Sandwich Day Narrative

I
Thursday is ice cream sandwich day. All of 4th grade lines up along the brick wall by the school kitchen doorway. Each small hand clutches three neat quarters, pressed into sweaty palms. We are whispering about all the swear words we know. Damn, is only a kind of bad one. Hell, can be a bad word, but sometimes Kyle’s priest says it at church, and priests don’t say bad words, so maybe it isn’t bad? Hannah’s older brother said “Shit” last month, and that one was definitely bad. She knows another word, but this one is so bad that she can’t say it. She says, “It’s like ditch but with a B in front. It can mean female dog or be a bad name.” She whispers the letters “B-I-T-C-H” into my ear. We are scandalized by such spellings in the air, and giggle

It stings like a brand, burns my ears, and the fire creeps up the back of neck. This attack wasn’t on my idea, it was on me. The humiliation and fury over a word I still don’t fully understand fills me with sad indignation.

II
The word keeps coming. It slaps me in the face again and again. It’s directed at me by family members, classmates, and strangers. Each time I hear the word, it still bites. I hear it in the hallways of my middle and high school. The word is lobbed out against female friends, my girl classmates, my woman teachers, and me.
She wouldn’t even make out with him after that. Bitch.
She never shuts up. Bitch.
She’s always trying to get her way in our group.

Are bitches mean? Angry? Passive? Assertive? Are they old? Young? Hot? Ugly? There’s no rhythm to it. It seems almost anyone can be a bitch, any woman that is, who does something other than what those around her want or expect.

Soon other words join Bitch. Kayla’s a “whore” because she’s slept with too many boys. Casey’s a “prude” because she wouldn’t sleep with Max even after they dated for half a year. One of my best friend’s asks me out. I turn him down, I don’t like him that, I explain. A month later his online status message declares that I’m a “slut”. I hadn’t ever kissed a boy outside of a school play, but I’m branded. The word seeps out of the computer screen and burns into my brain. I was a woman who raised her hand too much, didn’t smile enough, was too particular, who did something other than what was expected, a bitch, a slut.