Humiliation

No one in the courthouse would ever imagine she was waiting there naked and on her knees, holding her breath for him to walk through the door and remind her who she belonged to.

I thought I was going to beg her to keep my secret. I never imagined that when she came back into the living room, she’d be holding a crop and wearing high heels.

In the bathroom, a makeup bag was waiting for me with a note: “put everything on and turn it on.” From that moment on, I stopped deciding what happened to my own body.

I’d spent two years imagining this day. I had no idea a suited fifty-something, with his gaze locked on mine, would decide for me what my first time would be like.

I left home with my thong folded in my pocket and three phrases I didn’t choose written on my skin. Each class hour drove me closer to the edge, with no permission to finish.

This morning, while waiting for coffee, I saw myself again on my knees over the freshly polished floor, legs numb and eyes down, waiting for a single order from him.

I came in thinking I owned everything. Marisol, on her knees in yellow gloves, had already decided that tonight the owner would be her.

They dragged me into the exam room for not following the rules. They didn’t know that was exactly what I wanted: for someone to finally decide for me.

I’d gone days without hearing from her, dreaming of her orders. That afternoon I walked through a door I shouldn’t have and discovered how far I was willing to go.

I came three times on the locker room bench before I understood my rise no longer depended on my goals, but on how much I could take on my knees.

She’d spent years scrubbing other people’s houses with a polite smile, but that afternoon, on her knees over the marble, she discovered how much she needed to be treated like an object.

“I’m here to see if my wife works well,” the man said at my door. An hour later I was on my knees in my own kitchen, wearing his wife’s apron.

I was given a choice between three years in prison or becoming my wife’s obedient dog. I chose wrong, and that night at The Reserved I understood it completely.

I arrived at the farm with my branded T-shirts and my city attitude. They had calloused hands, a sharp knife, and every intention of putting me in my place.

She was only going to advise him about an apron. She never imagined that, in front of the salesman, he would point to her as if she were the maid they had come to dress.

One smile and a couple of billiard shots were enough for her to turn his world upside down. Now he wears a lace apron and waits, trembling, for the doorbell to ring.

I opened my eyes and didn’t recognize the room: only the weight of hands on my skin and the certainty that that morning belonged to others.

We had barely been married two weeks when I discovered what her temper was capable of, and the first slap was only the beginning of that afternoon.

She ordered me to get on all fours in the back room and, while her fingers explored me, I realized she had just uncovered something I’d hidden for years.

She called her “babe” in the same voice from twenty years ago, and Helena knew the severance check would never leave that drawer. The debt was going to be collected with her body.