The following story is set in Northeast Louisiana in 1832. The protagonists are slaves. They speak in the language of time-period slaves. Some of the language is offputting to contemporary ears, but it is authentic. The story details the de-flowering of a young girl under the tutelage of an older, more experienced sister. All of the characters in this story are eighteen years of age or older.
Training Day
The following Saturday afternoon found Zelma Leone leading her younger sister Phoebe down the rocky, overgrown path to the backwoods spring a half-mile west of the farm. The two women had spent countless hours splashing about in this spring as children. As adults neither woman found much time to sneak off for a swim. They were slaves.
Zelma was a voluptuous woman in her mid twenties. She was fair-skinned and wide-bottomed, with Mediterranean eyes, a dimpled chin and swinging breasts. Phoebe was her younger reflection. Both women had course, reddish hair and freckles. They were mixed race, but spoke in the argot of West African slaves, having grown up as such. Today was to be Phoebe's introduction to the ways of men.
Zelma and Phoebe talked as they picked their way down the trail.
Zelma: "I don't want you to be nervous about dis. Dere ain't nothin' to be nervous about."
Phoebe: "I coulda come by myself. You ain't had to be here."
Zelma: "Nah, don' git your fur stirred up. We talked about dis. I wanna make sho' you don' has no troubles. Once I see that you got a han'le on it, I'll leave you 'lone."
Phoebe: "Yeah, but..."
Zelma: "Dere ain't no 'Yeah buts' about it. I'm gon' watch for a li'l while an' den I'm gon' on back to de house. You've watched me often enough."
Phoebe: "I ain't watched you on yo' first time!!"
Zelma: "It don' make no diffunce whether it's de fust time or de thousand hundredth time. It's always de same thing. Nah, I've worked dis out wid him and dis is de way its gon' be. You hear me?"
Phoebe: "Yes'm."
Presently the trail widened into a luxuriant tropical paradise with crystalline waters whose glassy reflection was only marred by the odd dragonfly and, occasionally, a leaping largemouth bass. The hot afternoon was drenched with the high-pitched buzzing of cicadas and the mating calls of frogs. Huge butterflies flitted amidst riots of colorful wildflowers and water lilies.
Zelma and Phoebe inhaled a glorious whiff of freedom. This wild kingdom was the closest they would ever come to self-determination.
Spontaneously, both women stripped naked and bolted for the water. Their tits flopped ridiculously as they fought each other for the privilege of being first to the spring. When Phoebe surged ahead, Zelma would grab her wrist from behind to pull her back. Phoebe returned the favor when Zelma managed to get a step ahead. They laughed and wrestled and tumbled about like children.
Phoebe finally yanked free of Zelma's grasp and tumbled backward into the water. She bounced up immediately from the shock of the cold spring, whooping and laughing. Zelma stood on the bank with folded arms.
"I ain't wanna git in first anyway," she said. "I knowed it was gwine be cold."
Phoebe ignored her. She turned and took a full header into the deeper waters, undulating her body like a dolphin until she emerged again on the surface, whereupon she struck out across the spring using a strong freestyle stroke. The spring deepened to fourteen feet at points. Phoebe could still see clear to the bottom. Felled trees littered the watery bottom; she could see turtles and fishes beneath her, dashing about in a frenzy to be elsewhere as she approached.
"I wish'd I could do dis ever' day," she thought as she sliced her way thru the water.
Behind her, Zelma was dipping her feet daintily into the spring. She wasn't about to go crashing head first into this frozen pool like a drunken polar bear and come up shivering from frostbite. No, she was going to get acclimated to the cold like a woman with some sense.
By the time Phoebe crossed the spring and returned, Zelma was just getting into knee-deep water. Phoebe didn't wait for her. She turned and swam another lap. When she returned a second time, the crystal clear waters were lapping against Zelma's hips. It wasn't until Phoebe's fifth lap that she passed Zelma heading the other way.
Zelma pulled herself up on the far shore and quit. She squatted on her haunches, air-drying, as she waited for Phoebe to catch up.
"Come on here, girl," she called out.
Phoebe didn't reply. She touched the far shore then turned to swim another lap.
Zelma didn't complain about this disobedience. She wasn't sure that she was doing the right thing by being here. Caleb was somewhere out in these woods. He was either hiding out or on his way.
In her concern over Phoebe's late-bloomer status, she'd arranged for Caleb to take Phoebe's virginity. It was her plan to micro-manage the event, even to the point of demonstrating proper technique to her younger sister. Caleb was a friend; he liked Phoebe. This was fortuitous, she thought, because she didn't think Phoebe could (or should) endure some of the better-endowed bucks on the farm. Not for her first time, anyway.
No one had performed this service for Zelma when she came of age. She always regretted that her mother had not lived to instruct her in the ways of men. So she was going to perform this service for Phoebe and perhaps give her something to remember and pass on to her own daughter, when and if that time came.
"Hey, Zelly," came a voice from behind her. It was Caleb. He'd been waiting for them for an hour. Zelma was not surprised to hear his voice. She turned to greet him.
"Hey Caleb," she replied nonchalantly.
"You sho' you wanna do dis?" he asked.
"Yeah, I guess. Is YOU ready?"
"I been thinkin' about dis all day and yesterday. I'se ready."
"OK. Here she come. Don' say nuttin' til I axe you, OK?"
"OK."
