I liked the dark green one best; it seemed to highlight her auburn coloured hair. I used to love to play with her hair when I was a kid. It was long and shiny and tumbled in waves over her shoulders. I would have liked to play with it that morning but I didn’t think it was appropriate at my age.
She seemed very absorbed in the newspaper and glancing over I saw it was the incest article she was reading. I’d only read a portion of it to her earlier and it was a longish article. Apart from the article there was an editorial comment that moralised about the growing danger of incest in our society and the deleterious effects of this “Anti-social horror.”
“All parents will be revolted by the very thought of such things happening in families,” it trumpeted.
The writer was obviously getting some salacious enjoyment out of this opportunity to dramatise the subject, and in any case his claim that “All parents will be revolted” was clearly wrong, since if incest was so widespread then some parents were not revolted, as witness Taylor mum and son.
After a couple of minutes mum looked up from the paper and sighing said, “You know I could almost feel sorry for those two.”
“Oh, why?”
“Well it says here that the social workers and the psychologist say the boy will be damaged for life, and he’ll probably never be able to engage in a satisfactory relationship with a woman.”
“Do they say why?”
“No, but the boy says it was a wonderful experience with his mother.”
I grinned and said, “That’s why he’ll be waiting for her when she comes out of jail.”
“Mmm, I wonder if he will be waiting. Things change in a couple of years, and there’s the baby. What happens when a woman gives birth in jail?”
“I read somewhere that they’re allowed to keep them, at least while they’re small,” I said.
“Breast feeding.”
“What?”
“They probably allow them to keep them while they’re breast feeding.”
“What happens after that?”
“How would I know; foster them out or put them into some sort of institution I suppose.”
“Do you think the mother is allowed to have them when they get out of jail?”
“I’ve got no idea, you’ll have to ask the experts.”
I changed the direction of the conversation.
“Do you suppose they’d have done anything about them if he’d been older…you know, the age of consent and all that?”
“Probably not, and anyway he might have been smart enough by then not to blab about it.”
I got a bit annoyed at that and decided to defend my gender; “You keep saying he was the one who talked, but it might have been her.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but it was you who said it was him in the first place. It might have been neither of them that talked, and they got found out some other way, like a grandparent becoming suspicious.”
She rose and took her cup over to the sink and started to wash it. I decided to take a bit of a risk and asked hesitantly, “Mum, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“How would I know what you’re thinking, I’m not a mind reader.”
I grinned, “You used to be. When I was a kid you always seemed to know in advance what mischief I had in mind.”