THE BAD WORD
I remember the last time I used the word a–hole. And, yes, to be clear, the two missing letters are both s. This crude word flew out of my mouth in a recent argument involving politics. But I also remember, and always will, the very first time I used the word a–hole.
Kenny, the boy who tried to blackmail me, was also eight years old. This is the age when parents are gods and God, the greatest power of all, has the capacity to determine whether you go to heaven or hell. I definitely didn’t want to go to hell for using the word a–hole, but more immediately, I didn’t want my parents to find out, for I would surely be punished.
The word provoked by the bully-in-the-making was the most powerful shot I could take directly at his freckled, smug, smiling mug. The stocky, shrewd-eyed kid had just spewed a racial slur at me. At that time, my indignation was modeled on how I had seen my parents react to such slurs. I really had no idea how the prejudice behind the insult could stir behavior, such as perhaps that of the boy’s family. And I assume neither did Kenny at the time.
What Kenny did know was how to use to his benefit the classic kid phrase, “I’m telling!” It was not actually apparent whom he would tell. But I couldn’t risk the consequences of my parents being the recipients of this information.
“But you called me a bad word, too!” I protested his threat.
His response was not reassuring. “Yeah, but even my parents use that word, so it can’t be that bad. But everyone knows that the word you just used is a really bad word, so I’m still telling.” He eyed me gleefully, then added, “Unless you go into the Emerson Drugstore and get me a Snickers and a bag of Fritos.” The problem was not the drugstore, which was a block away. It was the fact that I had no money, which I irritably confessed to Kenny.
“Then you will have to swipe them when no one’s looking.”
“No, because, if I steal, then you’ll just use that to get me again,” I retorted. “I’ll go home and get the money. I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry up then. If you are not back in a few minutes, I’m going to tell what you said,” he smiled smugly.
I ran the half a block in the opposite direction of the drugstore to our house, the only one on the block surrounded by a chain-link fence, on Emerson Avenue. It was a Saturday, the day when my mom, a high school biology teacher, would take advantage of weekends to cook dinners for the rest of the week. She was in the yellow-walled kitchen washing something in the sink. Without greeting her, I rushed in and simply attempted to bargain. “If I promise to do the dishes for this week, can I get five dollars to spend right now?”
My tactless desperation was not lost on my mom. She turned around to face me and sternly asked, “What for? Why do you suddenly need five dollars?”
In my emotional state, I had mistaken her concern for suspicion. I started crying.
She immediately came over and hugged me. “I didn’t say no, but I just want to know why you need money so badly—you’re just a kid.”
I took the risk. “I called Kenny a bad word, and now he said he is going to tell. Then he said he wouldn’t tell anyone what I called him if I steal something for him from the drugstore.”
Looking back, I now know my mom’s concern was not as serious as her expression pretended it to be when she asked me what I called Kenny and why. I shrugged and looked at my feet. Then barely audible, I whispered, “I called him an a–hole because he called me the word that upsets you and Dad.”
Silence. After a few seconds, I looked up at my mom to see if she had heard me. She was obviously thinking over the situation.
Finally, “Sweetie, that is definitely not a nice word, particularly because it is a mean word for a part of our body that we all depend on. Even though it might smell bad, we should be very thankful for that part of our body.”
She thanked me for bravely telling her what I had said. She then handed me a five-dollar bill and added, “After you give Kenny what he asked for, but before you walk away, politely call him an “Anus.”
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb is the author of Shapes That Stay (Kelsay Books, 2021). Her poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Camas: The Nature of the West, Flash Fiction Magazine, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Slipstream Magazine, AJN: The American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. She is cofounder of a 501(c)(3) natural-history nonprofit and has a special fondness for spiders, peccaries, and anything in the Corvidae family.