Debra Ch. 01

She had died suddenly, mourned and lost at thirty two. She'd been killed driving thorough an intersection. A tragic accident, it happened and it was very sad. The husband was a bear of a man, bearded and hairy, seeming more animal then person, mostly bear it seemed. The daughter was slim, slight and beautiful; rich auburn hair. Soft curls where her mother's was always straight. Yet still the alluring dark reddish hue. She was only just eighteen; much younger inside. The casket was closed, too much damage, too much to bear.

They went on; the husband stoic, the daughter descending into despair. She lost the girlish pretty clothes she always wore, a match to her mother. She went to jeans and tank tops, and cheap high heel boots. She tried to take up smoking but she couldn't.

She could fail at school, so she did. Most of all she hated her mother for dying, also for being, well, her mother. She drew up the worst of her recollections, her mother's timidity, her church devotion, her fawning after her husband. The lace she wore in public. On a daily basis, that Debra's mother looked like a slut, and it was worse because no one cared. It was all reprehensible.

Debra went to get her hair cut off, hair she and her mother had carefully cared for. They'd stroke it out, free of tangles at night and then again in the morning. Every day, it was a ritual that bound mother and daughter together; it then fell in waves. Her mother's hair and Debra was the same in many way; their mantle, their glory as the Bible said, as Debra's mother told her. It is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved said the Bible, and the Bible was forever the truth, said Debra's mother. Debra grew hers that way her whole life. She'd loved her mother, idolized her, until the day the woman died.

Her hair; she hated it now, pulled at it, ran a brush through it viciously. She wanted to; but couldn't find herself able to get it cut. She blamed her mother. Her mother never gave her the will to act on her own. Debra-Ann tried scissors but her hands shook too much. She sat before her makeup table; in her mother's high backed ornate chair. It was a chair where Debra and her mother would sit, maybe an hour a day. Her mother would carefully coif her and Debra's hair, apply makeup, and apply adornments.

Debra's mother would sit there with Debra, speaking softly, reading perhaps from her worn King James Bible; the mother in the most elegant of negligees, preparing herself for the day or for her husband. Debra loved those times more than anything else; the soft meekness of her mother's voice, the lyrical script of the scriptures. Now it was Debra in the chair, crying, sobbing, hating; hating, everything about herself.

Debra rebelled, as much as she could at eighteen, inside really much younger, a child really. This was often the case in a young girl, grown on the outside to resemble an adult, but not yet figured out on the inside how to be one. Debra fought for her angst fiercely, it became her identity.

In a pique she threw all her expensive makeup away and went to cheap horrid black. She tried to curse as often as she could but it felt strange. Still she did, in a wooden kind of way, unnatural. She fought unceasingly with her father because she could. He was a man who she used to call Daddy, but now she barely considered a father at all. She had to be almost physically dragged to church, an important family tradition. She'd sit there pouting, furious, hating the very building she sat in.

The father looked on with despair. He knew the cause of their destruction, but he didn't know the cure. He argued and pleaded, banished her to her room, took her dinner, restricted her, nothing worked. He looked up how to deal with rebellious teens and those suffering from grief. Debra raged, unfocused, she was plummeting and somehow there was something in her wanting her to fall. The depth of both Debra's anger, her self-loathing grew.

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Finally the father decided he had to treat as he did when she was a little girl. The two regressed to spanking her over the knee, spanking her like a child. She abhorred it. She was grown and this was something she was undeserving off, no matter that she deserved it very much.

Because of this, she resisted her father at every turn. She ran from him but he'd catch her, she punched and kicked but she wasn't very strong. She'd find herself carried to her room, and stripped of all her clothes; while under one of his huge arms. She fought like a cat, cursing and clawing, hissing, biting scratching with cheap breakable fake fingernails.

Debra-Ann had grown obstinate. It was a hard habit to break, to tear from her all the constructions she'd draped herself in. She was also so mad at her fate, at losing her mother when she needed her most, who was suppose to help her become a woman. There were a lot of spankings. Debra-Ann, the daughter of her mother, had been gone a long time. The very little girl raised by a loving strict family was hidden somewhere inside, scared to come out.

The father had a lifetime of being strong. His wife had needed a husband like that; physically and morally strong, a protector at heart. His wife had needed a wellspring from which to draw her own willing limited efforts at independence. She had been bound both physically and emotionally to her husband, by choice. But the husband had become distracted by his own grief, unable to concentrate both on his own pain and that felt by his daughter.

Debra was lost partially because of him. He felt himself responsible for all that had happened, and his failure to intervene effectively. Debra was like his wife in many ways, but had her own identity, different. The girl though, was much like her mother; more then she would ever want to admit, linked so closely by temperament.

He had missed the signs but it was not too late; he felt, to save his daughter. It got so bad; he scoured the internet and found a solution of sorts. He explained to Debra she would get spankings every time she misbehaved and also what was called maintenance; spankings. This would occur alternating Tuesdays and Thursday and then Monday, Wednesday and Friday; because he felt it was necessary. That was who he was, self assured, determined, fierce in his devotion to kin and what he felt was right. It was what Debra right now hated; hated most about him.

He was determined to save his daughter. The discipline and rules, reinforced by over the knee helped. Pain can be a great motivator. He decided he'd determine what she wore every day, and her schedule, and homework time, where he would help her in her studies. She would now dress as his daughter, in a feminine manner as his wife had conducted herself. From now on like a lady, not her current dress. Everything was packed up and she got to wear what he selected. Only traditional feminine things, as her mother had always worn.

Debra hated it, she hated femininity. Debra hated what its trappings had done to her mother, robbed her of a personality, perhaps in the end it was what had killed her. Maybe her mother had killed herself because she hated the slave she was to her husband, was to Debra?

Her mother had lived as if in a century before now, perhaps farther back. Perhaps she was so despondent at being so submissive she had killed herself? Her mother couldn't live in the twenty-first century? Was the reason she was gone? Debra blamed herself. Her mother never was at all selfish, perhaps she had needed to be, and then she would not be gone.

Debra so much wanted her exterior to match the way she felt; coarse and unflattering, colorless. Her father decided different. She was not allowed to wear pants or any unfeminine tops. She was made to dress appropriately. She sat then, in her mother's elegant chair in Debra's room, dressed appropriately ladylike, and cried.

She wanted plain clothes, plain cotton unmatched underthings. She wanted what she wore to match the misshaped way she felt she was. Debra was not going to be the prettily dressed fawning subservient woman her mother was. Of that she was determined. She was going to be something better, well at least different. She was...well she didn't know what she was going to do or be. With her mother's passing Debra lost hold of her moral compass. She was adrift in such grief; and in between being a girl and a woman.

She hated her father; huge and menacing, who had the nerve, by right of strength, to discipline her, to hit her. He was a savage brute Debra decided. Debra fumed, she was not a little girl, and spankings were beneath anyone. It was abuse, it was brutal and it hurt too much. How could her mother bear such an oaf, a monster, ursid and hairy as Debra's father? But now she had no clothes; she cried, so very lonely, beret of her mother's companionship.

Debra-Ann would leave finally; tired of being bound to her home. She left appropriately dressed, moody. She hated every moment dressed in a way that didn't fit the ugly way she felt. She didn't have to wear heels but she couldn't wear pants, and her underthings had to match; just as her mother had insisted. She felt pretty, and she despised that, because inside she didn't feel that way. In every reflective surface, in every kind word of her appearance, she saw her mother and missed her more.

She would come into the house screaming, finally; tearing off the clothes she was forced to wear and condemning them. She hated the skirts, elegant tops and dresses. She'd stand there trying to remove all the femininity that she felt constricted her.

Her father was unmoving as a mountain. With a deep sigh he put Debra over his lap for unladylike language and behavior. She fought with all her strength. She sought weapons to defend herself. She ran and fought, bit and hit. She learned slowly she couldn't escape. It became sinister in its inevitability.

She had nightmares of it, her father holding her down, never relenting. The spankings would end faster if she accepted her discipline, adjusted her behavior. Debra knew that, but resisting was her only option. She felt she needed to be rebellious of everything to be her own person, to cast aside every value her family held dear. She would cling to the feet of her mother's chair while the spankings occurred. She simply could not believe where she was. She did not think she deserved this, but she very certainly did.

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At first she'd claw and seek to escape the punishment but her father would hold her in place, he was very strong. She'd fight and he'd spank her backside and thighs rhythmically, Debra-Ann was eighteen, but slim and willowy like her mother. She was strong, she was a cheerleader and in gymnastics but her father, a bear of a man was infinitely stronger.

She wasn't able to escape; or accept the pain indefinitely. Eventually she was left clinging to the chair legs, her mother's high back chair, finally blubbering how sorry she was, hoping that would stop what she barely endured. It went on and on, sometimes past crying. She never knew when it would stop, only that her father was in charge and he determined what was right for her. Eventually she'd struggle a bit but went over, instead of having to be dragged and put in place. She squeezed her eyes shut. Lessen the pain to be suffered.

Homework was a trial and left Debra-Ann often in tears. Her tendency to curse at it ended with her over the knee in the kitchen on several occasions. She knew slowly, she really needed to watch her language. After a particular long outburst of filthy words she was led upstarts to the oaken chair. At first she resisted, she was half dragged, placed over her father's lap. She felt she had a right to use what language she wanted. She was a grown person, a young woman; it was she felt, her first amendment right. But, over the knee it was explained her family didn't talk like that, her father didn't, her mother never did. Debra knew that was true.

The discipline for bad behavior, Debra could tolerate, the maintenance was impossible for Debra-Ann to accept. No matter how hard she tried, it meant she was going over the knee at some point. She could be a perfect angel and yet she'd still get spanked; regardless. She was simply getting disciplined on the appointed days, because her father knew best.

She refused, that made her father put her over her knee for disobedience. She fought the spankings which made it go longer. She rebelled, but that meant more punishment, on top of maintenance. She locked herself in the room, but he had a key.

The sessions occurred at anytime she was home, but as stability entered back into Debra-Ann's life, it occurred mostly before she went to bed. As the weeks of discipline started, she dreaded night time, her backside so sore, crying herself to sleep. Later she accepted it as an almost consistent night time ritual.

It was so difficult and Debra-Ann was so hurt. One night at maintenance she finally broke free and confronted her father, spitting and yelling and calling him every name she could. She was left gasping for breath, tears streaming down her face, wiping fruitlessly at her running nose. Her father looked at Debra-Ann sadly till she stood there quietly shaking, done with her tirade and then put her back over his knee, and began again.

He disciplined her past crying then. She was through finally with resisting, spent, just blubbering incoherently, the tension gone, just accepting her father's authority over her. Afterwards he was able to hold her on his lap. Before that she always retreated to the corner of her bed, in shame, deeply hurt. Debra hated that, being spanked like a mere child. But this time she found she clung to him, shuddering, confused and hurt; at her life, not at the spankings.

When she could talk, partially, through the crying and hiccupping, Debra-Ann finally confessed how mad she was at her mother, for dying. For not being there to help her, well, grow up, not being a child.

This was why she was a bad kid she explained, because she didn't know how to be an adult, be a woman, what her mother was suppose to help her with. She was getting an adult body, she wasn't a child anymore, and she simply didn't know what to do. Debra-Ann cried through all this on his lap, clinging to him, shifting on her sore bottom, sniffling, wiping her face. The crying at the end was not because of the discipline, but because she finally could express her loss, her anger and despair at it.

Her Daddy stroked her hair and rubbed her back and told he was in charge and would help her be what she needed to be. It was his job now to help Debra be an adult, to be a woman, and find her own place in the world. Debra-Ann gave him a weak smile face turned up at him up at him. She threw her arms around her father and clung to him. She leaned against him, her bottom and thighs very sore and hot. She curled close and murmured "I love you Daddy." Debra's father hadn't heard that in a long, long time. He moved to tell her that too, that he loved her, but she was already asleep.

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At that moment something inside Debra-Ann changed. The man holding her wasn't the monster, or the enemy; the brutal ogre bent on punishing her for; well everything. He was again her father, her Daddy, the man of the house, the man who raised her; forever and ever.

He would see to it that she did right both honoring her mother's memory and herself. Debra needed that, as her mother had needed that; that firm unmovable mountain of commitment and love. It was a huge presence, almost always there, or at least close by. With a phone call, he'd be there soon to rescue; or comfort or be whatever was necessary.

Debra slowly became careful about her language. When speaking to her father, she was told she needed to begin or end every phrase with Daddy or Father. She settled on Daddy. She tried, it was difficult, but she worked on it until it became natural. Calling a father Daddy at eighteen sounded odd, but it was always what he had been her whole life. She decided it was going to happen in public too because he was her Daddy; what she'd been needing since her mother's death. She'd been so hateful and disrespectful to him in public, and been scurrilous of his character when talking of him. It had all been disgraceful.

Tears came to Debra-Ann's eye's to think what her mother would have thought of her daughter, disrespecting her father that way. Her mother never had an unkind word about Debra's father, ever. How easy it had been for Debra. Debra knew her mother often disagreed with her husband, but she never disobeyed or did anything that wasn't respectful and submissive. Debra had hated that in her mother, but now realized it must have been very difficult. Her mother was known for her sharp tongue.

Debra's father took her everywhere, to school, to the mall and stores, every event. He was always visible to Debra. Before, Debra saw this as menacing, stifling; a sucking away of her very independence. She had only to look and he was the largest person nearby, hulking and hirsute.

Now it was what she needed. She realized she had been afraid, no one to help her be a teenager, a young woman. She'd cast herself to independence, and like a boat in a storm, she'd been lost, drowning, almost killed, as a person. Her father, that huge rock, had rescued her. He was like a lighthouse, guiding her. With her Daddy nearby, nothing could hurt her, not even herself. The two grew closer.

She had a nightmare about her mother, about the crash, it was horrible. Debra screamed out in terror, to the only one who could help her; her Daddy, who was then next to her. He curled her close, she was shivering and crying, so afraid and confused. But he was there, wrapped around her, a looming protective creature, holding her, her small on his lap, like she'd been when she was little. She stroked her hair as she shivered; until she finally went back to sleep. She never remembered the dream that terrified her, and never had another one.

Debra-Ann woke with her Daddy's arm over her, snoring next to her. She found she liked his smell, how big he was, and how strong and how much he had tried for her. She was in a cotton night shift, plain, what she obstinately insisted on wearing. It had stupid flowers on it and cost less than fifteen dollars. In her closet were pretty, romantic and gossamer night gowns, expensive, like her mother used to wear, only in Debra-Ann's size.

Debra's father had purchased them for her, for when she was ready. She took off her cotton covering and put one on of silk and lace and padded down to the kitchen and tried her hand at a new endeavor, breakfast. She never wore the discarded gown to bed ever again.

After a few weeks, she was only led upstairs, and with personal resistance, some tugging and pouting, placed herself over the knee. She was, she told herself, working on it. Part of the problem was the company Debra was keeping, who accepted behavior Debra knew was unacceptable. She worked on finding new friends and explained to her old one why they couldn't be together. She slowly learned to control her language and to ask her Daddy for help with homework. He'd scoot his chair in and they'd go over the problem. He'd rub her back lightly with his large rough hands. Debra-Ann loved this and she curled her toes when he stroked her.

What she discovered was; that her Daddy wasn't a beast at all, but really a very smart man. It wasn't just his intelligence but his determination to help Debra. He read her textbook assignments so he'd know how to help her.

Part of this was the fault of Debra's mother, who had particular feelings about the role of the Head of Household. She had always held her husband to a high standard. Being a Head of Household, the HOH, was a unique calling. It required a singular effort by the husband and father to be lord over his home, and to be everything to his wife and children. The HOH had to know everything, and be everything to his wife and children, only in that, was he truly deserving of their submission to his authority.