assuming an attitude of pseudomaturity, “I am not that confused little teenager you talked with two years ago… the last time I had a chance to talk with you privately about things a girl needs to talk with her mother about!”
“Ricky… get your clothes and leave,” I managed to say, hiding my face in my hands as I collapsed into a chair.
“Mrs. Bryant… I want to say…”
“Just go…” I insisted, not saying anything or moving until I heard him walking down the steps.
Slowly, I took my hands away from my face and opened my eyes too look at Kathy. She was standing there facing me, the strangest look on her face. I think she was trying to decide, which way to react. At one moment, I was sure she was going to get very angry and strike out for her “rights” and independence. In the next instant, she seemed as if on the verge of tears.
“Oh, Mother! Mother! Help me! Help me-ee!” she cried out suddenly, dropping to her knees and clutching my legs, her eyes searching mine so soulfully. “Mother… I can't help… it. I can't help it, Mother…”
“My darling, beautiful Kathy,” was all I could come up with, as I ran my fingers through her long brown hair and pressed her cheek against my knee. “I never… knew you had such problems… I guess. Oh, I don't know what I'm saying, Kathy. I love you, precious. I've never been able to be much of a… a good mother, even when we're together. How… when did it first happen…?”
“Last fall,” she told me immediately, realizing at once what I meant, “I tried, Mother, but it was no good. This guy I was crazy about… he never gave me a chance when he was in school. Then he dropped out and went in the Army. When he was home on leave, I met him at a dance… and we got, oh, I don't know how it happened. We were dancing, and I just knew that was it. We both got so turned on it was embarrassing for us to stay there in public. He ditched his date and I ditched mine and we went to a motel.”
“Did it… hurt, Kathy?” I asked, feeling very helpless and inadequate, trying to smile when she looked up at me and shook her head.
“No… I liked it,” she admitted to me with such a fresh and innocent honesty. “Mother, I… I think I'm a nymphomaniac! I don't know what to do, honest. When I get with a boy and he starts in, I can't say no! I'm a nympho, Mother!”
“Don't be silly, precious,” I consoled her, trying to believe it was just not so. “You're 17 years old. My goodness! How many 17 year old girls are still virgins these days? The only thing you have to worry about, young lady, is getting pregnant You… you're not… you haven't…?”
“Oh, of course not. I take the pill,” she said, acting as if I were terribly old fashioned, “Bobo knows a druggist who sells them to him without a prescription for about five times what they cost if you go to a doctor.”
“Who's Bobo?”
“He's my… regular boyfriend,” Kathy answered, seeming more at ease and relaxed, standing up and shaking out her hair, “He's nice. We don't have a big hang-up or anything serious… just fun and all.”
“And your father… your stepmother… they know nothing about any of this?”
“You better believe they don't,” she assured me with a shudder, “You can't talk to them like a human being, Mother. They think they know it all and that kids ought to do this or that, and that's it. I wanted to talk to you about it last summer… this summer. I could scream sometimes when Bob was here all the time and I couldn't talk to you.”
“Bob… yes, I thought he might be here today,” I said, wondering where he was.
“Oh, who cares about Bob?” Kathy commented, but I thought I detected her trying to avoid the subject a little too vigorously. “Oh… I know he's your boyfriend, Mother. But he's the reason I never get to talk to you alone or do anything. And at night, I go…”
“Yes?” I questioned when she suddenly broke off in mid-sentence.
“Nothing…”
“Tell me. Kathy. It was you who stressed that there was a lack of communication between us.”
“Mother… is Bob a good lover?”
“Why… whatever in the world made you ask that? I don't really think it's a proper subject for discussion.”
“I think it is,” Kathy insisted, and she seemed the most serious I had ever seen her, “Mother, if anyone can understand about me, I know you can. At night… I can't sleep when I hear you and Bob in the bed together. I can't sleep and it… I know it's wrong, Mother, but it turns me on. Oh, gee, I've heard you getting kicks in there with him, and I can't sleep!
“That's why… well, I didn't know any kids here this summer, and when Ricky called for you last month… I pretended I was you on the telephone.”
“You what?” I exploded, clamping my hand up to my mouth, not knowing what to say.
“Yes, Mother,” Kathy said with a nod, a slightly triumphant and knowing smile trying to show itself, “He thought I was you to start with because when I answered, he said 'Denise?' in such a sexy voice. And I just felt like changing my voice a little and making it low like yours, and I said, 'Yes, darling.'
“So, that's how it started. You can imagine some of the things he said, and I just kept saying, 'Yes, darling.' It was a riot, Mother. Oh, I know I shouldn't be joking about it. I know that, Mother, and I'm not joking about it. You have no idea how close it made me feel to you..
“How close?” I questioned, so beside myself with shock I was hardly conscious of everything she was saying. “How could it?”
“Mother, don't you understand?” she asked, kneeling beside me once again with a look in her eyes that bespoke a genuine kind of love. “I know! You don't have to try to hide anything from me. I'm not ashamed of you. I know that you're like me, Mother. You have to have it too. When Ricky… started telling me on the phone how he wanted you to do things to him… how you ate him raw and everything… oo-oo-oh, I just got so jazzy!”
“But how… did you meet him, if… he thought you were me?” I asked bewilderedly.
“Oh… ha-ha… that took some doing,” she said with a funny laugh that I seemed to remember from more innocent times. “I was afraid to talk too much, or he would know it wasn't you. I told him that 'my daughter' was visiting me and just dying to meet him. The rest was easy. I had him come by in the afternoons when you weren't here and when Bob was gone too.”
“So… you think your mother's a nymphomaniac?” I found myself saying blankly, too numbed to think or plan what I was saying, “You think your mother's a tramp, and you can be a tramp too. Yes… I suppose you would think that-shacking up with a man here at the house like this seducing schoolboys on the side. Would you like me to tell you the rest, Kathy? Surely, you want to hear about the man who pays mother thirty dollars to watch me pull up my dress and masturbate? Or the married man who likes for me to spank his bare bottom? Or the preacher who runs in for a quick… kiss on the penis and pays me ten dollars. Oh, if you think… think you're such a nymphomaniac… maybe you'd like to try five men at once! I have, Kathy! What do you think of that?”
“Oh, Mother! Mother! I love you!” she screamed, in tears as she threw her arms around me and hugged me so very tight. “I don't care what you've done, Mother. Don't you understand… that I understand? Can't you understand me now? I love you and I need you, Mother. I don't… have anybody else…”
Kathy crawled up on my lap and held my head close to hers. Her warm lips pressed on my cheeks, and I was overwhelmed with her love. We both cried our fill, and then stayed there in each others' arms for several minutes. I couldn't think of anything to say. The dirty feeling was not as bad as it was, but I kept thinking of Ricky. He had made love to both mother and daughter. The thought kept running through my mind and it would not go away.
Bob did not come home that night, and at about one in the morning, Kathy knocked on my bedroom door and asked if she could get in bed with me. We talked for a while about several things there in the darkness, our arms sometimes around each other, or our hands entwined.
“Mother… it's not wrong or… or perverted to do that is it?” she asked about going down on a man. “You do it, don't you?”
“It's not wrong,” I assured her, but realized that I couldn't just outwardly condone complete promiscuity. “It's something… well, like any kind of sex. You should be in love. You should find a boy you deeply love and discover a spiritual oneness with.”
“No… I'm not like that,” she admitted, kissing my forehead. “I've even thought of having sex with Bob. He can turn me on sometimes… like when I hear him making love with you, or see him kissing you. I peeped in the den one night and saw him kissing your breasts. I was so turned on I… I made it myself that night.”
“How many times have you and Ricky… made love?”
