Chapter 2
"Well-you been with him again?" Wilma Baird asked.
The voice grated out of the darkness of the living room. Martha sighed heavily and turned on the light. Her mother sat in the greasy chair and sucked angrily on a cigarette, blowing smoke through her nostrils like a medieval dragon. She had her hair piled on top of her head in an artful set that was calculated to look casual.
She was a redhead tonight. Cheap earrings dangled from pierced lobes, and rhinestones glinted with too many colors from around her neck and wrist. She wore a black sheath so short her panty hose showed between her thighs as she sat there. She had no panties on, and the lips of her pussy were flattened by the nylon mesh into a ludicrous sneer. The light hit her at an angle that made Martha conscious of having inherited her mother's green eyes, pert nose, and high cheeks. But her wide mouth and soft chin had come from her father, because her mother's mouth was pinched and tight, her chin sharp enough to stab with.
"Why are you sitting in the dark, Mother?"
"I wanted to."
"Were you waiting up for me?"
"No. I have to go out again."
The two women eyed each other in silence. Martha didn't need to ask where her mother was going. She'd been "going out" more and more, lately. She started toward her room.
"You didn't answer me, Martha," her mother said sharply.
"Yes, Mother," she said finally, turning around. "I've been out with Ken again."
"Come over here, baby," she said, patting the arm of the dirty chair. "Come sit by your mother a minute."
Martha hesitated, sighed, then walked across the room. She rested her hip against the chair and felt her mother's arm go around her waist to hug her briefly.
"I might not be up in time to see you off tomorrow, baby," she said.
"That's all right, Mother."
"No, it isn't. I wanted to see my baby off. Any good mother would, and that's what I've tried to be, haven't I-a good mother to you? And a father?"
"Of course you have, Mother."
"I've raised you the best I could. Put clothes on your back and food in your mouth. Now your schooling. It hasn't been easy. In fact, it's been a perfect bitch. But I'm glad one of us is going away for a while. You need a vacation, too. Don't worry about the tuition going down the hole. Grades and learning are more important than that, and you've got to have a clear mind to make good grades. If s the only way you can be independent of the bastards."
"Yes, Mother."
"Do you good to get away from him for a while, too." She looked straight into Martha's eyes. "You haven't let him catch you yet, have you? You haven't gone and given him your cherry like a sap, have you?"
"No, Mother."
The arm hugged her waist again. "That's my baby, my girl. I'm proud of you. Ken's a man, honey. All men are bastards. He'd just pluck it and run like any other bastard. Your father was the best of all the bastards I've met, and he still left us flat, without a cent, without even a damn goodbye. Sooner or later they all do it. They just plow around in your pussy until you can't stand it any more, and then they leave you flat. Ken'll do the same thing to you. He's just another bastard underneath-just like the kind I have to go out with. All they're good for is getting money from them, but you can't get it from one you're married to. Speaking of money, I wish you'd let me give you some for your trip, baby."
"I have plenty, Mother."
"Where'd you get it?" she snapped.
"I told you. I saved it from my job."
"It's a good thing, that job. It's tough, going to school and working, but it's good for you. Prepares you for what you're going to have to do later so you can stay independent of the bastards. I'm not picking on Ken, Martha, you know that. But he's a man, and you know what that means, too. You should by now."
"I know," she said hollowly, her mind wandering back through the endless years of listening to this same speech.
"Did you pack your toy?"
"What?"
"Good God, Martha-haven't you been using it?"
"Oh... yes, Mother. Of course I've been using it."
"Jesus, you had me scared there for a minute. Thought maybe you weren't quite normal. That, or you're lying about you and Ken."
"I haven't been lying. I'm still a virgin, Mother. Do you want to check again, before I go?"
"Oh, come on," her mother said gruffly. "Don't get sassy. I believe you. Listen, honey, we haven't had a private talk like this in a long time, but I want you to feel free about using it. You can't ever forget that, because it's the only way to stay independent without losing your marbles at the same time. That's why I gave it to you when I could tell you were growing up and getting the urge. The urge is normal, baby. It's the way you take care of it that counts. You don't want to start thinking with your pants. That's how you get caught. So, it's all right to use your toy. It's good. Use it on your pussy all you want. I do. This crap I've been doing lately leaves me frigid-don't get a thing out of it. Anyway, it's different for me. I lost mine a long time ago. I wish to hell I'd had a toy when I was young, and I'd never have married a bastard for it. Baby, promise me you won't ever give in, no matter how much you want to, or I'll guarantee you'll wind up just like me. Promise?"
The grip tightened around her waist again. "I promise, Mother," Martha said softly.
"That's my baby. We'll teach the bastards a thing or two about respecting a woman." She glanced at her watch. "I've got to go, baby. Take me some time to walk there."
"Isn't he picking you up?"
Her mother snorted derisively. "Are you kidding? In the first place, I don't want the bastard to know where we live. Second place, we wouldn't want the bastard's poor wife trailing him here and having to find out what a heel he is, would we? Baby, I wish I could see you off tomorrow, but I know I'll be dogged."
"It's all right, Mother. You go ahead and sleep in."
Martha felt the tight, puckered lips press against her cheek. She inhaled the dizzying smell of cheap perfume, like orange blossoms and gardenias trying to overpower swamp gas, that wafted up from between her mother's breasts. Martha watched her mother walk to the door with a swinging motion to her heart-shaped rear, and she wondered how many ways there were of doing it besides the normal way. She had the feeling her mother would know them all.
When Martha went to her room and saw that her packed suitcase had been gone through, she understood why her mother had brought up the toy. She took the toy from her night table drawer and removed it from its box to look at it. There was something about the flesh colored plastic she hated. Yet she knew if it hadn't been for the electric sensations the vibrator had given her, she would have gone mad years ago with desire.
She stripped off her clothing and lay in bed nude. In the stillness, she heard the solitary cry of a loon flying overhead, trying to find its way to the Everglades in the night.
An image of white cypress trunks standing silently in the dark water appeared behind her closed eyes. Curtains of gray-green Spanish moss hung from the tree limbs to deepen the shade and cast a hush of stillness over the pool. Towering clumps of saw grass reared up in the distance, and an alligator fishtailed with deadly silence through the black water, rippling its surface-Martha's father slipped into her mind, his face ruddy and leathered by the sun, his eyes set deep into the redness like a pair of gleaming, dark sapphires, full of life and wonder. She remembered the way his teeth shone like pearls in the sunlight whenever he tipped his head back to laugh with the sheer animal joy of being alive.
She could recall fishing with him, the way he held her pole and jerked on it at the right time, then the lusty whoops of pleasure as her young fingers worked clumsily with the reel. She remembered the way he took the wriggling fish off her hook with quick, sure movements and the peals of childish laughter she gave him as she watched him kiss it to make it well before he tossed it back into the water. Then he would hug her, and they watched the water together until they saw the fish swim away.
Her father used to hold her suddenly and whisper in her ear for her to be quiet. His voice would be charged, and his finger would be pointing toward the thick tangle of mangroves until she looked carefully enough to see the delicate pink tint of a roseate spoonbill wading through the intertwined roots, swinging its head back and forth in search of fish. Martha remembered crouching silently with him, feeling the joy of life in his hands, until the bird took flight, its lifting wings making a small fire of color in the blue sky, and she'd cry with glee.
Martha opened her eyes and blinked rapidly as if to dispel the only memories of her father she had. She didn't like to think of him after she'd been talking to her mother and listening to her call him a bastard. They were good memories, ones she'd never shared with her mother-just as she'd never told her anything about Ken.
Martha suddenly realized for the first time how like her father Ken was. He had the same happy smile, the same coloring, the same gentleness and love in him, the same patience with her.
She rolled over in bed and felt a strange emotion go through her, a tickling feeling that passed all up and down her body. She got it whenever she thought of those times with her father, because they were the only times of her life she could remember that weren't filled with the dreary, complaining bitterness her mother had made every aspect of it contain.
She knew she could stop it all. She could get up and phone Ken and tell him she wanted him, and it would be like being with her father again.
But there was something stopping her, something she couldn't determine... or couldn't remember.
She shook her head and got up from the bed, forcing herself not to think about it tonight. The thought that there was something her mother knew and that she couldn't remember about her father had bothered her before. She had struggled and struggled with it in the past, but had come up with nothing.
She found herself staring at the toy on the night table as if her eyes had been drawn to it, as if it were beckoning to her to come fit it against her silken flesh and turn it on. It made a silent promise to ease her troubles, to make her forget and sleep soundly as it had so many times in the past.
She went over and picked it up. She slid the loop over her middle finger and felt the familiar weight of it in her palm. She ran her eyes over the knobbed surface and saw the oval shape the small protrusions made. They were like little tits at the top and bottom of the oval and down the edges. There was one short, fat one just below center. She rubbed her fingertip around the curved, knobby edges and then around the fat bump that was shaped like a truncated prick.
The tingling sensation passed through her again, and she hated herself for experiencing it. She suddenly despised the toy and the fact that her mother had given it to her. The thought of using it on her pussy any more made her feel degraded. Yet there was a deliciousness in that feeling that wouldn't be stilled. Ken hadn't punished her enough. She needed more.
She lay down in bed again and fitted the vibrator to her palm. She let it touch the surface of her belly. Her breathing quickened as she anticipated the thrills of sensation the toy could bring.
With a cry of despair, Martha opened her thighs and cupped the toy against her cunt, moving her hand and her hips until the oval of knobs was situated right, inside the lips of her twat. She felt the short fat knob open the mouth of her vagina and fit inside, just far enough for her muscles to grip it but not so far that it would rupture her. She pressed with her hand, trying to shove the frustrating knob deeper into her body, knowing that the insidious toy had been designed by a sadistic bastard of a man. A small indentation cupped her tumescent clit, and she felt the tiny organ swell into the hollow as if in fond remembrance. The small knobs pushed against the tender flesh of her inner lips all over her vulva, and she whimpered in anticipation of what was going to happen.
"Oh, God," she moaned. "Damn her, damn her!"
Martha squeezed her tit with her other hand, as if trying to find something to hang on to, then flipped the small switch with her thumb and clamped her thighs tightly around her toy-cupping palm. The vibrator buzzed with a sinister sound and sent shock after shock of sensation through her body. The little knobs beat angrily against her tumid flesh and stimulated her clit into a raging, frantic organ. Her juices flowed from inside her virginal tunnel, thick and slippery, and smeared over the pink, swollen flesh of her gap, making the knobs all the more effective.
Her pussy clamped in spasmodic waves around the virginity-preserving knob, trying to draw it more deeply inside. She pressed her hand tightly against her cunt until she felt pain-good pain, clean pain, degrading, humiliating, well-deserved pain.
She opened her mouth and rolled on the bed' and exploded violently, shuddering again and again, until her buttocks were sore from clenching so hard. She mashed her face into the pillow and cried ragged sounds, seeing the huge, inflated stem of Ken's prick in her mind, thinking that it would feel as terrifyingly glorious as this when she finally let him cram it into her cunt.
Her thumb hit the switch again, and she quivered into an exhausted heap. After a long time, Martha rolled onto her back. She raised her arm and looked at the toy, despising it and herself once again. She took it from her finger and stood up. She slipped into her robe and carried the toy in her hand with unshakable determination.
She went out to the carport in the warm night, raised her arm high, and dashed the instrument to the cement floor. It shattered into a million pieces, some of which stung her feet as they flew. The batteries rolled to a stop against the abutting house, their zinc casings bent.
With the broom Martha swept the flesh-colored plastic into a dustpan. She watched the pieces slide over the edge into the depths of the garbage container. She replaced the lid and went back to her room. She saw the box where she'd left it, closed it up, and put it back in the drawer. Her mother would see the box, but the toy would be gone. She would smile with satisfaction and never know.
Martha crawled back into bed and put her hands over her face and sobbed into them for a long time. The act had taken much strength, but she knew one link in the tethering chain had been broken, now, and she felt impelled on a course that would finally cut the rest.