Secret Gardens
V. 2005
It was nearly 6:30 when Ginny heard Matti’s car pull into her driveway, ten minutes early. It had been a hot day, but the sunlight from the kitchen window had softened into a gentle bronze. A car door slammed shut, and a moment later the doorbell rang. “Isidora?” Ginny called out behind her as she finished chopping the olives. “Could you get that?”
“Okay,” came from upstairs. She heard the floorboards above her creak, then Isidora’s footsteps jogging down the stairs. Ginny picked up the cutting board with the olives and, using the dull end of the knife, scraped them into the bowl with the rest of the salad. She rinsed her hands in the sink and dried them on the fringe of her apron. From the doorway Isidora and Matti were making polite introductory sounds so Ginny hurried out of the kitchen and through the dining room to welcome her guest.
They were standing in the doorway, shaking hands when she arrived. “Here’s the happy homemaker,” Matti said as she looked Ginny over.
“Oh yes,” Ginny said as she modeled her apron. “Aren’t I just the picture of June Cleaver?” They laughed as they hugged hello. Isidora hung back, giggling softly, a question in her large brown eyes. Turning to her, Ginny asked, “You know who June Cleaver is?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so,” Isidora said, blushing.
“She’s from a TV show that only old ladies like Matti and me remember.” Matti groaned theatrically at that and pressed her hand over her heart.
“Oh no, you are not old,” Isidora said but laughed with them, understanding the joke this time.
Matti stepped out of the entranceway and into the living room, inspecting Ginny’s furniture and the paintings on the wall. “Ginny, I love this house.”
Ginny came up from behind and took her by the arm. She noticed that Matti did not pull away as she might have before. Instead she helpfully raised her elbow, playing along, the Southern belle graciously waiting to be led. “Want the grand tour?” Ginny asked. She spun the two of them around to where Isidora stood. “Honey, why don’t you take that lemonade out of the fridge and lay it out on the back porch? Mrs. Probst and I will be right down.” As Isidora slipped off to the kitchen the two of them climbed the stained hardwood stairs. “Here’s the bath,” Ginny said, taking her hand out of the crook of Matti’s arm and placing it on the small of her back. “And this is the guest bedroom, where Isidora is staying.”
“Very nice,” Matti said, nodding enthusiastically. Ginny had no trouble seeing the natural curve of the teacher’s softball-sized breasts pressing through her white cotton tee. Was she not wearing a bra on purpose, or did she “forget,” obeying some impulse in her subconscious as it filled her head with programmed excitement over this visit? The though sent a wave of heat through her. As if sensing it, Matti slipped away from Ginny’s hand and poked her head through the last doorway in the hall. “And this must be the master. Oh, Ginny, it’s lovely.”
“Thank you.” Actually it was fairly simple, a queen-size bed with a maple frame pressed against the wall opposite the door, bureau, closet, double-pane windows, make-up stand. “Listen, thanks again for coming.”
“Stop it. Really, it’s my pleasure. That Isidora is beautiful, isn’t she? Where did you say she was from?”
“Ecuador,” Ginny said as she closed the gap in the hallway between them. “Yes, she’s stunning. Spanish class is going to be very popular with the boys next year.”
“She really looks more Italian, doesn’t she?” Matti said, lowering her voice. “With that marble skin and those gorgeous black eyebrows.” Ginny took another step in, close enough to whisper. How far had Matti’s brainwashing taken her? Was she waiting for a sign, a caress, a kiss, before pledging herself over to Ginny? She had to know. She shuffled over so that she stood half-in, half-out of the doorway, and Matti turned to face her from the opposite side of the frame. Trembling, Ginny slipped her hands around Matti’s waist. Confusion mixed with surprise in Matti’s eyes. “I’m just glad you came,” Ginny murmured, and kissed Matti on the mouth.
As their lips met Matti jerked her head back. “What?” she said, her eyebrows two crescent moons of alarm. “What are you doing?” Pushing Ginny away, she retreated into the hallway, half-turned toward the stairs.
“I’m sorry,” Ginny said. “I guess I just—”
“You know I’m married, right?” Matti wiped her mouth with her wrist. “And anyway, I’m not—” She blinked, looked at the carpet. Her smile flashed, empty of sunlight. “I don’t do that. With women.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She had to be very careful. That Matti had not already run down the staircase and out the door showed the programming’s effect. But it had only brought her to this teetering point. There was still enough of the old Matti to take any aggressive move from Ginny as a push out the door and straight to the superintendent’s office. She tried to catch Matti’s eye. “Listen. Please stay. I promise I’ll behave.”
Matti took another step back but faced Ginny, her arms crossed under her breasts. “Didn’t even know you were gay. Why would you—I mean, I wasn’t trying to, you know, flirt or anything.” But Ginny heard the catch in her voice. Some small spot in Matti’s mind, a spot that had learned to believe whatever Ginny said, was scanning her memory, asking was I was I was I?
“We were both probably giving out weird signals,” Ginny said, keeping her gaze apologetic but firmly on Matti’s eyes. A little of the shock drained away from them, replaced by a hint of soporific calm. Taking a tiny step forward, Ginny was relieved to see Matti rock back on her heels but stay where she was. “You know, seeing so much of each other at school. Just mixed signals, that’s all.”
“Mixed signals?” Matti’s cerulean eyes searched in Ginny’s for a warm familiar spot to nestle into. Even without being triggered, she was learning to open her will automatically to Ginny’s suggestions. “No. Maybe. Mixed signals.”
“Nobody’s fault, really.”
“Um, no. Nobody’s fault.”
“Please stay for dinner, won’t you?”
Matti was quiet as she drowsily debated the idea in her mind. Finally, she said, “I’ll stay.”
“And just forget this ever happened, okay? At least for now.”
“Forget it for now.”
“That’s right.” Ginny took another step so that she was fully in Matti’s field of vision. “Just put it out of your mind.”
“Okay,” Matti replied quietly.
Ginny smiled and broke eye contact. “Good.” She swept past Matti and down the steps. “I’ll go pull dinner out of the oven.” Glancing behind her she saw Matti shake the cobwebs out of her head and begin to follow.
Dinner was uneventful. Isidora told Matti about how she found the study course the university offered for international students, and how much she loved the U.S., even though she missed her family and friends very much. Ginny had sat them together at one side of the dining room table and sat on the other side herself, watching them and not saying much.
“She really is gorgeous,” Matti whispered to Ginny as Isidora cleared the table. They watched her run the plates under the tap, her thick black Indian hair hanging to the shoulder blades showing from under her sleeveless top. “And so sweet.” Standing on one foot, she scratched absently at her calf with her big toe as she worked.
“Isn’t she? Why don’t you two go out on the porch?” Ginny went into the kitchen and shooed Isidora away. As she made the coffee, she heard the front door creak open, then laughter coming from the porch. She set three yellow mugs onto a TV dinner tray and filled them with coffee. Briefly she considered the bottle of Xanax in the cabinet over the sink. But despite her nerves, a rational, confident voice inside her was certain that Matti would not need drugs to be broken. She remembered how Matti had looked in the school hallway a few days before, tired, empty of will. And the shadow of that emptiness in her eyes upstairs before dinner. No, she was out there, that beautiful naïve creature, sitting next to Isidora on the wicker sofa, primed to accept endless obedience to Ginny. Waiting only for a push. Ginny took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching her hands until they stopped shaking.
They were talking about Anderson-Hume when Ginny came out. Gracefully she leaned over the coffee table and set the tray on top. “What scandals are you telling this girl about my school?” she asked as she sat in the chair near Isidora’s end of the sofa. The porch faced northwest, and through the floor-length bug screens they watched the dusk move from orange to navy.
Matti rolled her eyes. “Scandals? Oh, don’t worry. She’ll have to find those out for herself.” Sipping her coffee, she added, “Actually, I was just admiring Isidora’s English. Do they have an intensive language program back home?”
“Intensive, yes.” Isidora said. She sat with her feet tucked into the cushion, knees pointed toward Matti, giving Ginny a terrific view of her slender, tanned thighs. “But really, it is the lessons with Ginny that help.”
“Really? She’s been tutoring you? But I thought you’d only been here for a couple of weeks.” In the gathering darkness Matti did not notice Ginny reach out to Isidora and stroke the fleshy ridge of her ear once, twice with her nail. Isidora sighed gently, her breath blowing out a tiny flame inside of her. She turned her head away from Matti and stared out into the yard.
“Sort of like tutoring,” she said. Expressionlessly Ginny watched them, her radar turned up for any sign that Matti heard the the sudden airlessness in Isidora’s voice. “But really it’s a concentration exercise she does with me after I read my lessons, to help me remember. Has Ginny ever shown you her diamond necklace?”
“I—yes.” Matti shifted her hips. The catch in her voice pulsed in Ginny’s pussy and faded. She had found Isidora at a dance club over a year ago. She was the goddess of the dance floor, her body swaying effortlessly to the music, giving each man there a taste of her sweet perfume. “Um, Ginny, isn’t there a light out here you could turn on?” After buying her a couple of drinks Ginny had learned about the exchange program at the university, and after buying a couple more she had lured home the girl with the Italian face. Her blood red lips worked ai, ai, ai as Ginny’s fingers worked inside her, those same lips and that tongue so inexperienced and so eager as Ginny’s pussy slowly, achingly bloomed for her.
“Very pretty stone, isn’t it?” The next morning Ginny had offered to hypnotize Isidora as a quick hangover cure, and the girl accepted. Weekly dates followed, ending always with Isidora nude in Ginny’s bed, still filmy with aftersex as Ginny held the necklace above her face, the pendant boring into the brown shells of her spellbound eyes, until she slept in her jardín de rosas. “The way the light flickers on it as it moves?” Until she dropped out of school, trained to stay in Ginny’s house at all times to avoid immigration authorities. Until the spinning crystal had turned the South American club kid into the perfect brainwashed housewife. Ginny found buyers for her a week ago, a software engineer and his wife up in Portland who had balked at the price tag until Ginny sent them a photograph.
“Very pretty,” Matti echoed. Mirroring Isidora, she straightened in her seat, so that they each faced the screen. “She used it on me once, showing me how to use self-hypnosis to get rid of stress.” She frowned faintly. “Or was it twice?”
“She holds it in front of my eyes and turns the chain in her fingers, so that the diamond goes around and around,” Isidora said into the growing dimness. “It’s so easy to concentrate on the motion. And so relaxing.”
“Yes, it is relaxing,” Matti murmured. Her hands limply held her mug of coffee as it cooled on her lap. Ginny’s body was on fire but she could not interfere, not yet. She had to be cool for just a few more minutes and wait for Isidora’s script to coil itself around Matti.
“So easy to follow the motion in front of my eyes and let Ginny relax me with her voice. I can almost see it now, floating in the darkness. Seven.”
“Spinning.” Matti’s voice was muffled, distracted. She sat frozen, except for her eyes as her gaze tracked the flicker of the invisible diamond. “What’s. Happening to me?”
“Six. Sometimes she relaxes me so deep. Five. So much deeper than I thought I could go. Four.”
“Deep. Don’t stop. Wait. What?”
“Down to a place where I am so focused. Three. Feeling so focused and so good that I can listen very carefully to Ginny’s voice. Two. And accept everything she says.”
Matti said nothing. In the near-darkness of the porch Ginny could not see her face but heard her draw a breath and let it out slowly. Another. “My secret garden,” Isidora said, “One.” Both of their chins slumped toward their chests. They sat there, limp, dolls tossed thoughtlessly into the corner.
“You are in your garden, now, aren’t you?” Ginny asked them. “So safe and so warm with the damp grass running through your toes.”
“Yes,” they said.
Ginny stood up and walked in front of the couch. She took their mugs out of their hands, put them on the table, and quietly pulled the table aside. “And you can smell the flowers, your favorite flowers, the sweet smell hanging in the night air.” Her yellow sun dress fell away. The moon emerged from behind a cloud and lit her flesh and the faces of the deeply hypnotized women the color of water. “You can see your flowers all around you coming out of the soil.”
“Yes.”
“There is something you must do, now that you are in your gardens, isn’t there?” Her bra whispered against her aching nipples as she slid it off. Next was the elaborate black lace of her panties. “Something you must do to prepare.” Slowly, the two necks straightened. Matti and Isidora rose from the couch, the wood boards creaking under their feet. “Wait,” Ginny said as the sleeping women began undressing. “Let your eyes open, you are still in your garden, and look next to you. That’s right. Do you see her? Your beautiful friend is in your garden with you. So glad to see her, so happy to share your secret place with someone so special.”
“Happy,” Isidora said, her smile delicate under drugged eyes. Matti watched her, her face impassive.
Ginny slid behind Matti and gently squeezed her arms. “See how beautiful she is,” she whispered. “So lovely, so sexy, and now she’s in your garden, barefoot in the lilies with you, and you can help each other prepare, so you will be ready to let me instruct you.”
“Help each other. Prepare.” Matti took a careful step toward Isidora, then another. “Yes.” She hooked the straps of Isidora’s top with her fingers, and the girl dutifully lifted her arms as Matti pulled it off and dropped it on the couch. Her camisole came next, her tanned breasts slipping free as Ginny watched, flicking her own nipple idly as her other hand drifted down her body. Matti unbuttoned Isidora’s shorts and knelt to slide them down her legs, Ginny sighing with delight as Matti’s nose drifted toward Isidora’s nappy but well-trimmed bush. “So lovely,” Matti said.
Cupping her elbows, Ginny drew Matti’s unresisting body upright. “Very good, sweetheart,” she said. “But now you must let your lovely friend Isidora prepare you for instruction.” On cue, Isidora drifted toward them and unbuckled Matti’s belt. Her slender hands opened Matti’s jeans unhurriedly as Ginny cradled the teacher and her heart pumped longing between her legs over and over. “Arms up,” she said after Matti had stepped out of her panties, and Matti obeyed as Isidora pulled the white tee off her back. Cupping one of Matti’s breasts from behind and giving its nipple an exploratory sweep with her nail, Ginny said, “Thank you, Isidora honey. Go ahead and sit back down on the couch.” She felt Matti’s nipple respond to her touch. “How do you feel, darling?”
“So good. So deep.” Matti’s voice hummed through her bare back and into Ginny’s ribcage.
“Do you see the colors spiraling together?”
“Spiraling. Everything spiraling. Floating into the spiral.” Working the teacher’s breasts with her hands, Ginny kissed and nibbled the thin, freckled ridge of muscle between Matti’s neck and shoulder until she whimpered. “Ready. For instruction.”
“I believe you are,” Ginny said as she released Matti. “Lie down on the couch. Use Isidora’s lap as a pillow.” Once Matti had done so, Ginny knelt before her and shouldered Matti’s leg behind her knee. “Do you remember the song I taught you?” she asked Isidora. “Sing it for me, please.”
Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Isidora’s mezzo-soprano, pleasant even if thinned by trance, filled the porch with the slow sing-song melody. Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Ginny used her fingers first, making ovals over Matti’s pussy until her juices flowed and her breath played ragged rhythm to Isidora’s voice. Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Ginny dipped her fingers into her, plumbing a little deeper each time, circling her own clit with her other hand. Then her tongue lapped at Matti’s glistening folds as they swelled and Matti’s fingers grasped at the air. Blind to everything but her spiral, the teacher cried out as Ginny found her clit and Isidora’s song seeped its way into her head. Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Love Ginny/Serve Ginny. Matti’s face tightened as orgasm filled the center of spiral like a balloon fuller and fuller until at last it burst and for one brilliant sunburst of an instant orgasm was song was spiral was Ginny was love Ginny serve Ginny love Ginny serve
Ginny love Ginny
She brought them upstairs to her bedroom and fucked them all night, not awake but not asleep, grinding her pussy on Isidora’s suckling mouth as she used her vibrator on Matti. Matti rocked her hips in time, searching for the center of the spiral and finding it again and again. Finally, exhausted, Ginny collapsed, onto the damp sheets and ordered her girls into real sleep. They slept in a tangle of limbs with the odor of pussy juice hanging over the bed like incense, and a few hours later with the sun leaking through the curtains Ginny was awakened by Matti’s moist lips pressed against hers. She hauled herself up onto her elbows and looked at the teacher, felt her eager breath sweep her cheek. Devotion was burning endless tunnels into her sky-blue eyes. From downstairs came the hiss and crackle of frying eggs.
“Is your husband still in Chicago?” Ginny asked.
“He doesn’t get back until Sunday night,” Matti murmured. She drew her palm up Ginny’s belly. “I have all weekend to please you. Now that I understand my feelings for you.”
Combing Matti’s tousled hair with her nails, Ginny asked, “Do you want to serve me?” Air huffed out of Matti’s nostrils and her eyelids fluttered as she nodded. “Then you must realize that I want your life. All of it.”
“You have it.” They kissed again. Matti’s breast brushed against Ginny’s bare shoulder as she snuggled closer.
“Then you know you have to leave your husband.”
Matti’s smile faltered as she jerked her head off the pillow. “What? L-leave my—but I love hi—love. Love Ginny.” Ginny saw the resistance drain from Matti’s eyes, leaving them cold and empty as polar caves. “Love Ginny, serve Ginny. Yes. I have to leave my husband. Have to give my life to Ginny. Yes.”
“You will call him after breakfast. You will tell him that you are moving out of your house today.”
“Yes.”
“That you are hiring an attorney, and if he tries to contact you again you will file a restraining order and tell the judge that he hits you.”
“Restraining order. Yes.” Light returned to Matti’s face as she accepted her new orders. As her warped mind pictured making the call, Isidora called upstairs that breakfast was ready. Ginny climbed out of bed and slipped on her robe. She took Matti by the elbow and helped her up, guided her slave to the kitchen table.