference—we’re all sharing our bullying stories. This one is mine.

I hope it’ll be a light.

The Soundtrack to My Survival
by Stephanie Kuehnert

In the morning I sit on my front steps and tighten the laces of my Rollerblades. I do this carefully because in the afternoon I won’t have time to make adjustments. As soon as camp ends, I’ll have to slip into them and skate for my life.

The thought makes me queasy, so I pop a tape into my Walkman: Faith No More’s
The Real Thing,
side A.

I am freshly turned thirteen and in love with Mike Patton, the lead singer. He has long brown hair like mine and when he head bangs in his music videos, you can see that his skull is shaved underneath.

I nod my head in time with the driving guitar riff, slap the side of my peach and gray skates, and push off. It takes four songs to get to my junior high.

As my hair blows out behind me, snarling in the wind, I decide to shave the underside of my head, too. I’m sick of the way it knots up no matter how much I brush it, and it’s too hot to have long, thick hair clinging to your neck.

Especially when being chased by a pack of girls who have nicer Rollerblades and longer limbs.

“You want it all, but you can’t have it,” Mike Patton croons into my ears—to me it is crooning, others might view it as shouting. In the video for this song, he stomps around, swinging his hair and glaring intensely at the camera. I don’t just love Mike Patton because he’s one of the hottest guys on MTV. He knows how I feel.

I wanted a torment-free summer. Last year I was still trying to fit in with Liza/Brooke/Dani, the three-headed popular-girl beast from grade school, who accidentally-on-purpose burned my forehead with a curling iron. I’d flinched and that was it: my legs tangled in the hoops they made me jump through once again. When we got to junior high, I gave up and they sprouted new heads—boy and girl heads.

The girl heads shouted, “Freak!” in the hallways because I wore Converse sneakers instead of Keds. In gym class, the boy heads told me that I looked like the guy from the Black Crowes—ugly, flat-chested, and greasy-haired. I hate that band. To get their songs and the beast voices out of my head, I blasted Hole’s
Pretty on the Inside,
side B, Courtney Love shrieking, “Is she pretty on the inside? Is she pretty from the back?”

Summer was supposed to be my time to shine at the theater camp open to students from both of my town’s junior highs. Since the Liza/Brooke/Dani beast wasn’t there, I actually tried out and got a role in
Grease
instead of hiding behind the scenes on stage crew.

I hadn’t known that the beast from Emerson, the other junior high, would be worse.

I arrive at camp with the angry “Surprise! You’re Dead!” blaring in my ears. The drums
rat-tat-tat-tat
like machine-gun fire and Mike Patton screams about torturing someone who wronged him. For a moment I feel strong enough to stand up to anyone, but then I meet the blue eyes of Rachel, the Barbie doll who leads the Emerson girl beast. I scurry inside and try to enjoy the day, rehearsing my beloved
Grease
songs and forcing smiles at the few cast mates who don’t hate me.

I eat lunch with my stage crew friends and go home with one of them after camp. Mia has Rollerblades, too. I warn her that last week Rachel and up to six other girls chased me home every day. Mia believes that since there are two of us, they’ll leave us alone, but I’m prepared.

My Rollerblades are already laced and I have a tape in my Walkman: the Sex Pistols’
Never Mind the Bollocks,
side A. I saw an old live video of them on MTV’s
120 Minutes
. Johnny Rotten is not pretty like Mike Patton, but his snarl makes up for that. When I was in second grade and intimidated by the teacher of my gifted class, my mother told me to “keep a stiff upper lip.”

Stiff upper lip
, I always thought while suffering at the hands of the Liza/Brooke/Dani beast. Now that I’ve discovered Johnny Rotten, I think,
Snarled upper lip
.

Rachel leads a pack of four cackling girls after Mia and me. They all have shampoo commercial hair and curves like high school cheerleaders. I look like a third grader by comparison, but at least I’m fast and so is the music that keeps me moving. Instead of worrying about what will happen if they yank me to a stop with their manicured claws, I picture the kids in the Sex Pistols video slam dancing in big, black boots and the safety pins shoved through Johnny Rotten’s ear. I can barely understand his lyrics because his rage is even thicker than his British accent, but regardless, I think Johnny might understand me even better than Mike Patton does.

“Wow, Steph,” Mia says breathlessly as we clomp through her front door on our skates. “Those girls really hate you. You should have just done stage crew.”

I’ve already explained that my intrusion into the pretty, popular girl territory of acting isn’t the only reason Rachel hates me. She thinks she’s sticking up for a friend of hers who I had a disagreement with last year. She has no interest in my side of the story. The petty argument is grounds for making my summer a living hell.

Rachel and her cohorts twirl in delicate circles on the sidewalk in front of Mia’s house. They catch sight of my pale, sweaty face in the window and laugh before skating off.

I carefully wind the cord of my headphones around my Walkman, still thinking about Johnny Rotten.

I’ve decided that I will get big, black boots and wear safety pins as earrings.

I will learn how to snarl.

If Mean Froze
by Carrie Jones

It is recess and all my friends rush out to play

Freeze tag. I am always brilliant at standing still

As Scott Quinn, Jackie Shriver rush past me—one,

Two, three—until a hand reaches out to tag me into motion

Again, but this day I have to talk to Mr. Q,

My English teacher. A too-good girl, I never get

In trouble, but Mr. Q doesn’t like me, never picks

My stories to read, never picks me to talk

If my hand is raised. He cringes when I speak. Every time

My mouth opens, he cringes. Everyone whispers

About it. Whatever he wants, I know it can’t be good.

Not me alone with him and his porn star mustache and talk radio voice.

My dad has just died. My step-uncle has just touched me.

I am not prepared for even the smallest of blows, but there

He is—an earthquake of a man, always rumbling, always ready

To tremor my life into something that’s just rubble.

“You are here because of your
s
’s,” he says.

My
s
’s . . . My
s
’s . . . My . . . I pick at a hangnail, shift

My weight, look out the window at Jackie running

From Paul Freitzel, laughing . . . laughing . . . happy . . .

Back in first grade, I refused to talk because everyone laughed at my voice, at those
s
’s that slurred around in my mouth and refused to be still, those hopeless, moving things. Jayed Jamison imitated me to giggles, calling me Carrie Barnyard, St. Bernard, pulling my hair, chasing me at recess, knocking me down so my tongue tasted dirt and pine needles invaded my mouth and then he’d start it all over again, hissing
s
words in my ear, sss-sausage, sssss-snake, shshshs-shiver, all those sloshy
s
’s. Everybody just watched. Everybody took tag turns mocking my voice so

I stopped talking. I stopped

Moving my tongue. I gave

Away my lunch, my snacks

Until people loved me too much

To be mean. And slowly

—what an
s
word—

I started moving again, whispering