The Circle of Abundant Happiness
By Cheryl Taggert
If you need help keeping up with the characters, you may go here.
Time passed, as it always does, and we settled into our own routine. Mom let Lisa and me move in with each other. We rented an apartment near the university and started making a life for ourselves. We were happy, blissful even. We would invite others for sleepovers. My mom and Cindy, Aunt Emmy and Danni, Jenna, the twins, Rachel, even Lisa’s mom, Donna. Occasionally, Marie or Deanna would drop by and we would renew the wonderful lives we had shared. There were even times Lisa and I stayed in one of the many hotels in Hollywood for a night to enjoy some fun and games with one of the girls who worked there.
We got our undergraduate degrees, and I started graduate school. I was still working on my former project, the interviews with girls who had started their sex lives early, which eventually became my Master’s Thesis and later, in an expanded form, my Doctoral Dissertation. I ended up publishing it, of course, and it became required reading in quite a few colleges and universities for people studying child psychology, including my alma mater, UCLA. I always felt its popularity was mostly due to the fact that it offered a different conclusion than most people had about children who had experienced early sexual experimentation, even with adults.
The FBI even hounded me after publication to try to get the names of some of the people who had been what they called “victims of child abuse.” I ended up going to court to defend my right to maintain my subjects’ privacy, as I’d said I would when conducting my research. I explained my findings, and the judge agreed that since the so-called victims didn’t see themselves as such, it wasn’t the job of the FBI to try to convince them that they were. He had the view that if they weren’t damaged psychologically, why do something that might cause them damage? I had interviewed plenty of girls who had suffered guilt after being discovered and their insistence that the pain and shame were a manifestation of society’s finger-pointing, not the acts themselves. I also made sure I interviewed girls who had been forced into sex, and the pain from the experiences were not from society’s reactions but the fact that their participation was forced, not a mutual decision. In those cases, however, the rapists and molesters had been tried already, or the victims chose not to pursue legal punishment for their tormentors, so the FBI was not interested in those cases.
When I had earned my Master’s in Child Psychology, I started working with the local school system as my first job and quickly earned a reputation for being able to help girls whom many had considered incorrigible become happier, more productive people. I never shared my secret to my success. I was certain nobody would ever understand — unless they were like me, and there was no way of telling that.
Two years later, when Lisa and I were both 26, I opened my own practice counseling young girls. I limited my practice to girls only, ages seven to seventeen. I also finished my PhD. I was now Doctor Taylor. The following year, we bought a house together not far from the campus where we had met.
Both our lives changed drastically, however, when the county brought me five-year-old Paulette. She was two years younger than the youngest girls I normally took on, but Jerri, a female social worker I knew from CPS, or Child Protection Services, called and begged me to work with the girl.
Her mother had died of a drug overdose, and nobody knew who her father was. On the birth certificate there was no name for father, meaning he probably didn’t even know the woman he had fucked had gotten pregnant. Hell, he may not even remember having sex if he had been too stoned at the time. There had never been any efforts to find him.
So little Paulette was an orphan, completely without family since her mother had had no living relatives anyone could find.
And she was more beautiful than any little girl I’d ever met.
She had the looks of a child movie star. I had always considered the young actress who’d portrayed Hermione in the Harry Potter movies to be gorgeous, but that girl had nothing on Paulette.
Her black hair hung in waves down her back and over her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes seemed to stare into my soul when she favored me with a glance. Her gorgeous mouth was naturally red with surprisingly white teeth for a girl who’d been mostly neglected. The only way to describe her skin was alabaster. Of course, she wasn’t all that clean when I first met her, but I could see the striking beauty beneath the layered dirt. Also, her clothes did not fit the rest of her. I don’t mean they were too big or too small. I mean they were too drab, barely more than rags.
When I first met her, she sat in my office for nearly thirty minutes in total silence. She just sat there taking in the various decorations that spotted my office walls — colorful paintings by some of the girls I’d worked with mostly.
Jerri, the social worker from CPS, told me the little girl’s story, and my heart went out to her immediately. Her mom had been a drug addict all the child’s life, and while she’d tried to make a life for herself and her daughter, the lure of drugs always got in the way. She had sold her daughter to men by the hour to get money for drugs, or in direct exchange for the poison she needed.
“Cheryl,” Jerri concluded, “the biggest problem I have is I don’t want to put her in juvee,” meaning juvenile hall, a place with beds and food but little else. “What I really need is a place where she can stay. Somewhere she can be safe and try to attempt a life that at least borders on normal.”
Jerri was looking at me, her brow arched with suggestions and dire requests.
“You want me to bring her home?” I said, Jerri’s meaning finally dawning on me.
“Only for a few days until I can find a suitable foster home. A week at the most.”
I looked back at the angel who sat at the small table, sized for little girls, her eyes slowly drifting around the room, taking in everything and nothing.
“A week?” I asked, obviously weakening, though I was never truly considering saying no.
“At the most,” Jerri said, encouragement in her voice.
“Jerri,” I said, figuring I probably should be completely honest with her. “I don’t exactly hide it, but I don’t shout it from the rooftops either.”
“What?”
“I’m a lesbian. I live with my wife over near UCLA.”
“Pff,” she said. “You think that matters? This is the twenty-first century.”
“Not in some parts of the country,” I said.
“Well it is in this little corner of the world. We don’t screen for that anymore,” Jerri concluded, her tone suggesting a finality that said it wasn’t an issue and would not be mentioned again, much less discussed. “Besides, I was told by someone you were a lesbian — I forget who — which makes you a perfect person to take her in right now. She doesn’t trust men.”
That made sense. She had probably felt abused by men her whole life if her mom had been forcing her to have sex with them for drug money. I looked at Paulette again, wondering what Lisa would say when I brought her home. This wasn’t like bringing home a puppy.
“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” Jerri said, causing me to look at her and wonder if she meant it the way I thought about such beauty. But she was just being motherly, not being a horny lesbian whose pussy creamed at such sights as the little girl sitting in my office.
I had managed to seduce or be seduced by quite a few girls who came to me, often inviting Lisa to join in for a session when she could make it. This one was different, though. I thought about the men she’d been forced to pleasure, and while my body wanted to make love with this little vision of beauty, my mind and heart refused to allow me to go there. I considered her forbidden fruit because of the probable trauma she had already suffered. I was sure any attempt at seduction would not be welcomed by Paulette. And that prevented me from trying to get her interested in anything like that. Her soul would have to be healed first. Then she might be taught that sex could be a joy.
“Okay,” I said, thinking of Lisa. “A week.”
“Thanks! She’ll be so much happier there than at juvee. I’ll call you the minute I have someone lined up.”
“No hurry,” I said, hoping that sentiment was true for Lisa as well.
After Jerri left, I finally managed to get Paulette to talk.
“Hi,” I began. “I’m Cheryl.”
She looked at me, her features blank, no emotion at all. “Hi. I’m Paulette, but you know that.”
Well, she’d been listening to my conversation with Jerri, at least.
But more than that, the maturity of the girl’s conversation surprised me. Startled me in fact. She was only five, but she conversed like a much older girl, maybe ten. In some ways, she didn’t even talk like a child.
She pointed at a picture of a yellow cat, an original artwork by one of my patients.
“That’s pretty,” Paulette said. “Who painted it?”
“One of my patients,” I said.
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a child psychologist,” I answered, wondering if I would now need to explain what I did.
“Oh,” Paulette said, as if that explained everything.
“Do you like to draw and paint?” I asked, thinking she was hinting at an activity she’d like to do.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”
I again marveled at the level of maturity in her conversation. If her voice sounded as old as her conversation made her sound, I would be able to close my eyes and think I was talking to one of my older patients, not the youngest one I’d ever had.
She interrupted my thoughts when she said something that really astounded me. “I like to read, though.”
Read? At age five? I began to wonder what her IQ was.
I got up and retrieved a copy of a Dr. Seuss book, that old stand-by The Cat in the Hat.
“Not like those,” she said, disdain dripping from her tone. “Do you have Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? I’m reading that right now, but I left it in my room.”
Harry Potter? She’s reading Harry Potter? I figured her verbal IQ would definitely test well into the genius range, at least 150.
Because I had many girls right now who were reading that series, I had a copy of the book she wanted in my office. I brought it to her and asked if she would read it aloud to me.
She shrugged, as if my request were a simple one, and after finding where she’d last read, began to read to me. After five minutes, I had her stop reading aloud.
“Who taught you to read?” I asked as if it weren’t important.
She looked at me with an intelligent gaze as if deciding if my question were worth answering. “TV,” she said, as if that answered all my questions.
I had never worked with a child like this, not even close. On the one hand, it frightened me. Could I work with such an intelligent child? Dealing with super-intelligent children is an art. They could rarely be treated like someone their own physical age, yet they didn’t respond well if they were treated more like someone their mental age. It was a delicate situation. On the other hand, I was elated, eager, overjoyed. Many child psychologists could go an entire career without even meeting a child this smart.
While Paulette sat there reading, I went into my office, closed the door, and called my wife.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about Lisa. She was thrilled we would be keeping Paulette for as much as a week.
After Paulette and I arrived at our house, I suggested the girl take a bath. She readily agreed and stripped right there in front of both Lisa and me. We watched as she revealed her slender body slowly to our eyes.
“My mom used to like to watch me, too,” she said.
“Your mom used to like to watch you do what?” I asked, figuring she would say something about getting undressed, but her response surprised me.
“Everything,” she said before asking, “where’s the bathroom?”
I glanced at Lisa and put my hand on Paulette’s shoulder, guiding her down the hallway to the bathroom. I noticed the shabby clothing on the floor as we walked by. The panties had a big hole in them.
I turned to Lisa. “Would you throw those out?” I asked, nodding towards the pile of rags that had passed for clothing.
“Sure,” Lisa answered, her eyes tearing at the sight of the meager and ragged clothes the child had been forced to wear.
I ran the bath for the lovely creature that would be staying with us for at least the next few days, and halfway through that, Lisa showed up at the bathroom door. Like me, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of Paulette’s beauty.
When I heard Lisa gasp, I looked around to see what had made her do that.
Then I gasped. Paulette was sitting on the toilet, the fingers of her right hand inside herself, fucking her little pussy. The fingers of her left hand were rubbing her tiny clit. As we watched, she brought her left hand to her mouth, licked it to wet it, and returned to her pussy. Her breathing was already becoming ragged from the orgasm that seemed to be perhaps a minute away.
Then she was coming. She grunted and gasped as the feelings washed over her. After finishing her climax, she stood back up and looked at Lisa and me with a smile. Then she had stuck the fingers from her right hand inside her mouth to lick them clean of the small amount of pussy juice that her vagina had produced.
I looked at Lisa, who looked at me. Then we both looked at Paulette.
“Do you do that a lot?” I asked.
“Yes. It relaxes me,” she said.
“Is that what your mom used to watch you do?” Lisa asked.
Paulette nodded. “One of them.”
Something told me the other things would be just as interesting.
She climbed into the tub and sat there, making no move to wash herself. Instead, she looked up at me and Lisa as if waiting. Then it hit me. She didn’t bathe herself; her mother did that for her. I reached for the washcloth I’d taken out of the linen closet for her, dipped it in the bathwater, and began to soap it.
Then I noticed she was looking oddly at the washcloth. “Why are you using that?” she asked.
“Didn’t your mom use a washcloth to bathe you?” I asked.
“No. She just used her hands.”
I glanced back at Lisa, who was obviously getting turned on by this, thankful I’d agreed to bring this treasure into our home. A week? A month would be too short a time. I had planned not to do anything sexual with Paulette because I thought she was traumatized about sex. The situation was proving to be quite the contrary. Still, Jerri had mentioned a fear of men. Perhaps the child was only traumatized by men, not women? Something that happened later would answer that question clearly, but for now I was left to wonder.
And to enjoy this bath.
I started soaping my hands. I smiled at Paulette, but she was frowning, her brow furrowed in clear disappointment. Something else about bath time was missing.
I stopped lathering the soap. “What is it, honey?”
She looked at me with those piercing eyes. “Aren’t you going to get in with me?”
My breath caught. A few seconds passed and I closed my hanging mouth. Looking back at Lisa, I saw she had her eyebrows raised. Then Lisa spoke up. “Yeah, Cheryl, aren’t you getting in with her?” I could hear the lust in her voice.
I looked back at Paulette. Disappointment and hope seemed to drip from her like the water from my soapy hands. It was obvious she wanted me to undress and join her in the tub. It occurred to me that we could have moved this to our private bath, which had what was basically a hot tub, not this standard sized one. All three of us would fit easily there.
But Paulette was looking at me. She saw me as her rescuer. I was the mother figure to her. Since her arrival, she’d been nice to Lisa, but her view of us was more like I was her new mother, and Lisa a favorite aunt. I wondered how she would take the suggestion we move into the bigger tub for the bath. Would she panic? Would she refuse? It was becoming more and more apparent she wanted me to do sexual things to her. This was apparently the norm for the baths she’d had all her life.
I decided to check her out on the new tub idea, making it a suggestion she was free to turn down.
“Honey, Lisa and I have a much bigger tub than this one. It’s like a little swimming pool in our bathroom. We could be more comfortable in there if you’d like to move there.”
Those enigmatic eyes brightened and her delicious lips spread into a smile — the first since I’d met her. She nodded enthusiastically.
I turned to Lisa. “Lisa, while I get Paulette out of the small tub, why don’t you go start running the water in the big one?
Before Lisa could leave the bathroom, I looked back at Paulette. “How would you like it if we all three take a bath together? There’s lots of room.”
Her smile widened. I had my answer.
We moved to the spacious bathroom off our bedroom, and Lisa was running the bath for all of us. She was also busy removing her clothes when we entered. Paulette stared at my wife as she revealed herself to the child. When Lisa’s pussy came into view, the child’s stare became even more intense, as if she were trying to memorize every detail.
As the water rose higher, I placed Paulette into the giant tub and began removing my own clothing. Once again, she stared without a hint of awkwardness at my nudity as each garment was removed. Because I had been at work, there was more to take off, including pantyhose. By the time I was finished stripping, the tub was nearly full enough for us.
I stepped carefully into the tub and moved next to Paulette and Lisa, who had already joined our unplanned guest. Paulette was sitting astride Lisa, her legs on either side of my wife’s thighs. She was facing her.
“Can I wash your breasts?” Paulette asked a very happy Lisa.
“Sure,” was the expected answer.
Paulette reached over and grabbed the bar of gentle soap from the soap dish, and after lathering her hands, began to massage the slippery bubbles of soap onto Lisa’s breasts, which are quite a bit larger than mine.
The child seemed fascinated with the globes of flesh, each capped by a light pink nipple as big around as a ping-pong ball with a small point of flesh protruding from its center to form a hard point that I knew from experience felt wonderful against a soapy palm.
Finally, Paulette looked deeply into Lisa’s eyes and said, “You can touch me down there if you want.”
I could see that Lisa was so turned on by this that I thought she might come right then and there. Instead, she reached down and began to play with the fleshy lips of Paulette’s pussy. The little girl, who I still had trouble believing was only five years old, rinsed Lisa’s boobs and leaned into her chest to suckle my wife’s breasts. There was more than sexuality to the movement. This was an act of love and joy.
When she leaned back after beginning to squirm under the expert touches by Lisa, she looked at the woman whose breasts had received such loving attention and said, “Is it okay if I have some fun with Cheryl now?” Lisa nodded, of course.
It was odd. Until that moment she had not said my name once. I was actually touched by her saying it like that and in that context, as if we had been very special friends since her birth.
As the naked child moved to straddle my hips, I indicated my wife and said, “You know who she is?”
She smiled at her and said, “Sure. She’s Lisa.”
She looked at me then and said, “You can touch me down there too. You can both do whatever you want with me. I like it.” Her face clouded. “I just don’t like penises.” She meant what she said, too.
“What did your mommy call this?” I asked, touching her slit.
“My pussy or my cunt. Sometimes she called it my slit or mound, and even my kitty. She showed me where my clit is, and that’s what feels the best. I love how it feels when I touch it, and I love it even more when my mommy touched it.” She looked at Lisa. “You touched it nice too.”
“Do I touch it nice?” I asked, feeling the tender flesh beneath my probing fingers.
“Yes,” she said, smiling at me. Her pleasure was evident on her face. “Are you gonna make me come?”
“I hope so,” I said. “Did your mommy ever touch you with anything else, like her lips and tongue?”
“Yeah, that was the nicest of all, I think. I liked doing that to her, too.” I was amazed at the casualness of the child’s conversation about the lesbian incest she’d experienced — and enjoyed — with her mother. It was obvious that she considered those experiences to be normal, as if all children engaged in sex with their parent.
Paulette’s pussy was now clean from the rubbing by Lisa and me. I lifted her up and planted my lips on her mound, beginning to run my tongue over its surface. I couldn’t hold her there for long, but Lisa stood up and guided this lovely child to where she could sit on the edge of the tub and have her pussy licked.
She eagerly spread her legs and I continued pleasuring this lovely child.
Her breathing quickened and she began to chant, “I’m almost there! I’m almost there!” Then she was. She came like a grown woman would. Not with the flow of juices — her body was still only five — just as far as the orgasm’s intensity was concerned.
She came down from her sexual peak and moved to kiss me on the lips that had just been pressed against her little girl mound.
Lisa interrupted. “Uh, can we move this to the bed?”
I grinned at her. It was a wonderful idea. Before we got out of the tub, we all finished bathing, Lisa and I taking turns washing Paulette all over.
Soon we had dried off enough to move to our bed. Paulette gently urged us onto our backs next to each other, and she started by licking Lisa first, I suppose because she had been the first to touch her pussy.
Soon, Lisa was nearing an orgasm, and I mean within only a few seconds. Then the orgasm burst upon her, sending her body into paroxysms of released desire.
When she was finished coming, she looked at me, incredulity bathing her face. “Oh, my God!” she said. “I’ve not had a young girl that good at licking pussy since Laura.”
“Who’s Laura?” Paulette asked.
“We’ll tell you later,” Lisa said. “Do you want to lick Cheryl now?”
The child grinned and nodded and was soon giving me the best oral sex a five-year-old girl could ever give. Lisa was right. This girl’s ability was amazing for one so young.
Soon, I came as well, and it took me several minutes to recover.
“Can I come live here?” Paulette asked, looking deeply into my eyes.
Lisa chuckled and said, “Yeah, Cheryl, can she?”
I said, “We can talk about it.”
Lisa smiled and said, “I’ll fix her some dinner. You get in touch with whoever you have to contact to make this happen.”
By the next day, I had arranged to be Paulette’s foster mother. Jerri was thrilled. “I was hoping you’d say that!” she exclaimed.
*******
A month later Lisa and I sat in bed, discussing our future.
“I’ve been thinking,” Lisa said.
“What about?”
“Us.”
“Okay,” I said. “What about us have you been thinking about?”
Lisa snuggled up against me. We had spent the evening making love with Paulette. She was becoming more and more a fixture in our lives.
“I’m thinking I want to be a mom.”
“Being an aunt to Rachel’s children isn’t enough?” I asked. Rachel had married and now had two children, both girls. Their initiation into lesbian sex would begin soon.
“No.”
“So how do you propose to get pregnant? Artificial insemination?”
“No. Adoption,” she said.
I looked at my wife, my lover. Of course, I knew who she meant.
“You want to adopt Paulette?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s a big step.”
“I know,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I love her so much. She’s like our daughter already. And she loves us, too.”
“I know.” She did, too. She told us all the time how much she loved us. I had been afraid she would be adopted by a heterosexual couple. This girl really didn’t like men at all.
One Saturday our neighbor, Greg, had stopped by to drop off some tomatoes from his garden. He was just being neighborly. But when we let him into the house, we wanted to introduce him to Paulette, but we couldn’t find her. When we finally located her, she was inside the closet in her bedroom, hiding. She had been afraid we had decided to share her with Greg. She was terrified.
I could see the problems that would arise if a man and woman wanted to adopt this beautiful child. She would never be able to love the man. She would always fear him.
We assured her that Greg would never hurt her, but it was no use. Paulette wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, it took over a year for her to be able to trust him, and that was after much work with her child psychologist mother.
Now, my Lisa was talking of adopting this precious girl. And I was already close to agreeing with her. I adored Paulette in a way I never thought I would adore a child. Yes, there was the sex, but it was more. Just as my love of Lisa was about more than the sex or even our shared desire for young girls.
The next day I called and asked Jerri if our adoption of Paulette was possible. She had laughed happily on the phone and said, “Considering I doubt that she could ever be happy in a home where there was a man, I would strongly support your efforts to do just that.”
I called my mother that afternoon. She thought the idea of adopting this lovely girl was a great idea. She had spent plenty of time with the girl that would be her granddaughter if we did indeed adopt her, and she loved the girl. There was a strong emotional attachment.
Finally, we asked the person whose views on the subject were more important than anyone else’s.
As the darling girl sat on the sofa, her gaze piercing Lisa and me to the core of our hearts, I asked her how she would feel about becoming our daughter. I didn’t have to explain about the difference between adoption and foster care. She was keenly aware that as our foster child, she could be removed without notice.
As her adoptive parents, she would be ours forever.
“That’s what I’ve wanted since the first night I was here,” she said, sounding as if we were silly not to have known it already, and I suppose in a way we were. And for the first time since setting eyes on her, I saw Paulette shed tears of happiness.
Now, here we were, six months after making that decision, standing before a judge, who was listening to Jerri give her unqualified support for our adoption of Paulette Hargrove, who until that day had never had a middle name. The judge granted our petition, and he signed the paperwork that would forever change her name to Paulette Brown-Taylor. But now, not only did she have a new hyphenated last name, she would have a middle name as well. Henceforth, the judge declared, she would legally be known as Paulette Gwendolyn Brown-Taylor. She would forever carry the name of one of the bravest women I’d ever met, a woman who had given her life to return Cindy to her family, rescuing the woman I considered another mother from that Hell of a jungle compound in Colombia. It was a fitting tribute to Gwen to name this lost but now found girl after her.
That night, we went to my mom’s house to celebrate. It wasn’t a night for sex. It was a night for celebration and remembering. Besides Mom and Cindy, who cried when she was told Paulette’s new middle name, Lisa’s mom was there, as were Rachel, Jenna and her partner Miranda a lovely girl from Panama whom Jenna had met last year, and one who shared Jenna’s youthful tastes. The twins Sophia and Sonia who were now twenty and considered each other their life partner, sat beside each other making it look as if a mirror had been placed next to one of them. My aunt Emmy and her partner Danni, were there of course, and finally there was Deanna and Marie, who had moved in with each other over a year ago, much to my delight and surprise. Paulette was the guest of honor, and Lisa and I were the proud parents who beamed at our daughter with love and pride.
No men were present. Lisa’s father and Rachel’s husband, who were keeping Rachel’s daughters while we had this party, had understood. They’d been told about our daughter’s fear of men, as well as being assured that eventually they would be welcome at such an occasion as this after Paulette’s psychologist mother had time to work with her daughter on that fear. They still lived in complete ignorance of the special relationship we all had, but they were men and easily fooled by the women they loved.
After the feast we’d shared, I looked around the large dining table at the people who meant the most to me over my lifetime. They were all there, and my tears began to flow freely. They were tears of abundant happiness. The love that I was feeling had turned to tears and had overflowed my eyelids. This was my family, each of them. They had all done their part to shape who I had become, many of them unaware of the profound influence their own lives had had on mine. I was thankful for each one of them, and that night I made sure they each knew the depth of my gratitude for them.
I recalled a night when we had feasted years before. That fateful night before Gwen and Mom left to rescue Cindy. This time, the love was not colored in hues of sadness and fear. This time it was radiant in its splendor, alive with promise.
My life was good, and now it felt fulfilled. I was twenty-seven and very happily married, though as yet not legally in the United States, one of the world’s most backward nations as far as sex went. I had become a successful child psychologist who had a very secret method for dealing with problem girls, and now I was a mother. I looked at my lover, my wife. Lisa was crying openly as well.
It was 2009. Life had come full circle, and I was discovering that I had arrived where I’d begun, in a life of supreme love and happiness, where pleasure was celebrated, not frowned upon.
I raised my glass of wine to them all. “To family!” I squeaked, my throat tight with emotion as the tears flowed freely, and they all repeated my toast. “To family!”
— Finis —
Click here to read the Author’s Afterword
