One beautiful day, when the sky was pastel blue with wisps of clouds splotched all over, I was sitting in the drawing room with my nearest and dearest friend Alice when mother came bursting in.

"Stand up!" She commanded.

I was instantly thrown into a fluster-my grey eyes popped open in surprise. Then, at the embarrassment of not instinctively obeying my mother, I hopped up on wobbly knees.

Mother whisked her skirts across the room to where I was standing and revealed a seamstress’s measuring tape. She dropped the tape to the floor and measured me from head to toe.

"Mm hm," she mumbled.

Then she whisked the tape measure around my buttocks and mm hmm’d one more time. Next the tape measure flew around my waist and another comment was made.

Finally she tossed the measuring tape around my breasts. She didn’t say anything at first. She squeezed the measuring tape as tight as it would go. I tried to exhale a yelp but she wouldn’t budge. Then she slackened her grip and let her steel blue eyes rolled up to meet mine. I instantly looked away and over her to Alice.

"Well," momma said as she straightened up. She glanced back to Alice then at me, she fixed a stray hair falling from her graying bun. She flung the tape measure around her pale neck and swept out of the room before I could question.

The drawing room doors slammed shut with a force greater than God.

I looked to Alice, I could feel her tingle to giggle in my own throat. Ashamed, I looked at her quickly with the crack of whip, like momma would do to me, but at Alice, I did not smile. Instead, I left the drawing room too and told Ruby, my mistress, to dismiss Alice at once.

My embarrassment of that day never fled my mind and was always close behind me whenever momma would inadvertently compliment my dresses or my hair. I felt like she was buttering me up the same way Ruby douses my biscuits in the morning. I tried as hard as I could to ignore her conquest over me-her constantly touching my hand or hair.

When I felt like I could no longer stand it-after her watching me read, I commanded the carriage be drawn up for me. My mother stood at utter shock when my father obeyed my wishes.