Chapter 3

Mom strapped sponges to our naked bodies with rope tied around our bellies so that the largest yellow sponges hung down in front of our freshly hairless and slick cunts and another to barely cover our butt cracks. It looked like we wearing an absurd loincloth or a very chunky bathing suit from a distance.

Mom wrapped rope around the base of our tits and then around our back before wrapping it around the front and using it to tie two smaller sponges on our tits.

She said that duct tape would just come off and then tied one more cord around the sponges to secure them on our bodies. She tugged them to make sure they wouldn’t come off, but they did shift.

She made us carry buckets and wax outside to wash her car. My mom has an old Mercury Monarch. The car was massive, and the engine has a beastly sound because I think the muffler fell off a long time ago. The paint on our car had faded due to the sun, and it seemed pointless to wash it, but mom said that was the point we needed to learn. She said it was like breaking rocks in prison with a hammer. The lesson was in the labor not the outcome.

It didn’t make sense to me, but I had to do it anyway. She told us to dunk our asses in the water and put our tits right into the bucket and wash the car. She’d let us know when we could hose it down.

Mom sat down on a lawn chair in the front of the yard next to some plastic pink flamingos and sipped lemonade. She turned on the radio, so we had some cool music. My mom liked rock and pop, which was lucky for me. A Whitney Houston “I wanna dance with somebody” came on and Mandy and I pretended to sing it while we splashed.

Mrs. Hannigan came out of her house, almost immediately to complain about the noise. I hated that old bitch. She lived next door and collected the rent for the landlord. She acted like she owned the Duplex though.

“What in heaven’s name is all of this satanic music?” She asked my mom.

“I believe this is Whitney Houston,” my mom answered with a wry grin.

“These girls have next to nothing on,” Mrs. Hannigan wasn’t going to argue about the music after she noticed we were wearing nothing but sponges.

“They have on more than most at the beach, and they’d be happy to wash your car next when they finish with mine,” my mom smiled at her.

“Oh no, I won’t accept any labor in exchange for the rent which is due promptly on the first,” she reminded my mother.

“Completely free of charge just to be neighborly,” My mom offered our services to the mean old biddy. She always had her nose in everybody’s business.

Mrs. Hannigan seemed skeptical, but she wouldn’t pass up anything free.

“In fact, how much do you pay the lawn service to mow the yard?” My mom asked her as she sipped her lemonade.

Mrs. Hannigan told her she wouldn’t reduce the rent one penny if that is what my mom had in mind.

“I understand, I just thought they would be happy to do it for the summer for half of what you pay the service,” my mom smiled again.

“They would have to weed, edge, blow leaves, that is not work for girls,” Mrs. Hannigan insisted.

“If you don’t like the way they do it, then you don’t have to pay, how is that?” My mom continued to smile.

Mrs. Hannigan blustered and asked if we’d be wearing the sponges while we mowed the grass.

“No, but since it is summer they will be wearing bikinis,” My mom smiled. Mrs. Hannigan told us to see that we minded her radio antenna when we washed her car. “The colored boys at the car wash snapped it off and refused to admit they damaged it. If you damage it then I’ll add the cost to the rent,” she wagged a finger and reminded us that it was due promptly on the first.

My mom took a long sip of her lemonade while we watched Mrs. Hannigan walk away and then reminded us to get back to work.

“Sure, you want to do this, cunt?” I whispered to Mandy while I bumped into her and tried to knock her sponge off while making it look like an accident.

“Nope, do you?” Mandy tried to trip me so that I would fall face first on the hot metal hood of my mother’s car.

“Yeah, this is how I want to spend my Sunday, wiggling my ass outside. I’ve never washed a car before,” I said sarcastically.

“Maybe you should quit,” Mandy splashed me with soapy water.

“You would like that,” I said and splashed her back. She said she would, and before we knew it, we were fighting and splashing each other with water and having fun. It was quite unlike me to enjoy myself outside, especially with Mandy.

We only stopped when we noticed a creepy old neighbor standing nearby. He was watering his fence with his garden hose and had been for quite some time. He looked like Stan Lee, the guy who draws comic books of Spider-Man. He had grey hair and a mustache and was wearing foster grant sunglasses and wearing baggy shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like a typical “Snowbird,” which is our word for tourists that come down from the north to visit. They typically come down in Winter, but some of them retire to Florida and stay all year round. They are still snowbirds as far as we are concerned.

“Hello there,” he looked delighted we noticed him. It was obvious he was gawking at us. I would have shot him a bird if I wasn’t in training, but I could tell when I looked at my mom; she expected us to be polite.

“Hello Sir,” I said, and Mandy stopped splashing me to look at him too. I elbowed her, and she said, Hello Sir.

“Such polite girls, I couldn’t help but notice you were washing the car,” he said. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to say to that. It was neither a question nor something interesting that we didn’t already know.

“Yes, we are sir,” Mandy said after waiting to see if he had anything else to say.

“My eyes are getting bad, and I am sure you have on swimsuits but every time you bend over I think you don’t,” he smiled at us hopefully.

“We have on swimsuits Sir, they are just H string bikinis,” Mandy turned around and bent over and mooned him and exposed her entire bare ass.

“H String Bikinis? I am afraid I haven’t heard of that,” he said.

“Yes Sir, it is like a G-string only one letter more because it was even smaller than a G-string. I would be crazy to come outside wearing just a sponge,” Mandy bounced up and made her tits bounce up as she popped out of the water and smiled at him. Mandy was a crazy bitch on some level but I have to admit that was a funny joke.

The neighbor continued to stare at us and let his garden hose run, but he had nothing to say. We told him we needed to get back to washing the car and turned around started working. I couldn’t help myself. I had to laugh. Mandy was pretty funny.

“That was fine girls because you were playful, but I expect you to be honest with your betters,” My mom came over to where we were and brought two tall glasses of cold water for us. I reached for it, and my mom poured it on my head and the other ice cold glass of water on Mandy. She smiled playfully and splashed us, and we splashed her back.

“I am not wearing a bikini! no fair,” My mom said playfully as she reached into the suds bucket and splashed us.

“Then go put on your h string and come join us,” Mandy laughed and picked up the hose and sprayed my mom down.

“I might just do that,” My mom rubbed some of the water off her pretty face and tried to wipe off her make up that was running. She laughed.

A van pulled up to where we were. It was Jerry, the guy who did drywall. He whistled and said we all looked pretty soaking wet.

My mom composed herself and invited Jerry in to look at some of the damage. She told us to continue washing both cars and then come back inside when we were done. Jerry leered at us creepily but kept his distance and followed my mom inside to look around.

“Jesus, your mom is so strange. One minute she is kicking our ass and the next minute she is playing around with us,” Mandy said.

“My mom has a playful and fun side. She loves me, doesn’t your mom love you, Mandy?” I knew that was mean.

“Yes, my mom loves me,” Mandy said it like that should be obvious.

“Well, they both have a wild side. I know my mom likes to party and she has been around long enough to be able to recognize a nose that had cocaine in it,” I said.

“Good point, yeah my mom had a wild side. Do you think your mom really was disciplined this way, or is she making it all up to do one of those scared straight things?” Mandy asked. She explained there were these after school specials where kids were sent to these camps to get tough love, and they had harsh conditions and labor and were yelled at all day.

I laughed at her for watching after school specials. However, I told her that I believed my mom had been disciplined this way. “Why else would she have all these paddles and know how to use them? I’ve never met my Grandfather, but my mom has a lot of stories about him. She said he had a warm and loving side but that if you got on his bad side, he would burn your entire world down. I know he had a tattoo of the letters L-O-V-E on each finger of his left hand and H-A-T-E on each finger of his right hand. I told her about a story my mom told me once where a hippy was hassling her father after he came back from Vietnam as a decorated war hero. The Hippy told my grandfather “Make Love Not War” and spit on him.

My Grandfather showed him his open hand with the tattoo that said LOVE on each finger and then his fist with the one that said Hate and asked him which one he wanted. The Hippy chose love, and so my Grandfather slapped the shit out of him with it.

Mandy laughed pretty hard at my joke. I wasn’t sure if she was genuinely amused or buttering me up. That was what I liked about Mandy. She was so much like me in a lot of ways. I also hated that about her.

We washed my mom’s car, and when we were satisfied with that, we moved on to Mrs. Hannagan’s big Lincoln Continental. We could finally talk a little while my mom was inside distracted with Jerry.

“What scares you the most about the rules?” Mandy asked me.

“Nothing, what scares you,” I lied. The entire thing scared me. Mandy said she thought the rules were too light.

“You are going to want to go home to mommy after two days here,” I assured her.

“Oh, that sounds like a bet?” Mandy said.

“I liked how you tried to trick my mom into deciding who was the best girl and then letting her duck out while the rest of us continue the training. I have been around her all my life. She is hard to manipulate,” I said.

“You noticed that, did you? Well, I’ll have to watch how you do it and take notes,” Mandy said.

I looked over my shoulder to see if my mom was watching from behind. She wasn’t, but that would have been funny if she caught me saying that.

I told her she had to be smarter if she was going to try to pull anything on my mom.

“We could work together,” Mandy said.

I agreed wholeheartedly. This would be a perfect way to get her to do something to get in trouble and take all the blame for it.

“What is the goal? To get Julie to have to do this? or to just get out of doing it entirely?” I asked.

“Do you think we can get out of doing it entirely?” Mandy asked me as we washed the car and ignored some local rednecks honking and yelling at us from their truck as they drove up and down our street.

“No, my mom is going to make us do it to the end,” I said. “We could probably get her to be less strict,” I suggested.

“I like that idea,” Mandy admitted.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of the rules,” I said.