Bullyville by Francine Prose Page A

Bern said, “Only a little white meat for me, please.”
    Everyone looked at everyone else. Only a little white meat, please?
    In fact, Bern took only small portions of everything—which was so totally un-Thanksgivinglike, he could have been celebrating a different holiday than the rest of us. As we loaded our plates and tucked into our meal, Bern lowered his head so near his food that he hardly had to use a fork to lift that scrap of white meat to his mouth. He could have just scarfed it up directly off the dish.
    Gran and a couple of the aunts tried to strike up conversations with him. “So, Bern, I hear you work with Corinne.” “How long have you worked with Corinne, Bern?” How long could Bern have worked with Corinne? Most everyone who used to work with Corinne before September was dead. Anyway, Old Bern could only spare one syllable at a time—“Yes, two weeks”—lest anything get in the way of the teensy, pleasureless bites he was taking, one after another; lest anything interrupt his chewing very slowly and methodically, as if he were scared of choking. Bern took a morsel of stuffing, a dab of potatoes, a mini-taste of Gran’s meatballs and lasagna. And then, amazingly, Bernopened his mouth and spoke.
    â€œWhat was that?” asked Uncle Dan.
    Mumble mumble mumble.
    â€œExcuse me?” said Aunt Barb.
    Bern said, “Do you have any ketchup?”
    Ketchup? At Thanksgiving? Hadn’t this guy ever heard of gravy and cranberry sauce? But what the hell, Bern was the guest. Mom started to get up, but Aunt Grace practically shoved her back into her chair, and returned from the kitchen with a bottle of ketchup, all crusted over as if it had been in the refrigerator for about thirty years. Bern shook it and shook it and then a watery stream emerged. It looked as if someone had been bleeding onto his turkey. And all at once I had the shameful desire to do to Bern what Tyro had done to me, that first day at Bullywell, to shake ketchup all over his food until his plate was a sea of red.
    All at once, I knew what bothered me so much about Bern. He didn’t just remind me of the geeks I rode to school with. He reminded me of me . He reminded me of me at school, the person I becameas soon as I walked in the front door of Bullywell Prep. No one knew him, no one liked him, no one knew anything about him, and at the end of the day, no one would.
    I knew that should have made me feel sympathy for Bern, who was suffering, like me. But the truth was, it made me hate him. It made me wish he would just get up and leave Gran’s house immediately. So I guessed I wasn’t becoming the kind of person Dr. Bratwurst wanted us to become—full of compassion and heart. Whatever was happening to me at school seemed to be hardening my heart instead of softening it, shrinking it instead of making it larger. I couldn’t stop thinking about that, couldn’t stop feeling my heart clench and grow smaller inside me. And somehow that made me sadder than anything else. I had changed, I had really changed. And not for the better.
    Then I thought of Tyro, and I wondered about his Thanksgiving. I imagined silver and fine china and a gleaming mahogany table surrounded bysuper-uptight, superrich relatives not talking to each other except to say, Pass the canned peas, Pass the skim milk, Pass the white bread. Maybe he had a rotten family, maybe that was why he was so mean to me. There had to be some explanation. But I didn’t know that for sure. All I knew was that his dad had tons of money. Maybe his family was wealthy and loving and warm, maybe he tortured me for me no reason except that he liked the feeling of making other people miserable, and he could do it and could get away with it and not have to pay the price.
    Less than five minutes after the coffee cups were cleared, Bern thanked everyone and excused himself and left. It seemed to me that everyone heaved a huge sigh of