Mother Love
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I could never hate my son. How could a mother hate her own child? I remember the first moment that he was laid upon my chest – purple pink and wet from my womb – so small and fragile. How could he grow up to be just like his father?

When it comes to hate, the word seems not strong enough for Johnny’s father, John. I more than hate that man. Strong love can turn to even stronger hate. Or was it even love? He was a charmer, so he almost bewitched me.

We met at a business party, and he caught my eye across the room. It was a physical attraction for me, but I know now that he was more attracted by my money. He threw himself at me and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. We married in a whirlwind and before I knew it, I was pregnant with his son.

I later found out that he was with other women even while I was pregnant. I was there carrying his son and he was with other women. Can you wonder why I hate him?

He seemed thrilled to welcome John Junior into the world, and to play a role in bringing him up to be a chip off the old block, but without any responsibility for the boy. Of course, we argued. He suggested that we live apart so that he could have Johnny on the weekends. T=It was the ideal arrangement for him – I carried the burden and he was forever associated with fun times.

My family funded his business, but he was an incompetent manager. He decided that the best thing to do was to sell and pay back the debt so that (as he explained it) I had “one less club to bash him with”. We were happy to get back the original sum and agreed to compromise on outstanding interest just to be rid of him.

But the buyer of the business knew something was wrong. They had the company investigated (which is probably what we should have done) and found “gross embezzlement”. John had stayed on through a transition period and he got word of potential charges and disappeared, taking along his bimbo secretary for company.

To cover his trail, it seems to me that he faked his own death by hiring a sailing boat and never coming back. Whether dead or not he was out of my life and I was happy for that.

Johnny however, had lost his sugar daddy. He went off at me, blaming me for making his father leave and even for causing his business to fail.

I said that a mother can never hate her son, but in that moment, I saw in him everything that I hated about his father. I needed to expunge from the boy all traces of the man he might become. The world was rid of one. I wanted no successor. How do you do it? Where do you find the answer?

Google. What a resource it is!

It seemed to me that the boy needed discipline. That is what I searched for. Some very strange results emerged. I wondered if this was really a thing, so I sent out some emails. It turned out that there is a network out there – mothers just like me who are terrified of what their sons might become.

Nobody could deny that we mothers are motivated by love. I reached out to some of them in my immediate vicinity and we discussed how we might achieve our ends. Katie and Leila were mothers like me, but they were further down the track in terms of what they had achieved. The results were starting to become apparent for them, and they were positive.

Katie had a son Wade, who now goes by the name of Wanda. Katie said that she was called to hospital because her son had accidentally overdosed for the second time, and while the boy lay there, she decided that she needed to do something. She was able to get an expert to plant slow release capsules in his scrotum which slowly but surely had effect. Wanda now stacks shelves at a hardware market where she gets a hard time from both employees and customers, but she is off drugs – except the right ones – the ones that eliminate her maleness and promote he change to womanhood.

Leila had a son Oliver, now called Olivia at home. He got in with a bad crowd – macho dicks who picked on less masculine guys. Leila figured that the only way to get her son out of that gang was to make him a victim rather than an abuser. To her surprise Olivia now looks back on her time as a boy with some disgust, although she was still keeping up the pretence of maleness until she graduated high school.

Hormones seemed like the beginning of the process. Katie’s connection at the hospital could arrange that for me.

I had a small crisis of uncertainty, but I have to say that my son’s demeanor set my resolve. He was awful to me. I told him that with his father gone he had nowhere to go. The rules were changing, and he needed to get with the program. No allowance. He would be working for his money from now on. And new directions applied. He could wear what he liked at school, but at home he was no longer Johnny Junior, but just June. And June needed to take care of herself and take her vitamins.

June is not stupid, although Johnny might well have been. The tables had been turned. A total lack of independence meant accepting the new code, no matter how objectionable it might be.

Perhaps there was a thought that in time June could leave home and live another life, but for now she needed to take the heat. And like the frog in the pot, I started low and turned it up. Initially it was just a hair band for his unruly hair, and a frilly apron, but as days went by it became ribbons and frilly dresses.

Johnny was able to emerge from June’s bedroom – now decked out in pink – and attend school, but when she got home she needed to change immediately. Honestly, it got to the point that I could not bear to look at Johnny. June was just so different – so submissive. Was it the clothes or the hormones?

My family are in retail, and we have done very well. But we did have a dress and lingerie shop that was struggling. It was in a location ripe for redevelopment, so we needed to keep it going, but the staff were old and unable to sell current styles. It needed youth, but it also needed a new theme.

I would be helping out my new friends to ensure that Wanda and Olivia both had jobs as girls, and part-time work would be available for June. The shop would be a dress and lingerie shop catering for boys as well as girls; boys who wore dresses and lingerie, that is.

Leila had some experience in retail as well, so she and I could get the new shop started. We need some new suppliers for key stock, including padded and restraining underwear, depilation and different skin care and makeup, and shoes in larger sizes.

We rebranded as “Secrets” and offered to make Wanda and Olivia full time assistants on pay and with commissions on total daily sales. They would need to maintain a “grooming standard” and to wear the shop’s products including cosmetics, hair ornaments and jewellery. It was the best offer going. For Wanda it was better than the job she was doing, and Olivia had no other job lined up when school finished.

But I did all of this so that June could follow in the footsteps of these two new girls. It was to be weekends and nights allowing for shifts, but also the shop got very busy on major shopping evenings and days.

June protested that she did not want to work in “a tranny shop”, but I had to point out that Wanda and Olivia were girls just like she was. The key things was, that they were girls who were now able to put their circumstances and their personalities to good use and develop their confidence while making money. June had learned from her father that money was to be coveted, and now that meant earning it. In his mind it was a uniform just like a fast-food outlet – embarrassing to wear, but the only way to keep the job. He had the idea that he would be able to shed it in time.

Wanda may have had the same idea, but for her the physical changes were making it harder to contemplate shedding “the uniform”. Taking after her mother Katie, the hormones produced very large breasts and an impressive shapely rear end, together with copious blonde hair. It was a shape that made her a magnet for men and their stares and compliments.

Low self esteem had driven Wade inside himself, into a drug-shaped world without humanity. Wanda was awash with invitations from admirers. She took time to learn how to show off her feminine assets and to conceal the old assets that no longer belonged where they lay. She took charge of lingerie with a special focus on shapewear for customers in transition.

Away from the pressure to perform as the man she could never be, Olivia blossomed as a pretty girl, slim and with hair extensions added after graduation, she had the look of a runway model. She proved naturally gifted as a salesperson.

If June thought that in the company of these two proto-females she could remain just a boy in disguise, she was severely mistaken. Even while still at school she was persuaded to become one of the three “Secrets Girls” strutting their stuff in the store, and at the clubs after work. As a responsible parent I might have disapproved had I not been so pleased to see all trace of John disappear before my eyes.

They noticed at school, so that called for a discussion with June’s principal and an announcement. It was just that she wanted to grow out her hair and to wear some of the fashions from “Secrets” to increase sales to the girls she now mixed with. By the time that she graduated she knew that she had a future in the family business – in retail – ladies fashion.

I suppose that as a mother you hope that your children will go on to have children of their own, so when June announced that she no longer wanted to be a biological parent but a woman who would necessarily be sterile, there may have been a pang of guilt. Would she ever know a mother’s love?

She said that it was just a case of finding the right man. All I had to say about that was to be very careful. Do not let infatuation turn your head. Be careful when you choose a husband. Any man would be lucky to have my daughter June.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2020

Author’s Note: This is another story inspired by an idea by Ftygrl: “Man meets future wife at business party, courts her, woos her, wins her and ultimately marries followed by impregnating her. Has several flings and ultimately abandons her to raise his son. Later the business the husband works for is bought out and subject to audit. Turns out he and his secretary were embezzling lots of money and must flee ahead of the auditors. They arrange a phony business junket and vanish. Declared dead, his widow takes revenge on his son by having him help out in her struggling Dress and Lingerie shop as her dress model. Later meets other ladies who have done the same revenge on their sons.” I try to remain true to the ideas I am given, but there are some departures.