Short Story By Twinkle Johar

Bitches can bite

When I was with him, everything seemed so perfect. You know, like the idea of us being together forever. I could notice myself daydreaming about spending my entire life with him and it seemed magical, in other words, “perfect”. And it was all so easy that I never wanted to give up. In fact, why would I? I never got the warmth my heart longed for and with him I could get that. He loved me, owned me, basically he was my master. Even if it was a bond where I felt suffocated, at least I felt touched too. He was my happy place because he was the only place I had. Was all of it toxic? I had no time to think about it and no courage to speak about it. Because what if he left me? Where would I go? I got married on my own and, honestly, that was the time when I was fearless, the only time when I spoke for myself, I mean, I spoke for us.

I gathered the strength to walk out of a home where my existence meant a burden, where I was taught only for the sake of getting me married to a rich house, where I never felt loved. I was always broken. I couldn’t speak up about my priorities in life because they were so busy fighting among themselves. I just moved away and I would never know when I chose to make a life with him. It meant so much to me to be called someone’s belonging that I kept doing what he asked. As I said, he was my master. There wasn’t anything wrong about it. He considered me his bitch. Well, pets get loved too, right? So I carried on. One fine evening, he came to me and said those three golden words. I was used to hearing it since 15 years. The first time he said it, I was 7, he was 30. He used to tell me that I am a flower and as he waters all the flowers in our garden, he would water me too. I did not feel good the first time he gave me his watery thing in the backyard. I got hurt, but then he said those three golden words and then I felt I belonged somewhere. The day I decided to move with him, my family cared because he wasn’t rich and I did not care because they weren’t happy and that was it! I always made a rule, since I was little, that whatever makes me happy, they do not approve, so if this person isn’t liked by them, he is my happy place.

He was the only place I had and you cannot label the only bread you have as stale. You eat it anyway. Well, here he was the one eating me up day by day, but as I said, at least I was being touched and used.
I started feeling dirty day by day. Maybe because he used to get dirty by working all day in other people’s gardens and then touched me. So I kept quiet. One day, I went looking for him at one of the houses he worked and found him in their backyard saying those three words to the little girl I used to see every day cycling around. He said, “TUM MERI HO”. But those words were for me all this while, right? He looked at me, without any fear and I apologized for coming in there. He called me a bitch and asked me to return home.
That night I found his red water spilling out of his thing. I said my three golden words to him. “BITCHES CAN BITE”.
I buried the dirt in the backyard. I never watered it. I never felt dirty again.