My twelve-year-old daughter is a slut.
That’s what the writing on the wall says. She’s never actually had a real boyfriend, but she does have boys who are friends. There are a few girls at school who are jealous of those friendships so they do what petty middle school girls do: lash out at her anonymously with markers on bathroom stalls.
My daughter is also pregnant. At least, that’s what one of the middle school rumors currently making the rounds would have you believe. During her last day of seventh grade, she had eaten too much ice cream and while almost everyone else was running around outside playing games, my daughter sat, pale and nauseous in the heat of the afternoon sun. Two of her classmates inquired about how she was feeling, and as they walked away from her, one of them joked with the other about how nausea was a sign of morning sickness and pregnancy.
That simple, stupid comment was all it took to bring a twelve-year-old’s sexual morality into question in front of her peers. While my daughter will soon be thirteen, she easily passes for sixteen because genetics. She’s taller than I am, barely, but her figure is clearly that of a young woman of childbearing age. In a parallel universe, a pregnancy rumor might very well hold the possibility of being true.
In this one, it absolutely doesn’t.
The status of my daughter’s womb became so much of a hot topic by the end of the last day of school that a concerned staff member alerted the school guidance counselor, who in turn contacted me directly to inquire about the health of my daughter and offer support for her and our family if the rumour was not a falsehood.
My initial reaction was visceral. I wasn’t sure what I was more annoyed with: the idea that another student had begun such a ridiculous story in the first place, or the fact that some people actually believed it could hold merit.
Not once did I ever doubt my daughter’s chastity. I know my kid. We’ve had “the talk” so many times she could write a book about sex. Her father and I are both on the same page when it comes to birth control and safe sex; my daughter knows that she can come to me as soon as she’s in a relationship where sex becomes a real possibility, when it’s time for her to get on the pill and buy some condoms. No shame, no judgement, just our standing offer of support for her sexual safety. I realize that kind of forward-thinking is an attitude that many parents will disagree with, but I don’t care. Teens and their raging hormones are like powder kegs resting on the shore of an island that’s surrounded by fire. Abstinence is ideal, but hardly realistic.
In an effort to quell the pregnancy rumor and put the school staff at rest with a definitive, scientifically-proven answer once and for all, I helped my daughter take her very first pregnancy test. That’s not the way I envisioned her first day of summer vacation. Usually it involves her sleeping in until noon and complaining about boredom an hour later. Instead, she pissed on the absorbent tip of a plastic stick and we waited together for the result.
Five minutes passed and I worried when there wasn’t one to report. She was all out of fresh morning pee and there was nothing showing up in the window. Nothing. At the very least, there was supposed to be one pink line for “no.” What the fuck?
Upon closer inspection, I realized that the poorly designed test had spaces on the back that looked like windows. Oh. I had left the test sitting upside down on the bathroom counter.
It was, as we knew it would be, negative.
For all the proof we have to show the world, the middle school rumors about my daughter’s possible pregnancy are out there, regardless. My hope is that, by the end of summer vacation, most people will have forgotten about it. Still, when my daughter begins the eighth grade in September—obviously without child—I worry that there will be some people who will look at her just a little bit differently, wondering about whether or not she had an abortion.
And there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about that.
Middle school (and high school, for that matter) is hard enough as it is without bullshit rumors that get started on a whim. Girls are especially tough because while boys will tend to use their fists, girls use their wicked words without a care for consequence. That old adage, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” is a crock of festering shit. Words can hurt. Not only do they have the power to cause emotional wounds, but they can fucking desecrate a girl’s reputation in less than a day’s time.
I hate that my daughter knows that first-hand.
Still, there is something positive to come out of this experience, and thankfully it wasn’t a pregnancy test result. She has gained a valuable lesson in how little effort it takes to harm another person with a few careless words. In the end, I know she’ll be a better person because of it.