Chapter 26: Mother's Underwear

It was a few months after my mother molested me I was watching television. During a commercial break, I raced down to the basement to get a change of clothes out of the dryer. That’s when I accidently tripped over an open box of powdered laundry detergent left on the cellar stairs. I went ass over teakettle and landed in a cloud of soap powder at the bottom of the stairs. My mother heard the racket and came to investigate.

Joyce had been drinking for the last few hours and was already well on her way toward getting totally sloshed. She stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at me rubbing my arm as I sat and sneezed in a fog of soap dust. Little particles of Tide lay all around me, like the remains of a winter’s snow squall.

Joyce vanished from view for a moment and then reappeared with a dustpan and brush and a face of fury. She started screaming.

“Look at the mess you’ve made, Dennis. I want this cleaned up before you go to bed!” Joyce raged as she threw down the dustpan and brush. I ducked to avoid getting hit, and the brush bounced off my shoulder.

My mother then stomped down the stairs, stood over me, and demanded that I sweep up every last speck of soap powder spilled on the concrete floor of the cellar.

Joyce took a seat on the stairs and proceeded to supervise the cleanup the process. “You missed a spot there ... over there is a place you missed ... you call that clean?” She pointed out one speck after another.

No matter what I did, it was not good enough. If even a particle or two of soap powder remained wedged in a crevice, it was too much.

As Joyce scolded and guided my cleanup process, she positioned her loose-fitting gray skirt as she sat on the stairs. Joyce rolled up the hem of her dress and draped it across her knees with her pale white legs spread wide. She continued to admonish me for missing specks of soap powder.

“God damn it! Look at me when I’m talking,” she snarled.

I had been averting my eyes as I cleaned. Every time I glanced up, a clear view of her crotch, black underwear, and a few strands of pubic hair filled my field of vision. Mother’s underwear was so tight I could see the outline of her sex beneath the fabric of her panties.

“Joyce, I really don’t want to see that,” I said as I pointed to her open legs and the view beyond.

Joyce rolled the hem of her dress further up her thighs, spread her legs even further apart, and said, “Then don’t look.”

Despite my anger and growing rage at my mother’s micromanaging, I was cautious in my response. One wrong move on my part could trigger something very uncomfortable. Much more painful than the discomfort I was already feeling. I was scared she would strip naked.

I remembered her invitation to explore her body and I feared that Joyce was trying to use my accident with the soap to set the stage for her next act. Her voice continued to nag at me for the next several minutes as she kept herself on display while I cleaned the floor at her feet. I refused to look at her and said nothing. I cleaned and silently obeyed her every command. I refused to nibble at her bait. I was mother’s perfect servant.

Finally, she grew tired of her game and my lack of response. She decided that the floor was clean enough and she dismissed me from my labors. I went to bed and tried to sleep as a fresh set of unwanted images burned into my brain.

That was the last time anything remotely sexual passed between us. Twice was enough.