On the same day I learned the word ‘bitch’ I learned when not to say it. But in hindsight she really was a bitch so I don’t even feel that bad about saying it.
Let me first set the scene: Troublefield kids had it good in Bushland. Sheepish and sharp-witted we were the teacher’s idyll package. Even our parents got in on the lineage-baiting; Dad sat on the Board while Mom helped out, always around on account we lived so damn close. Yes, we were VIP’s –our package including a little leeway and after-school access to hallways other students were being simultaneously evicted. As eldest of our clan, I was on top of the world.It was with this sort of serene, self-satisfaction I traipsed my third-grade hallway that grim, October day. Unable to tell the horrors that would soon unfold, I was still sunny –my face as bright as a lenolium floor, my worries as vacuous as the hall around me. Literally, the universe was in my hands: our Mrs. Phillips-solar system projects were going home today. Mine was seven styrofoam half-spheres spray painted and glued in a row on dark blue posterboard. Puny hands groped Jupiter and Saturn for support –stiff, sticky texture rubbing my wrists raw. To my right, my best mate Corey Loken accompanied. Corey came from a heritage all his own: his grandfather had served as everything from school nurse to beloved superintendent. They even had his name plastered in big, black letters on the junior high gym. Corey, on the other hand, was the Jr. Encyclopedia Britannica of smut. Someone straining niceties might suggest there was a Dickensian/Artful Dodger way to his worldliness. I just thought he was da’ bomb. The last class bell might’ve indeed rung, but the introduction of Corey’s lesson on a certain fierce, five-letter word was just beginning.
“What’s ‘a bitch’ mean?” my squeaky falsetto inquired.
Beneath his shaggy, blonde bowl-cut Corey squinted –mulling his exact right response. “You know a girl you hate?”
I shook my head. It was common fact girls had cooties; none had been let near enough for me to officially hate yet.
He stopped, shrugged. “You will.” We walked on.
Outside, early-winter air sunk its teeth into our exposed skin. We were the placenta-laced piglets you see in science texts: rosy, shriveled (from the cold), with our eyes stuck shut –blinded by the still-high October sun.
“Ridiculous,” I might’ve spat had anyone heard me over my chattering teeth. Corey the Tortoise had descended into the high collar of his dark blue fleece coat –only his eyes still protruding. I cursed. My own red windjacket laid unceremoniously stuffed on my locker floor. I bristled. No matter, six or so minutes and I’d be home. What wasn’t managable about that? Corey’s elbow dug sharp in my side, bringing me back to Earth.
“Hey, is that…” I could see he was squinting. Through the usual sight of Bushland’s slowest 6-9 year olds at last boarding the bus, there stood the lowly faculty member assigned to stop the hypothetical event we fell under the bus or something. Today’s look-out was new. Her stiff shoulders and shifting weight spelled out someone who wanted to scram –her face twisted and obstructed from view. Still, somehow in the recesses of my mind, a hunchback begged to ring a recognizing bell. My eyes squinted, matching Corey’s. Suddenly -the seas of heads beginning to part- upon clear realization who she was, I shivered –blood curdling (though I suppose that could’ve been attributed to the cold). Corey’s nails sunk like barbed fish hooks in my skin, a deathgrip around my gangly arm. He was rattling, petrified like the Tin Man. “Dude is that-“
I nodded. “Mrs. Frowney.”
(Narrator’s Note: In no way was the real-life character’s name ‘Mrs. Frowney’. However, as both real and fake names here exist only two letters apart and I’d like to escape a lawsuit, I retain the use of ‘Mrs. Frowney’ for ironic/comedic purposes. Please enjoy.)
God, we hated Frowney. Years later, I’d find I actually had good reason: when building onto the fourth grade wing, thrice she was caught by a faculty member getting jiggy in a classroom with construction workers not her husband (why someone didn’t just nip that in the bud the first time, I don’t know). For now, all I knew was she wasn’t even an official member of the staff –just a mom and our coach’s best friend who liked to get her rocks off yelling at children while her own kids shoved us into fences. Corey quickly bailed. I shrugged; as long as I made no quick movements, she likely had little reason to see me. Distracted by my breath acrobating smoke rings around my Rudolph-red little nose, I strategized springing my coat from its jail of a locker.
I juked for the door. Breaking when I thought her back had turned, I was unceremoniously slowed by the planet-sized poster board still in my clutches. Flailing like a shreded parachute –killing my momentum- finally it bent like the Titanic, making an equal amount of noise. This had the sea kraken’s attention. Splaying outreached tentacles of angry disapproval, her image consumed me; I sank in the gravity of her pull. Outside door and my view into the cafegymnatorium closing, my courage shrank to the size of my chance of escape.
“And where do you think YOU’RE going?” she spat, her condemning southern drawl emphasizing almost every other word.
I was blank -my wit run dry. If she was Medusa, I was stone still. A shakey hand pointed in the direction I thought my locker might be. “Uh, I was going to retrieve my jacket?” Why it sounded questioning, I don’t know.
Her rebuke that followed was so cliché and unoriginal, I can’t bare to put it in type. That it was riddled with rules and a snide delivery (like sticking me with a purloined pear knife) are all that’s necessary to know here. It ended when she stuck a long, crooked finger at the vibrating wall of yellow parked just beside the pavement.
“Get on the bus,” she rasped through clenched teeth.
I nodded, unable to pry my shamed eyes from the gray, hard ground. Corey’s own eyes were wide as white empty saucers, his face glued to his bus seat window, leaving smudges (I assume having just the muffled audio, he was starving for some context). Shoulders caving -proverbial tail tucked between my legs- I turned to sulk my way back toward my bus. The combined hum of their engines were deafening now, the driver with the five o’clock shadow impatiently abating his breath, hand clenching knee as he waited for me to board so he and the fleet behind him could leave. I was stumbling; this was a first for me –most people were just happy to let me through. Making it worse, the cold wind thought to rub in my one escaped tear –streaking it across my raw face. Broken, all I had left was the satisfying, selfish slip of a certain, new five letter word.
“Bitch,” I muttered, mostly to myself. Evidentally the wind picked it up, pulling it up to her ears. Frowney gasped, stomped my way and grasped my shoulders -spinning me around hard like the Price is Right wheel. Legally, I was dead –my heart stopped beating.
“WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!?!” she heaved.
“W-w-witch,” was the best I could come up with. I was fooling no one. My heart and fingernails sank –styrofoam Saturn imploding in my hand. No way in hell was I getting that remote control Jurassic Park car for Christmas now. She grabbed me by the ear.
“How ‘bout we tell Principal McLane what you told me?” Frowney smirked, a sick new gleam in her eye. If she really wanted me to answer, she was doing a poor job hearing any of the rest of my cries. The same cafegymnatorium door now so much closer, I heard the hiss of breaks letting off bus wheels. The entire world knew exactly how dead I was; at least they had the decency to leave. I could only assume Corey was freaking out.
But then something miraculous happened. Dangling off the ground, hanging by an ear and attached to the pinching, spinly fingers of Mrs. Frowney’s hand, somehow I wriggled free. Like an idiot fish thrashing violently ‘cause it’s all he can do, I had broken off of my hook. Rubber soles crashed to concrete grout, bringing on a wave of nerves and nausea. Adrenaline pumping –chaotic alarms sounding off in my head- I staved off the need to hurl and just ran –far from Frowney, far from the swift pain of punishment, on to my little, white sanctuary called home two blocks away. I was probably going to catch hell for running from a teacher, a principal, and for failing to get on the bus; I was for a fact bound to get whipped once my folks caught word what was done. But for now, in that short distance between school and house -my small, clammy hands groping for dear life the remains of Jupiter and Pluto- as the sweat made my frame feel on fire, that frigid, October air for once felt kinda nice.
(Narrator’s Note: A decade later, I asked my mom whatever came of my only punishment: a letter of apology to Frowney and her husband. Had she really sent it? ‘No,’ she said. ‘We trashed it. We were horrified you used that word but we were tickled someone finally got to say it.’)
