After School Sissy -- Part 1

Everything changed after my mother died.

When we got back home after her funeral, my stepfather told me to make him dinner. He said that now that my mother was gone, that I would have to start "taking her place." I made his dinner without arguing, because he is a very big man with a bad temper.

Over the next few days, I would learn that "taking her place" also meant that I had to do all the chores around the house, including all the cleaning, doing his laundry, mending his clothes, cooking his meals, everything.   I did my best to do these things well, but my stepfather was never satisfied. He beat me several times when he was displeased because I hadn't ironed his shirts as well as my mother had or because his coffee didn't taste the way it had when my mother had made it.

One night while he was beating me with his belt for over-cooking the roast, he said, "Maybe you would be able to do your chores more like your mother if tried dressing like her." So the next day when I got home from school, I went into my mother's closet to look for something to wear.  I pulled out a pink dress that I knew had been one of her favorites.  I took off the jeans and tee shirt I had worn to school and slipped the pink dress on over my head.  I struggled with the zipper in back, but was able to pull it up most of the way.  It felt strange wearning my mother's dress, but I really didn't have time to think about it because my stepfather told me that he wanted to whole house vacuumed before he got home.  So I just got busy with my chores. 

When my stepfather got home and saw me wearing mother's dress, he smiled. That evening he was much nicer to me and didn't complain about any problems with how I performed my chores.  As I finished putting away the dishes, my stepfather said that tomorrow he wanted to see me wearing mother's stockings and high heels with my dress. And he wanted me to wear some make-up too. I had no idea how any of this was supposed to help me do chores better -- but I wasn't going to argue, especially since he was being so much nicer to me.

But I did tell him that I had no idea how to put on make-up.  I was afraid if I tried to do myself and I looked bad, he would just get angry with me again.

"Don't worry," he said.  "I'll have someone come over here to work with you after school to show you how to do it."