by Grace Brackenridge
Used to be, somebody coming upstairs made a clomp-clomp-clomp sound. Footsteps echoed in the hallway.
When I turned 13, Mom remarried.
Kyle, my new stepdad, put in wall-to-wall carpeting.
I left my door open ajar Saturday morning. Otherwise 'grounding' felt like solitary confinement. I'd missed curfew by 45 minutes the night before.
Since Mom eliminated corporal punishment when I turned 12, she had no choice but to ground me for the weekend. Adding insult to injury, she went shopping at the mall on Saturday.
Without me.
That's the one thing Mom and I still like to do together.
"How was it?" I asked into my cell phone, lying on my bed with my back to the door.
"Awful!" exclaimed my best friend, Julia.
Since we had been out together, Julia missed curfew too.
Unlike our household, Julia's stepdad actually re-introduced corporal punishment when Julia turned 12 - with what he called a "birthday spanking with a surprise."
Julia's first 'surprise' was unwrapping a ping-pong paddle at her birthday party. The second 'surprise' came after everybody left. Her mother went for a walk, and Julia's stepdad spanked her bare bottom long and hard.
"Still," I pointed out, "you woke up this morning with your punishment behind you."
"Yes, it's behind me alright. And it still hurts!"
I laughed. "Consider yourself lucky. When Mom said no more spankings on my 12th birthday, I thought I was the lucky one, especially knowing what happened to you on your 12th. But now I'm not so sure. In a way, I wish I could trade places..."
"Grace! Grounding means no phone calls!"
I rolled over on my bed.
Kyle stood in the door, still in his bathrobe and bare feet, his toes kneading the thick carpeting.
"Julia, I gotta go!" I clicked the 'Off' button.
"I heard you tell your little friend that you would like to trade places with her. What's that about?"
So I explained about Julia's stepfather, the ping-pong paddle he gave her for her 12th birthday, and the bare-bottom spankings that Julia receives - including last night's spanking for curfew violation.
"So you want Julia's stepfather to spank your bare behind?" Kyle asked, confused.
Kyle is in the construction business, so he knows lots about building houses and remodeling. Like wall-to-wall carpeting. But he doesn't understand teenage girls at all!
I suspect nobody does.
"No, Kyle, he's not my stepdad. You are."
Kyle smiled as he began to see the light. "Want to help me with a woodworking project?"
"Sure," I shrugged.
"What are you two doing?" asked Mom, holding an armful of shopping bags. "Grace, you're grounded. Why aren't you in your bedroom?"
"She's helping me," said Kyle, turning on the router and drowning anything else Mom had to say.
I smiled at her and shrugged.
Mom looked up from the bags on the king-size bed she shares with Kyle. All her shopping acquisitions lay spread before her.
"Grace, you were grounded last night," said Mom, looking to the open door of the master bedroom as I walked by. "Just exactly what do you think..."
Kyle appeared behind me, holding the handicraft of our father-daughter woodworking project.
"Oh," said Mom, utterly confused.
"Hannah," said my stepfather, "we can talk about this later."
He took me by the arm, leading me down the hall to my room.
Behind us, from her bedroom door, Mom called, "Kyle, don't you think we should talk now? You know, beforehand?"
"No, Hannah. I don't."
He closed my bedroom door behind us.
The thing I thought would be the hardest was the bare-bottom part.
With Mom - before the ban - baring of the bottom was something she did only for the extra-hard spankings of my childhood.
And in any case, I was a child and she was my mother.
Now, a man who wasn't even my real dad, was about to bare - and paddle - my 14-year-old bottom, a disciplinary measure that hadn't happened to my buns in years.
I wore tight designer jeans out to Kyle's workshop. So rather than spank me bare right away, I bent over the end of my bed for about a half dozen super-swats.
I cried as I pulled down my own jeans - under Kyle's orders - and draped myself over his lap while he sat on my bed.
The nice thing about the 15-inch paddle that we made is that it works fine for a bend-over paddling on the seat of the pants, as well as the more-familiar, over-the-lap spankings.
Even over his lap, Kyle gave me a good dozen spanks on my cotton panties.
Only then did he bare my buns for the grand finale.
By then, I was so focused on the pain in my butt that I didn't care one tiny bit that my stepdad could see my bare butt.
My only concern was the painful sensation of our brand-spanking-new paddle connecting with my bare, already-spanked skin.
Ouch!
But then again, "ouch" really doesn't capture the true sense of a bare-bottom paddling.
"I just think we should have discussed it first," sniffed Mom over supper.
I wasn't grounded anymore, but - for some reason - I felt like hanging around the house. For one thing, I didn't want Mom picking on Kyle like he'd done something mean and awful to me.
"We did discuss it," said Kyle, carving his meat.
"No we didn't!" said Mom indignantly.
"Grace and I discussed it," said Kyle evenly. "I'm her dad. I made a decision. It's not good for you to argue like this in front of Grace."
"You are her STEPfather, Kyle!" said Mom coldly. "Grace's father is dead."
Silence fell over the table. The one time I said that, about a month after the wedding, Mom grounded me for the whole weekend.
I could see the hurt in Kyle's face.
"Dad," I said, using the "D" word that I had copiously avoided over the 18 months since the marriage, "if I ever say something mean like that to you, please give me a good, hard spanking."
I looked at my mother, my eyes blazing.
"Don't worry," he replied. "I will."
We ate the rest of the meal in silence.
"Grace, why don't you go over to Julia's house?" suggested Kyle as I helped Mom clear the table. "You two have some spanking adventure stories to share."
"She's still grounded," insisted Mom, "as far as I'm concerned."
I looked at Mom and then at Kyle. Something of a tectonic nature was shifting in their marriage.
I best be someplace else!
"Thanks, Daddy!" I said, giving him a hug and a kiss. "See you guys later."
All Julia and I talked about was our spankings.
I even showed her my bottom, which still bore the imprint of Kyle's paddling.
"Wow! He done you good, Grace!" exclaimed my friend.
We looked at her butt, too, but it had been almost 24 hours and there wasn't much left but a darkish bruise on her lower cheeks.
"Well, I better get home to see if Mom and Kyle are gonna get divorced or something!" I joked, trying to hide my anxiety.
"Everything will turn out fine in the end," Julia assured me at her front door.
Back in the days of hardwood flooring, Kyle and Mom would have heard me walking across the living room and climbing up the stairs.
Back in the days of hardwood flooring, Kyle would never have heard me talking on the phone. We wouldn't have made me my brand-spanking-new paddle. I wouldn't have been spanked. Mom and Kyle wouldn't have argued.
What a difference wall-to-wall carpeting can make!
"Kyle, you can't be serious! I'm a grown woman!" I heard as I climbed the stairs.
The door to the master bedroom was ajar.
"When I was in the Navy," said Kyle, "I met women in a number of countries. Most American men who are in the know will tell you that American women are the worst."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The sense of entitlement," Kyle replied. "The idea that they are the boss of everything. That men are their servants, rather than the other way around. Fortunately, I can help Grace overcome her American heritage."
"You sound like a jihadist!" Mom accused.
"No, just an ordinary Christian man with a spoiled stepdaughter and a very spoiled wife," Kyle replied. "I think I'm on the way to help Grace get over her spoiled-ness. I'm not so sure about you, Hannah."
"What's THAT supposed to mean?"
"That means you never, ever deny my position as Grace's father. I provide her a home. Food. Love. And discipline. I'm her father. I expect an apology."
"Okay, okay," said Mom impatiently, "I may have gone overboard in the heat of the moment. I apologize. There! Satisfied?"
"Not quite," he replied evenly. "You still need to be punished."
"You can't spank me like a little girl!"
Spank! God! Things looked like they were heading in the right direction. I'm well aware some of my 'attitude' problems stem from the examples my mother provides.
"Grace took her spanking with dignity and an attitude of submission," replied Kyle. "I'm disappointed that you can't show the same maturity."
"Well, I don't see anything mature about this," said Mom.
I couldn't help myself. I peeked around the corner.
Mom lay down, right over Kyle's lap. She wore nothing but her bra and panties.
"Not on the bare!" whined Mom as Kyle hooked the elastic band with his fingers.
"Very well..."
Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap!
Whereupon Kyle pulled down the panties of my sobbing mother and...
Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!
Mom howled and squirmed, instantly aware of the difference in the 'sting' factor.
I could relate...
Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!
After church on Sunday, Mom stayed behind for a meeting of the Music and Worship Committee.
On the ride home, I said slyly, "Daddy, feel free to borrow my paddle any time you want."
"What are you talking about?"
"My paddle," I replied. "I mean, if you ever need to give somebody else a spanking, I don't mind sharing."
"You know, I've been thinking about drilling some holes in that paddle of yours," he replied.
"Why?"
"Cut down air resistance," said Kyle. "Provide more bang for the buck."
"It's got plenty of bang already," I observed.
"Want to help? After all, it is your paddle."
I shrugged. "Sure."
I changed from my church dress into a blue denim work shirt, snug white shorts, and flip-flops.
I met Kyle in the workshop.
"I don't see why you need me," I shrugged as Kyle measured and marked the spots where he would drill three rows of holes in the blade.
"Product testing," he smiled, sitting on a high metal stool next to his workbench. "We need to test it before and after the alterations. Come here."
"This is just a test, right?" I said as I stepped forward and he tugged down my shorts to my knee. "It's not a real spanking."
"Well," he replied, draping me over his right knee, which he supported with the steel support ring near the bottom of the stool legs, "it can be a real spanking, if you want it to be."
I dangled in the air over the concrete floor, made furry with yellow sawdust.
"Why would I want that?" I asked, looking down. "Can't I have just a couple of swats now and a couple more when the holes are drilled? That what you mean by 'product testing', right?"
"Now, it has to be as close to the real thing as we can get," replied my stepdad. "So if there's something naughty you've done - say since the last time I spanked you - this is your chance to clear the books."
"Well," I blushed, "maybe I can think of something."
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