Free The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson

for. “What do you do there?” I said.
    They talked, she said.
    “But what do you talk about?” I was lying on her bed on my stomach with my knees bent, swinging my legs back and forth like a metronome underneath the ceiling fan.
    “Well,” she said, “we talk about our power. Something you’re going to have to think about in your own life.”
    “You mean … how women know about all the feelings?”
    She laughed. “Uh, no . We’re all a little bit sick of having to be the ones who are responsible for taking care of all the feelings,” she said. I sat up on the bed, suddenly interested. Hadn’t I been the one to point out that this was too great a burden for women to bear? And hadn’t she been the one to declare that we were the lucky ones?
    She came and sat down beside me. “Women have been responsible for all the wrong things for too long,” she said. “By the way, do you know everything you need to know about sex?”
    I put my head underneath her pillow, and she laughed.
    “Forget it, I’m not going to embarrass you,” she said. “It’s just that women have to take back their sexuality. We’ve let men dictate the terms for way too long. Look, did you ever wonder why I’m always telling you that boys are out for only one thing , and that you mustn’t give in to them, because they just want to use you?”
    “Yeah,” I said in a small voice, thinking, Oh, God, not this again .
    “Now I want to tell you something else: you are a sexual being yourself, and you, as a woman, have a need for sexual expression, too, and you have a right to experience that. Sex is just creative energy. It’s beautiful, and it’s there for all of us, not just men! And you know something? Your generation is the one that’s going to have it all. The work and the respect and the feelings and all that, too.” She gathered me up in a hug. “I am so lucky to have a daughter like you, so I can watch this all happen. You’ll go to college and get a degree in something you really care about—something you can support yourself with so you won’t have to depend on some man to see you through life. And don’t you come to me telling me that you met a really nice guy and he’s going to be the one to go to work and you’re just going to drop out of school and stay home and make lots and lots of babies and keep him happy. Okay?” She was holding me and staring into my eyes. “Okay?”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “And if you want orgasms, multiple ones even, you shall have them.”
    “Stop it,” I said, and wriggled away from her. “I’m begging you.”
    MY MOTHER was living by herself in a tiny studio apartment furnished with stuff she bought in thrift shops, objects my straitlaced father would never have put up with: huge, overstuffed pillows, scarves, scented candles, and purple filmy curtains with stars on them. Most surprising of all was a water bed with a black velour bedspread.
    “Come on!” she said. “This is the best bed in the world! You’ve got to feel it! Come on, touch it. Run your hand over this cover. Isn’t that something?”
    I went over and sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed and looked around. From there I could see the corner of the room that served as a kitchen, with its coffeepot and two-burner stove and dorm-sized refrigerator. And right in the middle of everything was a card table spread with all her arts and crafts. My father had always referred to her projects as “arts and craps,” but now they clearly had top billing.
    I looked down and felt inexplicably dizzy. The Joy of Sex was lying on the floor, and there was a man’s leather sandal right by my foot. So the stud wore sandals. My toes curled up in embarrassment.
    “You love it here, don’t you?” my mother was saying. “I knew you would. It’s our kind of place. A woman’s place.” I swallowed hard and nodded. She went to the tiny refrigerator and took out two Cokes and handed me one. She was smiling with all her teeth