Miss Bernie

"Nothing. If you like this, they could be told you are dead."

"Damn, I would hate to do that to them."

She told me of the plans she had to help me become a female 24/7. She would teach me to do my own hair and makeup. She had books and magazines for me to read. She said I needed to decide on a female voice to use as my own because she had heard me use several voices.

I said, "How now brown cow? How about this one?"

Her head snapped around. "Hey, that's my voice, find one of your own. Shit! You are really good at that, you sounded exactly like me."

I thought about the voices I knew well enough to be very comfortable with them doing them full time. I thought about a voice I really liked a lot. It belonged to my sister Catherine, I had loved to mimic her when I was young and had it perfected. It had a little southern country accent in it but not too much.

"How do you like this voice, Sugah! It's a sweet, slightly different voice from mah past."

"Oh! I like that! It has a lot of you in it, just sweeter and a hair higher. It suits you."

"OK Sugah, Ah'll use this voice from now on."

We pulled into a parking place in the mall. Janie led me right to a jewelry shop that did ear piercing and in no time I had two studs in each ear. Janie giggled, "I know you want a whole bunch of body and tongue piercings but they will have to wait."

I laughed and said, "Forever! I have never seen a piercing, other than the ears, that improved on God's good work."

"Good!" said Jane, "I am not fond of them or of tattoos either. I never saw one I thought improved the landscape very much."

We filled two shopping carts rather quickly with items on Jane's list. We filled the trunk of the car with the supplies and returned to the house. We carried everything in the kitchen. I let Janie do the arranging of the kitchen. I hadn't fully explored the house as yet, so when everything was put away I asked her to show me around.