UNCONDITIONED CHAPTER 18
From Victim to Bully to Victim
While it was too dangerous to take my frustrations out directly on my parents, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Rosen, was a perfect target. She was old, plump, and taught like she was counting the minutes to retirement. When she became overwhelmed, which was often, she shut herself into the supply closet for extended periods. She reminded me of the women on my mother’s side, so I lacked the respect for her that’d kept me so well behaved in fifth grade. I started with minor infractions like throwing paste up onto the ceiling above her desk when she was out of the room. When she returned, sticky blobs plopped, one by one, around her causing her to retreat to the supply closet.
When I didn’t get into trouble for the paste, I ramped up my risk-taking by putting a “kick me” sign face down on her chair. She sat on it unwittingly and it stuck on the back of her skirt when she got up. It jiggled on her barrel bum as she wrote on the blackboard, and everyone laughed until she looked back at us to see what we were laughing about. As soon as she turned everyone abruptly became silent, as though a switch had been flipped. Eventually, the piece of paper fell to the floor, and she bent to pick it up, looking at it for a long time while holding it in her hands. She raised her head slowly, surveying the class, and asked quietly, “Who did this?”
Her feelings were hurt. I felt a confusing twinge of guilt mixed with triumph. I only ever saw adults react with rage, had never been exposed to their vulnerability. I thought to myself, this guilt is the price for being bad and I need to learn to pay it. Everyone was silent, smirks wiped clean, innocence permeating the classroom.
“We’re all going to sit here until one of you comes forward.”
We all sat still, hands folded on our desks, silent. I repeated to myself, don’t be a good girl and confess. No one ratted me out, the bell rang, and she gave up.
Despite my antics, grade six was tough socially. One girl was picked on the most—Stephanie, a quiet, thin girl with dark circles under her eyes. I asked why they (surprisingly not my role models, but the normal kids) were mean to her and a classmate said, “Her breath smells bad because she has to take medicine and she’s Jewish.” I wondered, what was up with the Jewish thing? Jesus was a Jew, so why was it such a big deal for my mother and her sisters and now the kids in school too?
After my experience at St. James, I was petrified of becoming the other class target at Cutter. To prove I was enough like the mean kids to be exempt from their bullying, I made a show of getting close enough to smell Stephanie’s breath. There was a hint of medicine, but her breath wasn’t unpleasant. Stephanie’s and my eyes locked—her hurt, along with my cowardice, pierced my heart with self-loathing. But after having survived Mothers McNamara and Staten, not to mention still coping with my parents’ constant ridicule, I was hypervigilant about not falling prey here. This stance sent me smack dab in the middle of a moral dilemma: Was self-protection more important than doing the right thing? At that moment I decided that it was but pledged to myself someday I’d have courage enough to defend the victim.
When standing in line, inevitably someone would start with crossed fingers and the “Stephanie’s cooties, pass them on” thing. I dreaded this hateful ritual but was too afraid to stand up for her and, as a result, felt unclean whenever this happened because I reluctantly participated. There was a calm, self-possessed girl in my class, Julie, who stepped out of line and stood by Stephanie, holding her hand and staring at all of us with chin-jutting defiance tinged with saintly compassion. This left me feeling even dirtier and more spineless. I envied Julie’s valor in confronting the bullying mob and cringed at my self-protective, mean weakness. Deep down, it was Julie, and not the underachievers, who I’d hoped to emulate, but that would take decades to admit out loud so it could come to fruition.
Every classroom has a teacher’s pet and ours was Brenda, who had long curly hair and big eyes. Her outfits were always carefully coordinated with headbands that matched her plaid kilts, but still she managed to not be cute. A straight-A student, she was plucked out of our room to join a regional class for the exceptional. She’d smile back at us dimwitted ones with victorious sympathy as she left the room. I smelled a rat and decided to pay closer attention. It didn’t take long to discover her cheating on a test with a tiny piece of folded paper with answers stuck up her sweater sleeve. She leaned her head down as though she were inspecting her desktop, flowing tresses forming a curtain behind which she could unfold the answers to fill in the blanks.
Hypocrisy was something I expected from adults but was unnerved to witness Brenda’s desperation for approval from authority because I felt righteous in seeking revenge on it.