I don’t know how long I sat there bawling my eyes out, but it felt like a long time. Eventually, the door to my room opened again and for a brief moment I had hoped it would be her. Sadly it was John who walked in.
“Hey there.” He said timidly.
When I didn’t respond, he closed the door and continued talking. “Your mother is pretty upset.”
“I tried to tell her I was sorry.” I began to cry harder, “I didn’t mean it!”
“Yeah, well, sometimes saying you’re sorry isn’t enough.” John said definitively, but somberly.
I looked up at him. He was standing directly above me, peering down on me.
“W-w-what am I supposed to do then?” I blubbered.
“Son, I really don’t know.” John said honestly, “But for starters, I think you should do as your grandmother asked and get washed up.”
I watched in disbelief as he too turned his back on me, walked out of the room, and closed the door behind him. Again I was left alone feeling unequivocally despondent. Sobbing heavily, I managed to get myself back into the bathroom and as I walked in I saw that wet diaper and kicked it. I had expected it to go flying across the room but instead my bare toes sank into the goopy mess almost like the diaper was trying to eat my foot. Shaking it off I stepped over it and acted like it wasn’t even there as I started to strip off my clothes. I remembered Grandmother telling me to put them inside the door flap and when I did, they vanished down a long rectangular metal tube. I assumed that it was a laundry chute; at least I hoped that is what it was.
I decided that I would take a shower and ended up being scalded, because I didn’t know how to operate the shower faucet.
When the hot water burned into my flesh I screamed something like, “Holy loving chum buckets from hell!”
I slammed my body in the corner of the shower in an attempt to hide from the falling drops of lava. I was pressing myself so tightly against the wall that I am sure the grout lines were being imprinted in the flesh of my hindquarters. I stayed like that until I managed to figure out, that I needed to not only turn the single control, but also push it upward, to obtain a much more tolerable water temperature.
By the time I was done showering I had, for the most part, stopped crying. However, was still feeling miserable for what I had said to my mom. As I dried myself off, I decided, that I would go in search of her to apologize again.
Sufficiently dry, I dropped the washcloth and towel into, what I was now more or less sure was, the laundry chute. Once I had returned to the bedroom, I made a very startling discovery. I had no clothes to put on!
“Ah Alvin, you idiot!” I verbally reprimanded myself, as it struck me, that I should have at least held onto the towel until I found something to cover my nudity!
In the bedroom, there is this very large arch top armoire and since there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to look, I opened the single wide arched door with hopes, that I might find a bathrobe or something else to wear.
The interior of the armoire was divided into four equal sections on the left side by three wooden shelves. On the right side was a long section for hanging clothes. There were several fancy wooden hangers on the clothes rod, but no bathrobe. In fact, there wasn’t a single item of clothing in the roomy armoire; however, it was by no means empty! On the top shelf, which was beyond my reach, were six, apparently unopened, blue packages that said GoodNites on the side. My heart began to race at the thought that my grandparents had prepared for my arrival by purchasing those for me. What got me was the number of packages. I mean, did they really think I wet that much?
However, the six packages of GoodNites on the top shelf were not all that was inside the armoire. The next shelf down was empty, but the third shelf from the top wasn’t empty. It had been cram packed with stacks of, what I could only guess were GoodNites, seeing how they were already out of their packages. A bit more than a week ago, I probably wouldn’t have guessed that they were GoodNites, but things are different now; I’m different too.