flowing blood!”
“I'll do that to you!”
“Yes, you'll do it if you love me. I've just done something {or you that I had never done for anyone before. I swallowed your come… You never whipped a kid? So much the better! You have a horror of that sort of thing? Better yet! Then I can teach you something, too!”
I never for a second dreamed of consenting, but instead of replying to this effect, I questioned her some more.
“How come you have the taste for that sort of thing at your age?”
“Because I'm mama's daughter.”
“What do you mean? That your blood is the same? Or that…”
“Or that she trained me? Co ahead and say it! It's her own word. Yes, she trained me like a trick dog. And I like it. I'd like to be able to do as much as she.”
“How did she train you to…?”
“Oh, it wasn't hard or long! Since she has the same taste herself she saw right away that I too… It was just like in the circus. I had my exercises every day before… Oh, but you know how they train dogs; they do their tricks before they can eat; for me it was before coming. And little by little mama saw how far I could go…”
I raised my eyebrows. She hesitated and then, in that voluptuous voice that very young girls can sometimes assume when they wish, said, “You want me to say it? It excites me almost as much to think it when I'm next to you as to have you do it to me.”
“And I'd a hundred times rather listen to you than to beat you.”
“Beat me? If it was only that! I can see you still don't know mama!”
And in concise, definite sentences, she drew up the following summary of her family.
“I can't make Lili understand that mama isn't I a whore. But you've seen her, haven't you? Charlotte is a good girl. Lili is a whore — she's the only one of us that is. Mama is a whoremonger. When she gives a performance in front of a customer it's she that gets really excited, that comes… And I'm like her! I'm a whoremonger too, and when I received your come in my mouth…”
“Is that right? And I suppose you'll give me a present as a token of your satisfaction?”
“Yes, and a brand-new one: my cherry.”
By the quickness and agility of her reply she quickly hoisted herself once more to the height from which my stupid wisecrack had attempted to hurl her. And, quickly, she re-undertook her narrative in the same light-hearted tone.
“You know how she handled it, mama, when she saw that I… that I liked that sort of thing. She simply said to me that we would see how far I could go in taking punishment without it keeping me from coming.”
“Nothing simpler!” I repeated. “And was it she who did the beating?”
“Naturally,” said the girl innocently. “And she made me do a lot more than the others ever did.”
“I don't follow you.”
“Didn't Charlotte tell you that there's no one who can finger or suck a girl like mama. So when it was her, she could really make me a martyr and I'd still come.”
“Make you a martyr?”
“And how! Even Charlotte was crying and had to leave the room. She couldn't stand to see it. But I never cried. I clamped my teeth together so I wouldn't cry out or… Ah! You don't know what you're going to hear! Look at my knockers. You see anything?”
“I hope so.”
“No, I mean any marks.”
“No.”
“That's because the needles were sterilized.”
“What needles?”
“When she used to finger me like she could, stopping every time just when I was on the verge of coming, she could stick thirty-two needles into my breasts! Thirty-two! Before I said I couldn't take any more!”
“Your mother!”
“That's nothing. There aren't any marks on it either, are there? You think she doesn't know how to do things like this? Well, there where it's even more tender she tore out my pubic hairs in groups of four hairs each. That hurt me more even than the needles! But the thing that Charlotte couldn't stand was when mama would stop beating me off to chew me.”
“Chew your cunt?”
“Yes. The lips. Oh! That really hurt! The last few times, she chewed until she drew blood and then…”
Ricette threw her arms around my neck as if to excuse herself to me for all this, and after a short silence, said:
“Oh, well! You know mama! I told you: she's not a whore, she's a whoremonger. While she was sucking my blood I thought she'd go crazy. She had to have Charlotte come save her… then she beat herself off while she was grinding her teeth on my lips, and I was more afraid than hurt. I thought that when she came she would rip me away in pieces! Oh! But… I've said enough. You don't understand these things anyway.”
“Not enough, if you want me to understand. The way I get it, your mother taught you the art of coming while you were suffering, and now you have to suffer before you can come. Is that right?”
“That's it. Good. I'll tell you some more then. Do you know how I finger myself at the dinner table?”
“Can't say that I do.”
“As if you didn't know that we all beat ourselves off right after lunch! But I… You'll see if I like to suffer when I'm coming! I smear my snatch with mustard and then I finger myself all awkwardly so it rubs in. But pimento salad is the best. When I can get it I always use pimento salad.”
God! This one was the worst of the three! She was completely mad! I asked one last question. “And what do you let men do to you?”
“Oh! Not what mama does! Nothing but whips and rods with men.”
She started to smile, but lowered her eyes and said in a sad little voice, “Poor Charlotte! If you could see us next to each other at times like that! I get all excited and stick out my behind. But she, from the first stroke of the whip, starts crying; and since I love her I can't hit her any more when she does that. They hardly ever take us together any more because of that. But they always want to take me with mama because, for that, mama and I are exactly the same. You know it as well as I do.”
“I know it as well as you do?” I asked uncomprehendingly. “Oh!”
Mauricette's cry was so frankly indignant that you would have thought that I'd lied to her. She sat up quickly on her heels, her hands on her knees.
“I have to teach that to you too? The day before yesterday when mama came back from here she said that you grabbed her pubic hair and hurt her so much that she almost came.”
“If you think I did it for that, you're crazy!”
“And she told me this morning that she finally got you to hit her, but that it was so…”
“Oh, I socked her a couple of times on the shoulder, but that's got nothing to do with flagellation.”
“Maybe not for you! But for mama, yes! You mean to say that you have slept with her three times and you still don't know what she likes?”
“Her daughters.”
“You don't know how right you are! She has to have one of us under her when she's being whipped, and then you can do anything to her you want to! It's frightening. She cries, she comes, I've got blood in my hair and come in my face…!”
She was wild-eyed and excited, and she interrupted herself to shake her head and throw herself onto me.
“If you really love me, if it was the truth, I'll take her place. I'll get on top of her and you can cornhole me in my blood while she sucks me off. Then it will be her turn to have my blood in her hair and my come on her face while your prick is in my behind!”
I had never seen Ricette in so excited and exalted a state, and I thought that she had reached her peak when her exaltation suddenly leaped even higher as she thought of a new infamy.
“No!” she cried. “You can take my cherry dog-fashion while she catches the blood and come with her face
