Chapter 14

Grace

"Looks like someone learned a lesson recently," Doctor Simmons said, leaning in closer.

"Last night," Nurse Cathy confirmed.

"Jake is pretty thorough, isn't he?" the doctor asked, turning to look at Shelly for a moment.

"He sure is," Shelly replied in a quiet voice. I couldn't look at any of them. I kept my attention focused on the fabric of the gown, how it had bunched up at my waist when the nurse had raised and spread my knees to give Doctor Simmons easy access to my most intimate places.

As I felt the speculum touch my pussy, the sense of detached observation I had experienced in the Carpenters' living room took hold of me. I looked down at Doctor Simmons as he peered intently at the private places between my thighs and my bottom cheeks. He could see the cleft of my pussy and the tiny button of my anus, but I couldn't. I felt as if I had somehow entrusted my body to him and Nurse Cathy, whose attention was also fixed down there, watching the doctor work.

My brow creased hard as I remembered Jake, the night before, telling Shelly that her pussy belonged to him, and Shelly asking him to fuck his pussy. A shudder ran through my whole body and, to my horror, I felt my vagina clench, just as the beak of the speculum started to open me up. I bit my lip hard, desperate not to make a sound, but the jolt of arousal proved too strong; I heard a little whine come through my nose.

It got much worse, though. The nurse made a tsking sound with her tongue against her teeth, as if she couldn't resist the reflexive disapproval such a wayward pussy provoked in her.

Doctor Simmons said, "It's perfectly normal to get aroused during your exam, Grace—especially for a girl like you. Just try to relax, though."

I looked over at Shelly. The pink had returned to her cheeks, but she had a little smile for me.

"Don't worry, honey," she said. "We'll find a suitor who can give you exactly what you need."

I squeezed my eyes shut and chewed on my lower lip. The detachment seemed to come and go in waves. I felt myself clench again, and I felt warmth spread through the whole region that lay so exposed to the doctor and the nurse.

When the doctor spoke again, his voice had become impatient.

"Breathe nice and slowly, Grace. It's normal to get aroused, like I just said, and the way you're lubricating will help make this more comfortable for you, but if you can't relax these muscles it's going to hurt when I dilate you—open you up, I mean."

I heard myself start to speak, again becoming distant from my body. I kept my eyes closed, but something inside me just had to ask.

"What does… what did you… mean, Doctor?"

The speculum started to open inside me. I took the inside of my cheek between my teeth and bit hard at the terrible mixture of pain and arousal.

"Hymen is intact," the doctor said, in a businesslike voice clearly intended for Nurse Cathy's ears. "But should rupture easily on first coitus. I won't need to rupture it to insert the IUD."

"Doctor?" I asked, wondering suddenly if I had actually drifted away into an alternate reality, and I hadn't spoken at all.

"What did I mean by what?" the doctor asked impatiently. "I'm going to insert your intrauterine device now. You and your suitor won't have to worry about pregnancy until you're ready to start a family."

I opened my eyes to see Nurse Cathy handing him a tiny thing in the shape of a T. He held it up for me to see.

"See? Very small. Neither of you will feel it, whether during sexual intercourse or during your daily activities."

"I…" I said, as he returned his attention below my waist. "I meant…"

The speculum opened me up again, and I swallowed hard. I felt it expanding still further inside me.

"Ow… ow…" I said, my voice whiny.

"I told you to relax," the doctor said. "It will only take… a… second."

My body bucked as I felt a flash of pain deep inside me.

"There," the doctor said. "I'm just going to keep you open for a moment while I check… yes… the IUD is properly placed."

"What did you mean a girl like me?" I asked, the words rushing out as I tried to distract my attention from the discomfort in my pussy.

He pulled the speculum out at last. To my dismay, I felt it again, though, its beak against the other hole, the one lower down, the tiny, wrinkly one. I swallowed again, thinking about what Jake and Shelly had said about that hidden ring, about having sex there.

"I'll have a look in here, too," the doctor told me. "To make sure you're ready for anal intercourse when the time comes. Push for me, just like you're on the toilet. That's right. You know how, a girl like you."

I let out a little cry that had discomfort and shame and an unwelcome recognition all mixed up in it. I felt the speculum stretch me on its opening beak.

"Anus is well formed," the doctor told the nurse. "Anal intercourse is indicated, with the usual training recommended." He looked up at me. "Training a girl's anus involves anal plugs—most people call them butt plugs. When your suitor wants you to get started with that, he'll let you know."

He looked back down. Despite everything, all the discomfort and all the humiliation, or maybe because of it, I clenched again. I heard a sound that must have been a suppressed giggle from Nurse Cathy. My face felt once again like the surface of the sun.

"That's what I meant, Grace," Doctor Simmons said, "by a girl like you. You're here in Grasskiln, under the supervision of the New Modesty Authority, not just because you're a criminal, but because you're a young woman who has specific needs—and just like Mrs. Carpenter said, those are needs we can make sure get taken care of here."

Another girl from the bus arrived at the front of the New Modesty Authority building, with her foster mother, at the same time Shelly and I had. I recognized her but I didn't remember her name, if I'd ever heard it. She didn't seem any more inclined to greet me than I did her, though; we both had our eyes mostly on the floor. To my distress, I couldn't help wondering whether she had gotten punished last night, and whether she had training panties on under her modest dress—identical to mine, as far as I could tell, except for the color.

Shelly and the other girl's foster mother knew each other of course, and the receptionist knew them both.

"Hi, Irene! Hi, Shelly!" she said brightly. "How are you keeping? You can go ahead and take Lisa and Grace back to the conference room. Two of the other girls are already here."

Walking past Mrs. Brown's office I remembered to my surprise that I had only gotten to this strange town the day before—not even twenty-four hours. My stomach lurched at the thought that the New Modesty's mortifying program had already begun to seem, against all logic, somehow normal.

The conference room had chairs in two circles, one inside the other. Mrs. Brown stood in front of one of the chairs in the inner ring. I could see that Frannie had the seat on her right hand, and Frannie's foster mother sat in the one behind it. The other early arrival sat next to Frannie, a black-haired, olive-skinned girl whose name, I thought, might be Maria but could also have been just about anything else for all the attention I had paid on the bus.

"Come on in, girls," she said to me and the other girl. "Have a seat. Lisa, why don't you sit next to Rosa."

Rosa, not Maria. Who gave a fuck. My mouth twisted to the side as I realized, to my dismay, that I gave a fuck. My cheeks, already on a low simmer, had blazed up to medium high.

"Grace, you can sit next to Lisa," Mrs. Brown said. "Foster mamas, you can go ahead and sit behind your girls."

Your girls. I felt my forehead crease. Something about the way they talked, here in Grasskiln, seemed to stir unwelcome feelings despite the apparent innocence of the words themselves. Clearly, according to Mrs. Brown and the New Modesty Authority—according to the entire population of Grasskiln, as far as I could tell—I belonged to Shelly… and to Jake.

I swallowed hard as I remembered Shelly, the previous night, bent over in front of her husband, pleading with him to give her the shameful thing she obviously needed so badly.

Please, sir… I want your beautiful cock in your wet little pussy.

I belonged to them… my pussy belonged to them… but not to keep—no, not to keep, but to train… to get me ready to belong to someone else.

A suitor.

I felt my face going red as I stared down at my hands, folded in the light green lap of my embarrassingly modest new dress. Keeping my face bent, I shot glances around the circle. A girl who had come in after me and Lisa was sitting down in the last empty chair, between me and Mrs. Brown. I saw Frannie flicking her eyes around the same way I was, but the other three girls seemed to have their focus on their laps, or the floor. I noticed more than one blush, and I thought I saw another girl wince a little as she shifted in her seat.

"Alright," Mrs. Brown said, sitting down in her own chair. "Let's get started. I hope you've all had at least a little bit of a chance to start settling in. Looking around the circle I can see that your foster mamas have managed to get you into some more appropriate clothing than what you arrived in."

I looked up, and took in fully for the first time that not only Lisa and Frannie and I, but also Rosa and whoever that last girl was who had just sat down next to me, were all wearing nearly identical, slightly updated but definitely old-fashioned dresses. We looked like a home economics class from the 1950s.

Again I wondered, to my distress, whether I was the only one wearing the horrible training panties. As the thought rose into my mind I did everything in my power not to squirm in my seat, but my sudden focus on the sensations of the lower half of my body made it impossible. I shifted a bit, and I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from letting out a little whimper of discomfort and embarrassment as the bruises flared back into life, alongside the unique, distracting feeling of the extra padding from my mortifying new underwear.

Part of me wanted to look around to see whether the same thing had just happened to any of the other girls, but I found I couldn't raise my eyes from my lap. Mrs. Brown had let silence fall for a moment, as if she meant us to think about what she had just said. I wondered suddenly whether she, in fact, knew exactly the conflict and shame her words had raised in me. That idea made my tummy flip over, but maybe it also meant that all my fellow ‘foster kids' had felt the same kind of reaction. Did Frannie and Lisa and Rosa and the other girl—Cora, I remembered suddenly—all fall into Doctor Simmons' category of girls like me, whose humiliating needs would be met in this strange town?

"We're having this meeting," Mrs. Brown finally continued, "to tell you about the rules and requirements of the New Modesty courtship program the state has assigned you to, here in Grasskiln. I have some good news, too. You all have dates tonight."