Bullyville by Francine Prose Page A

dad used to sing it to me, that’s how I knew what the lyrics were. And when it got to the part about “pop goes the weasel,” this weird clown would jump out of the box. I’d had it for a long time, since I was a baby. At first I’d been scared of the clown, and I’d cried when it jumped out.
    Part of me was aware of the kids banging my head against the locker as they tried to stuff me inside, bending my knees and my elbows so I’d fit. And meanwhile I was thinking how I used to imagine that the jack-in-the-box clown was my friend. I even made up a name for him. I calledhim Acky-Acky. And after he’d jumped out, and I had to stuff him back into the box, I’d say, “Sorry, Acky-Acky. I hope this doesn’t hurt too much, but you’ve got to go to sleep now. Rest in your comfy little box, and soon I’ll play the song again so you can jump out and we’ll have fun.”
    They forced me to my knees and turned me into a sort of package that they could lift and prod and stuff so that I could fit into the locker. And I was thinking about how Acky-Acky finally broke. Some spring must have busted. Because when the song got to the “pop goes the weasel” part, Acky-Acky didn’t jump out. I played it over and over, and finally I pried the top loose so I could get Acky-Acky out, so I could set him free….
    By now I’d somehow fit into the locker, and I heard myself, as if from a distance, saying, “Please don’t close the door, please don’t close the door, I don’t want to be shut up in here, in the dark….”
    But even as I was saying this, I was thinking about how when I pried the lid off, I had to reach in and pull Acky-Acky out of his box, and he justhung there limply, hanging over the side of his little house. It was as if the life had gone out of him. My friend was gone. Acky-Acky was the first thing I knew that had ever died. I cried. Then I stuffed him back in one last time and closed the lid and said a little prayer over him. I put the toy away, and someone—probably Mom—must have thrown it out, because I never saw it again.
    I’d never thought about it until now, when I felt that Acky-Acky was coming back to be with me, to help me. Because now I was Acky-Acky. Just like him I’d been stuffed into a space that was way too small. The difference was that no one was telling me to be comfy, rest, go to sleep, no one was promising to play the weasel song and pop me out again. I thought about Acky-Acky and I felt sorry for every time I’d returned him to his dark little cell, and then somebody slammed the locker door, and I was all alone, in the dark. Inside.
    It was silent and almost completely black. Two razor-thin stripes of light leaked in through the slots in the metal door. The guys, whoever theywere, had gone away. Or so I thought. But I was wrong. Because after a few minutes, I heard someone speaking through the grate.
    Tyro said, “If you tell anyone who did this, I promise—no, I swear —we’ll kill you.”
    And then they were finally gone. I waited for a few minutes, and then—when I knew I couldn’t stand the dark and the closed-in, suffocating feeling one more second—I began to bang on the locker door. I banged and shouted for a very long time. Maybe everyone was in class. No one heard me, or if they did, they pretended not to. Suddenly I got really scared. Maybe there had been a bomb scare or something—like there had been a few times in public school—and everyone had left the building. I even worried that they’d all gone home for the day and I would be stuck there all night, though I knew that wasn’t possible. Only a few minutes had passed since school started, and it was still early morning. Still, I kept banging and banging and calling out, “Help, help!” though it was highly embarrassing to be calling out like that.It felt like one of those