by Grace Brackenridge
"...can't take your call right now. But if you leave your name, number, and a brief message, I'll call you back as soon as I can."
"Roger, I'm sorry to say this," I said sharply into the phone, "but I think we need to reconsider discipline around this household. I know I started all this. I thought 12 years was too old. But Sissy is your daughter and I think she needs a big dose of her father's discipline. I simply can't live like this any more."
I paused, trying to think of what to add.
But I had said my piece.
"Anyway," I added, regaining a modicum of composure, "I hope you're having a nice day. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't say what I'm supposed to say. This is Grace." I laughed nervously. "You got my number."
After five years of sleeping together - five years of some really terrific sex - Roger ought to recognize my voice and know it's me by now. But I have self-esteem issues. I can't believe anybody can love me as much as Roger does. I am truly blessed, but I can't accept it.
The curse of plenty.
I returned the receiver to its place, hanging from the wall phone on the kitchen wall.
"Are you gonna divorce Dad?"
I turned to see Cecilia - Sissy - standing in the doorway, her hands behind her back.
At 15, my stepdaughter is still a pixie-like creature, so much like her diminutive mother.
Maybe that's part of my problem: when I get into these pitched battles with Sissy, I feel like I'm fighting the ghost of Angelina.
"Why do you ask that?" I snapped. "Is that what you want? Out of your house? Out of your life?"
My adrenalin was still raging from our argument; my hormones surged because it was that time of the month.
A PMS bitch to the core, I couldn't see straight.
"No," said the child, "I don't want you to leave, Grace."
Gone was that high, shrill bratty tone that Sissy used on me just moments ago. She seemed subdued and sad. If I didn't miss my guess, Sissy had tears in her eyes.
"I don't know why I get this way," confessed my stepdaughter. "It's like a chemical inside me or something. You're not going to leave me, are you?"
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
"You told Daddy you can't live like this any more," said Sissy, bowing her head.
Almost inaudibly, she whispered, "PLEASE don't go."
I felt my chemistry calming, but there were still issues that needed to be resolved.
"Look, Sissy, I'm not leaving," I said calmly.
I could see relief as she raised her head to study my face. "Promise? You really promise not to go?"
I keep forgetting that, despite all her apparent self-confidence, my little stepdaughter lost her mother at two-and-a-half years, the time of her first individuation.
When she was 10, I became her new stepmother.
Sissy had been 'Daddy's little helper' and queen of the roost. She wasn't happy to turn everything over to another hen.
The early years were rough.
Roger had used corporal punishment pretty much exclusively on Sissy when he was a single dad. Roger is a very gentle man, but Southern Baptists had raised him and he simply didn't know better, despite his advanced degrees in college.
Kyoko, the college student who labored as Cecilia's nanny until I came on the scene, also spanked Sissy as her first response to childish foolishness.
I'm sad to say that I, too, fell into the same routine. Even as I punished, though, I knew something was wrong.
As the alpha female, I used Cecilia's small pink souvenir paddle - aptly lettered 'Applied Child Psychologist' across the small blade - to assert my new status as the mother hen.
Nevertheless, guilt over my physical domination of Cecilia gnawed at my insides.
For that's how I used spankings: to vanquish and subordinate my daughter.
My 'mothering' became a cruel path to dominance, to satisfy my insatiable appetite for absolute power and control.
In time - and with the help of several parenting classes for blended families - I convinced Roger that Cecilia, now a 12-year-old, was too old to spank.
For almost three years subsequent to that epiphany, I successfully substituted 'natural consequences' and a token system to effectively guide my budding teen into womanhood.
Successful that is, till six months ago.
It seems that Cecilia was searching the back of her closet for a missing sneaker.
There, apparently, she encountered the Devil. Cecilia promptly sold her soul for 30 pieces of silver, which the Prince of Darkness added to her iTunes account.
Sissy emerged from the closet the bonafide spawn of Satan.
Life in the Brackenridge home has been a living Hell ever since.
"I'm sorry I said you were fat, Grace," said my stepdaughter, still standing in the kitchen door with her hands behind her back, looking very much like a naughty 8-year-old rather than a self-confident teen.
For my part, I fit the part of the mean old stepmother, towering over my naughty stepchild. Cecilia had submitted to my corporal punishment for about two years; that dominant/submissive dynamic never goes away.
Indeed, at 5-foot-9, I'm an Amazon giant and the exact opposite of Sissy's mother.
Some call me buxom. Others call me large-boned. Roger calls be voluptuous and still marvels, after five years of marriage, at my extra-support 38D brassieres and equally substantial panties for my buttocks. So far, so good.
My waist? None of your business!
When I look in the mirror sometimes, I see a big, fat cow looking back.
"I'm sorry I called you a big, fat cow," said Sissy, expanding and clarifying her apology.
Despite the fury of our recent conflagration, I couldn't help but smile.
"It's an easy mistake to make," I quipped.
Cecilia didn't get it.
"And I'm sorry for calling you the C-word," she continued. "I had no reason to get mad like that. It's my own fault I missed curfew last night. You guys have every right to ground me."
Perplexed, I shook my head.
Had Satan lost his grip on the soul he so recently purchased in the closet?
"Well," I said, "I suppose I owe you an apology, too. Sometimes when I'm PMS, I don't know what I'm saying."
"That's okay, Grace, you have every right to be mad at me."
"Well, kiddo," I sighed. "Your apology is accepted, but that's probably not all that needs to be done here. I'm not a stickler for respect, but calling me what you called me requires some consequences, don't you think?"
"You mean the big, fat cow part?" she asked. "Or the part where I called you the C-word?"
"Well, the big, fat cow part was unkind, but probably constitutionally protected as fair commentary," I smiled. "But it's the C-word that crossed the line for me, Cecilia."
"Yeah," she nodded, "I knew I was over the line the minute I said it. I was too pissed off to take it back right away. Not that it matters, I suppose, once it comes out of your mouth."
"Can you think of any natural consequences we can add to the grounding?" I asked, crossing my arms and feeling in control of the situation.
"Well," said the waif, looking younger and tinier the longer she stood there with her hands behind her back, "I gotta an idea, but you're not gonna like it."
"I've an open mind," I smiled. "What's your idea?"
"I know you and Daddy took those parenting classes and got certificates and all," she said hesitantly. "And I think you guys learned a lot of really good stuff. You are doing a pretty good job with helping me grow up. Really. But maybe you guys are in too big a hurry for me to grow up."
I shook my head. "Honey, I haven't a clue what you're talking about."
"Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "I thought this would be a good consequence for me calling you the C-word."
She brought her arms from behind her back and now I could see why she had been standing there so contritely.
All along, Cecilia had been hiding something in back.
"Where did you get that?" I asked. "We threw it away years ago."
"Yeah, we had that big ceremony out by the garbage can," giggled Cecilia. "You guys were sure you were doing the right thing. As for me, I wasn't so sure. I knew I wasn't as grown up as you guys thought I was."
She shrugged and smiled. "Besides, Popeye had been my best friend for years."
"Why do you call it that?"
"That's what I named him," Cecilia explained. "When I was little, Daddy said my eyes popped out of my head whenever he got it out for me. Popeye. Cuz my eyes popped out of my head. Get it?"
"Yes, I get it."
"I know it's old," sighed Cecilia, smiling wanly. "Almost as old as me. But it still works just fine. I think you ought to try it again, Grace. It's what I deserve."
Cecilia stepped forward and handed me her little pink souvenir paddle, handle first.
The white lettering was chipped and faded, but it still declared the paddle's intention and purpose: 'Applied Child Psychologist.'
I sat on our bed in the master bedroom, the 'Applied Child Psychologist' resting on my lap.
Cecilia chattered gaily as she sat on the floor and took off her sneakers. "I used to hate waiting, like Daddy used to make me do. When you guys got married, you started spanking me on the spot. I like the sound of that, don't you? Spanked on the spot!"
"I don't recall your enthusiasm," I said dryly. "I seem to remember a very weepy little girl sitting right where you're sitting, pleading for a stay of execution."
Cecilia stood and wiggled out of snug designer jeans. "You remember that time I was bawling my head off and asking you to move my spanking to bedtime? You sorta gave me my wish. Remember?"
"Yes, I remember."
In fact, I still felt ashamed of that spanking. I had spanked her maybe 2 or 3 times prior to that one.
Cecilia begged for a bedtime spanking, rather than an on-the-spot spanking. I told her she would get her wish. But I also said I'm getting my wish too.
Since she was already over my lap and panties down, I applied some child psychology to her bottom.
At bedtime, I felt conflicted. Was a double spanking really justified by a single fresh remark? Still, I had made a commitment to Cecilia. Wasn't I obligated to keep my word?
I kissed her goodnight. I decided I shouldn't spank her again.
Still, I lingered at her bedroom door, my hand on the knob. Should I stay or should I go?
Then little Cecilia piped up and asked me if I forgot my 'promise.'
Well, that sealed her fate.
But I still felt guilty.
"Look, Sissy, I'm sorry for spanking you twice like that," I sighed. "I was new to the spanking business. You didn't deserve two spankings."
"Why not?" giggled Cecilia. "If you spank me once for my own good, then twice-spanked is twice as good!"
I smiled, unconvinced and unwilling to forgive myself. Not just yet, anyway.
"Maybe you remember it different than me, Grace," said Cecilia, pulling her white cotton top over her head and shaking free her short, curly auburn hair. "After the spanking - the bedtime spanking - you lay down next to me and we talked and talked."
I looked at her pixie-like body with narrow tapered waist and tiny, budding breasts in her trainer bra. And such a nice round bottom! I felt jealous of my stepdaughter's waiflike body type, so much the fashion these days.
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