Chapter 2

I woke up the next morning with my head bouncing on my pillow as Mom bounced on my bed on her hands and knees, chanting, "Brek-fuss, brek-fuss, brek-fuss." She was still wearing her scoop neck sleep shirt, and as she bounced, so did her boobs—every which way. I turned my face to the pillow to shut out the sight and didn't look up again until she'd stopped bouncing. Then her breasts just hung there like tempting, delicious fruit and didn't help one bit with my morning wood.

Looking at the wall, I said, "You're raring to go early this morning."

"Yep," she said, "and I'm hungry. C'mon, let's go get brekfuss."

"Okay," I said. "You go on ahead to the kitchen, and I'll be there in just a minute. I have to go to the bathroom and get dressed." I wasn't about to get out of bed with her here while my pecker was sticking out of my boxers.

"No," she said, tugging on my hand. "Now."

"Samantha," I said sternly, "a man who's responsible for a little girl doesn't walk around in front of her in his underwear."

"Oh, poo," she said. "All right."

As soon as she was out of the room, I got up and slipped into a pair of shorts and zipped across the hall to the bathroom.

"Now, what do you want for breakfast?" I asked, as I walked into the kitchen.

"Cocoa Puffs," she said.

"Cocoa Puffs? We don't have any Cocoa Puffs. We haven't had any Cocoa Puffs around here for years."

"Do too," she said.

I looked in the cupboard where we kept the cereal, and sure enough, there was an unopened box of Cocoa Puffs. So we had cereal for breakfast. I opted for Wheaties, though. I couldn't understand how Mom could stomach Cocoa Puffs. It sure isn't my idea of a grown-up cereal.

And I sent Samantha off to get dressed. I wondered for a moment how it was that she was able to dress herself but needed help getting undressed for her bath. It seemed to me that putting clothes on was a more complicated task than taking them off. But I also saw immediately that it would be pure stupidity for me to challenge Mom about that. It would almost certainly backfire on me, and I didn't want to add getting her dressed to my responsibilities.

Presently, she returned wearing the same baggy pink shorts but a tee-shirt on top—this one so tight and thin that her breasts were outlined in every detail. I didn't say a word about the shirt or her lack of bra. Not one word.

"So," I said, "what are you going to do today?"

"Play," she said.

"Hmmm," I said, "If you're going to play, maybe I'll go hang out with Mike for a while."

"Can't," she said. "You can't leave me alone. You have to be responsible for me."

"How about if I get a babysitter?"

"And how are you going to pay for a babysitter?" Mom's voice said from Samantha's mouth.

"How about if Mike comes over here, then?" I asked. "Then you'd have two people being responsible for you."

I almost laughed out loud at the look of panic that flitted across Mom's face.

"Um," she said. "No, I mean, I don't think that would be a good idea, ah, Mike's too big to play with me. Yeah, that's it. Mike's too big to play with me."

"I see," I said. My bet was that she didn't want Mike to see her boobs in that shirt. Or try to explain why she was acting like a little girl. I probably could have milked this one quite a bit more, but I decided to save it for when I really needed it. "Well, then, what let's you and me do?"

"Play hopscotch," she said, running off toward the back of the house. She returned a minute later and, holding a stick of chalk in one hand, zoomed right on by me on her way to the door to the garage.

"Hopscoooooooooooooooootch," she said, zooming right on by me again and heading for the front door.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the house, Mom bent over and started drawing a hopscotch court. We live in a housing tract that's pretty much like housing tracts all over the United States—three bedroom, 1-1/2 bath single-family homes side-by-side on 60' x 100' lots. We had neighbors on either side of us as well as neighbors across the street. On this clear, sunny Saturday morning, it was likely that the neighbors would be out mowing lawns and washing cars, or just coming and going with weekend errands—and they would have a marvelous opportunity to see 37-year-old Mrs. Whitfield playing hopscotch like a little girl while wearing a tee-shirt that made it clear that she was by no means a little girl. I could just see old Mr. Perkins from next door coming out to watch Mom bounce. I also thought that jumping up and down without a bra was painful for women with large breasts. But I was just along for the ride. If Mom was up for it, so was I.

Mom had fished a couple of stomped-flat Coke cans out of the recycle bin to use for markers. We pounded out rock, scissors, paper to decide who would go first. Mom's scissors cut my paper, so she dropped her marker in square number 1, and we were off. For the first round, Mom easily hopped and stepped down the court, turned around at the end, hopped and stepped back, and gracefully bent in a ballet-like pose and picked up her marker.

We got as far as the first double square without too much trouble. Then the going got a lot tougher. Mom had made a poor choice of markers. The Coke cans tended to skitter and slide on the pavement, and there were a lot of missed turns. Hopping was more work for a big person than a little person, and I think Mom discovered that her center of gravity was not now in the same place it had been when she was a girl. As she started to tire, she had increasing difficulty maintaining her balance. More than once, I saw her wince and cup her breasts. The neighbors didn't exactly stand and stare, but the guys across the street seemed to have a lot of excuses to be in their front yard and look our way. The neighbor directly across from us, who was washing his car, hosed down his wife when he turned to check Mom out.

It took us an embarrassing two hours to make one full round. By that time, our legs were sore, our feet hurt, and we were sweating like pigs. By silent mutual consent, we decided that one round of hopscotch was enough.

As soon as we got back in the house, Mom peeled off her tee-shirt and used it to wipe sweat off her chest.

"Mom!" I exploded.

"Samantha," she reminded me.

"Samantha, little girls shouldn't be running around without their shirts on."

"It's perfectly all right for little girls to run around without their shirts on when they're in their own houses," Mom said.

"I dunno about little girls with big tits" jumped out of my mouth before I could catch it.

Mom had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Okay, she got me. Score a point for Mom.

As we finished up our lunch of toasted cheese sandwiches, I asked Samantha what she wanted to do during the afternoon.

Mom cupped her still-bare breasts and moved them around gently. "Um," she said, reverting to her little girl voice, "I think I'd like to just rest this afternoon."

"That would be fine with me," I said. "You go ahead and do what you want to do then. Maybe you should have a nap."

When I got done cleaning up our lunch dishes, I tip-toed down the hall for another peek at Mom. She was sitting at her desk with her back to me, doing something with her laptop. Great, I thought, an afternoon off. I went to my room and spent some time with my computer, too.

Because I'd given Samantha such a hard time about last night's casserole—little girls don't like sautéed onions and bulgur wheat—I served grilled hamburgers on buns with french fries for dinner, and let her have a soft drink with it. I was an old meanie responsible person and told her to put a shirt on before she came to the dinner table. I didn't get one complaint about the food, though. She chugged down the last of her orange soda and bracked out a most un-little-girl-like belch.

"Oh, that sounded just lovely," I said. "So refined."

Mom stuck her tongue out at me and giggled.

"What shall we do now?" I asked.

"Go Fish!" she said.