When you come home after a long time away, there is a great chance that everything will have changed. It certainly changed after my mission trip. I've always been a very religious woman, proper in my observances, and have raised my daughter to be so as well. Well, I tried, but after the mission trip to Haiti that I went on during my daughter's third grade year, I ceded control of little Anna Catherine to her father. I sort of had to, and by the time I came back, it was a little too late for me to do anything about my daughter's enslavement.
The opportunity to go on the ten month long trip was one I really felt I couldn't pass up, helping disadvantaged children at the orphanage that Saint Edward's sponsored. Even Anna Catherine thought it was important, and thought I should go, as I'm fluent in both French and Haitian Creole. Of course when she heard it was going to be for ten months, she reconsidered, but she was only eight, and idea that she wouldn't see me for most of a year was a bit scary for her. Anna Catherine and I have always been close.
Well, I say that, but apparently my departure on the second day of her third grade year coincided with her first period. My call back home when I arrived in Port-au-Prince was the first time I heard actual hatred in my daughter's voice, as she accused me of abandoning her. My husband, John, told me that he'd take care of it, and reminded me that I had left her under his complete control.
I didn't talk to Anna Catherine the next few times that I called home. I did get her once, in March, though, when I was finally able to get a long call following January's earthquake. (I'd contacted John briefly a couple days after the quake but connections were limited in Cotes-de-Fer at the time.) She seemed to be much better, by then. Of course, the quake and helping deal with the aftermath added three more months to our mission, so it wasn't until mid-October of Anna Catherine's fourth grade year that I finally arrived home.
John ran a small company that manufactured some sort of device that I never quite understood. He puts in long hours though, so I did not expect him to pick me up from the airport. I took the subway to the station a block away from our house, and walked the rest. The weather was good, and I passed a few of my daughter's friends, dressed in Saint Edward's Catholic School's uniform of a black jumper over a pale blue blouse with black socks and saddle shoes or sneakers. Anna Catherine always wore saddle shoes. She was a proper little Catholic school girl.
My small silver Ford Fiesta was still parked in it's spot next to the door to the kitchen when I reached the house. Given the direction that her classmates were walking, I knew my daughter would already be home, and since she was only nine, her Great Aunt Martha would be there to watch her, as we weren't quite sure that I'd be home in time.
The door was unlocked, so I opened it, and stepped right in, dropping my suit case by the door. I could see my daughter's shoes lined up carefully by the door. They were sneakers, so I figured that she'd pulled the daddy's little girl stops out to let her wear them instead of the saddle shoes. I promised myself that I'd see her back in saddle shoes by the end of the week. "Anna Catherine, Mommy's home!" I cried out.
I expected to hear by my daughter's feet pounding in the hall as she rushed to greet me. Instead I heard her call out, "Coming, Mother." Apparently I was no longer Mommy but Mother, a sad turn of events. The real shock, though, was when Anna Catherine stepped into view.
My daughter was not dressed properly. Gone was the black jumper and pale blue blouse. Gone were the black socks that I expected. The only thing my daughter wore was a black leather collar and a black stylized leaf tiara through her dirty blond hair. That wasn't the real shock though. My nine-year-old daughter was nursing a baby, and looked like she might be pregnant with another. "What happened to you?"
"What do you mean mother?" Anna Catherine asked, as if her nakedness, baby, and apparent second pregnancy was perfectly normal.
That was when my husband's Aunt Martha spoke up. She at least was appositely attired, in long house dress, with her hair up in a bun. Martha hadn't changed at all. "I think your mother means what happened since she left. Remember, no one has told her about your pregnancies and the new household rules, now that your father has collared and crowned you."
"Oh," Anna Catherine said. "You mean she doesn't know how bad a girl I was the week after she left?"
"No, she doesn't know at all," Martha said. "Mary Catherine, I'm afraid as soon you left, your daughter became simply uncontrollable. She defied her father, yelled and screamed at him. She'd run around the neighborhood, refusing to come in for dinner, and refusing to eat what her father cooked. Though I have to admit that John isn't the best cook, so I really don't blame her for that. She also stole money from her father's wallet, and vandalized Mister Bush's Saint Francis statue.
"So John decided drastic measures were required. He got the hardware, and informed her what was going to happen. Anna Catherine didn't really want to become a breeder, but as John said, 'old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.' She ran away and he chased her down. She nearly escaped, but he caught her. Then he stripped her, spanked her, collared her, crowed her, and bred her.
"The crown and collar makes her accept everything, and with the baby in her belly, and now in her arms, she would have a really hard time running anyway. She hasn't had a single period since he started breeding her, and John says he's going to keep her this way through high school. The only time she gets to get dressed now is to go to school, and she can't take off the collar or the crown. They're fused tight to her body and would have to be cut loose."
I could tell that there was nothing I could do about what had happened to Anna Catherine. My little girl was under her father's control now, just like he'd told me she would be. By going on the mission trip, I'd ceded my daughter to my husband's seed. I would not be able to guide my daughter's life anymore. I could only find out about it. "So, Anna Catherine, is your baby a girl or a boy, and what did you name your baby?"
"It's a girl, and I named her Arlene Anna," Anna Catherine said, swapping breasts. "She was born five weeks early, and but we got to go home from the hospital after a week. I'm already four months pregnant again, and Doctor Cohen says I'm having another girl."
"How are your grades?" I asked, as we moved into the parlor. Martha didn't follow us.
"I got honor roll all last year, and I have straight As so far in fourth grade," Anna Catherine said. "Master Daddy insists that I keep up my grades up. I really have to study hard. I don't have time for much after school and my baby. Daddy makes sure I take care of may baby all the time too. I take baby with me to class, so she can nurse. It's going to really get hard once I have my next one. Maybe Daddy will let me put one in the new nursery they're building at Saint Edward's Elem."
"May be they will," I said, noticing how well my daughter was handling her baby.
"Mary Catherine, I'm leaving now," Martha said. "There are plenty of microwave meals if you don't want to cook tonight, but I stocked up the pantry last week so you can if you want to. John said that he expects that you would like to teach Anna Catherine how to cook, so I haven't bothered to."
"I shall see you Sunday, then, Martha," I said, as Arlene Anna pushed herself away from my daughter's breast. "I see Arlene Anna is done. May I hold her?"
"I call her Arianna," Anna Catherine said, as she burped her baby. "I really should shower before Daddy gets home. He likes me to smell like a clean little girl when he starts to eat my little pussy."
Anna Catherine handed over her baby, and headed to the hall bathroom. For the first time I held my first granddaughter. I held her through her mother's shower, and continued to hold her when Anna Catherine returned and took her seat up on the couch. For the next hour, while we waited for John to come home, I told my daughter about Haiti, but only because she didn't have any homework to do.
John arrived home just a little before five, just in time to be volunteered to change the baby. I put in three microwave meals, and by the time John had fastened on a fresh diaper on my granddaughter, supper was ready. We all sat down around the table, well, except for the baby who was safely placed in her bassinet, asleep.
"So, what have you done to our daughter?" I asked John, as we dug into our meals.
"Anna Catherine is now totally subservient to me," John said. "She can no longer disobey me, unless my commands will cause her harm, and finds what I've done to her to be perfectly normal."
"And what exactly did you decide would be normal for our daughter?" I asked.
"Well, as you can't have any more children, I decided that she would have them instead," John said. "I also decided that since I now have control of our daughter, she would live like my siblings and I grew up, naked at home, clothed away. I know you didn't like the idea, and that's why you insisted on all the proper clothing for her. Well, that proper clothing no longer fits. I keep her in a couple school uniforms, and she has some new sneakers, which I have to admit she talked me into, but that's all."
"Let me guess, she's been wearing her school uniform to Mass," I stated. John nodded. "She will get a new church dress, then. I noticed you left out underwear. I'm betting she doesn't have any."
"Why would she need it?" John said. "I'm keeping her from having a period, and even if that were an issue, there are tampons. I have enforced her studying habits, to make sure she gets good grades. She still has her friends, but they mainly visit on the weekend and have lunch with her at school, when they don't have their own issues. She still walks to school with Mary Celestine and Elizabeth May."
"Their own issues?" I knew that line was trying to hide something else he had done. "What have you done to them?"
"I may have offered to sell their fathers the same crown and collar system after Anna Catherine started to show her first pregnancy," John admitted.
"And I suppose both girls are pregnant?" I asked. I knew my husband and his kinks. "Elizabeth May is the last of five children, and Mary Celestine's mother just had a little boy two years ago."
"Elizabeth May is having her brother, Mathew's, child," John said. "Her mother died last fall, and Patrick wanted babies back in the house."
"Eliza May had her baby during Math class today," Anna Catherine offered.
"I hadn't heard of that," John said. "Anyway, I think about two-thirds of the girls in Anna Catherine's class have crown and collars."
"Everyone but Juliet Anne," Anna Catherine reported. "We're trying to convince her uncle to get one for her."
I had no further questions of my husband. It was clear that Saint Edward's Parish was entirely changed, at least in my daughter's year. I never should have taken that mission trip. If I hadn't taken it, my house wouldn't be full of crying babies and naked little boys and girls, to this day.