Chapter 4: Shoppin from Jo's POV
The silence in the car on the way home from the Budget-Saver was a physical thing, a third passenger sitting heavy between me and my father in the front seat. He drove with a mechanical precision, his knuckles white on the wheel. The ghost taste of chicken fat and shame clung to the roof of my mouth, no matter how many times I swallowed.
Mom was waiting in the doorway when we pulled up, a tiny silhouette against the yellow light of the hall. She couldn’t have been more than four feet tall, a bird-like figure in a faded house dress. As we got out of the car, her eyes scanned us, missing nothing: the grease stain on Dad’s shirt, the hollow look in his eyes, the way I couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Bobby?” she said, her voice thin. “Joseph? What happened?”
Dad walked right past her, into the house, beelining for the bathroom. We heard the tap run, and then the frantic, splashing sounds of him scrubbing at his face.
Mom turned to me, her small hand gripping my arm. Her fingers felt like brittle twigs. “Tell me.”
“She made us push her cart,” I said, the words ash in my mouth. “She ate chickens. In the aisle.”
“And?”
I looked at the concrete of the driveway. “She made us… hold the bones. In our mouths.”
Mom’s hand flew to her own mouth. A tiny, choked sound escaped. Her eyes, wide and dark, filled with a liquid fear I knew too well. It was the fear that walked these streets beside us, the fear of being small in a world that rewarded bigness. It was the fear of the giant, tattooed women who lounged on porches and watched us pass, their laughter trailing behind us like smoke.
“Why do you go to her?” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Why does he go? This is sickness. It’s a sickness in this city, in both of you.”
I had no answer that wouldn’t carve her heart out. I couldn’t explain the magnetic pull, the terrifying awe that filled me when I saw Aisha’s shadow fall over me. I couldn’t articulate the twisted thrill that ran through my veins when she exerted her will, a force of nature choosing to notice an ant. So I just shrugged, a useless, pathetic motion, and went inside.
Dad was in the kitchen, standing over the sink, staring at his own reflection in the dark window. He’d scrubbed his lips raw.
“She spoke to me,” he said, not turning around. His voice was sandpaper.
“What?”
“At the end. She said I did okay.” He turned then, and his face was a wreck of something horrifying—a flicker of pride, soaked in shame. “She saw I was useful.”
That night, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The text from Aisha glowed on my phone: Tomorrow. 3 PM. 2247 Crenshaw, apt 4B. Don’t be late.
My body hummed with a low, electric dread. And beneath it, like a dirty secret, a current of anticipation.
The building on Crenshaw was a four-story stucco box the color of dried blood. The elevator had an ‘Out of Order’ sign yellowed with age. I took the stairs, my sneakers echoing in the concrete stairwell that smelled of mildew and ammonia. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird. On the fourth floor, I found 4B. The door was wider than normal, reinforced with steel frames.
I knocked.
The sound that answered wasn’t footsteps. It was a deep, seismic thud, a vibration through the floorboards that traveled up my legs. Then another. The door swung inward.
Aisha filled the doorway. She wore only an oversized t-shirt that stretched taut across her stomach and ended high on her thick thighs. Her hair was piled in a messy bun. In the dim light of her apartment, she looked even more monumental, a goddess of shadow and flesh.
“You’re two minutes late,” she said. Her voice wasn’t angry. It was factual. “Time is a concept small people can’t afford to waste. Come in.”
I stepped past her, my head not even reaching her chest. The air inside was warm, thick with the scent of incense, cocoa butter, and underneath it all, her—a musky, animal smell. The apartment was spacious, adapted for her. The ceilings were high, the furniture sparse and sturdy-looking. Textbooks and loose papers were scattered across a heavy oak table that would have anchored a banquet hall. Sociology of Power Structures. Advanced Quantum Mechanics. Epigenetics and Social Hierarchy.
“Sit,” she commanded, pointing to a low, wide ottoman near her feet.
I sat. The ottoman sank under me. She lowered herself onto a wide, reinforced loveseat facing me. The structure groaned in protest but held. Her knees were level with my chest. The sheer mass of her legs, each thicker than my entire body, dominated my field of vision. The tattoo on her thigh, an intricate pattern of geometric lines and Arabic script, seemed to shift with her breathing.
“You’re here to study,” she stated, picking up a textbook. “So we study. Tell me, Joseph. What is the fundamental basis of social order?”
I blinked. “I… law? Cooperation?”
A soft, derisive snort escaped her. “Power. Pure, physical, psychological power. The strong take. The weak yield. It’s biology. It’s physics.” She leaned forward, and her shadow engulfed me. “Look at us. What am I?”
“You’re… big,” I stammered.
“I am power incarnate. And you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You are potential energy. You exist to be acted upon. Your father learned that yesterday. He learned his place is to be useful. To serve a greater force.”
She set the book aside. “Your turn. What do you want?”
The question, so blunt, left me speechless. My mouth worked, but no sound came out. I wanted to not be afraid. I wanted to touch the impossible landscape of her. I wanted to disappear into her shadow and never come out.
“I can smell your confusion,” she said, a smirk playing on her lips. “It’s sweet. Like fear. You want what all small things want: to be close to the sun, even if it burns them.” She shifted her weight, the loveseat creaking. “Take off your shoes. And your shirt.”
The command was casual, absolute. My fingers trembled as I fumbled with my laces, peeled off my t-shirt. The cool air raised goosebumps on my skin. I felt exposed, infinitesimal.
“Stand up.”
I stood before her, a pale, skinny boy lost in the canyon of her form. Her gaze was clinical, appraising.
“You are feminine,” she stated, her eyes tracing my collarbones, my narrow shoulders. “Fine-boned. Designed for submission. In nature, the small and clever serve the large and strong. That is the true order.” She reached out a hand, her fingers as wide as sausages. She didn’t grab me. She simply placed her index finger against the center of my chest and pressed.
It was not a hard push. But the weight behind it was irresistible. I stumbled back a step, my balance lost.
“Good,” she purred. “You feel it. The truth. Now, repeat after me. ‘My strength is in my submission.’”
My throat clenched. “My… my strength is in my submission.”
“Louder.”
“My strength is in my submission!”
“Again.”
I said it again, and again, each time my voice growing louder, until I was shouting it at her knees. A heat was building in my gut, a shameful, undeniable fire.
She watched me, her eyes dark with a satisfied gleam. “You see? It feels true. Because it is.” She leaned back, spreading her legs slightly. The space between them was a dark, vast valley. “Now, come here. Serve your purpose.”
I moved on shaky legs, standing before the awe-inspiring width of her. Up close, the scale was obliterating. She was a continent.
“You may touch,” she said, her voice a low vibration. “With your mouth. Worship what is greater than you.”
I knelt. The carpet was rough against my knees. The musky scent of her intensified, filling my head. I pressed my face against the dense, warm flesh of her inner thigh. The skin was surprisingly smooth. I kissed it, a timid, dry press of my lips.
Aisha let out a long, slow breath. “Yes. Like that. You are a good girl.”
Her words, so wrong, so right, sent a jolt straight through me. I closed my eyes and did as I was told, my movements becoming less timid, more desperate. I was adoring a monolith.
Her hand came to rest on the back of my head, not pushing, just owning. Her fingers spanned my entire skull. “You want to please me,” she said, not asking.
I did. God help me, I did.
Her breathing deepened. Then, she began. A low chant, at first. “Me.” A pause. Then, stronger, “Me.” Then, a third time, a rolling thunder that vibrated through her body into mine. “ME.”
It was a mantra of pure self, a coronation. Each proclamation stoked the fever in me. I was nothing but a instrument for her will.
Her grip tightened on my head. “When you are allowed your release,” she growled, her voice thick, “you will call out my name. You will sing it. Do you understand? What will you say?”
“Aisha,” I whispered into her skin.
“Louder.”
“Aisha!”
“Again!”
“AISHA!” I screamed, the name tearing from my throat, a prayer and a surrender.
A shudder ran through her massive frame. The loveseat emitted a sharp crack of protest. She let out a guttural sound of pleasure, a queen accepting tribute.
Then, she pushed my head away. I fell back onto the floor, gasping, my lips tingling, my whole body humming with subservient energy.
She looked down at me, a sheen of sweat glistening on her brow. Her expression was one of placid, absolute dominion. “Good,” she said, simply. “You learn quickly. Your father has potential, but he is still fighting it. You… you are a natural.”
She stood up, the room seeming to shrink around her. “Get dressed. We’re going out.”
“Out?” I croaked, scrambling to my feet, grabbing my shirt.
“You need to see the world as it is. Not as your little books tell you.” She pulled on a pair of vast, denim shorts and a tank top. “And we’re visiting your dad. I have a job for him.”
As I followed her massive form to the door, my legs weak, my mind reeling, one clear, terrible thought solidified in the chaos: I was hers now. The lesson wasn’t in the textbook. It was in my bones. And I had never felt more alive, or more erased, in my entire life.
The ride to my parents’ house was a silent, rolling confession. I sat in the passenger seat of Aisha’s battered sedan, the suspension bottoming out with every minor dip in the road. My face still hummed from where her skin had pressed against it. The world outside looked different now, filtered through the lens of what I’d just accepted.
I saw the hierarchy everywhere. A tall man bullying a shorter one for a parking spot. A group of large teenagers laughing as they shoved a smaller kid’s groceries from his arms. It had always been there. I’d just refused to read the text.
Aisha parallel parked in front of my childhood home with a jarring finality, two wheels mounting the curb. The house seemed shrunken, a dollhouse next to her. She killed the engine and the silence expanded.
“Stay close,” she said, and opened her door.
I scrambled out after her. The suburban afternoon air felt thin, insubstantial. She walked up the path, her footsteps measured thuds that vibrated through the concrete. She didn’t knock. She tried the knob, found it locked, and then leaned into the front door.
The wooden frame splintered with a sound like a gunshot. The door swung inward, dangling from a single hinge.
My mother’s scream came from the living room, a high, sharp thread of sound. We found her backed into the corner behind my father’s armchair, her hands clutching the fabric. Dad stood in the center of the room, a small, brittle figure trying to block Aisha’s path. He was holding a wooden cooking spoon like a club.
“Get out,” he said, his voice trembling. “You don’t belong here.”
Aisha looked at the spoon, then at him. A slow smile spread across her face. She took one step forward, and then another, her bulk filling the space, pushing the air out of the room.
“Bobby,” she said, her tone soft, almost chiding. “You did so well at the store. Don’t be stupid now.”
“Stay away from my family.” His knuckles were white on the spoon’s handle.
She stopped inches from him. She looked down at the top of his head, at the thin gray hair there. She reached out and took the spoon from his grip. He offered no resistance. She snapped it between her thumb and forefinger with a dry pop and let the pieces clatter to the floor.
“Your family,” she said, glancing at me, then back to him, “is already mine. Your son understands. He’s a good girl.” She turned her gaze to my mother, cowering behind the chair. “He gets it from you, doesn’t he?”
My mother let out a whimper.
Aisha’s focus returned to my father. “I have a job for you. You’re going to fix my door. The one you just saw me break.”
“I… I’m not a handyman,” he stammered.
“You are now,” she said. She turned, her denim-clad hips swiveling, and surveyed the living room. Her eyes landed on my father’s favorite armchair, a worn leather recliner.
“This will do,” she said.
She lowered herself toward it, not sitting, but squatting above it. The sheer immensity of her backside, wide enough to eclipse the chair completely, hovered for a moment. My father stared, frozen in a mixture of horror and that same wretched fascination. Then, she settled.
HER ASS CRUSHES.
The sound was not of breaking, but of compacting. The leather sighed, then screamed as the seams split. The wooden frame inside uttered a series of quick, sharp cracks—pop, pop, pop—like vertebrae snapping. The chair flattened beneath her, becoming a mound of shredded leather, splintered wood, and exposed springs. It ceased to be a chair. It became rubble.
She remained there for a long moment, a mountain of woman resting on the ruins. Then she stood, brushing a fleck of lint from her thigh. The wreckage sighed, settling further.
“That,” she said, looking at my father’s ashen face, “is a door. A broken one. You will bring tools. You will measure. You will build me a new one. Stronger.” She stepped over the debris toward him, casting him in her shadow. “You will make yourself useful. Or I will find other things of yours to break.”
She turned and walked toward the destroyed front entrance, her steps heavy on the floorboards. She paused beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder. Her touch was like a weight anchoring me to the earth.
“You,” she said, her voice low, for me alone. “You’re with me. Let your father think.”
She walked out into the fading light. I stood in the ruin of my living room, my father broken before the wreckage of his chair, my mother sobbing softly behind hers. The air smelled of dust, defeated leather, and her.
I followed her.
The car door groaned shut behind me, sealing me in with her scent and the lingering tension that vibrated in the confined space. Aisha turned the key, the engine catching with a ragged cough. She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the broken doorway of my home, where my father’s silhouette stood frozen amidst the ruin of his chair. She reversed off the curb with a jarring lurch, the bumper scraping asphalt.
“He needs a clear task,” she said, her voice conversational as she shifted gears. The city slid past the windows, a blur of sun-bleached stucco and chain-link. “Men like that, small men who’ve played at being big fish in a tiny pond… their minds break if you just destroy. You have to give them a box to rebuild. A simpler, smaller box.”
I said nothing. My hands lay limp in my lap. The taste of her skin was still a phantom imprint on my tongue.
“Your mom’s tougher,” Aisha mused, taking a corner too fast. My shoulder bumped the door. “She’s already lived in that tiny box. She knows its dimensions. She’s just scared of the lid coming off.” She glanced at me, a quick flash of dark eyes. “You’re not scared of that anymore, are you?”
It wasn’t a question. I shook my head.
“Good girl,” she said, and the praise bloomed hot and shameful in my gut.
We drove in silence for ten minutes, leaving our neighborhood behind, moving into a commercial strip of auto shops and faded signage. She parallel parked with violent precision outside a squat, beige building with a sign that read ‘Bobby’s Custom Upholstery & Repair’. My father’s shop. His name in curving letters on the dusty window.
“He’s here,” she stated.
I could see him inside, through the glass. Not my father, but a version of him: ‘Bobby the Boss’, moving between worktables, a measuring tape clipped to his belt. He was talking to an employee, pointing at a stack of fabric. For a moment, watching him in his element, I could almost forget the shattered chair, the bones, the broken door.
Aisha killed the engine. The sudden quiet was profound.
“Come on,” she said.
She didn’t wait for me. She was out of the car, her figure dominating the sidewalk, before I’d even fumbled with my seatbelt. I scrambled after her. The bell above the shop door gave a feeble jingle as she pushed inside.
The conversation inside died instantly. My father’s employee, a lanky man named Carl, looked up from a sewing machine. His mouth fell open. My father turned. Seeing us here, in his sanctuary, the color drained from his face. He looked like he’d been punched in the chest.
“Bobby,” Aisha said, her voice filling the small space, bouncing off rolls of fabric and stacks of foam. “We need to talk about my door.”
Carl stared, his eyes wide. He was a big man, but next to Aisha, he seemed abruptly ordinary.
“Aisha,” my father began, his voice tight. “This is my place of business.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. She walked slowly down the central aisle, running a finger along a bolt of grey velvet. It left a clean line in the faint dust. “You build things here. You fix things. That’s what I need.” She stopped in front of his workbench, a vast landscape of tools and tacks. She picked up a heavy-duty staple gun. She squeezed the trigger. The thwack-thunk was explosively loud in the quiet shop.
Carl flinched.
“Your home door is broken,” Aisha said, setting the staple gun down. “You’re going to build me a new one. A proper one. You’re going to do it here, on your time, with your materials.” She leaned her hips against the workbench. The solid pine creaked in protest. “Consider it a thank you. For my patience.”
My father’s jaw worked. He glanced at Carl, then at me hovering near the entrance. Humiliation warred with a desperate, fading pride. “I have orders to fill. Clients.”
Aisha’s smile didn’t waver. She reached behind her, to where a finished chair cushion sat, awaiting pickup. It was a beautiful piece, burgundy leather with intricate piping. She picked it up in one massive hand. She examined it.
Then she dug her thumbs into the center and pulled. The seam split with a sickening rip. She tore the cushion in half, tossing the pieces onto the floor. Foam innards spilled out like pale guts.
“Now you have one less order,” she said calmly. “See? I’m helping you prioritize.”
My father made a small, wounded sound. Carl took a step back, hands raised. “Hey, man, I don’t want no trouble—”
“Leave,” Aisha said, not even looking at him.
Carl didn’t need telling twice. He was out the door in seconds, the bell jingling madly in his wake.
We were alone. The three of us. My father stared at the ruined cushion on his clean shop floor. His hands were trembling.
“You’re a bully,” he whispered, the words barely audible.
Aisha pushed off the bench and walked toward him. Each step was measured, deliberate. He didn’t run. He couldn’t. She stopped a foot away, looking down at him. She smelled of sweat, cocoa butter, and power.
“I’m the sun, Bobby,” she said, her voice low and rich. “You don’t call the sun a bully for burning you. You just learn not to stare.” She reached out and took the measuring tape from his belt clip. She unspooled a length of it. “Now. You’re going to take my measurements. For my door. And you’re going to do it right.”
She handed him the metal end of the tape. Her gaze was unblinking. “Go on.”
His fingers shook as he took it. He moved like a man in a dream, stepping closer to her immense form. He knelt, awkwardly, to measure the width of her shoulders, the distance he’d need for her to pass through a frame. His hands hovered near her body, afraid to touch.
“Be precise,” she commanded.
He pressed the tape to the span of her hips, his knuckles brushing the denim of her shorts. He was close enough to her that his head was level with her crotch. I could see the tremor in his arms. I could see the pathetic, unwilling erection tenting his work pants.
Aisha saw it too. She looked down at the top of his head, at his thinning hair. She chuckled, a deep, volcanic sound.
“Look at you,” she murmured. “Even now. Even here.” She shifted her stance, widening her feet slightly. The movement brought his face inches from the thick seam of her shorts, stretched taut between her powerful thighs. The musky, overwhelming scent of her must have flooded his senses.
My father froze, the measuring tape falling from his nerveless fingers. He was panting, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Pick it up,” Aisha said, no humor in her voice now.
He fumbled for the tape, his face scarlet. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at me.
“Stand up,” she ordered.
He rose, unsteady, the tape clutched in his fist like a lifeline.
Aisha turned her back to him. “The other critical measurement,” she said, over her shoulder. “You need to know how wide to make it so I don’t scrape the frame.”
She bent forward at the waist, placing her hands on her knees. The effect was catastrophic. Her denim shorts, already strained, tightened across the monumental expanse of her ass. The fabric disappeared into the deep cleft, framing two immense, heavy cheeks that seemed to eclipse the room. The tattoo on her right cheek, a complex geometric pattern, stretched and shifted with the movement. She was a planet, a landscape, and my father was a tiny surveyor tasked with mapping it.
“Well?” she said, her voice muffled slightly.
He stood there, paralyzed.
“Measure it, Bobby,” I heard myself say. The words were out before I could stop them, flat and cold.
He glanced at me, his eyes full of a shattered betrayal. Then, moving as if underwater, he stepped forward. He placed the metal end of the tape against the outer curve of her left buttock. His hand shook violently as he drew the tape across the impossible width. He had to lean over, stretching his arm, to reach the other side. The number was ludicrous. A doorway for a giant.
“Say it,” Aisha commanded, her head still down.
“F-fifty-four inches,” he stammered.
“Say it louder.”
“Fifty-four inches!” he nearly shouted.
She straightened up slowly, the denim groaning in relief. She turned to face him, taking the tape from his limp hand. “Good. Now you have your numbers. You will build it. You will deliver it. You will install it.” She tapped his chest with the metal cassette of the tape measure. “And every time you swing a hammer, you will remember why you’re doing it. You will remember the taste of my chicken. You will remember the sound of your chair breaking. You will remember measuring my ass in your own shop.”
She tossed the tape onto the workbench. It clattered loudly in the silent room.
“Let’s go,” she said to me, walking toward the door.
I followed her. I didn’t look back at my father. I knew what I would see: a man dissolving, reduced to his most basic, shameful components. The bell jingled once more as we left him standing there, surrounded by the ruins of his authority, the phantom dimensions of her body hanging in the air around him like a cage.