Chapter 40: Cossets, Confessions, and Compromises
I stayed in the crib and sobbed and beat up the mattress for what felt like forever. I screamed and wailed. Sometimes I muffled, other times I screamed until my uvula rattled and shook the crib’s bars. To add to the frustration, I didn’t even have a stupid stuffie to take my anger out on. Lion remained in the living room where a sobbing Janet was being given pats on the back and soothing comments by her friends.
I was alone.
I could have, with enough effort, gotten out of the crib. The bars were tall, but I had the time, adrenaline, and a thin enough diaper so as not to encumber me too badly. I didn’t though. The door was locked from the outside and the windows were far too high to attempt escape. I could have wrecked the room; likely would have gotten some pleasure in it too, but it wasn’t the right move.
A wrecked nursery would have done one of two things: Anger the giantess even more so that she did end up spanking me, or just make her even more numb to my outrage. In my own personal fantasy, I was in a war just then.
So I did the only reasonable option left to me: I cried myself out till I ran out of tears. I yelled until my breathing steadied. I let my anger and hurt harden and simmer inside me until the insides of my brain were numb.
And I went quiet. I said nothing for the rest of the day. When Janet came in later to tell me that everyone else had gone home, I said nothing. When she fed me lunch in a highchair, I said nothing. When she tried to play with me, I said nothing. When she talked to me, I said nothing.
I did not resist. I did not defy. I just said nothing. If she called my name I would look at her; stare even, as an acknowledgement, but I would not speak to her. When she fed me, I opened my mouth and swallowed. Nothing more. When she offered me toys, I accepted them briefly, then put them down quietly to the side. I would hold my bladder long enough to know that I was still in control of such things, but I would not let her see me squirm. When she called me “baby” or herself “Mommy”, I didn’t object or blush or comment. When she changed me I did not huff or squirm. That night I obeyed and gave her my limbs in the bathtub to cleanse and scrub as she pleased.
I would give her nothing. Not my anger, nor my pain, nor my embarrassment, or exasperation. If she didn’t want me, all of me, the real me, she’d get nothing. Not even rebellion.
At first, it didn’t work. Her own attempts were half-hearted. She’d lost that bright and shiny polish of Mommyness and enthusiasm. She’d lost the angry intensity too, but she wasn’t nearly as into it as that morning. She was pensive; weary; maybe even afraid to engage me at that level. To be crude, it was a little like trying to masturbate out of habit or boredom. You can go through the motions all you want, but if your mind is really on something else nothing is going to happen.
Janet’s mind was on something else. We’d hurt each other.
I could see the cracks starting to form right around my enforced bedtime. “This monitor,” she told me, “is a special two way monitor. It will let me check in on you and talk back to you if you need it. If you want my attention, all you have to do is call ‘Mommy’.” She wanted me to call out to her.
Good. The silence was starting to hurt more than my shouting. When she kissed me on the forehead, her “I love you”, had an edge of doubtful hope; practically begging me to reciprocate.
I stayed up late that night. Staring at the baby monitor, on its own special shelf right by the changing table. I was silent. I did not call out. But I did not go to sleep. Skinner, the SLP, had told Janet that the baby monitor was “educational”. I waited, just in case “educational” meant “subliminal”. If it was hypnotic, I couldn’t tell. Even hours later, when Janet would have most likely gone to bed, nothing came through. If it really was a two-way like Janet had claimed, she was saying anything either.
My silence dragged on into the morning. Hers didn’t. Breakfast was scrambled eggs. I still had to be spoon fed “via airplane”, but at least it wasn’t something out of a glass jar. She bobbed me on her knee, and tried to get me to comment on cartoons. I remained silent and didn’t react. Being dead ass tired from not sleeping didn’t help. I went through the crawling playground once, too.
In this instance, bare bones token compliance was doing more damage to her than willful disobedience. I was obeying her out of spite.
Before I knew it, it was after lunch. It had been just over 24 hours since I had muttered so much as a syllable other than a burp. I sat there on the wooden deck in Janet’s backyard. I stared at my green bootied feet dangling above the lawn. My legs were bare because I’d been dressed in a matching onesie that morning.
Janet was attending to her garden. Apparently, she grew some of her own vegetables in her backyard as a hobby; mostly peppers. I, being an untrustworthy Little, was made to wait on the safety of her deck while she checked to see how ripe this pepper, or that plant was before she picked the lot. Me? I just stared at my feet; not bored because I knew it was hurting her.
I heard crinkling and for once it wasn’t from me. Janet’s feet crunched on drying grass and the first wave of Autumn leaves. She’d stopped attending to her garden and took a knee so that she was almost at eye level with me.
“Hey, Clark.”
I looked up at her, to acknowledge her presence. Still said nothing.
“Can we talk?” My silence was permission, apparently. “I stayed up late last night talking to Mrs. Beouf and Auntie Jessica. I listened to some podcasts and read some stuff on parent…” she stopped and tried to course correct, “on being a Mo…” she stopped again. Even though my face was a mask of neutral anger, she could tell. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
If she wanted me to ask her what about, she was in for a disappointment. I just kept passively looking at her; looking through her.
“I’ve thought about it, and I think I know what you’re going through, now.”
She didn’t know. She didn’t know me at all. Let her suffer.
She rattled off a list anyway: “The world is new again, and everyone is treating you differently, and no one is asking you what you want, and they’re trying to anticipate your needs instead of asking for your needs, and that makes it feel like they’re not listening, and you’re meeting new people and about to go to school and even though it’s familiar it’s in a new context and that’s scary. You’re just really overwhelmed.” Okay…maybe she had an inkling. It was still only scratching the surface but it was close. “That’s what it’s like being a baby, though.”
Nevermind. Fuck her.
“Your emotions are too big for your body and you’re just doing the best you can even though things are happening way too fast.” Then she really lowered the hammer. “I forgive you for what you said yesterday. I still love you and I want to be your Mommy.”
I did not respond. I wanted to. I wanted to yell and scream and give a repeat performance of just how wrong she was and how wrong all of this was and send her back into tears. But in this instance, she would have won. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I didn’t want her to hate me, I wanted her to feel guilty.
Then the giantess sucker punched me. “And I’m sorry too.”
Something must’ve shown on my face. My eyebrows must have raised, or maybe I blinked funny. Maybe some kind of other tell. But something changed in Janet just there.
“I know I’ve been kind of crazy lately,” she said, still looking me in the eye. “And that’s not your fault, it’s mine. I should have told you. I should have listened. But I was so excited to…to…be a Mommy to SOMEONE, that I…I went overboard.”
I sat up a little straighter. Crossed my arms. Still said nothing, though. Let her talk and make her own rope to hang herself with.
Still on one knee she began to confess. “I should have asked about taking you to most of those places. We could have put off the salon and the doctor.” I forced my face to go placid again. Put off but not avoid. Still having my old life and adulthood literally stripped away from me was a necessity that I got no say in the matter.
Seeing my displeasure, she pushed through. “I should have told you about the shower, and my friend Jessica.” That was a slight improvement. Her best bud wasn’t “Auntie”, now. So there was that…
Still not enough.
“I’ve just been so baby crazy lately because…because…” She stopped.
“Because you’ve been wanting to baby me before this.” I said, finally breaking my silence. It was an accusation, stated as fact. Silence is a tool. So are carefully chosen words spoken at the perfect time.
It worked better than I could have planned. Better than even I had wanted it to.
Janet stood up, sat down besides me on the deck, and leaned forward; her elbows resting on her knees. I looked at her. But she didn’t look at me. Her head was staring back at her garden, her jaw wiggling as she worked up the courage to say…
“Yes.”
My voice didn’t utter the word “What?”, but my mouth surely went through the motions. Over and over again, not even whispering, my mouth went “What? What? What? What?” I felt a buzzing in my brain, a surge as my heart skipped a beat, and a kind of sad terror. I’d wanted to be right, but I felt awful hearing that I was. I felt betrayed.
I drew my arms in up to my chest in tiny balled fists. I leaned slightly away. My eyes squinted and my mouth twisted. I was afraid. Not afraid of being hit or spanked. I was afraid of listening to what I was about to hear. Even so, like a fish gasping for breath, my lips kept forming the word, “What”?” over and over and over again.
“It didn’t start that way at first,” Janet continued. “When I got pulled to watch your class, I was just doing my job.” Her voice was far away. She was in her own head as much as mine. “I admit I was kind of curious. Everybody knows about the Little teacher, even if we don’t say more than hello to you.”
I wasn’t hearing this. I wasn’t hearing this.
Neither was she. Janet was reliving it. “Then, I talked to Tracy and heard how she adored you, and saw how well behaved your class was, and I thought ‘hey, maybe I should give this guy a chance. Do him a favor. Let him teach some older kids for a change of pace. I kind of felt sorry for you.” My frown deepened. “Everyone knows that you’re there as a token, and given an easy classroom with no real significance, but those math scribbles showed you had some chops.”
My mouth stopped working. I was using it to breathe, my nose becoming clogged and threatening to drip from something besides hay fever.
“And then you came into my room, and there was that…thing with Jeremy. And you taught a good lesson. A really good one.” She sounded almost sad. “And then I found I was starting to like you more. As a friend.” She laughed to herself, even though it didn’t sound happy. “I had a mature, adult Little friend.”
I was still staring in disbelief at what I was hearing. She still hadn’t looked me in the eyes. In a weird way that’s how I knew she was telling me the truth, just then.
“And I really liked you. You’re funny, clever, polite, insightful. You can be tactful when you want to be. And when you trust someone you give them your all. I liked that about you.” She paused and looked at me for the first time. “You’re kind of a know it all, and you definitely like to toe the line, but that didn’t detract from what I liked. In a weird way I liked that confidence and stupid bravery.”
She looked away again. “But it wasn’t until we were all grading those essays. When I saw you cry and break down like that, right there in the middle of my room; that’s when I started feeling things. Even with your suit and your goatee, I just wanted to pull you into my lap and cuddle you and tell you that everything was going to be okay.” Her voice got tight for a second before regaining control. “That’s when I started to cosset. On you. So yeah, Clark. I was cosseting on you.”
There was that word again. I’d heard it twice yesterday, but still had no idea what it meant. “The hell does cosset mean?” Even though- or maybe because- I had barely talked, my voice came out dry and cracked like the leaves that had just barely started to fall.
I saw a blush rise up in Janet’s cheeks. “Cosset is the word we use for that feeling an Amazon gets when they see a Little and they want to take care of them. Mommy or Daddy them. It’s kind of like a crush, I guess.”
My captor looked back to me and saw the building storm behind my eyes. I knew it. I fucking knew it! “Did you poison me? Did you do this to me so that you could take me? Take me away from my job and wife? Ruin my life?”
This time, her eyes widened and she looked hurt. “What? No! Clark, don’t be ridiculous. I would never…!”
I let more silence bore into her.
