Smile like you mean it

For months, I quietly held something painful and awful.

I was worried. I was so, so angry. And to make things worse, I couldn’t do anything to improve the situation, because it was not mine. I’d promised not to share.

When your children are little, you can physically extricate them from bad situations. You can separate them from the bitey kid. You can turn down play dates with kids you don’t like.

In short, you have a lot of control over their situations.

Once they’re teens, they live with you, but they have lives separate from you. They’re their own whole humans, navigating the world. You can be there for them physically and emotionally, but you’re no longer right there on the playground or organizing their social lives.

In sixth grade, I made a friend named Jennifer. Her family moved to Virginia after school started. We had the Foreign Service upbringing in common, and we immediately became besties.

One day she really hurt my feelings. I came home sobbing, and was disconsolate for days. We eventually made up and were good friends until they moved overseas a year later. They came back, but we moved to India. It was the olden days, and we stayed in touch with letters.

Both our families were back in the neighborhood just before she and I started college. One afternoon I told my dad I was going to Jennifer’s house. He made a face and said, “DON’T YOU REMEMBER WHAT SHE DID TO YOU?”

And I was all, “In sixth grade?”

Yes. In sixth grade.

We were about to be collegers, and my dad was hung up on a sixth grade fight. I couldn’t believe it. I remembered The Jennifer Incident, but not as a big deal. Which is to say: I got past it, but my dad never did.

So.

This spring, India told us about a toxic situation she’d been in through middle school. She didn’t call it bullying. But she was bullied.

I’d been under the impression she had a kind group of friends. And I think most of the girls are. I think they, like India, went along out of fear.

I don’t know the state of the group now, as they’re going various ways for high school. But there was a Don—pretty, and a sophisticated manipulator—and a Capo, who’s mean girl in her own right.

India said that shortly after my mom died, the Capo told India she was glad her Nana died and that India deserved it.

She said this, verbatim: I’m glad your Nana died. You deserve it.

What. The absolute. Evil.

This girl had been at our house numerous times since they were small. She’d spent time with my mom, who was always around. She knew how close India and Betty were. She knew India was devastated. They all did.

I was like, what kind of person says something this unimaginably cruel? And she was talking about my girl and my mom. I was apoplectic.

Bullies prey on the vulnerable. And oh, India was vulnerable.

I asked India why she didn’t tell me when it happened, and she said because I was doing so badly after my mom died. And then she went to camp, and then I had breast cancer. I was a wreck that entire year.

It’s true. I was. It made me feel so guilty; I wasn’t there for my child.

And then, India said, she just kept waiting for things to get better. It’s such a small school, and friend groups were formed long ago. If she wanted people to sit with at lunch, she had to stick it out.

If we said anything, everyone would know. And the mean girls would be meaner. In her estimation, our involvement would only make things worse.

The Don dictated who was ostracized—sometimes for an activity, sometimes for weeks. For some weeks, it was India. But it varied. The Don would invite every girl except one to do something or tell them who didn’t get to come. She’d tell each girl, “Don’t invite X.”

They’d actually turn and walk away from that one girl, even if she’d asked to join, even if she stood there, watching them go. Then they’d post on social media about how much fun they were having.

Even before she told us, India had stopped doing things with the group outside of school. She didn’t want to ostracize anyone. It was painful and cruel, and she hated it.

The more she backed away, the more left out she was. The more mean comments she got. She felt so bad that she questioned if anyone at school liked her.

I wished India could tell them to fuck off, but she didn’t feel strong enough to say anything.

I kept telling her that happy people do not behave this way. This is absolutely true, but didn’t help her situation. It was brutal to see her so diminished, so fragile.

She repeatedly forbade us from saying anything.

There was nothing we could tell the school—it wasn’t physical violence, where we could point to someone beating up our kid. And if an administrator told the girls they had to “be nice” or some such, it would only get worse.

It was the kind of manipulative emotional cruelty that really messes with a person.

Every day, we counted down to the end of school. Counted down to camp, where she’d be with loving friends who supported her through that brutal summer after her Nana died. Friends she keeps in touch with throughout the year and loves and trusts.

It hurt my heart knowing she was going to school sad and vulnerable day after day, putting on a brave face and acting like she was fine. And, as happens, I looked at her and saw myself at her age, small and traumatized, smiling, acting fine for the outside world.

Smile! You’re fine! Fine and fine and fine.

We offered to withdraw her and homeschool her the last months, but she refused. So Nick and I just kept saying: look at the calendar. Only this many weeks, only this many days. But when you’re living through something scary that feels out of your control, days are eternal.

Time, after all, is the longest distance between two places.

My overwhelming emotion was rage. And I felt powerless. It’s a horrible combination. The mama bear urge to wrap my body around her and maul anyone who tried to hurt her was fierce.

(Violence is never the answer—I believe this wholeheartedly. But I’ve learned that in spirit, I’m a vindictive Texas cheerleader mom.)

So. Middle school finally ended and camp began. India had an incredible summer, and came home feeling good about herself. She’s back to her glowy self, and with enough distance that she’s fine with me writing this.

I’ve been talking about her situation, and it turns out this kind of sneaky manipulative bullying is insanely common. And nobody I know knows what to do when it happens. One family sent their daughter to boarding school.

India and Jordan begin high school together tomorrow. She has friends from other middle schools who’ll be attending. For the first time, she’ll be in school with her lifelong bestie. She’s actually excited for school.

I’m here to support her, but she has to figure out her own boundaries and what she will tolerate. This spring was a hard reminder that her life is her life. She’s my heart walking around outside my body. I’m her mom, but I can’t live for her.

I’ve long known that if someone hurts me, I can forgive them—for my sake if nothing else. It doesn’t mean they’ll have access again, but I can let it go.

But if someone hurts someone I love? I know now that my dad carried The Jennifer Incident with him all the way to the other side.

Forgive? Forget?

Never.