Chapter 1

May 4, 2017 (Thursday)

Dear Ms. Diary,

I am 14! Rhee and her mom came over for dinner and cake, and I got a few presents. However, the best present was one my mom gave me before dinner before Dad got home; Mom had taken the afternoon off so she could prepare dinner and make my birthday cake. After she got the cake into the oven, I cornered her, intending to take advantage of what I hoped would be her guilt and her apparent submissive streak, a reasonable assumption from the sexual role-playing that I had observed on two of the three occasions that I had watched my parents having sex. (Yes, despite my tender years, I am aware of such things. There is this thing called the Internet, and I am pretty bright.)

“Mom, we need to talk.”

“Okay,” she said a bit tremulously, “about what?”

“I have this photo that I took on the 22^nd that you need to see.”

I then showed her the photo on my phone I took through the hall mirror of her and whomever back on 22 April. She glanced at the picture and immediately broke down, sobbing.

“I was afraid of that,” she blubbered. “I thought I heard something in the house that sounded like you.” (After taking the incriminating photo, I had tiptoed down the hall and out of the house.)

“Why,” I asked.

“It sealed my promotion, but I’ve been ill about it ever since. I’ve been dreading that if I had heard you that you’d tell your dad. I know that he loves me very much, and I’m very afraid of the consequences of him finding out.”

She proceeded to completely lose it, lying on the kitchen floor, crying.

I let her cry for a minute and then asked, “Was the promotion worth it?”

She wailed louder and got out a stuttering, “N ... n ... no.”

I sat on the floor next to her, put her head in my lap, and smoothed her hair. After a while, her crying came to a shuddering end, at which point I started down the road I had carefully planned in the past 12 days.

“I love you, Mom, but you’ve screwed up, and I don’t want your screw-up to change what has been a happy life for me and Dad. There must be some changes, else I will tell Dad and take my chances. I think he’d be devastated.”

At that point, Mom started blubbering again. “O ... okay. I’ll do whatever you want for you not to tell him.”

“At some point, Mom, you’ll have to tell him, but in exchange for a few particular demands, I will let you tell him in the future when you think your marriage might survive the telling.”

Her crying again ceased, and she responded, “I’ll do whatever. Let you stay up late ... whatever.”

“No, Mom, I don’t want you to give up your parenting responsibilities; I don’t think that would be good for me, and Dad would get suspicious. No, I have very different thoughts on the subject.”

The quaver in Mom’s voice was obvious, “Wh-what?”

“Since it seems you cannot be trusted with it, I’m taking control of your sexual life. You will do what I say in that vein, but I demand control of no other aspects of your life. I want you to be an effective parent to me and a good wife to Dad.”

Her face, on which I was looking straight down, went through many expressions, some of which I could not interpret. One looked promising for my endeavor, but the expression series ended with fear.

I interrupted her before she could get her objection across her lips, “No, I won’t demand that you fuck all my male school friends. I don’t want that at all.”

Her face relaxed a bit, but still showed tension.

“Mom, why don’t we get up off the floor and sit at the table and I’ll explain.”

She nodded her head, and we got up and sat in chairs on opposite sides of the kitchen table. I again pulled out my phone, set it on the table, and opened and started the voice-memo app. I also extracted a piece of paper from my pocket, spread it out, and began reading.

“This is an agreement between Sandra Williams, wife of Charlie Williams, and me, Beth Williams, Charlie and Sandra’s daughter. In exchange for my silence on Sandra’s infidelity in her marriage bed with someone from the bank for which she works, I claim control of Sandra’s sexual life, only her sexual life; no other aspect of her life that, in my opinion, does not intersect with her sexual life, though I will endeavor not to impact negatively her professional work.

“As the mistress of her sexual life...”

Mom reacted to that phrase, which caused me to smirk mentally. It seems that I was right in assessing her submissiveness. I repeated and continued.

“As the mistress of Sandra’s sexual life, she must be obedient to the following rules of which I am the sole arbiter:

Item 1 Sandra will endeavor to keep this agreement from coming to the attention or knowledge of anyone, but particularly her husband, Charlie Williams.