Thanks so much for the comments and feedback for the first chapter. Please keep it coming, I'd really like to hear what people think, and what they would like to see in the future.
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What can you do with memories which you cannot explain?
Do you put them back in the same dark space where they so long lain dormant, pretending that there is nothing there? Do you simply shake your head and say that it never happened even when you know in your heart that it must have?
Can you simply choose to forget?
I do not know. I only know that I could not. Could not explain, and could not forget.
In the days that followed my daughters graduation and the flood of memory provoked by a spill over brunch, I could not clear the memory from my mind. The image of my mother, naked and bent over the kitchen table, moaning in pleasure as some faceless form laughed in the background of my mind.
I could not forget the whispered words which I was then sure my mother must have uttered.
"Dominate me, baby..."
It was a problem without any answer, for I was not about to call my mother, the renowned author and social activist, and ask her to explain to me something that may have been nothing more than a dream. The very thought of such a conversation with my mother mortified me, and it was not a call that I was willing to make.
My relationship with my mother had always been good, but it had also been one dominated by propriety. My mother, May, had always been out to set an example, as a woman of color, as a social activist, and as a single mother. She was not the sort to laugh along with a dirty joke, and the idea of discussing a sudden memory of her sexuality might well be the sky falling on our heads. No, I was certainly not going to speak to my mother.
I suppose that I could have gone right away to Simon. Yes, my husband would surely have thought it was weird, and even troubling, but we had been married more than twenty years and even though he was busy with his political campaign, I still knew that he was my rock, that I could go to him with anything and that Simon would share the weight of any burden. But I did not go to my husband.
It was too small a thing really, and it was too embarrassing to make so much over something trivial. After all, my memory was clearly of my my mother having sex, and if that is alarming for a child it is not actually that unusual. I was not by any means proud of the fact that all of my children had sooner or later caught their father and I in the act, but it had happened. Thankfully they had all been at an appropriate age, where Simon and I were able to sit them down and explain some things, doing nothing I'm sure to make the situation less embarrassing, but at least demonstrating that consensual sex between adults was nothing to be ashamed of.
I was most embarrassed I suppose by the effect that it had on me. After all, I was a forty three year old woman with three grown children, I had not been foolish enough to imagine that my mother had given birth to my sister and I through immaculate conception. If I had once seen her engaged in intercourse, even somewhat shocking intercourse, so what? She had been an adult after all, and she had been a woman with needs just like any other. The memory should have simply been something that I shrugged off, went on with my life, even forgot.
But of course that was not what happened.
I was troubled by the image, the laughter and the words which echoed in my head for some days after the incident at the brunch had brought them up. It seemed like every few moments my thoughts would drift in that direction and leave me confused and embarrassed all over again. There seemed no escape, but I was determined not to let it show. I continued to work at the firm as I always had, I showed no sign of distress in my interactions with my husband or my friends, and I resolved to myself that my current worries and concerns were simply something that would pass.
It might have gone that way had it not been for the incident with my daughter Corrie, who stopped in at home for a visit about a week after her graduation.
It was the usual visit, one part friendly chat and one part an occasion for Corrie to do her laundry for free in our machine, and perhaps most of all it was a way of asking for a little money, as all twenty somethings fresh from college and as yet without work will do. I did not mind in the least of course, no matter the reasons for her coming. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was free for the weekend, while Simon was hobnobbing with CEOs and political movers at a golf tournament. What better way to spend an early summer afternoon then hanging out with one's own daughter?
I am sure we didn't talk about anything important, though at this point it is rather hard to recall exactly. Doubtless we discussed Corrie's search for a job, she was hoping to find something in marketing while she toyed with the idea of grad school, and probably we discussed her many friends and their own plans for the future, and maybe even we discussed Simon's campaign and Tim and Joanne's trip to Europe . I do not know.
I do know that after an hour or so I left my daughter in the living room and went to the kitchen to fix us some more tea. My laundry room is right next to the kitchen and so as I refilled our mugs I realized that the clothes that Corrie had put in the washer had finished, and just out of habit I went to transfer them to the dryer myself. Just like any mother might, on any normal day.
Things went strange at once however, for the first item that I pulled out of the washer was not some top or a pair of jeans but a pair of crotchless panties of black lace. I was rather surprised, of course, as any mother would be. I was well aware that my daughter was sexually active, I had met a half dozen of her boyfriends over the years, but I had never really thought of my sweet Corrie as the type of young woman to wear such provocative lingerie. It had never been my style at all, the closest I came to such revealing garments was the occasional thong, which I actually found a bit uncomfortable but it always drove Simon absolutely wild to see the skimpy cotton disappearing between the round globes of by ass...never in my wildest dreams however would I have considered something so openly provocative as those panties I pulled from the washer.
I was not going to make a big deal of it, I simply threw them in the dryer and went about transferring the rest of the wet clothes out of the washer. When I had finished however, I received another surprise, and this one a little harder to wrap my head around.
When I moved all the clothes from the washer, I checked one last time, making sure I hadn't missed some single sock or other small item that Corrie would miss. The washer was clear, all save for a small scrap of paper which must have been in the pocket of some pants or something. I reached in and quickly removed it, to throw it away in the small wastebasket beside the washer. Yet when I held the scrap in my hand I realized at once that it was not paper at all, no crumpled receipt or scrap of note.
