Odd Girl Out (10 page)

Finally, at the end of fifth grade, Petra told the school counselor that they needed a break. "I said to [the counselor], she can't be the only one to carry Samantha. It's not fair to Annie." (Petra did not tell Annie about her intervention until our interview.) Petra discovered only then that Annie was not Samantha's only target. Between third and sixth grade, several mothers had asked the counselor to separate their daughters from Samantha.

In sixth grade, Annie had an autograph book that she asked her friends to sign at the end of the year. Most kids wrote in their favorite color or movie, and then they wrote what they liked about Annie. "What I like about Annie is that she's so tall," Petra remembered. "What I like about Annie is that she likes to talk on the phone." And Samantha? "What I like about Annie is that I don't really like her and she's really a bitch. What I like about Annie is that we get in fights all the time but she's still my best friend and I like the fact that she gets over the fights."

Annie was so afraid of isolation that tolerating abuse felt like her only option. She also loved her friends. Like Vanessa, Annie tried to please her friend at any cost, wanting only to save the relationship. Her unremitting focus on staying friends with Samantha allowed abuse to take over the friendship.

With meanness so intermixed with friendship, Annie lost the capacity to tell the difference. Consider Annie's incisive description of Samantha's behavior: "This was her way of saying, 'I am your friend and I like you.' I think she was trying to keep the friendship just as she could have it."

The plight of girls who are targets of relational aggression is usually the hardest to address. When family members know about it, it's often difficult to comprehend a girl's refusal to resist. Annie remembered one night "so clearly. I was crying my head off, going, 'I don't know what to do. I can't do this.'" Annie's brothers were kidding around, and perhaps a little exasperated. They asked, "Why don't you just go over there and beat her up? You're ten times her size."

"They were like, 'Go kick her ass!'" Annie said wistfully. "But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't just go over and be like, 'Hey! You know what? I don't like the way you're treating me.' I just felt so insecure. I was crying so hard." Annie recalled sitting in the family room, not knowing what to do. "I was nine then—for a nine-year-old girl to be having to go through friendship struggles already, it's ... it wasn't just like, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' It was, 'I don't want to be your friend.' To have that thrown in your face all of a sudden is just so difficult for someone so young, and someone who really thinks that friendship is important."

 

Our culture's limited understanding of female aggression and intimacy makes it hard for girls to deal with their peer relationships in healthy ways. Most damaging is girls' inability to identify what Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown call "relational violations," or dynamics of meanness or abuse.
¹⁹
Without an understanding of their unique experience of bullying, girls often end up blaming themselves for their own victimization. Consider Annie, whose interview was dotted with embarrassed explanations of how it was possible that she was bullied by someone half her size and a year younger than she.

That girl bullies are often likely to be the most socially skilled in a group complicates matters further. Like the popular girls profiled by researchers, these girls are mature and worldly. Less often discussed, however, is their intensely charismatic, even seductive aura. Girls like these have almost gravitational pulls on their targets. The friendship is mesmerizing, and often the target is gripped by dueling desires to be consumed and released by her friend. The target may rationally understand the relationship's problems, nod in agreement at her parents' entreaties to pull away, and then find herself inexplicably drawn to a bully's side. About a close friend who demeaned her and forced everyone she knew to ignore her, Chastity said, "She's the kind of person that whenever you'd meet her, you'd love her to death. She's the sweetest person. She'd hide her attitude so everybody loved her."

 

NATALIE'S STORY

In Ridgewood, Dr. Laura Fields, the city superintendent of schools, led me through a multipurpose room teeming with children lining up to leave. She strode confidently between the long brown benches, stopping to chat with students here and there: "How are you!...Good to hear it!...Now, don't you think you should close your backpack before you get on the bus? That's a good boy.... What a lovely dress!" Some of the kids waved shyly. Others just stared.

Outside at the football field, I marveled at the crowd already gathered. This was the spiritual center of town. Football was just about religion here, and it was common for town residents, even those without school-age children, to drive forty-five minutes on the interstate to fill the stands at away games. Laura led me up through the bleachers, and I could feel people watching me. After we found seats, Laura began chatting with someone while I sat by awkwardly, queasy as I felt the bleachers sway.

The bleachers creaked as a woman plunked down next to me. Short and stocky, with dyed red hair and acid-washed jeans, a cheerful, hearty voice rose up from her belly. "I'm Susan Patterson, how're
you.
I'm real excited for you to speak with my daughter, Natalie." So much for blending in. She turned intense eyes on me and gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder, guy-style. "I think she'd be good for you to talk to."

Natalie seemed less sure. In the days that followed, I said hi to her at school and got little more than a fleeting look before her pageboy hair swung back toward the floor, her locker, anyplace that was not me. I wondered if her mom was forcing her to meet with me.

The day of our interview, I slid into a desk next to her. Natalie was thirteen years old and in the eighth grade. She was wearing blue jeans with a matching jacket and a white T-shirt underneath.

Today Natalie would introduce me to a secret, repeat-offender girl bully in Ridgewood. She was the last one you'd pick in a lineup: picture your typical girl-next-door cheerleader captain. Reese had straight A's, a ponytail that swung like a metronome, and a face that would make Scrooge smile. I was introduced to her mother early on, a charming woman with a quick laugh and a reputation for being at the center of all things off the record in Ridgewood.

Natalie grew up with Reese. Their families had been friends, and the girls started playing in preschool. Natalie felt almost worshipful toward Reese, who always had a new game to pretend. She adored the time spent at Reese's house, which always felt more crowded than it really was.

In third grade, Reese started telling Natalie stories about having a brother who died or a pet that didn't exist. She'd come over to Natalie's house and criticize her outfits and the pictures on her bedroom wall. Natalie was hurt but figured if she changed her clothes and stripped her walls, Reese would stop. She didn't. At school, Reese started pretending Natalie wasn't there when they were around other girls, even though at home they were still best friends.

Reese was the girl version of the stealth bomber: she flew low and she was in and out before anyone knew who did it or what happened. Spectacularly sweet, she was one of the first to spring to mind when teachers ticked off a mental list of girls with good reputations. Which made her the last person most people even thought to look at. "She made good grades and didn't talk out in class," Natalie explained. "The teachers saw, oh, Reese and Natalie are friends, so they'd put us together in groups in class. We were quiet and we'd tell each other things."

But whenever they were grouped or paired together, Natalie clammed up. Reese berated and teased her. "I'd be the quietest girl in the grade because I didn't speak out," Natalie said. Although she had once loved to read aloud from her journal in class, Reese began exchanging looks with other girls, so Natalie stopped. Meanwhile, Reese projected an image to their peers of harmony and affection. "She was all the time trying to be my friend."

I asked Natalie if she'd ever spoken out against Reese. She looked at me quizzically. "I thought she was, you know, like the world. She was my
best friend.
" She said this carefully, as if English was not my first language. "I didn't—I was just scared to say something to her because I was afraid she'd get mad at me or dislike me and start talking about me even more." The few moments when Natalie or one of their friends showed signs of resistance, "She tried to make everybody think she was just fine and that it was all me coming up with this stuff in my mind." Reese successfully convinced Natalie that she was not strong enough to fight, even if she'd wanted to. "She took advantage of me and I didn't take up for myself," she told me. "I would let myself believe that she was better than me."

That Natalie hid the problems with Reese from her mother was no surprise. Natalie's downcast eyes were a stark contrast with her mother's easygoing, how-ya-doing personality. Sometimes, when her mother asked if school had been good and Natalie said not really, Susan breezed on to the next subject. She was friends with Reese's mother—looked up to her, in fact—and Natalie never thought her mother would believe her. She was ashamed.

In sixth grade, Reese became close with Drew, who had just moved to town. Reese put Drew through an unusually public torture, and Natalie eventually reached out to her. After watching Drew cry every day at school, Natalie tried to show her that she'd felt the same pain. It wasn't easy. "She was afraid to trust me," Natalie said. "And I was afraid to trust somebody at first, too. I thought I'd never trust anybody again because I put my whole trust in Reese. And she just totally went behind my back and talked about me. She told people everything I had ever told her. So I thought I could never tell anybody anything again. I didn't even tell my mama and my daddy anything."

When I asked Natalie if her friendship with Reese affected her in any way, she was modest. "I think it has affected me just a little," she said. "I used to be loud and funny and everything, but now I barely talk. I used to be the funny person with my friends and everyone would laugh at me. I used to stand out wearing funny clothes but I don't do that anymore because I'm afraid that Reese or somebody would make fun of me or talk about me."

"How does that make you feel?" I asked her.

"When I think about it, it makes me feel like I want to just cry. But I don't because I know that if I cry I'm letting her get to me and I just don't do anything." Natalie had befriended new girls and felt a world of a difference in these new relationships. But fear of new confrontations with Reese lingered.

As she sat before me, Natalie's face was anguished, but the pain was hardly fresh. It seemed stamped there. She had been on the verge of tears the whole time we were talking, reporting the facts with clarity and steadiness.

When we were done, I turned off the tape recorder. I told her how strong and wonderful I thought she was, and how brave. Natalie stood quickly to leave, and I felt intuitively that she would go somewhere else to cry. It was all I could do not to jump out of my chair and hug her, but I knew that was not what she needed. It was what I needed. Listening to her was like looking down into a deep well of sorrow, and the memory of Natalie stayed with me long after I left the building.

At 1:15
P.M.
, my first group of eighth-grade girls at Marymount were looking like they might pass out. It was the right-after-lunch-and-I-need-a-nap class period. On the floor, the girls were drooping against one wall, refusing to make a circle, leaning into one another like reeds. It was March, and outside there was a hint of spring. Though it was no more than sixty-five degrees, many were wearing shorts or tank tops.

I pulled out the Oreos, and as if on cue, they sat up and began to munch. Relieved by these signs of life, I began the discussion by asking them to describe the perfect girl. They looked at me quizzically.

"Like in magazines. Movies.
Dawson's Creek.
Stuff like that."

A few hands went up. Hoping to foster a casual atmosphere, I had asked them to speak without raising their hands. Old habits die hard.

"Skinny!" one says.

"Pretty!"

Okay, I thought. And then: "Nice!"

"What do you mean, nice?" I asked, looking up from my notebook.

"She always has friends."

"She never gets in fights."

"Everybody loves her."

So began my understanding of girls' everyday aggression.

"Okay," I said, stalling to think. "So if one of your friends has done something to bug you or make you mad, or sad, do you tell her about it?"

"No!" came a chorus.

"Why?" I asked.

Silence. I waited.

A girl in the corner took a breath. "Because then it's going to cause a big thing."

"What's 'a big thing'?"

"There's going to be a big fight about it," someone else explained.

"Everyone's going to get involved. It's not worth losing your friendship over something small."

"People make stuff up."

"What if," I asked, "you were just telling someone how you felt, because
you
felt bad? You know, to make yourself—your friendship—feel a little better?"

"Then you might hurt her feelings," one said. Nods. Locking eyes.

"Can you tell someone the truth and not be mean?" I asked.

"The truth hurts," a girl in the corner said quietly. "That's why I lie."

 

When I set out to write this book, I sought the stories of women and girls who had been targets or aggressors of severe episodes of bullying. Following the received wisdom of scholars and teachers, I conceived of alternative aggressions as behaviors found outside girls' "normal" social structure. When I met with my first groups of girls, I was broadsided with stories of everyday conflict that bore a striking resemblance to their descriptions of bullying.

Girls don't have to bully, at least as far as we have understood the word, to alienate and injure their peers. In fact, the word
bullying girl
couldn't be more wrong in describing what some girls do to hurt one another. The day-to-day aggression that persists among girls, a dark underside of their social universe, remains to be charted and explored. We have no real language for it.