At last the ninth cut fell, vertically on my right bottom cheek, and again my resolve to be brave failed me, for I screamed aloud in my suffering. But even as I was crying out, the cane dashed sternly over the top of my bottom for the final cut of all as I prayed, nonetheless drawing a new frenzied twisting about and shifting up and down on my knees, while my tears ran freely.
“Now then,” said Mr. Raleigh hoarsely, “I think I may say that all three of you have been adequately whipped for your naughtiness in my absence. Lucille, you may go back to your room, put some cold cream on your bottom, and go to bed. I shall not be visiting you tonight, by the way.”
Shamed though I was at this announcement of my physical bondage to Mr. Raleigh, I nevertheless felt this most exquisite relief at being pardoned more of the dreadful whipping. I picked up my clothes painfully and stumbled back to my room, still sobbing from the feverish heat in my behind, which was the greatest it had ever been in all my life in getting punished.
It was a long time before the agony of my bottom permitted me to fall asleep, but at last I did. At breakfast the next morning, Mr. Raleigh told me that he had judged Rosa guilty of making the loudest outcries, and, after sending Selena to her room, had taken off Rosa's brassiere, shoes, and stockings, tied her up on a chair like the one on which I had had my first whipping from his hands, and then given her fifteen spanks with a hard rubber paddle he had purchased in town at the shop of a leather goods worker who had made these to order and other instruments for him on special order. He added ironically that he had had to stay with Rosa all night long to console her, for she seemed quite feverish from her severe punishment, and that he was sure she would be a very good girl from now on. It was Selena who served us breakfast, eyes downcast and still reddened from crying.
And so, in this energetic and cruel manner, I have been treated by Mr. Raleigh ever since. His methods vary at times, yet they never tend to lessen the severity of the whippings I receive from him nor the desire to continue to humiliate and punish me that follows most of them. It is, in my mind and opinion, the worst form of humiliation a girl can endure: to be made to be submissive to the man who has just whipped her.
Mr. Raleigh whips me about once each week now. When I first arrived, of course, he whipped me more often. But, as though fearing he might tire of the amusement, he has arranged it so that it takes place only once each week. Sometimes I am tied up for the whippings, and at the others I am made to lie across his knees. That, of course, is aside from the occasional whippings I receive from him for little acts of disobedience.
I doubt if my father ever intends to pay back the money he borrowed. I have been the slave of Lester Raleigh nearly a year now, and during that time my father has gone deeper in debt to him. I fear my period of slavery will never end till Mr. Raleigh cares to end it.