Abuela Takes Over Shrunken First Semester chapter 6 by maximally

Foot rub number two happened at eight-fifteen the next morning, because Victoria had set an alarm for it.

Max knew she'd set an alarm because it went off on her nightstand, two feet from the nest she'd built him out of a folded silk scarf in an empty jewelry tray. It was a cheerful marimba tone. The label on the lock screen said MIJO FOOT RUB 💕.

"Rise and shine, sweetie," she sang, and stretched her legs out down the bed. "Mama's feet missed you."

So here he was. Sunday morning, sun coming through the cream curtains, Victoria propped up on the pillows in a satin robe with a mug of coffee and a face mask on, scrolling recipes on her phone. Max stood on the duvet with both arms wrapped around the base of her big toe, working the joint in slow circles like he was trying to loosen a stuck jar lid the size of a fire hydrant.

Day two. He was already getting better at it. That was the most upsetting part.

He'd figured out that the arch was where she sighed, and the heel was where she giggled. He'd figured out that if he put his shoulder under the ball of her foot and pushed up with his legs, her toes curled and her whole leg went soft. He'd figured out that the left foot was more ticklish than the right, and that she liked it when he went slow, and that the warm, salty-sweet smell of her soles didn't hit as hard on day two, either. Or maybe he was just getting used to it.

He didn't want to think about which.

"Ay, right there, mijo." Victoria's toes curled, and their shadow passed over him. "You're getting so good at this."

"Thanks," Max grunted into her big toe.

"Twenty minutes, and then Mama's going to make you a little breakfast. One Cheerio. Maybe half a Cheerio." She giggled at her own joke. "And then we'll sit down with the Ventus packet and make a new plan, okay? A Mama plan."

Max kept rubbing and didn't answer. He had a feeling the Mama plan didn't involve Ventus.

Downstairs, the front door opened.

It wasn't a knock. It wasn't the doorbell. It was the heavy, confident clunk of a deadbolt being turned by someone who had a key and had always had a key and would have a key until the day she died. Then came the rustle of grocery bags. Then came a voice that filled the whole first floor and climbed the stairs on its own.

"Victoria Maria Vasquez! You think you can skip brunch with your mother and just text me 'something came up'? Something came up? What came up? Did Jesus come up?"

Victoria froze. So did her toes. So did Max, still hugging one of them.

"Oh, no," Victoria whispered.

"Is that...?"

"Izzy called her. I told her to call her." Victoria tore off her face mask in one horrified motion. "I didn't think she'd drive up from LA!"

"She drove up from LA?"

"Mamá, wait—!" Victoria called, scrambling up on the pillows, her robe slipping off one shoulder. "Mamá, I'll be right down, don't come up!"

Footsteps on the stairs. Not slow. Not careful. Lupe Vasquez was sixty-four years old and did Zumba three times a week with women half her age, and she took the stairs two at a time like they owed her money. The whole house knew she was coming. The pictures on the hallway wall knew. The coffee in Victoria's mug trembled in rings.

"Don't come up?" Lupe's voice boomed, getting louder. "What, you got a man up there? Good. About time. Let me see him."

Max let go of the toe and looked around wildly for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere. He was standing on a cream duvet between two giant feet in broad daylight, as naked as the day he was born and three inches tall.

The door swung open.

*

Abuela filled the doorway in a way that even Victoria couldn't.

She was five-eleven, two inches shorter than her daughter, and she still seemed bigger, because Lupe didn't so much stand in a space as occupy it like an army. Three hundred and ten pounds of first-generation Mexican-American grandmother came through the door in a bright embroidered blouse and stretchy black leggings, with a grocery bag hooked on each wrist. Her long salt-and-pepper braid swung over one shoulder. Her F-cup tits rode high and proud on the soft shelf of her belly, each one the size of a beanbag chair from where he stood, and a little gold cross glinted in the deep crack between them. Behind her, her shelf ass stuck out so far that the leggings had given up and gone shiny. Her lips were already red. The smell of rosewater rolled into the room ahead of her like a weather system.

She took one look at her daughter in a crooked satin robe, then at the bed.

Then at the tiny naked boy standing between her daughter's feet.

The grocery bags hit the floor. An onion rolled out across the carpet.

"Ay, Dios mío." Lupe's hand flew to the cross. "Max?"

"Hi, Lupe," Max squeaked. "I-I mean, Abuela,"

For a long second, nobody said anything. Lupe stared. Victoria stared at Lupe. Max stood very still between the cliffs of Victoria's feet and wished, with every fiber of his three-inch body, that he could turn into a lint ball.

Then he heard socks in the hall and saw a black fringe lean around the doorframe, behind Lupe's elbow. Izzy had a bowl of cereal in one hand and was very obviously still in last night's shirt. She took in the scene, the onion, her grandmother, Max, and her face lit up with pure, holy joy.

"Oh hey, Abuela," she said through a mouthful of Froot Loops. "You made good time."

"Isabella," Victoria hissed. "You said you'd tell her I was sick."

"I said you'd miss brunch." Izzy shrugged. "She asked why. I'm not gonna lie to Abuela, Mom. That's, like, a sin."

Lupe wasn't listening to either of them. She crossed the room in four long strides, sat down on the edge of the bed hard enough that the mattress bucked and Max fell on his butt, and leaned down over him until her face was the whole sky. Warm, dark eyes. Deep laugh lines. A worried little crease between her brows that he remembered from every scraped knee and missed curfew he'd ever had at her house.

"Mijo," she breathed. "Look at you. Look at you. What did they do to you?"

"I don't know," Max said, honestly. "I just woke up like this."

"Yesterday," Victoria added quickly. "He woke up like this yesterday, Mamá, and I didn't want to worry you—"

Lupe's head swiveled toward her daughter. It moved the way a lighthouse beam turns, and Max watched Victoria Vasquez-Calhoun, forty-two years old and six-foot-one, visibly shrink about four inches under that look. It was the look of a woman who'd survived twenty-seven years of middle schoolers in Queens.

"You didn't want to worry me," Lupe repeated.

"No, Mamá."

"Your stepson is the size of a crayon, Victoria."

"I know, Mamá."

"And instead of calling your mother, you've got him down there rubbing your feet like a little chancla elf?"

Victoria opened her mouth. Closed it. Pulled her robe up over her shoulder with tremendous dignity.

"He likes it," she said.

Max shut his eyes.

"Oh, he does," Izzy said from the doorway, with deep sincerity. "It's, like, a whole thing, Abuela. There's a folder."

*

Max had to give her credit: Victoria told it well.

She did it like a press conference. The shrink potion, the modeling days, we are not going to the hospital. Then, with lowered voice and many glances at Max, she explained the laptop. The calculus folder. The forum. The browser history. "Four times, Mamá. He searched it four times." Izzy chimed in now and then from the doorway with helpful details, like "Mostly feet, though," and "He's been, like, really brave about it."

Max sat on the duvet with his knees pulled up to his chest and said nothing. There was no point. Every time he'd opened his mouth since yesterday morning, it had made things worse.

Lupe listened to all of it with her hands folded in her lap and her mouth getting tighter and tighter. When Victoria finally ran out of words, there was a long silence.

Then Lupe looked down at him.

"Max," she said quietly. "Is this true?"

He looked up at her. Abuela, who had made him empanadas every single weekend he'd stayed at her house in high school. Abuela, who lectured him for hours about that filthy internet. If anybody was going to believe him, it was her.

"Abuela," he said carefully. "I swear to God, I didn't do any of that. Somebody else put it there."

Lupe studied him for a very long time.

Then her face crumpled into overwhelming tenderness.

"Ay, mijo," she sighed. "You always did go red as a tomato when Abuela hugged you."

"That's not—"

"I always said that boy needed a real woman to look after him," Lupe announced to the room. "Didn't I say? I said it for years. And look. Look. God listens."

"Abuela, no, I'm saying I didn't—"

"Shh, shh." A finger the size of a rolling pin came down and pressed gently against his chest, and he sat down hard. "Abuela's not mad. Abuela knows boys. Abuela raised three kids and taught seventh grade for twenty-seven years. You think I don't know what a boy looks like when he's embarrassed?"

He was embarrassed. He was extremely embarrassed. That was sort of the problem.

From the doorway, Izzy crunched a Froot Loop very loudly.

"Besides," Lupe said. Her voice went fond and a little sly. "You rubbed Abuela's feet every weekend you come to stay with me for two years, mijo. Remember? You never once complained."

Max remembered. He'd been earning his keep. She'd paid him in carnitas.

"I mean," Izzy said thoughtfully, "that's probably how it all started."

Lupe and Victoria both turned and looked at Izzy. Then they turned and looked at each other.

"Ay," they said, at exactly the same time.

*

Which was how, ten minutes later, Max found himself standing on a different duvet, staring up at a different pair of feet.

Lupe had kicked off her sandals and stretched her legs out along the bed next to her daughter's, and it was like watching a second mountain range rise out of the ground. Abuela's feet were broader than Victoria's and a little shorter, but somehow they were more. They were solid and strong, the soles of a woman who walked everywhere, with thick pink pads and a high, firm arch from years of Zumba. Her toenails were painted a bright, cheerful coral. A thin gold toe ring glinted on the second toe of her left foot. The smell came in warm and heavy, rosewater lotion over the honest, salty heat of a body that had been in a car for six hours, and it wrapped all the way around him.

It smelled like Sunday afternoons in high school. That was the problem with it.

"Go on, mijo," Lupe said. She folded her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. "Show Abuela what you've learned."

"Mamá, start him on the arch," Victoria offered from beside her. "He's very good at the arch."

"I know where to start him, Victoria. I had him first."

Max put his hands on the ball of Abuela's right foot and pushed.

It was like pushing a boulder that happened to be made of warm bread. Her skin was thicker than Victoria's and tougher, and when he dug his thumbs in, nothing at all happened. So he did what he'd learned on day one: he put his whole shoulder into it, braced his legs, and leaned with everything he had.

The foot flexed. Lupe let out a long, rumbling sigh, like a ship's horn far out at sea.

"Ahhh. There he is."

He worked his way down into the arch, which towered above him like a cathedral ceiling, and pushed upward with both arms until they shook. He climbed onto her heel and kneaded the hard pad there with his fists. He hugged each toe in turn, one by one, coral nail and all, and gave them each a squeeze and a gentle twist the way she used to like. When he got to the one with the toe ring, the gold band was as big around as a hula hoop to him, and he had to work around it carefully.

"Ay, he remembered," Lupe murmured. "Look, Victoria. He remembered the toe ring."

"He remembered," Victoria echoed, breathless, as if he'd recited a poem.

"Such a good boy. Such a good boy." Abuela's toes curled with pleasure, and the whole sole above him bowed like a sail catching wind. "I always said. Always. Hardworking. Respectful. A little shy. Just needs a strong hand."

In the doorway, Izzy had put down her cereal and was filming. Max could see the red light from across the room. He didn't even have the energy to be mad about it.

He did the left foot, too. It took a long time. His arms were already wrecked from yesterday, and by the end of it he was dripping sweat and leaning against the side of Abuela's heel. She reached down without looking, scooped him up off the duvet, and lifted him into the air.

*

"Come here, mijo."

Lupe's tits were not like Victoria's.

Victoria's cleavage had been a canyon: deep, humid, and narrow, with walls that pressed in on both sides. Abuela's was a valley. Wide and yielding and huge, two great heavy F-cup boobs rising up out of the embroidered blouse, sagging just enough to settle on her belly, with enough room in between to lose a cat. Through the thin bra under the blouse he could see her nipples, broad and dark, each one wider than he was tall. She lowered him in without ceremony, right down into the warm dark where the little gold cross hung, and then she settled her whole chest with a contented shrug. The weight came in around him like someone pulling a down comforter over his head, and every inch of it was hot, a little sweaty from the drive, and jiggled when she laughed.

Rosewater. Heat. And underneath, a heartbeat as slow and strong as a church bell.

His head stuck out the top. One arm stuck out beside it. The little gold cross dug into his back between his shoulder blades.

"There," Lupe said with deep satisfaction, and patted him once, which pushed him an inch farther down. "There. Now Abuela can keep an eye on you."

"Mamá, I had him in mine yesterday," Victoria said, sounding faintly put out.

"And now he's in mine." Lupe settled back against the pillows next to her daughter, shoulder to shoulder. Max rose and fell with every breath, her tits lifting him and letting him sink. "Now. Let's talk about what we're going to do with him."

Max's stomach dropped.

"I was thinking," Victoria said, "we start slow. Izzy did some reading. Every day a foot rub, and then maybe some other little things. To help him explore."

"Slow is good," Lupe agreed. "But a boy like this needs structure, Victoria. Rules. A schedule. He needs to know where he belongs."

"Exactly. That's what I said."

"You said 'foot rub.' That's not a schedule. That's a treat." Lupe's voice had shifted into full lesson-plan mode. "Every day, he does your feet. Every time I come up, he does mine. And I'm going to be coming up a lot more often, mija. Every weekend, if I have to."

"Every weekend? From LA?"

"You want to do this right or not?"

Victoria was quiet for a moment.

"What about Ventus?" she asked finally, in a smaller voice.

Max held his breath. Yes. Ventus. Bring up Ventus.

Lupe sniffed. "We'll see. Six weeks is a long time."

From the doorway, Izzy's voice floated over, sweet and helpful.

"I mean, there's a lot more in the folder, Abuela. Like, stuff he's into. I could make you guys a list."

"Ay, would you, mija?" Lupe said warmly. "You're such a good sister."

"Stepsister," Max croaked from deep between her tits.

Nobody heard him. Abuela's heartbeat thudded slowly all around him, boom, boom, boom, and above his head the two women went on making plans. Feet. Weekends. Visits. A list. They talked about him the way they talked about remodeling the kitchen, warm and practical and already certain how it would end.

The little gold cross pressed against his spine.

Max thought maybe he should start praying.

In the doorway, Izzy stopped filming, flipped the legal pad to a fresh page, and wrote at the top, in purple: ABUELA — ALSO INTO IT? She underlined it twice.