Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

“Of course you have a bully,” Clarence replied. “Men like us always have bullies. You must think of it as a badge of honor. In fact, I consider it one of my requirements for friendship. I have little interest in the unbullied masses.”

Aaron looked down, scuffing the toe of his shoe along the ground in pleasure.

“Does your bully possess a name?” Clarence asked.

“Yes,” said Aaron. “Her name is Roberta.”

“Ah, a female bully. I have always found female bullies relentless.”

“What does relentless mean?” Aaron asked, adding, “I know it’s an adjective.” He had recently learned about the parts of speech and appreciated adjectives most of all because they were not essential like nouns and verbs.

“It means that quite often there is no dissuading them. Boys, you see, tend to bully for the sheer joy of it and are, therefore, indiscriminate. They are motivated by the pleasure of bringing pain and welcome any opportunity to do so, provided it can be achieved with ease.” Clarence paused. Aaron nodded to indicate his interest in Clarence’s commentary, even if he did not fully understand it. “The female bully, on the other hand, is loyal. It is you she is after, and she will not be distracted by substitutes.”

The bullying had begun in the spring, when the weather turned suddenly and unbearably warm and Aaron and his classmates twitched in their seats and sighed at Mrs. Lindskoog’s demands upon them. For weeks they sat, brains dormant, the air rotten with a smell like turning milk, which was the odor of their bodies ripening in the closeness of the room. Then, on the last Thursday of April, a day on which the superintendent announced over the intercom that the temperature had reached ninety-six degrees, a girl named Roberta Klimek sauntered past Aaron’s desk on her way to the pencil sharpener and delivered a single blow to his right arm. She had not spoken — in warning or explanation — and nobody else seemed to have noticed the attack, the first of what was to become a daily ritual. Soon, both of his arms were covered with bruises, dark like thunderclouds, and he began wearing long sleeves to conceal them, despite the heat. Still, it intrigued him to think of his body creating and hosting such rich, deep colors, and as he got ready for bed he took to standing with his shirt off before the bathroom mirror, admiring the contrast of blues and purples and yellows against his pale skin. It was in this pose that his mother found him one night. She opened the bathroom door, unaware that he was inside, and as she backed out, the flash of color caught her eye.

“Where did those bruises come from?” she asked quietly. His father’s anger had been loud, drowning out everything else. It was only after his death that Aaron realized anger came in quiet forms as well.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“It’s a game,” he said, and having thus committed himself to mendacity, he added, “They don’t even hurt.”

“A game?” she said. “Who exactly do you play this game with?”

“Just some kids.”

“Brush your teeth,” she said at last.

It was working in pairs that had first brought him to the attention of Roberta Klimek, after he had been paired not with her but with Kimberly, the pug-nosed girl who had been a favorite of Miss Meeks. When Kimberly heard her name coupled with Aaron’s, she blurted out, “Can’t I work with somebody else?”

“You can, but you may not,” Mrs. Lindskoog answered sternly, as if grammatical impropriety were the issue. She believed in the benefits of working in pairs, which Aaron dreaded even more than group work, for in groups he could keep quiet and do a disproportionate share of the work while in pairs there was no room for silent diligence.

He and Kimberly pushed their desks together and turned their attention to reading about another pair, Dick and Jane, who were a steady and tedious presence in their readers. After several minutes of boredom, Kimberly announced, “You know that nobody likes you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Miss Meeks didn’t like you,” she tried again.

“I know,” he agreed.

The two of them sat then, books open, neither making further attempts to read aloud, but Kimberly was not content to while away their reading period in a state of benign idleness. She gazed around the room for inspiration, and her eyes fell on Roberta Klimek. “You love Roberta,” she announced with such authority that the other children began to giggle.

Aaron stared down at his book, shocked by Kimberly’s casual invocation of the word love, then peeked over at Roberta Klimek, whose hands lay on top of her reader, twitching like fish too long out of water. As Kimberly continued her taunting, Aaron watched those hands draw together into fists.

Roberta Klimek was large for her age with long, straight hair and a blotchy complexion, a shy girl who carried out her attacks covertly, for she did not crave the fanfare that often marked bullying as a public event, a factor that he soon realized was not in his favor. He began to study her in the same way that she tormented him — furtively and with persistence. He learned that, unlike his other classmates, who settled into one or two “good” subjects and tolerated the rest, Roberta Klimek had the distinction of being poor at everything. She remained steadfastly unable to alphabetize, seemed not even to see the relationship between this skill and the alphabet itself, that series of letters that she had spent kindergarten, and now first grade, struggling to keep in order.

Finally, on a sweltering day in May, Aaron approached Roberta Klimek on the playground, where she stood by the monkey bars, alone like him. “Excuse me,” he said, the first words he had ever spoken to this girl whose fists he knew intimately, wanting to establish himself as a polite boy, a boy who said “excuse me” even to his tormentors, but as Roberta Klimek leaped on him and began to pound him with her fists, he knew that this trait was what flamed her hatred.

His mother was summoned to a meeting attended by the principal, Mrs. Lindskoog, the school nurse, Aaron, Roberta Klimek, and her father, who sat beside his daughter with similarly clenched fists and explained that she was in training. She planned to become a boxer, and he supported her dream. That was the word he used— dream —and Aaron would always remember how everyone looked down at the floor at the very sound of it.

“What can I do?” Aaron asked Clarence as he finished telling the story.

“I’ve never had much success thwarting bullies,” Clarence told him, “though if it’s any consolation, bullies, in my experience, eventually tire of you and move on.”

“It’s time to go,” said Aaron’s mother from the doorway of the sunroom. “I don’t like driving on gravel roads after dark.” It was not yet noon, so her comment made no sense, but Aaron did not say so. “Five minutes,” she said and left.

“Please, Clarence,” he said. “Tell me about Olga’s tale of woe before we go.”

“Impossible,” said Clarence. “Stories should never be told quickly. One must always leave time for creative embellishment and digression, or what are we left with?” He looked at Aaron, who shrugged. “The dreary facts. That’s what,” said Clarence. “And I can assure you that Olga deserves much more than the dreary facts.”

Though Aaron would not grasp until he was much older that Clarence had been in love with Olga, he could see that Clarence would not be convinced to tell the story. Already his mother was yelling, “Right now, Aaron” from the other room, and so he took the handles of Clarence’s wheelchair one last time and pushed him down the hallway and onto the porch, where the four of them regarded one another awkwardly, as people often do when it is time to say good-bye.