Chapter 9

Precisely what happened the rest of the night, Sugar was never really sure. Mercifully, the gin she'd been forced to consume had caught up with her and left her brain in a mad, unintelligible scramble.

She hadn't the vaguest conception as to how she got into bed. But that's where she found herself when she awoke well past noontime that same day. Only she was not alone. Uncle Ben was lying there beside her, snoring away and, like herself, without a stitch on.

So as not to awaken him, Sugar moved away from her uncle, slowly and carefully, and got off the bed. The insides of her thighs were sticky and caked with his drying cum. Her tits and belly felt the same way, as if he had smeared the stuff all over her body. She, of course, had no idea how many times he fucked her during the night. But it must have been a lot because her belly felt filled with his juice.

As she started toward the closet to get a robe to take into the bathroom with her, she found it necessary to grab a handful of tissues from the box on the table beside the bed and hold them to her pussy so his semen wouldn't continue to dribble out.

It was while she was reaching the robe that Sugar suddenly remembered the gown she'd brought home in the box from the boutique! She could feel the cold perspiration breaking out all over her body as she wondered if her mother or uncle had soiled or ruined it, as her uncle had the white pique? What would she wear to the graduation exercises? Worse still, how would Yale explain the loss of the gown to his father?

Frantically, Sugar grabbed the robe from the closet and, putting it on, hurried into the living room. She saw her mother sprawled out on the couch. She'd thrown one of Uncle Ben's blankets over herself, covering her head and body, only her shapely bare legs and feet sticking out.

From the couch, Sugar's gaze traveled across the room to where she'd thrown the box last night when her mother grabbed her. She let out her bunched-up breath in a sigh of relief. The box was still intact. Obviously they'd been too drunk to have discovered it.

Sugar hurried to it, picked it up and, hugging it to her body with both hands, hurried through the bedroom and into the bathroom. She would make sure that she didn't leave the box and its contents out of her sight again.

It wasn't until she got into the John and locked the door behind her that she allowed herself to even begin to think of last night's nightmare. She paused to look at her reflection in the mirror. The face of the girl who stared back at her was a sight. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot from crying, her hair disheveled and matted with sperm and cunt juice.

She grabbed her toothbrush and scrubbed the evil taste of gin and sex from her mouth and tongue. The very last thing in the world that Sugar wanted to remember was the loathsome experience she'd had with her mother. But there was no shutting it out of her mind. All the emotions that had been bottled up inside her since last night suddenly bubbled over and she began to cry, softly at first, then more violently as great sobs racked her body. Drunk or not, how could her mother have been a part of such debauchery? How could she have subjected her own daughter to such perversions? Helped Sugar's own uncle to rape her? Make her perform a Lesbian act with her?

On the verge of hysteria, Sugar finally tore herself away from the mirror, turned on the spray in the shower and stepped under it. Reaching the soap from the receptacle, she worked up a lather over her tits, her belly, her entire body, particularly between her legs. She made the temperature of the water as hot as she could stand it, letting it beat down upon her face and body, watching the semen her uncle had left in her cunt mix with the suds and gurgle down the drain.

It wasn't until she felt certain that every last speck of filth had been washed out of her pores and from inside her pussy, that she finally turned off the faucets and stepped out of the shower stall onto the cool tile. As she grabbed a huge bath towel from the rack and began to dry off her lobster-pink limbs and body, she thought of Yale. Not that he hadn't been there in her heart and mind all along. It was simply that she didn't want him mixed up in any of the sordidness of last night, not even in her thoughts.

Above all, Yale must never know about what happened last night. Because if he ever did, coming from a highly respectable, strait-laced family like his, it would be impossible for him to have any further respect for her. In truth, after the degrading things she had been forced to submit to with her mother and uncle, it was difficult even for her to retain her self-respect.

Reaching her robe from the hook where she'd hung it, Sugar put it on, then slipped into the bedroom.

Uncle Ben was still sprawled out on his back on the bed, snoring loudly, sleeping off his hangover. Without even a top sheet over him, Sugar could see his cock, shriveled to half-size, hanging down lifelessly between his hairy thighs. Looking at him like this, all she could feel for him was disgust, utterly and completely ashamed of him.

She was glad that he was still asleep. It would enable her to get dressed. First of all she went to the closet and from the shelf, she took down a well-worn suitcase. Her father had used it once upon a time, during his travels, and left it behind when he moved out.

Sugar opened the suitcase and carried it across the room to the dresser that she shared with her mother. She opened the drawer that contained her belongings, selected the things she'd wear and tossed the rest of the stuff into the suitcase. Then she returned to the closet. She had a very meager wardrobe, so it took only a moment for her to put her dresses and shoes into the suitcase, too, leaving out only the dress and shoes she'd planned to put on now.

She dressed quickly. Then she went into the bathroom and took her personal belongings-toothbrush, makeup, hair rollers, perfumes. She put them in the suitcase, too. Then she closed it.

She made sure her savings bankbook was in her handbag. After buying her graduation dress and the few other things she needed, her bank balance wasn't big. Just about enough to keep her going until she could find a job. Because that was what she had decided to do. After last night, it would be impossible to stay here in the apartment with her mother and uncle any longer. Because sooner or later, the same thing would happen all over again...and that was all she'd need, one more time, and she'd be sucked right into the same kind of life they were living. After all, she never wanted that to happen. Because if it ever did, she knew that any slight chance she might have of ever making it with Yale would be lost. Her only hope was to get as far away from her mother and uncle as she could and try to make something of herself. Try to become the sort of person Yale would be proud instead of ashamed of, someone his family would be happy to accept.

With a last hurried glance around the bedroom to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, Sugar picked up the suitcase in one hand and with the box from De Moiselle Boutique in the other, she went into the living room. Her mother was still on the couch, head and body covered over as before.

Sugar was glad that she wouldn't have to say good-bye to her mother, because that would call for a lot of explaining that Sugar didn't feel up to. She'd call or write later and let her mother know where she was and that she was all right. As far as her graduation was concerned, neither her mother nor Uncle Ben had made any plans to attend the exercises. They both had to work.

As she moved quietly toward the door, Sugar caught sight of the white pique dress and the bra and panties Uncle Ben had ripped off her last night. She stopped for a moment to examine them. She hadn't realized her uncle had done such a thorough job of ruining them. The bra and the panties she wasn't too concerned about. But she felt sad about the dress, since she had spent so much of her savings on it. She might have mended it, but it would never really be much good again. So she left everything there on the floor and continued on toward the door.

"And just where the hell do you think you're going?"

The voice startled Sugar, and she turned to see her mother sitting up on the couch. The blanket that had been covering her had slipped down to her waist, baring her torso. It was a strange thing for Sugar to notice at such a crucial moment-but her mother did have a beautiful bust, especially for a woman her age. Big, firm and high, they were the kind of tits that even a Hollywood sex symbol might drool over with envy.

"I'm leaving, Mother," Sugar said simply.

"Leaving for where?" her mother wanted to know.

Sugar could tell just by looking at her mother that she hadn't the faintest recollection about what happened last night. In a way, Sugar was glad her mother didn't remember. She wished that she herself could forget so easily. But it was impossible. Just as it was impossible for her to go on living here any longer. Nothing had really changed simply because her mother had drawn a blank.

"Tonight's graduation," Sugar reminded her mother, attempting to avoid a long, drawn-out discussion. "There are a million and one things I've got to do before then."

Her mother frowned at the suitcase. "Why've you gotta take that?"

"I've got to change later," was Sugar's reply. Then something seemed to grab at her heart, made her remember that the woman on the couch was still her mother. She left the suitcase and box at the door and went to the couch. She took her mother's bewildered face in her two hands and kissed her lips. "Good-bye, Mother," she murmured.

"Good-bye?" her mother echoed. "You sound like maybe you aren't coming back?"

Sugar's answer was brief and cryptic.

"Just don't worry about me," she said. She had no true feeling of sadness or remorse at the thought that she wouldn't be seeing her mother again-maybe for a very long time. The awful things that happened last night welled up in her mind again, dwarfing any possible sentiment she normally might have experienced. Without further comment, Sugar straightened away from her mother, hurried to the door and picked up the suitcase.

It wasn't until Sugar opened the door that her mother caught sight of the torn, white pique dress on the floor. "Whatever happened to your nice new graduation gown?" her mother called out.

Sugar made no answer. She simply went out the door and closed it after her. But in her heart she was awfully, awfully glad that her mother didn't remember last night...

The West Los Angeles-Beverly Hills branch of the YWCA was located on Santa Monica Boulevard, not too far from the apartment. Sugar had seen the place a number of times while riding the bus. She decided it would be the safest, most convenient and least expensive place she could stay until she could find a full-time job and make other arrangements. So she registered and stayed there until it was time for her to shower and dress and leave for the high-school commencement exercises.