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Faith Summer Wing

My Stepmother is a Lesbian

By Faith Summer

Authoress´ Note: A short story, genre: lesbian/humour about a teenage girl's thoughts and feelings about her step-mother. I hope you enjoy it. Please do not re-produce/copy without the authoress´ permission!  
contact: email - SeahorseStories@aol.com 17 February 2004  
Copyright Faith Summer 2004 All Rights Reserved

My life is so normal it borders on sleeping.  Actually, I have more fun and excitement in my sleep, but that´s besides the point.

My name is Sarah Brown - close friends call me Charlie... -  I am 15 and still at school.  I don't have any special hobbies unless you count television as one.  Most evenings after school I watch t.v. with Bruce, whilst occupying myself with which flavoured Monster Munch I'll be scoffing next.  Sometimes I do my homework.  Most times not.  I have no dreams of studying for a high-flying career after school; I have no aspirations either of ever fitting into a size 10 dress just to look pretty like the other anorexics in my class.  I refuse to resort to carrot and celery sticks - where´s the fun in that?  I have hair that's neither blonde nor brunette: it's straight, it's thin and it's mousy - but it's short and easy, and none of this big hairspray and styling business thank you.  I wear wiry glasses and would never dream of abusing my eyes with putting bits of plastic inside them so I "look better".  Oh, my eyes, they're brown and my skin only gets the odd zit which is amazing considering all the Monster Munch and Cadbury´s Fruit and Nut I put away.  I am so normal I don't even bite my nails.

Yeah, I can hear you say (sneer), if you're so normal how come you're writing THIS?

I am writing this because I want to tell you about my step-mother.  She's not like me in any way (except for the Cadbury´s Fruit and Nut she occasionally binges on, a week before her period).  She's so un-normal, she's interesting - and I know for a fact, that a lot of kids I know, hate their step-parents; but I don't, I am perfectly happy with mine.

To begin with, she's a lesbian.

Yeah, I can guess what you're saying now: how can she be a lesbian if she's your step-mother?  She's got to be married to your father to be your step-mother, and if that doesn't make sense, what´s the point in reading further?

Wait!  I don't have a father.  The man who got my Mum pregnant with me was just a friend of my Mum's - you see, my Mum's a lesbian too, but she´s nowhere as interesting as my Step-Mum is.

Why is that?

One reason is that she doesn´t care what people think or say about her.  Another - cool - reason is that she doesn´t drive a boring car just like everyone else does, no, my Step-Mum RIDES a motorbike.  And, a Harley Davidson Sportster at that!  And - although this isn't a reason for being interesting, rather, a reason for me loving her: she truly loves my Mum AND me.     

So, what´s with your Mum - what's she like (even if she's nowhere as interesting as your Step-Mum)?

My Mum is a work-a-holic which is as bad as drink in my opinion.  I only ever see her at the weekends - it's sort of like how it is for a few of my friends whose parents are divorced: mum has them during the week, and dad at the weekend.  Except my parents are not divorced, not even hetero, and they both have me at the weekend.  Mum's a successful lawyer, and Step-Mum's a herbalist, you couldn't get two jobs that are more different.  I sometimes wonder how I'll end up - but no office job please!  If you see Mum for the first time ever you could guess she is a lawyer by looking at her suits and the way she talks, but if you look at Step-Mum you think she's  a female Hell's Angel - you would never think she spends her days mixing herbs.  I sometimes wonder how I would be IF my Mum was my step-mum, and my Step-Mum was my mum - having inherited the genes from Step-Mum instead of from Mum - would I still be the same inside?  Would I still be boringly normal? 

I´m sure you're wondering how two people as different as what my parents are to each other, ever got together in the first place?  Well, it's sort of romantic...when I was just two Mum was having a problem with her allergies.  She was trying just about everything under the sun: acupuncture, meditation, prescriptive drugs.  In the end a client of her's recommended alternative medicine - herbal medicine.  So there was Mum in her sensible black lawyer's suit checking out the empty shop - all the strange lotions and potions - then from the back of the shop came an attractive, but curiously dressed young woman..."curiously" dressed because of the bikers leathers of course.  Mum was expecting a flower-child of the 70s, she had this certain image in her head - like most people do - about how someone should look depending on their job.  (Remember?  Mum dresses LIKE a lawyer and IS a lawyer).  So she says: "Do you know where the herbalist is?"  And this woman only says: "Yes I do." which makes Mum angry because she's a busy lawyer and is lucky even to have these few minutes on her lunch break - she is realizing then that THIS woman is the herbalist and thinks she is making fun of her.  But, just as Mum's about to leave the shop, the herbalist says: "Let me have a closer look at that rash on your face - I think I have something for it."  Mum's torn between rushing off back to work and the chance of finally finding something to get her skin better.  The clock is ticking...  However, Mum did decide to stay and let the herbalist help her.  Step-Mum says the moment she looked into Mum's eyes was when she fell in love with her.  Which is sooo romantic!  But Mum, she said she knew the moment when she fell in love with Step-Mum, which happened a month later...see! Mum's so UN-romantic it's normal!   That's where I must get it from!

Anyway, if you're wondering about whether Mum's rash got better from the herbal medicine, it did.

If it wasn't for Step-Mum I wouldn't have got Bruce.  Bruce is my long-haired mongrel and he resembles my art teacher (also called Bruce)...come to think of it, the art teacher has worse breath than my dog has, but their teeth are the same yellow.  Well, I suppose I must give Mum some credit because Bruce isn't exactly good for her allergies - she did, after all, agree to me having him...after a long argument with Step-Mum.  It happened like this:

I was twelve then and I REALLY wanted my own dog, (which kid doesn't?) and one day I came home from school and found a dear little puppy asleep on my bed.  Step-Mum had put him there - she wanted to surprise me, so she went to the animal-home and picked out Bruce.  You can't imagine how excited I was at last to have a dog of my own, and I really thought I wasn't ever going to get my own dog because of Mum and her allergies.  Bruce and me played with a tennis ball I'd found in Mum's tennis-bag, in the back garden until it got dark and we had to go in.  Step-Mum cooked us something for dinner - fishfingers probably - and Bruce got canned dog food.  Step-Mum even let me sleep with Bruce in my bed! 

When Mum came home late that night I heard her.  Because of her yelling.  I went to the top of the stairs and looked down...

"CYNTHIA!" 

Cynthia is Step-Mum's name - she appeared calmly in the hallway. 

"What's this?"  Mum lifted a foot which was an awkward act because of the tight skirt-suit.  She was waving her foot and pointing at her shoe with a very un-amused look on her face.  I didn't understand at first.  "Is there a dog in the house?  I told you I didn't want a dog - can't have a dog." 

Step-Mum then disappeared briefly, returning with pulled off toilet paper rolled up in her hand, and it was then I saw the something Bruce had deposited on the hallway floor.  "These shoes cost two hundred pounds!"  Mum was saying, taking off the shoe.  Step-Mum took it from her and cleaned it - the damage wasn't really so bad.  I think Mum was more upset and shocked over finding out Step-Mum had gone behind her back in actually getting a dog.  I heard them talking in low hushed voices as they went into the kitchen - Mum was over her initial excitement and had realised she was being a bit too loud. 

Me and Bruce tip-toed back across the landing and got into bed.  The whole time during this incident I had been - wisely - holding Bruce's mouth clamped together because he wanted to bark.  Now I let go, praying there wouldn't be a tiny woof out of him.  Well, he licked my face so much that my glasses came off and they got lost somewhere on the dark bedroom floor.  I was nervous about forgetting them - stepping on and breaking them as it was so dark - so I carefully got out of bed.  And so did Bruce.  Bruce ran out of the room happy as a pup (!) and I - because of fearing the consequences from Mum who could be strict when she thought of it - quickly followed him.  *CRUSH* went my poor specs as I stood on them running a couple of steps across the room.  Whoops! I said to myself, but the damage was already done...

I ran down the stairs after Bruce, hoping to catch him before Mum caught him.  Mum and Step-Mum were in the living room - I could hear their excited voices behind the pulled-to door.  Just as I rounded the corner I saw the flash of Bruce's sandy tail as he trotted - happily as a pup - into the living room, like a lamb to the slaughter.  Oh no!  The talking had stopped and Mum's face upon seeing Bruce had gone really white.  She didn't even glance at me standing in the doorway, just kept her stare fixed on Bruce.  "Cynthia WHY?"  she said at last.

"You know Sarah always wanted her own dog."

"And what about me?  What about my allergies?"

"He'll be mainly outside in the garden, and will sleep in Sarah's room..."

"I don't  think THAT'S very hygienic..."

"Bruce won't be sleeping in Sarah's bed."  (I then remembered my promise made at dinner-time to Step-Mum that Bruce wasn't to sleep in my bed and felt a little guilty: Bruce had been sleeping in my bed.  We'd made up that rule only because of pleasing Mum).

"BRUCE?!"

"Bruce."

"What kind of a name is that for a dog?!"

I decided to speak up: "I named him after my art teacher - I like art."  I added the I like art bit because I was hoping it might swing things in my favour - that I actually liked something that was being taught at school.

"And what are you learning in Art?"  Mum enquired.

"Vanishing points and portraits."  This was true.

"Portraits..."  Mum was thinking to herself.

"She's creative like you May!"  Cynthia exclaimed, also hoping to swing things in my direction.  (Yes, May's my Mum's name).

I must say that Mum can be mysterious and she is very clever.  She thinks things over for days sometimes and then comes out with a smart answer - this is something I have to be wary of.

"Bruce could learn vanishing points himself."  Mum was saying in her mysterious way to Step-Mum.

"May, at least - please, for Sarah's sake - think it over for a couple of days."

"And then she'll be so emotionally connected to the mut he won't be able to go...Cynthia, you shouldn't have done this.  You should have respected my wishes over this one."

That night Mum let me sleep with Bruce, but he was on the bedroom floor (he slept on an old bath towel).  It was only then later, in the bedroom, that she noticed I wasn't wearing my goggles.  "You're not wearing your glasses Sarah.  Why's that?"

I always have to wear my glasses because I'm short-sighted - I can't see the writing on the blackboard without them.

"I stood on them in the dark."

"Mmm...you can't go to school without your glasses Sarah.  You didn't break them on purpose, did you?"

She was staring at me, hard, in the dark.  I was thinking this is why she's a good lawyer, she never misses a thing, and the way she looks - well, let's say Step-Mum dresses like a hell's-angel, but Mum can look as mean as one when she wants to.

The next day I wasn't at school and I did practically everything with Bruce, except brush his teeth which weren't yellow back then.  It is unusual when Mum comes home early, but she did that day.  I wondered if it was because of Bruce, but she said we had an appointment at the optician's because I didn't have any glasses.  Of course Step-Mum was really happy about Mum coming home early so went all together to the optician as if it were an outing out at the cinema or something.  Later, Step-Mum cooked us a special meal, lasagne it was, and my parents drank white wine and got rather silly with it, telling jokes and doing impersonations of the neighbours.  Mum even, absently, patted Bruce on the head.  I suppose alcohol can be a good thing in certain situations.  Bruce wasn't even supposed to be in the kitchen, let alone under the table as we ate.

The day after that was Saturday.  Normally on Saturdays then, we used to go out shopping together,  the three of us.  However, recently I've been hanging out with my best friend, Kate and her boyfriend, Josh.  Anyway, I'm digressing...that Saturday was the day Mum found out that all her six tennis balls were chewed up, and her tennis-racket was also chewed up beyond repair.  As you've probably already gathered, my Mum gets angry quickly.  "MY TENNIS BALLS!"  She yelled at me, "You'd think that would be ENOUGH damage!  But my TENNIS-RACKET TOO!"

"You should have named the mongrel Terminator!"

Mum stomped off into the house and Bruce sat in my lap, on the grass, trembling.  It was my stupid fault - I should have known better than to give him Mum's prized tennis balls.  How he got hold of the tennis-racket I didn't know though.

I wisely left Bruce in the garden and raced upstairs to where Mum keeps her tennis things, in her wardrobe.  The door of the wardrobe gaped open - my mouth too at this point when I saw the chaos Bruce had made in creative-puppy-fun.  No wonder Mum was mad!  Clothes either hung askew off the clothes-hangers or in heaps around the bedroom floor, shoes were just about everywhere in the house.  The abused tennis-racket lay in pieces on my parent's bed.  I decided it would be in my best interests (and Bruce's) to tidy up.  But one shoe was never found.

Step-Mum cooked another special meal - I was beginning to wonder if this was part of the plan of "Keep Bruce".  (The dinner was surely prepared with the right feeling of showing those you love, love, but Step-Mum can be very persuasive when she wants something badly).  There was red wine this time and my parents were holding hands across the dinner table.  The subject of Bruce was never mentioned at the dinner table because no controversial subjects are ever mentioned there - it's a rule my parent's made up.  But that evening I heard them from upstairs arguing about Bruce.  They were in the living room listening to classical music which increased in volume simultaneously with the volume of their heated words.  I sat on my bed - Bruce on the floor, faithfully at my feet (keeping them nice and warm with his puppy-soft hair) - thinking maybe getting Bruce was not a good idea.  I hate it when my parents occasionally argue.  But I knew I wanted to keep him.

Sunday, Mum said Bruce had to go back to the animal home, first thing after school tomorrow.  I was so sad I never ate a thing.  Just spent the whole day with Bruce, playing sad ball games.

However, Monday turned out to be an amazing day.  Step-Mum had closed the herbal shop early so she could come to meet me at the school gates.  She had brought a second motorbike helmet with her and you can imagine the impact she had on the whole school, turning up on her Harley AND looking like her!  I was fighting off "friends" for the next two weeks until the interest in my cool Step-Mum had cooled.  I was thinking, oh this is it, this is the day me and Bruce depart forever.  I was so overcome with sadness that I wasn't even able to bathe in the excitement my Step-Mum had brought to me because of arriving to pick me up.  All Step-Mum said was: "This is a day you'll never forget." which caused a tear to escape, and I am not one of those girls who cry easily.  We rode the twenty minutes home and I was wishing that I had never set eyes on Bruce.

To my acute surprise, there was Mum standing in her lawyer's suit in the drive.  She never left work that early - well, not twice within a span of three days.  What shocked me was the huge smile plastered to her face: why was Mum happy about Bruce leaving?  I wanted to totally ignore her, to go up to my room and hold Bruce and cry with my face buried in his long hair.

"Wait."  Step-Mum said.

So I waited.

"Sarah, what do you think about keeping Bruce?"  Mum said.

I screamed in happiness and squeezed first my Mum, then my Step-Mum hard.  "I LOVE you Mum!"  I said.

That afternoon all three of us went to the pet shop and picked out 100s of things for Bruce: squeeky rubber toys, dog bowls, puppy food and even a comfy dog bed complete with mattress.  I was so happy I was delirious.  It was far better than any birthday I'd had - this was even better than six weeks of summer school holiday.

Sorry that this has turned out to be a novel, but now you can see why my Step-Mum is not only un-normal, but so special to me.  My life may be normal, but she adds that something extra to it. 

I wouldn't want it any other way.

Footnote:

Monster Munch is a brand name of British crisps/chips - Cadbury's Fruit & Nut is a British chocolate bar

zit is slang for spot or pimple - goggles is slang for spectacles or glasses

~ The End ~ 


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