Chapter 28 – [March 15, 2002]
Sitting across from one another at a library cubicle on the second floor whispering, the two sat deep in conversation. It was the most coveted space in study hall: the corner seat overlooking the school playground with views of the Puget Sound behind. Of all the rooms in BCS, the library was the coolest. It had high ceilings with exposed ductwork and conduit painted flat black, slate flooring, hardwood tables, leather couches, and fancy lights that attached to powered pairs of cables that stretched across great lengths of space.
The girls in conversation with their bobbed and highlighted haircuts and trendy earrings looked as though they should’ve been the most popular in school. But their voices betrayed fear of a fall.
“So what have you heard about our pee-pee pants girl lately?” Amber had whispered very quietly, leaning forward.
“Nothing since you heard the rumor from Ed.” Nicole said leaning forward as well.
“Well I’ve heard something new.”
Nicole’s eyebrows raised, “Oh?”
“Yeah.” Amber smiled deviously, still whispering. “My sister Annalisa is in Kindergarten you know. Right?”
Nicole nodded.
“Well, as it turns out, my sister heard a rumor in her class that there’s a girl in her class who has an older sister who wets the bed every night and wears diapers for it.” Amber raised her eyebrows and sat back.
Nicole’s eyes widened. “Wow. Diapers? Like baby diapers like Luvs or Pampers or something? Jeez! Jordan you are a real baby aren’t you!” She mused out loud before pausing to think. “Did Anna hear who the rumor came from? Like who was telling about the older sister in the first place?”
“Annalisa heard it third hand – she doesn’t know who originally told it and I didn’t want to make a big deal of it by pressuring her to go back and ask around or something. She’s just barely 6, she would screw it up probably. But do you know who else is in her class?”
“Mindi Reynolds.” Nicole smiled.
“Yep.”
Still whispering Nicole said, “Amber, I know this is almost for sure another thing that points to Jordan as our bedwetting freak – but it still’s just circumstantial unless Anna knows for sure. I don’t think we can go public yet.”
Amber thought for a few seconds, feeling the air being let out of her balloon. “Hmmmm.” She could truly feel time slipping by and she was getting more and more frustrated with the tall brunette’s popularity, especially after she had a whole assembly all about her!
Reluctantly she said, “I guess maybe you’re right. It’s adding up though…but maybe we’re still in the same boat as before. We need physical proof. A picture. A wet diaper. Some piss stained undies or something. We need to embarrass the shit out’a her. Then we’ll tell the stories and it’ll be no denying it. She and her pee problem will be the laughing stock of the school.”
Nicole giggled quietly and Amber joined her. The obsession the two had with lopping off the tallest looking tulip standing tall among them in the garden was beyond immature – but certainly not beyond their status as fickle 8th graders.
That sunny Friday afternoon at home, Jordan was boarded up inside the house all alone once again. With Mindi in after school care as usual, Jen at daycare, and her mom out to coffee with her newfound best friend Jo Miller another time, she knew she had several hours with the house to herself. And that meant several hours of diapered writing time at the computer.
Ever since the end of January when she had accidentally stumbled upon the practice for the first time, the tall 7th grader had been regularly repeating it during these solitary daytime hours. That first time, she had felt incredibly embarrassed about what she had been doing and questioned her sanity, feeling like a freak of nature. However, the purple plastic diaper had felt strangely peaceful between her legs – somewhat like the experience at night – and she had been unable to break the practice over the subsequent weeks.
It hadn’t been every afternoon that Jordan dawned one of her thick molicare diapers under her short BCS school skirt (or simply bare with just a polo), but it had been often enough that she had begun to worry that her mom might notice diapers missing. Thus, she had tried to keep her extra-diaper time to just those days where she knew she would have extended hours available to ‘play’.
That particular March Friday, school let out early, just after noon and as Jordan had hopped off her bus and toddled home, almost the only thing on her mind had been getting in the door, getting her diaper on, and pushing building contents of her bladder into it.
The first time she had worn during the day, she had also been unable to wet her diaper. Since then, however, she had ‘retrained’ herself (or de-trained) so that she could essentially pee on command if she pushed it out. The warmth of the pee between her legs and butt followed by the squishiness of the wet diaper between her legs had grown to be a delightful yet shameful feeling for her. She also felt guilty for the negative progress she was sure this was likely to have on her bladder-stretching program.
As she walked in the house that afternoon, Jordan quickly threw her backpack on the couch and closed and locked the door behind her. She pulled the shades and headed to her bedroom kicking her black school flats off on the way and loosening the fasteners on her pleated skirt. Letting it fall to the floor, she pushed her panties down and reached into the closet to find only one diaper left in the current bag of diapers.
Oh SHIT! I can’t use this one mom will totally know because I’ll have to put out a new bag and open it. Jordan thought rapidly but not entirely clearly, desperately wanting a diaper. Shit, what can I do? What can I do?
The thirteen-year-old girl, naked from the waist down wearing only a school blouse with a scarf around its neck, thought about breaking open one of the unopened cases of molicare diapers in her closet. I could pull one out of one of the bags in there I guess – but that’d be obvious too!
“Crap.” She whispered, scratching her rear end, feeling the urge to pee rise toward urgent.
Desperate now in more ways than one, I wonder if I still have any GoodNites left over somewhere?
Back in the fall when she had first started to wet the bed, her mom had started her out on the bedwetting pants for older kids but Jordan had leaked through them so often that she had switched Jordan to regular diapers. The tall slender girl rifled around in the closet on her knees hoping to find a single GoodNite somewhere.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (and after feeling a few droplets of pee leak out and down her inner thigh) she found a partially full bag. Opening one of the pants up gently, being careful not to tear it as she had often done with her sister’s pull-ups, she stepped into each of the leg holes of the all white garment and ever so slowly pulled it up. As they had done so well before, it fit just fine. Immediately with her legs slightly apart, Jordan let go and flooded the disposable undergarment.
As she felt the weight of her pee soak the middle and lower butt area, she crawled onto her bed and laid on her stomach, a trick she had learned to coax the liquid into the front panel’s absorbent matt. It soaked it up after a minute or two. She then gently rolled over to her back and the remaining excess soaked backward up her backside.
Thoroughly saturated and heavy, but also feeling a sense of relief and peace. Jordan stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. The girl who looked back was tall, long haired, slender, wearing just a white blouse with BCS emblazoned on the right breast, and she had just the hint of a yellow tinged white cotton diaper poking out of the bottom of the shirt between her legs. Immediately Jordan’s shame flared up.
What the hell am I doing? What is this all about? She talked to herself before beginning a round of chiding.
Look at you Jordan! Are you that desperate for affection and love? What do you get out of this? Look at you standing there in your own piss! What the hell is this? What the fuck is wrong with you? What would mom say if she knew? What would DAD say?
A lump formed in her throat at the thought of the man who she once hoped would just take notice of her life.
During the very moments when Jordan was urinating on herself in her bedroom at home, Sally was sitting with her friend Jo at the Freemont coffee shop that had quickly become both of their favorites. It had only been two weeks since their previous meeting at the very same spot – talking about the very same subject.
As coincidence would have it, Sally was in the middle of telling Jo about how she was beginning to wonder (as strange as it might sound) if Jordan might be having accidents during the day.
“It’s weird Jo, we’re just going through them at an ungodly pace…much faster than at the beginning when it first started. MUCH faster. And it’s true that since her infection I’ve been changing her some during the night but there’s no way it could account for this. I don’t change her every night – and sometimes we’ll go through a whole back in a little over a week. That’s 14 diapers!”
Jo looked at Sally with concern on her face. It was an odd conversation to be having and in all honesty, she kind of felt uncomfortable with where she expected it to lead.
“Well. I’ve gotta tell you Sally, that does seem odd to me too.” Jo mustered to say.
“Do you think she could be having problems with incontinence during the day as well or something – and just not telling me about it?” the worried mom asked honestly.
Well that’s a thought. But not likely. Jo thought.
For the past couple weeks since their previous coffee shop conversation, Jo hadn’t been able to get Jordan’s diaper wearing out of her mind. As she thought more and more about what had happened during the two days she had spent at the Reynolds’s home, she had developed a theory about Jordan; and Sally’s question became the platform for sharing it.
“Sally, Jordan’s not incontinent.” Said Jo rather bluntly.
“Oh.” Sally said taking it as truth then pausing to think, still somewhat cheery, “Then…where’re the extra diapers going? Why—-”
“Sally! Haven’t you noticed how she behaves when you’re putting them on her every night? I mean she’s a thirteen-year-old young woman with breasts, hips, a menstrual cycle, and a bush for Christ’s sake! But you’ve been putting her in giant purple diapers like a toddler for the past five months! Doesn’t that strike you as the least bit odd?”
Sally’s eyes widened. Jo had never raised her voice like this before and the content of her words were so stark – and true. She wondered if she was condemning her for her parenting practices.
“I mean, it seems fairly normal that a thirteen-year-old who’s embarrassed of having to wear a diaper to bed might do a crappy job of putting it on herself – leading to leaks. So I can see how, in the very narrow circumstance of having given full consent (and in the absence of any coercion), that girl might be willing to receive some help in getting fixed up for bed. But in Jordan’s case she’s not only tolerated help, she’s blossomed under it!”
Jo looked straight at Sally appearing quite serious but also compassionate.
“I mean, seriously Sally. She’s doing better socially, emotionally, and academically now than she’s done all year – probably in 2 or 3years! Getting diapered by you every night seems to be just about the best thing that could’ve happened to her from my point of view.” Sally froze as her friend said the words, almost as though she had come to expect a harsh judgment. In truth, she had never fully considered what Jo was suggesting.
They both were silent for a while before the older woman finally spoke, “Well she was just so stressed when she started wetting the bed and when Ted left and after 9/11 and so I just did what came natural and she just seemed so fragile…” Immediately, she sounded defensive and almost disoriented as she rapidly spoke.
“Sally…Sally dear…” Jo said shaking her head gently and calmly reaching her hands out to put them on Sally’s, holding her cup.
Tears dribbled down Sally’s face. “Am I a terrible mother Jo? Did I do this to her? Have I damaged her somehow?” Her eyes darted around the room – hazy – as if looking for an enemy.
Her mind had trailed off once again to Ted and his rage-filled threats at their meeting about a month before, all of a sudden a flood of fear washed over the now bewildered woman.
“Jo! What if Ted somehow attacks me with this? What if he tells the judge about it and accuses me of….of…,” she could hardly stomach to utter the words, “…abuse of some kind? What if he tries to use it against me to take the girls away? What have I done Jo? Is this abuse? Am I doing something wrong? What would a social worker or therapist or psychologist say about me putting giant diapers on my teenage daughter every night? Oh God I can’t take her to a shrink now!”
Jo’s eyes began to get watery as well. “Oh no, I didn’t mean that Sally. No. No. No.” She shook her head once again. Sally looked up and sniffed, clearly agitated, snot piling up in her nose and tears streaking her cheeks.
“You’re not a terrible mother. I don’t think you’ve damaged your daughter. I don’t think you’ve caused this reaction in Jordan either.” Jo said through her own tear buildup.
Jo tried to lock eyes with Sally but she was looking down again.
“Ted can do whatever he wants – you have no control over that. Maybe he’ll make an accusation about your work or your finances or your sex life. You have no idea what it might or might not be. Maybe he’ll do nothing. Maybe those were empty threats. There’s no reason you should carry around all this anxiety or fear about what he could do. I mean, look at you! You’re practically shaking girl!”
Jo smiled and motioned for Sally to take a mental inventory. She obliged reluctantly and quickly noticed and then remained focused on her trembling hands.
“All you can do is take care of yourself; prepare yourself inside to weather storms of loss and frustration and injustice in case they do come; and be the best mother you can be to your lovely girls – including Jordie.”
Sally quietly nodded, still looking down.
“And you’re right Sally, Jordan was clearly under a Ton of stress back in September and my best guess would be that she apparently regressed as an unconscious response to it. She seemed to be looking for more motherly,” (or maybe fatherly? Jo thought to herself parenthetically), “care and nurture – and she found it in the nightly routine you fostered with one another.”
Reiterating what she had said moments ago, hoping it would stick in Sally’s mind just how much she thought it was true Jo continued, “At first, it seems like you were taking care of the bedwetting and diaper thing out of a genuine physical need. She was leaking out of it badly after doing it herself. Since she didn’t mind the help, it seemed reasonable to risk the embarrassment to get it right.”
Sally nodded slightly feeling a little more vindicated and a little less scared of an accusation that Ted might bring. She also felt gratitude for her friend.
“But I’m sure your motherly intuition has picked up on what I noticed when I took care of Jordie after her stay in the ER.” Jo paused and looked at Sally knowingly. “She melts Sally. She just melts when she gets her diaper every single time.”
Jo waited for that to sink in. “Jordie just glows like a newborn when she’s getting taken care of. Every time I put her in her diaper for bed, she utterly relaxed and just sunk into this state of perfect serenity and trust…and I bet she does it when you take care of her too. Huh?”
Sally stayed silent, eyes widening as if Jo had conjured up her latest private journal entry. Yet it was at the same time a revelation for Sally. Although she knew she had felt and believed these things to be true before just under the surface, they had never been admitted or fully acknowledged.
“What I saw when I babysat Jordan for you was a teenage girl that’s learned to use being diapered as a kind of emotional crutch. She doesn’t need anyone’s help physically in my opinion – she needs it emotionally Sally. Like really genuinely needs it. And someone’s gotta have compassion for that.” Jo hesitated again.
“The first time I saw it happen I wrote it off as nonsense. But each and every subsequent time it was the same exact thing. She’d lie down on the bed and her anxiety would just melt away like frost on glass and she’d sink into relaxation.” Jo took a drink of coffee.
Sally still didn’t respond, but she knew it was all true.
“It’s a coping mechanism Sally. Like thumb sucking; like pot-smoking; like sex or bulimia or ice cream or a thousand other things kids learn to do to deal with life. Only this one is relatively harmless in my opinion. Risky socially of course if it ever gets discovered – but ultimately harmless. A diaper and snuggle from mommy is like Jordan’s “tween gin and tonic” before bed.”
She laughed out loud and Sally chuckled along with her, thinking Jo should be a little more uncomfortable with her chosen metaphor.
“And If I’m not mistaken – not only is it harmless, it’s something you kinda find sweet as well…Right? Don’t you like being able to be her ‘mommy’ again like this?” Jo looked her in the eye for confirmation.
The mother at heart couldn’t help but tear up and look away.
A long silence ensued once again. Each woman took long draws on their hot-mugged drinks before Sally finally spoke.
Summarizing Jo’s theory Sally said, “So Jordan’s wearing her diapers during the day. She’s putting them on herself. She’s doing it after school when she goes home and is all alone. She’s hiding it from me…”
“That’s what I’m guessing Sally. I could very well be wrong. But that’s what I’m guessing.”
The older woman nodded. “Thank-you Jo. You’re the best friend I could even hope to have.”
“Of course dear. Of course.” She smiled.
Almost to herself, Sally then said, “So if Jordie’s doing that during the day then? Does that mean she doesn’t want me to help her anymore at night?”
“Why don’t you ask her Sally?” Jo said.
A lump started to form in the woman’s throat.