'thewomeninmyfamilyarebitches', by Xiomarra Milann

Every time I sit on my grandmother’s sofa, I’m reminded that I come from a line of vicious women.

This sofa is the last remaining piece of family history my grandma was able to salvage after her sister, the “bitch” we don’t speak of, sold every other family belonging for cigarettes, as legend has it.

I’ve spent almost every Sunday since my conception sprawled out across this sofa, listening to the women in my family, in the words of my father, grandfather, uncles, brothers, “bitch” about everything going on in their lives. I spent the majority of my youth terrified that I’d spend the rest of my life, laying here, doing the exact same thing.

*

I was 12 years old the first time someone called me a “bitch.”

This grown man, advances rebuffed as I walked past him bee-lining into my neighborhood corner store, spit the only venom he had at my innocent body.

I did not know how deep it could spread until it met me again, at 15, when I told a boy 3 years my senior that no, I in fact would not suck his dick like the rumors swirling around our high school lead him to believe.

Bitch.

And I always heard great things come in threes, or otherwise threes times the charm, before another man could take credit for turning me into my deepest fear, I surrendered into what I already knew I was becoming,

Bitch.

Bitch.

I’m the bitch.

*

I’m 27 now, and I still can’t seem to shake the weight of what I’ve inherited from the bitches in my family.

Bitches who can’t be told no. Bitches who are always right. Bitches who need to have the last word. Bitches who wish you’d try them. Bitches who bite motherfuckers’ heads off. Bitches who won’t let anyone touch you. Bitches who’ve given me everything they have.

I wish I had been more grateful.

*

It’s been years since I had my last Sunday sprawl, getting the fuck outta dodge the second I turned 18, using my education as an excuse to run away from everything that was boiling in my blood. I spent the remainder of those Sundays counting down the seconds until I could erase myself from the cursive of their lineage.

My youth was dedicated to the fantastical assumptions of what I’d be doing instead to create my own story, never realizing that 10 years later, wherever my body may be, my mind will have never left that sofa.

I spend my Sundays now, reminiscing, telling myself that this week is the week that I will make time to revisit the home where I left my roots to grow, until another Sunday rolls around and I find myself wishing I could be 17 again, amidst one of those sprawls before everything was different; if I could go back, I’d meet myself right as my grandmother inevitably broke into her family history lesson, giving me the only bit of knowledge about my great-grandparents that I can hold onto.

*

At some point in the 1960s, my great-grandmother, Lupe, decided she wanted a new couch. My great-grandfather, Juan, told her that the ratty thing they had in the living room was fine. “We have a couch, we don’t need another one.”

As my grandma remembers it, Juan came home to find his perfectly-fine couch ablaze in the front lawn, with Lupe telling him, “now, we need a new couch.”

I can’t say for sure, but I thought I heard him mutter, “bitch,”’ under his breath.

Xiomarra Milann (she/her) is a Chicana writer based in Laredo, TX who is trying really hard to make the person who said "those who can't do, teach" turn in their grave. In her free time, she is the host of the “ButUmmYeah” podcast and painter of fruits on ceramic coasters. She was a finalist in the 2023 Battle on the Border Poetry Slam and hopes in her next life she'll be born as something with wings. You can find her @xiomilann and read her work in DVINO Magazine, Sam Fiftyfour Literary, Medium, Infrarrealista Review, Ink & Marrow, and on her 6th grade creative writing teacher's bulletin board. You can donate to her cashapp at $xiolypuff.