Dear Ms. Bell,

Dear Ms. Bell,

I’m not sure if that’s the correct way to address you. I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now. What I do know is that I was only in the second grade when you added to a level of trauma I didn’t yet have the language to explain.

My grandmother was a different kind of woman.

She believed in presentation. She believed in care. She believed in showing up in the world in a way that reflected dignity. She dressed well. She smelled good, always. Even in death, when I washed her body for the last time, I made sure she carried a scent I knew she would love.

That’s how deeply I associated fragrance with love.

With care.

With pride.

And then there was you.

You changed the way I felt about something as simple as smelling good. You didn’t just embarrass me, you disrupted how I viewed myself and the intentions of someone who loved me deeply.

Because of my home life, I didn’t tell anyone.

Partly because I didn’t fully understand what had happened.
Partly because silence was something I had already learned.

But I do remember this……

After that day, I laid my head on my desk and felt a sadness I couldn’t escape. It stayed with me. It didn’t visit, it moved in. It joined other moments where I had already been made to feel small, humiliated, or less than.

And I didn’t know where to go with it.

Not at home.
Not at school.

So I carried it.

That morning started like any other.

I woke up. Got ready for school. My grandmother made sure I was clean; face washed, teeth brushed, body lotioned, hair combed. And like always, she asked me:

“Do you want some smell good?”

And like always, I said yes.

It was our thing.

If you knew my grandmother, you knew I was going to be put together. That was one thing about that household: we showed up well.

I caught the bus. I made it to school. Ate breakfast. Sat in class, waiting for the day to begin.

Everything was normal… until it wasn’t.

I remember the assistant teacher walking around passing out papers when she suddenly said,

“Somebody stinks.”

I didn’t think anything of it.

I knew it wasn’t me.

My grandmother made sure of that.

So I sat there, unbothered, even when she started walking around sniffing students.

Confident.

Certain.

Unafraid.

Until she got to me.

Everything changed in a moment.

She leaned in, smelled me, and said out loud:

“That’s you. You stink.”

And then—

She told the class to line up.

To smell me.

One by one, they came.

Smelling me.

Laughing.

Calling me “stinky.”

And I just folded into myself.

Head down. Arms crossed. Crying quietly.

Wanting to disappear.

Wanting out.

Looking back now, I recognize that moment differently.

That may have been the first time I felt what I now understand as depression.

The first time the thought crossed my mind that I didn’t want to be here anymore.

And the weight of that, at that age, is something no child should have to carry.

I didn’t tell anyone for nearly 20 years.

But what you did followed me.

I stopped wearing perfume.

I bathed excessively, multiple times a day.

And anytime someone said anything close to “Do you smell that?” I was triggered.

Even when they meant something smelled good.

I reacted before I could process.

Because in my mind, smell was no longer connected to care.

It was connected to humiliation.

You may not remember that day.

For you, it may have been nothing.

A passing moment.

A careless action.

But for me—

It shaped how I saw myself.

How I moved in the world.

How I questioned the love that was given to me.

What I want you to understand is this:

I was a child.

And you were someone I should have been safe with.

I had to do intentional work to unlearn what that moment taught me.

To reconnect with myself.

To separate your voice from my own.

To understand that what you did said more about you than it ever did about me.

I wear perfume now.

Not for anyone else—

But for me.

Because I refuse to let that moment define how I experience myself any longer.

You don’t get to carry this.

But I did.

And now, I choose not to anymore.

Sincerely,
The little girl who deserved better