“It ain’t wha’ch a do....”

by Rex Antioch

“Will you make friends with that new girl in Mrs. Freeman’s form for me?”
Coming from the man who was both my father and my headmaster this was more an order than a request so I nodded.  “OK.”
“That’s ma’girl.  Her name’s Jenny Baxter.  She seems a bit of a loner.  Never easy, joining in the middle of the year, of course, but Mrs. Freeman thinks there’s something more than that, like she actually wants to keep people at arm’s length.  Seems a bit sloppy in the personal care line, too.  Records show that she lives with her father.  There was a divorce a couple of years back, and if the father got custody the mother can’t have been much good.  Maybe things are not so good at home.  Can be hard for a girl at that age, not having a woman around.  See if you can find out if she needs any help, OK?”
“OK, dad,” I agreed, not altogether whole-heartedly.
“That’s ma’girl.”
Jenny Baxter was easy to find in the yard during next day’s mid-morning break, sitting by herself like a rock in the swirling sea of 400-odd girls from eleven to sixteen which made up the school.  She was not easy to know, though.  I knew others had tried to break through when she had first arrived, had been rebuffed and had given up.
“Hi,” I said, abandoning my usual gang to be carried along in the currents of schoolgirls and anchoring myself beside her.
She’d been studying her shoes or the scuffed bitumen beneath them for as long as I had been watching her during the break but at my greeting she lifted her eyes, regarded me coolly for a long moment as though I was a slightly interesting beetle and then returned to her contemplation of her feet.
“Whad’ya want,” she said as though she had been waiting for a bus that was already half-an-hour late and still not in sight.
“Make friends?” I offered, settling myself onto the much-carved seat next to her.
She didn’t respond for a moment then wrinkled her nose into a sneer.
“You’re the Principal’s little girl, aren’t you?  Is this is all part of the jolly hockey-sticks thing?  Rah rah the school and all that.”
She was fourteen, a year younger than I am.  Mrs.  Freeman had told my father that she had a brain but chose not to use it.  She was a small girl with a pretty face well on the way to womanhood but her dark shoulder-length hair was lank and unbrushed, her school uniform was creased and already slightly stained in places despite the fact she’d only had it a month and I was aware of a gentle air of b.o. about her.  Her fingernails were chewed to the quick and she had a habit of reaching up and curling a finger around a hank of hair that hung by her eye and yanking on it hard enough to hurt.
“I was asked to try to make friends with you, yes,” I said gently.  “I wasn’t asked to pretend to be a friend.”
She gave me a sullen, sidelong glance while she worked that out.  Then she sneered at me again.
“Don’t waste your time,’ she said, giving me the cold shoulder.
I sucked my lips noisily and thoughtfully for a moment as though considering what she’d said.  Then I said quietly, even though we weren’t in any danger of being overheard, “You’re not the only girl in this school being fucked by her father, you know.  But you’re the only one who makes it obvious.”
I wasn’t absolutely certain this was her problem but I was confidently sure it was that or something like it.  She was behaving like a slut because she believed she was a slut, but she wasn’t throwing herself at boys or flirting with the male staff as a real slut would, and real sluts don’t despise themselves for being sluts.  They glory in it.  I knew, and liked, several girls whose behaviour fell well within the dictionary definition of sluttish and they were cheerful, outgoing, dressed and presented themselves like models and brimmed with the self-confidence earned by the sexual power they wielded.  No, Jenny Baxter thought she was a slut and despised herself for it, so the acts which made her feel like a slut was being imposed on her against her will, which meant by someone with the power to do it, which almost had to be her father or a guardian.
Her face jerked round to me and I saw by the horror and fear in her eyes I had been right.
“I mean it,” I said firmly, in order to keep control for I knew the other girl was within a hair of running from me, which would be almost impossible for me to recover from.  “Even I don’t know how many,” I nodded at the seething mass of girls penned in the yard.  “But I know of some for sure, and I think everyone would be surprised if we knew exactly how many of them were having sex with their fathers.”
I knew from the look in her eyes that I had hooked her, for they were the eyes of a drowning girl suddenly seeing a life-boat.  She’d thought she was alone and that thought had made her an outcaste, shunning society because she had believed it ought to be shunning her.
“Can you guess which ones they are,” I asked gently.
No other girl was sitting alone as she was.  It was a classy school and the uniforms of all the other girls were clean and smart.  Four hundred-odd heads of hair shone with health in the sunlight.  Even the girls who knew boys wouldn’t look at them twice were well turned out.  My father ran a good school.
“Jenny,” I appealed to her with my voice, begging her to trust me.  “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying it when your father fucks you.  Being fucked is the nicest thing there is.  Being raped is the worst thing there is, but your father doesn’t rape you, does he.”  That wasn’t a question, it was a statement.  There were no signs of violence about her and she didn’t have the cringe in her eyes that girls who are raped by their fathers have.  Her disgust, guilt and shame were all turned inwards, towards herself, not outwards to the man who had sex with her.
“The girls out there whose fathers fuck them,” I went on, nodding out at the girls in the yard, “Are happy about it.  They enjoy it.  They love it.  So they’re happy.  They’re getting great sex with a man they trust and love.  What could be better?”  I saw tears in the other girl’s eyes as for the first time she saw an alternative to the misery she was condemned to, saw like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel a relief from the guilt she was crippling herself with as she loathed and despised herself for secretly enjoying what she had always believed she should hate and detest.
“Our problem,” I continued in the confidential tone, “is your father.  Making him see it too.  Jenny, will you let me talk to him?”
Oh yes, yes, her eyes begged, then fear flared in them, too.  Fear that a secret kept chained howling in the darkest dungeon of her soul for so long should now see the light of day.
“Jenny, trust me,” I urged her.  “I promise I will never tell another soul what I know, without your permission.  And who else in the whole wide world would your father be able to bear hearing it come from, apart from your best friend.”
She was scared.  Scared at losing control over something she had believed she could only endure if she kept it locked tight in her own world, scared at how her father would react when what I was sure he had always impressed on her had to be kept their little secret had become the property of a third party, and a stranger at that.
“I want you out there with us,” I pressed her, nodding at the throng of girls around us.  “Smart, beautiful and happy.  Relaxed and at peace because of the wonderful orgasm you had last night and looking forward to the one you’re going to have tonight.”
She wanted it, too.  She hadn’t missed the ‘us’ and taken it to mean the company and society of other girls who enjoyed having sex with their fathers even though I had not necessarily intended any more than the general company of her classmates.  She wanted so much to be ordinary yet had never before even dared think that a girl who had sex with her father could be ‘ordinary’.  
“He’ll listen to me, Jenny,” I assured her.  “And I’m sure I can change it for you both.  For the better.”
She was panting slightly as her sudden new hope warred with the cautions and fears she had lived with for so long.  “Trust me,” I said again.
She nodded, her soul naked in her eyes, and I breathed a sigh of relief even as a gnawing fear woke in me - a fear that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, for how much worse would her despair and isolation be if I wasn’t able to free her.  I let her see nothing but pleasure and confidence.
“When would be the best time?” I asked.
We discussed it and agreed a time for me to call at her home when her father would be there but she would be out.  The bell sounded for the end of the break.
I rose from the bench and waited for her to stand as well.
“Friends?” I asked when she did.
“Yah.  Friends,” she agreed in a small, scared voice, although she gave me a smile and a firm nod.

Jenny’s childhood home had been sold as part of the divorce, which had presumably also financially impacted on her father, yet their new home was not down-market being a largish modern bungalow in a large section in an expensive part of town, which it had to be in order for Jenny to qualify for our school.  Indeed Jenny’s father was a highly respectable businessman, for incest is by no means the exclusive preserve of the great unwashed.  He opened the front door to my press of the bell-push and I saw his eyes widen with surprise and, a moment later, sexual desire.
“Hi.  I’m Kathy Allen,” I said brightly.  “I’ve come about Jenny.”
“Er.”  I watched him recover.  I deliberately remained in school uniform to obviate the need for lengthy explanations and also to reassure him that I wasn’t from any social or child protection agencies, and I was also very aware of the effect a well-made fifteen-year-old girl in school uniform has on most men.  “She isn’t here,” he said.
I gave him a grin.  I’d told Jenny to let him know my name, who I was and that we were friends, but not in any way to try to prepare him for what I was going to do as I was afraid it would put him too far on the defensive.
“I know,” I said.  “It’s you I’ve come to see.”  I saw doubt and a sudden caution in his eyes.  “Can I come in?”
He made way for me a little reluctantly.  “I hope, ah, Jenny isn’t in any trouble?” he fished.  I gave a non-committal smile and led the way through to what I could see was the lounge.
The house was rather like Jenny herself, the right money had been spent dressing her but no care taken of the result.  The necessary basic work was done by a woman who came in twice a week to vacuum and do the laundry but little was done by either Jenny or her father in between with the result that the place was untidy and smelt musty and a little sour.  I caught sight in the kitchen of a much larger pile of dirty dishes than two people could generate in a day together with a bin overspilling with take-away cartons.  Mr.  Walker was still in a smart business suit and was better groomed that his daughter but I suspected that was because he was well aware that to be anything else was profession suicide.  I had been alarmed, though, by a distinct whiff of liquor on his breath when he had opened the door to me, despite the early hour.
In the lounge I took one of the upright chairs by the wall rather than a low armchair in the middle of the room, and arranged myself on it elegantly, shoes and knees together demurely.  The man followed me in and took up a position standing by the window.  I knew he already had an inkling of what my visit might be about - the possibility that what he was doing with his daughter would be found out, and the consequences thereof,  must have been a constant fear in his mind and the first thing to spring forwards if he felt threatened.  He’d probably already worked out what he would do if police accusing him of sexually abusing his daughter arrived on his doorstep but it had clearly never occurred to him that it might be a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl instead and I already had him wrongfooted.  By taking charge so confidently I hoped to keep it that way.
“Yes,” I agreed thoughtfully.  “Jenny is in trouble.  But it has nothing to do with school, and you already know what it is.”
The man’s head jerked defensively as though I had threatened to hit him.  “I don’t know what you mean,” he blustered.
“Yes you do,” I told him wearily.  “Do you want me to spell it out?”
He stared at me, taking my measure the way I suppose he did his competitors in business.
“Jenny said you’re the Principal’s daughter,” he said warily.  I nodded.
“So I presume she’s been carrying these tales to everyone,” he said viciously.  “She’s never forgiven me for divorcing her mother.”
I guessed that was the story he had ready for the police, should they arrive.  I was impressed by it as much as I hope they would have been, which was not at all.
“As far as I know Jenny hasn’t told anyone.” I said firmly.  “She certainly didn’t tell me.  But as it happens she didn’t need to.  I saw the signs and when I challenged her she couldn’t hide it, any more than you could just now.  You can think yourself bloody lucky that no-one else has seen them,” I returned to him equally viciously, “Because it was only a matter of time before someone in authority did, and they would have done a lot more damage to you and Jenny than I’m going to.”
He was silent, totally perplexed as he hadn’t a clue where I was coming from.
“Shall I tell you what I saw?” I asked softly.  Angrily.  Jenny’s father didn’t respond.  Short of throwing me out of the house there was very little he could do except listen, and I was sure he wasn’t going to risk throwing me out unheard with what he now knew I knew.  He also wanted, perhaps needed, to know what I had seen.
“Jenny loves you,” I said gently.  “She understands your needs.  She can understand what it must be like for a single man to have a pretty, sexy, girl living with him, underfoot all the time.  She’s as aware of sex now as she is ever going to be, and she’s proud that she can meet and satisfy those needs in you.  It confirms that she’s a woman now.  She even has orgasms when you’re having sex and they’re as pleasurable as any orgasm is for any woman.
“But you’ve taught her that fathers shouldn’t have sex with their daughters because that’s what you believe.  So you feel shame and guilt every time you do it.  Maybe each time you do it you even tell yourself that it’s the last time, so when you give in and do it again with Jenny you feel even more shame and guilt, and disgust at yourself.”  I was holding his eyes daring him to deny it, daring him to look away.  He couldn’t.
“And Jenny picks up every iota of it.  She knows you feel shame and guilt and so she thinks she should feel shame and guilt when what she wants to feel is joy and pride.”  I paused for a moment to let that sink in.
“I think you even shift some of the blame for it onto her,” I said, low and accusingly.  “It’s in part your daughter’s fault for being a girl.  For being so pretty.  For being available.  For not stopping it. And she picks up on that, too.  She knows you’re weak and that you’re wanting her to be strong, but she can’t be.  She doesn’t want to be.  You want her to stop something she knows you don’t want to stop, and what she doesn’t want to stop either.”
The man licked his lips nervously, his eyes haunted.  He couldn’t look away from me.  Not my legs in my pleated school skirt.  Not my breasts in my white school blouse, their bulges emphasised by my tie.  He was snared by my eyes and my words.
“What do you do, afterwards?”  I asked coldly.  “Do you weep and apologise, promise it will never happen again and then break that promise?  Or do you just get off her and walk away, pretending it never happened?” I didn’t give him a chance to reply.  “Either way you leave your daughter feeling discarded and worthless.  Cheap and degraded.  Used.”
I gave a tired sigh.  “Do you wonder she cares so little for herself?”  I jerked my head in the direction of the kitchen.  “When you so despise yourself for what you’re doing that you let yourself go, live in a sty and get drunk, what can you expect your daughter to do?”
I could see that had hit home.  He was crumpling inside himself.
“Jenny loved having sex with you,” I said gently, trying to shore him up a little.  “But she hated it as well.  It made her feel proud, a woman doing so much for the most important man in her life.  And she enjoyed it. Yet it also made her feel ashamed and guilty because that was what she was getting from you.  You taught her to hate what she loved.  It was an impossible situation for her.  She could have become mentally ill.  She could have committed suicide.  She wanted help but could see no way on earth she could ask anyone for help because you made her believe it was a shameful secret.    So she let herself go, despised herself, refused all offers of friendship because she didn’t believe herself worthy of anyone’s friendship.  It was a whisper for help she was afraid of anyone hearing.  Thank God I did.”
I was silent, letting what I’d said sink in.  Waiting for a response.  The man’s eyes were turned away from me as though no longer able to face me and I could see he was thinking.
“What do you want me to do,” he whispered eventually.  “Go to the police and make a clean breast of it?”
“No,” I said a lot more calmly than I felt.  “That won’t solve anything.  What I want you to do is to learn to love Jenny.  As your daughter and as your lover.”  
His head came up and he stared at me in disbelief.
“She loves you,” I said again.  “Despite everything.  If she didn’t love you,” I pointed out softly, “This would have ended ages ago, with you behind bars.  A word to her mother..... a hint to a teacher...... It was because she loves you that she endured so much.
“So love her, and make love to her instead of just using her for sex.  Worship her and let her give you pleasure, because it’s the only thing she can do for you while you are doing so much for her.  Feeding her, clothing her, protecting her.  Get rid of the shame and guilt.  Let your daughter walk at your side instead of dragging her behind you like a smelly dog.  Treat her like the woman she is.  Your princess.”
He was shaking his head, unable to comprehend.
“Jenny’s not the only girl at school who has sex with her father,” I told him.  “I know of a dozen others and I’ll bet there are many more I’ll never know of.  They’re happy girls because they love and they’re loved.  The school’s seen girls like Jenny before, too.  That’s how I could recognise the signs.  They’re tragedies, all misery because the love is missing.  Fathers who use their daughters like unpaid whores.  If I thought you were like that you’d already be down at the police station.  But those girls despise their fathers, not themselves.  Jenny despises herself because she sees you despising yourself.  You drink to numb the pain because you care.  You despise yourself because you care.  But all you’ve got to do is throw off the guilt and accept that what you do with your daughter is a beautiful thing.   As they say, ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it’.”
Jenny’s father was nodding, a new light in his eyes as he saw the way forward just as his daughter had done the previous day.  He took a deep breath and squared himself off.
“Jenny’s going to be terrified when she comes in tonight,” I said softly.  “Wondering how you’ve taken this.  I want you to get on your knees to her and beg her forgiveness for the pain you’ve caused her.  You’ve got to throw yourself on her mercy.  You’ve got to talk to her more honestly than to any priest or therapist.  You’ve got to clear the air.  You’ve got to let her know what she means to you.  You’ve got to love her as she deserves.  And if you do, I think you’ll be surprised at the love you’ll get back,” I finished.
“Yes.”  A whisper seemed to be all he could manage.  The he raised his eyes to mine.  “Yes.   Thank you.  I....  I’ll do it.  You.....  I’m glad......  Jenny’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“Make her lucky to have a father like you,” I ordered.  Then I let myself out.

The change in Jenny Walker in the week that followed was astonishing.  She appeared at school neat as a pin and with shining hair, seeming to stand inches taller and laughing with her classmates.  Several times I saw her father meet her at the gates after school with a hug and they’d walk side by side to his car hand in hand, Jenny bubbling with chat and her father glowing with pride.  In fact we were too far apart in age and interests to become firm friends though we’d smile if we passed.  Just once Jenny stopped me, put a hand on one of mine and said, “Thank you,” and that was all that was necessary.
On one occasion later, though, when we had stopped for a chat she asked, shyly, if my father and I.......  and because she was a friend I told her whether or not we did.  
I don’t feel that I know you well enough to tell you, though. 

© Rex Antioch 2002