Foster Forest (2): Breaking

Things at the Forest Home seemed to be settling down. Lizzie was eating, and that kept Becky off her back. Although they rarely spoke to one another except during the mealtimes (and then it felt mandatory to talk to one another since it couldn't be avoided), it seemed that a kind of peace had settled itself over the home.

Underneath it all, however, a tension was bubbling.

Elizabeth was ten years-old: far too young to be expected to think of the needs of others. If she didn't notice that Becky was on edge, it could hardly be considered her fault. Young and narcissistic, she believed that she was the source of the tension, and so avoided Becky all the more.

This was easy enough during the week, when Elizabeth was able to escape the private school where she was being sent on a scholarship. During the week she could gobble two meals without worrying about somebody scolding her for eating too fast. During the week she didn't have to watch as her guardian stalked around the cabin, slamming the doors behind her when she went outside to care for the horses. During the week she didn't have to try to watch out, always wondering what she had done to make the woman so angry.

On the weekends there were many tears, but Becky didn't notice. Elizabeth would watch the woman go back and forth, pacing through the great room, sometimes on her cell phone, her voice raised. More often than not, Lizzie would retreat to her bedroom where she could grab a book and lose herself within the pages. Becky wasn't even trying to talk to her any more. Maybe it was better that way. That way she would never get attached, she couldn't be hurt when it was time for her to move on.

Although it was easier on Lizzie now that Becky no longer expected her to "talk about it," her loneliness was all the more pronounced. She was beginning to slowly run through the young adult novels in the small library at the home, and she knew that soon she'd be down to the mid-grade stories, since the adult books were just too much for her, and besides, she'd discovered that her teachers didn't approve. The books, at least, were her friends, with characters she could relate to. However temporarily, she could lose herself within the pages of the books she read.

Some days Lizzie allowed herself to miss Gran. As best she knew, the old woman was still out there somewhere, living in a nursing home with no idea that her only granddaughter was wasting away in "the system." She missed her grandmother, and it was difficult for her to understand how the woman could forget everything that was important to her. Nobody had ever even tried to explain it to her, and Lizzie had given up trying to understand. It was just stupid anyway!

School was easy though. There was always something going on, and the seat work took enough of her attention to take her mind off of her "situation" as one family had called it. She could spend six hours every day forgetting that she would ultimately have to go home to a huge, cold house with an angry, brooding foster mother.

Even at recesses, Elizabeth took a book with her to the playground. The other students, most of them the children of wealthy families in the area, were prone to poking fun at her for being a scholarship case. At least they didn't know that she was a foster child. That might have been deadly in the long run. With her nose buried in a book, it seemed as though she was practically invisible to anybody who happened to pass her. She liked it that way.

The illusion was shattered, however, when three o'clock rolled around and she had to make the walk to the black Ford waiting for her outside the school. The buses didn't go out far enough to pick her up or take her "home" and that meant that she missed the last half hour of aloneness before and after school.

After the first week they had stopped trying to talk on these journeys. Lizzie sat in the back seat and put her nose in her book, and she never noticed the way that Becky worriedly glanced in the rearview mirror to check on her. She had shut down on the feeling of abandonment that she'd suffered when the last parents had moved and left her behind. If she didn't get close again, then she couldn't get hurt again. That was how Lizzie viewed it.

Every evening Becky told Lizzie to do her homework. And every evening, Lizzie took her homework to her room. None of it was particularly difficult, and she spent the rest of the night after supper and a bath reading one of her books. Becky had even stopped coming in to tuck her into bed.

Elizabeth continually told herself that she wasn't lonely; that she didn't miss her Papa at all. She struggled to convince herself that she had no expectations of being loved in this new place, so if Becky didn't talk to her any more, or tuck her into bed, it didn't mean anything to her. She suppressed the pain and didn't let it show on the outside. If anything, she gave the appearance of being too tough for her own good.

It was that toughness that first got her into real trouble.

***

"Elizabeth Moore!" The voice was hard, tinged with a sternness that caused a chill to go down the ten year-old's spine, and for a moment, she didn't turn her head, didn't look up. She recognized the voice as that of her teacher, Mr. Becker, and she recognized the tone as the one he'd used last week when one of the other students had been caught passing notes in class.

Her shoulders were tense, and her fingers gripped her book tightly. Elizabeth forced herself to breath deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She didn't want him to see that he'd ruffled her feathers. Only once she was composed did she look up at the man, her brown eyes narrowing into slits as she glared up at him. "What do you want?" she snapped. "Can't you see I'm reading?"

Lizzie noticed the twitch at the corner of his eye. Her own gaze focused on the movement and then faded again to her usual uncaring expression. She knew what the expression meant: she had ruffled his feather, perhaps even more than he had ruffled hers. This was noted with satisfaction, and she tossed her blonde pony tail over her shoulder and looked up at him, raising both eyebrows in an adult expression that would have been very unusual in a child who had been brought up in a gentler life.

"Come inside," Mr. Becker said, his voice sharp.

Elizabeth didn't know what she had done, but it was very clear to her that she was in trouble. Slowly and deliberately, she gathered up her book, dusted off her uniform skirt and followed Mr. Becker into the school building and back to his classroom, her eyes looking straight forward with a courage that she didn't feel.

In the room, he shut the door behind them and gestured for Lizzie to sit at one of the front desks. She shook her head. "I'll stand, thanks," she said defiantly.

The man shrugged his shoulders and took his own seat behind his desk. "Elizabeth," the man started slowly, though his tone was still stern enough to make Lizzie's stomach roll nervously. "It has come to our attention that you are taking a book to recess every day during school hours. Is this true?"

Elizabeth's eyebrows came together and she recoiled slightly, giving the man a disgusted look. "Yeah, I take a book out every day. I don't feel like talking to the snobby little brats whose parents can pay for them to go to school here. So what?"

The teacher sighed, though Lizzie noticed the little twitch near his eyes again. He wasn't particularly good at hiding his irritation, and Lizzie Moore was especially well trained in how to spot it. Ordinarily she might have cared, but on this occasion she felt as though she'd been ignored long enough. Nothing she did seemed to get a rise out of Becky since the moment when the woman had slapped her in the face.

The tiniest of shivers went through Elizabeth's body at the memory, and she hoped that the man hadn't seen her reaction. Although she wanted a rise she didn't particularly want to wind up getting punished. She knew the damage that Becky Thomas could do with a hairbrush and she suspected that if she got herself into trouble at school, that she was going to wind up in just as much trouble once she arrived back at the home. Becky might even stop letting her use the books. That was something Lizzie couldn't stand.

"Recess is 'active time,'" Mr. Becker stated, a sharp tone in his voice that told Lizzie that his temper was becoming short with her. "Our school board requires that students spend at least half an hour every day in outdoor active play. Reading is not considered 'active play.' I will take your book." The teacher held his hand out for the book.

Startled by the demand, Elizabeth's eyes went wide, and she instinctively wrapped her arms around the book, clutching it tightly to her chest. The rules at the home were clear that the books weren't to be removed from the house. Apparently Becky was worried that they would get lost, or damaged in the woods. She wasn't supposed to have this book outside of the house, let alone at school. Certainly Becky wouldn't impose any consequences if she noticed that the book was missing (she'd been so distant!) but Lizzie didn't want to take the risk, either.

Elizabeth shook her head back and forth at her teacher as she turned to flee. For the first time since she'd started at this school she was showing some real emotion: her protectiveness over the books that were hers. "You can't have it," she called over her shoulder as she rushed to her locker and shoved the book deep into the recesses of her bag. "It's my book and I'm not going to give it to you!"

The little girl missed the bewildered expression on the man's face. The irritation was gone, replaced by the surprise of noticing that the toughest girl in his class was showing some genuine emotion -- over a book nonetheless!

The tension frightened Elizabeth, but she said nothing as she turned and strode on shaky legs back to where the teacher stood. "Anything else?" she asked, her brown eyes cold as she stared at him.

"I need to have that book, Elizabeth, or I'm going to need to send you to the principal's office so that your... So that Ms. Thomas can be contacted about this. Those are your choices. I can't let you keep the book. It's breaking our rules."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and shook her head. She was frustrated. It was clear to her that her biggest problem would be if Becky found out that she'd taken the book out of the house, and even then she expected that she'd be scolded. She refused to allow herself to even consider the possibility that Becky might revoke her book privileges. The entire concept didn't make sense: A school that wouldn't let her read, but wanted her to "engage in active play?"

"No," she said. "You can't have my book. I'll go out and... 'play' if that's what you want, but I'm not giving you my book."

She could see the agitation in his eyes, and for a moment Lizzie nearly stepped back away from him. It was with a great deal of forceful concentration that she stood her ground, her arms crossed over her chest.

And only after several moments did he finally speak. "Fine," he said. "Let's go." Mr. Becker took Lizzie's arm, his large, rough hand less than gentle as he gave her a tug to move her toward the door. "We'll see what Mrs. Laurel and Ms. Thomas have to say about this matter.

"Whatever," Lizzie muttered, jerking her arm out of his grip and moving at a swift pace as she walked ahead of him. She knew where the principal's office was, and she didn't mind going there. At her old school she had helped out in the office after school, until somebody was done at work so they could come and pick her up. Maybe Mrs. Laurel would even side with her about the book. After all, this was a school and weren't they supposed to be encouraging students to enjoy reading?

***

Two hours later the insanity of the situation still hadn't quite sunk in for Elizabeth. She was sitting in the back seat of the Taurus, with Becky in the front seat. The book was up there, with the witch, and Lizzie was forced to focus on the silence of her thoughts for the entire long drive back to the home.

They were nearly there when the ten year-old violently kicked the back of the driver's seat. "It isn't fair!" she cried in anguish. "It's a school!"

"Well," Becky snapped back, without missing a beat. "The sooner you learn that life isn't fair, the better off you're going to be. Personally I think that it is quite fair that you are being punished for breaking the rules just like a paying student would have been punished for breaking the rules. Did you think that for some reason you were immune to my rules, and the rules at school?"

Elizabeth drew back, her brown eyes going wide. She'd never seen Becky so angry, not even the day when she'd been spanked for yelling at the woman and refusing to eat. Shifting, she settled in against the door, staring out the window. The bitter expression on her face was gone. She'd finally gotten what she wanted from Becky: a reaction of some kind. She'd thought that it wouldn't matter if it was good or bad, but she could tell that the woman was angry -- really angry -- and as it sunk in that it was her fault, a guilty conscience began to haunt her.

The rest of the drive was taken in silence until Becky pulled into the garage at the home and opened the door, then went around to the back and let Elizabeth out. Subdued, the little girl slid out of the car, grabbing her backpack without bothering to sling it over her shoulder. Her head down, Elizabeth went through the door into the kitchen without saying a word.

Unsure of what she should do, but knowing that Becky was going to want to "talk" to her about what had happened (she'd said so before loading into the car), Lizzie put her bag on the kitchen table and sat down in one of the chairs, tucking her leg up under her and staring down at the table. She didn't figure that she was going to be spanked, like she was the last time, and she wasn't expecting that Becky was going to send her back to her social worker for re-placement. But even a lecture could be painful in its own, uncomfortable way.

It seemed forever to Lizzie before Becky finally came through the door from the garage into the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind her. The ten year-old didn't even look up as the auburn-haired woman pulled out a chair and took a seat near her. She'd half-expected the woman to begin yelling right away, to order her to go to her room. Instead, there was a long silence, and then the sound of something being slid across the rough wood of the table. Lizzie didn't dare look up.

"You like to read," the woman said, her voice low with a curious tone. Not at all what Lizzie expected.

Her brown eyes darted up to meet the curious green gaze of her guardian, and she felt herself flush as she nodded her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come out, and she closed it again, tears forming in her eyes as she considered the possibility of the books being taken away from her, so that she would no longer be allowed to read.

"I never had much time for reading," she heard the young woman say. There was a ruffle of paper, and the girl looked down to see that Becky was rifling through the book, the same curious expression on her face. "There's always been too much work to be done. Never was much one for watching T.V. either. Just a movie now and then. I wish I'd done more reading when I was your age," she added thoughtfully. Then Becky slid the book back across the table to Lizzie.

Elizabeth didn't want to tell the woman that in the past three years, books had been her only friends. She didn't want to talk about how she could escape from the life she really had into the life that she wanted. She couldn't express to this woman the fact that books were something she could rely on to always be there for her, even when people were so fickle and unreliable. She feared that if she divulged any of this information, the books, or the privilege of the books, would be taken away from her. Instead, she just shrugged her shoulders, struggling to remain dispassionate to the discussion.

The woman sighed, and Elizabeth carefully trained her eyes on the table. The girl noticed the movement, but ignored it. There was a clattering sound coming from behind her, and then she felt a firm hand grasp her arm and pull her roughly to he feet. Lizzie gasped with surprise, her brown eyes going wide as she met the green gaze of her guardian. It was immediately obvious what Becky intended to do, and Lizzie had to struggle to resist the urge to stomp her foot in protest.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Lizzie protested through clenched teeth, keeping her eyes carefully on Becky's face so that she wouldn't have to observe the wide wooden spatula in the woman's hand. She yanked her arm out of the woman's grip, only to be surprised, brown eyes going wide, when the hard flat of Becky's hand met with her upper thigh. The ten year-old cried out sharply, her eyes hardening as she struggled to keep the tears from coming and flowing down her cheeks.

"I was reading!" Lizzie growled angrily as her hand went to rub at her thigh. The frustration was boiling beneath the surface, and she knew that it was going to bubble over if she wasn't careful. Why did Becky have to choose this moment to start caring about what she did? Why now? "What do you people have against reading?" she said, stomping her foot and shaking her head.

"I'm going to give you the choice to take your own panties down this time," Becky said, her voice firm. It was obvious to Lizzie that her guardian was ignoring her protestations.

The truth was that Elizabeth Moore was more than just a little bit scared. She'd been spanked a few times by Gran when she was growing up, but never in a foster home until she'd met Becky. The hairbrush spanking she'd received three days after her arrival hadn't been too bad, even if the stinging slap to her face had been a shock to the ten year-old. What frightened the girl now was the slow and deliberate way that she was being treated, as though her guardian had planned this punishment carefully and every movement was calculated. There was no escaping the fact that this was going to hurt.

"I don't wanna...." The whine in Lizzie's voice surprised both child and guardian, and the little girl had to blink back tears as she carefully reached under her uniform skirt and lowered her panties down to her knees. The expression on Becky's face told her that if she didn't comply, she would be made to comply, and the thought of being so exposed in front of Becky brought a deep flush to the girl's cheeks.

The woman gave a small nod of approval to Elizabeth, though her expression remained incredibly stern. The child wasn't sure whether or not she had done as well as Becky had hoped, and the tears shocked her as much as the whining tone of her voice only seconds before. The fact that she wanted to please Becky was astonishing to her.

"Up and over," Becky said sharply, patting her lap as though she expected automatic compliance from Elizabeth.

"No..... I don't want to!" Elizabeth cried, the whining tone gone from her voice as she shook her head from side to side. "I don't want to get a spanking. Please!'

"You should have thought of that before you took one of the books from our library out of the house. You know that's against the rules young lady, and you can't argue that you didn't!" Lizzie felt her hand grasped in Becky's, which suddenly seemed so much larger. She flushed more deeply a she toppled over the woman's lap and was adjusted for mutual comfort. In a moment, she wasn't going to be comfortable at all, and she knew it.

"You should have thought about the consequences of your actions before your broke the rules at school, and before you sassed your teacher, and your principal!"

Any hope that her guardian might choose to spank her over the seat of her skirt was entirely dispelled when Becky lifted the skirt up over Lizzie's back. The girl took in a sharp breath, blinking back the tears that were already beginning to run down her cheeks. Mentally she chided herself on being so weak that she couldn't even lay across a woman's lap without tears coming. She didn't even know (yet) why she was so emotional -- just that she felt terrible being in this position.

No time was wasted. Elizabeth could sense the movement more than she could see it, and she tensed when she felt the wooden implement tap against her bared bottom. Her shoulders tightened, and her bottom cheeks clenched together. Her grandmother had never spanked with anything other than her hand, and the wooden spatula was an entirely new experience for Lizzie.

"No! Please!" she cried. But it was too late. The stinging, burning fire seared into her bottom, and the girl's back arched, her torso twisting as she struggled to make her way off her guardian's lap. Lizzie gasped, her head shaking back and forth in denial as the spatula smacked down against her right cheek, burning its impression into her flesh. She squealed again, finding it suddenly difficult to catch her breath, or to listen to what Becky was uselessly saying over her head.

"If you get into trouble at school, you will be spanked once I bring you home." Two more swats struck Lizzie, making her buck and squeal like a struck pig -- first the left cheek, then the right. The swats were firm, and Elizabeth was certain that her guardian was using all of her strength to burn a lasting impression into the child's backside.

Elizabeth didn't like it: not one bit. "Stop! You can't!" she cried, convinced of the injustice of what was happening to her. Since she'd been in foster care, only the "mean man" had dared to spank her bottom, and she'd been pulled out of that family very quickly afterward. It seemed to the child that Becky was just as mean as that man was, and she'd make sure that Mrs. Hodges knew it, too!

"I can and I am," came the response. The spanks were coming slow, giving her just enough time to begin to recover from one set of two before the next set was applied to her bottom, reigniting the burn.

Elizabeth wasn't keeping count of the spanks. They were slow, and she could easily have kept track, but her mind was reeling with everything that she was very quickly learning. Becky seemed to think that she could spank Elizabeth, and that meant that chances were very good that she would continue to do so, if she thought that the child needed it. The information was sinking in more and more with every hard spank of the spatula against her tender backside.

The spanking was slow, and something about that seemed terribly strange to Elizabeth. She'd heard friends talk about how their daddies spanked "hard and fast," but Becky was slow and very deliberate. There was no question in Elizabeth's mind that the spanks were hard (though Becky, who was going easy on her charge, might have disagreed), but the pacing was so slow that it seemed the spanking was taking forever!

The ten year-old twisted hard over Becky's lap, her right hand moving quickly to cover her bottom protectively as she cried out "I'm going to tell Mrs. Hodges on you! You can't do this!"

Elizabeth was lucky that her hand didn't receive the corner edge of the spatula, which had been about to land, just a bit harder, against the subtle, tender crease where her bottom and thighs met. The woman had managed to stop her hand just in time, and the little girl gasped when her hand was grabbed and roughly pinned to the small of her back.

"Keep your hand out of the way!" Becky snapped, a mean edge to her voice that made Elizabeth shudder involuntarily. "You can tell Mrs. Hodges anything you want, young lady. It isn't going to stop you from getting your bottom punished when you've done something wrong. You may as well save your breath!"

The tone of voice was harsh, and the meanness behind the words frightened Elizabeth. The tears had already been flowing, but when the first of many sobs escaped from her throat, Lizzie was no longer able to control her crying. The tears flowed.

The spatula rested against Elizabeth's bottom, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Perhaps her tears had caused Becky to end the spanking. Maybe the woman know how to feel some mercy after all! Before Lizzie could begin to pick herself up off of Becky's thighs, however, the lecturing continued. "I don't care what Mrs. Hodges says or she thinks, young lady. Part of my job is to make sure that you learn to obey the rules, and I'm sure you'd rather be over my lap right now than to lose your book privileges. Now I'll just finish up here, and you can go to your room and do your homework!"

The sense of relief that Lizzie felt upon realizing that the books weren't going to be taken away from her quickly disappeared when the spatula lifted up off of her bottom again. She tensed, unsure what to expect, but it was only a moment before the spatula was smacking down against her bottom, fast this time. It was almost as she might have expected a spanking to be, except that Becky focused carefully on the tender crease where the bottom and the thighs met with one another -- the place where Elizabeth would be sitting down to do her homework.

The spanks were hard, and they came fast. Elizabeth no longer had time to catch her breath between the spanks, and every one caused her legs to jerk out behind her. She was sure that she was too old to be treated in such a juvenile manner, and tears of humiliation joined the tears of pain as they ran down her cheeks.

"Okay! Okay!" Elizabeth cried, shaking her head from side to side. The spanking really hurt, but more than that was the humiliation that she felt at being treated in such a childish manner, as though she were only still a six year old. "I'm sorry, okay? I won't do it again! Ow!" A particularly hard swat caught Lizzie on the back of her thigh, and she kicked, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Her nose was beginning to run.

What does she want me to say? Elizabeth thought to herself. What was she supposed to say? She'd said that she was sorry, that she wouldn't do it again. But Becky wasn't talking, and Lizzie wasn't sure what was expected of her at all.

"Uh!" Lizzie cried out in pure frustration as the spatula continued to smack down against her already-sore bottom. The heat was building spank by spank, and Lizzie was becoming quickly exhausted. "I didn't know!" she cried suddenly. "I didn't know about the rule at school! I'm sorry I took the book with me! I'm sorry!"

With surprise, Elizabeth realized that she meant it this time. Sobbing, she shook her head and stopped her kicking. The spanking soon stopped as well, and a gentle hand rested on her backside. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Please don't take the books away. Please!"

Once she was guided tremblingly to her feet, Elizabeth went straight into Becky's arms. She tensed at the rigid response from her guardian, and then relaxed as a gentle, warm hand went up to rub her back. "I don't think you're going to do it again," Becky whispered in her ear.

Elizabeth nodded her head emphatically. "I won't!" she cried earnestly. "But please... The books..." she said, drawing back and wiping her running nose on the back of her hand.

"They stay here," Becky said firmly. "You aren't to take them to school, and they aren't to go any further than the porch without my written permission. If something happens to one of the books, I want to know who damaged it."

Elizabeth started to open her mouth to point out that she was the only child on the premises, but she wisely chose to keep quiet, simply nodding her head.

"And I think that we'll see about getting you some more." Becky pulled Elizabeth in for a quick hug, surprising the ten year-old, and then gave her a stern look. "Go on up to your room and do the homework that Mr. Becker assigned, and then make me a list of books that you'd like to have. I'll see what I can do while you're at school tomorrow. Okay?"

Elizabeth nodded, a grin spreading across her face. "Okay!" Turning, she grabbed her book bag off the table, glaring at the evil little spatula for a moment, and then turned and rushed up the stairs to do her home work.