The woman seated up high on the bench was not the same one who had handled my earlier proceedings. I had to lift my chin up to look her in the face. What did she want with me?

“I need to know how you feel about all of this,” the judge intoned quietly enough that her voice wouldn’t carry back to the audience.

“Does it matter?”

“It often does, but it’s a question I always want to make sure to ask before coming to any custody decision.”

“I want to stay with my aunt and uncle.”

There wasn’t any reason for either of us to have expected that answer to be different, by I nonetheless appreciated that I had been asked. But now the pain in my bladder was back. The momentary distraction of being called forward to talk with the judge had temporarily put it off my mind, but now the ache in my insides was back with a vengeance.

“How much longer till the hearing is over?”

“It will be another ten to fifteen minutes. I need to talk with the attorneys for a bit more before I announce my decision.”

That was longer than I would be able to wait. I paused. If I didn’t ask, I was going to wet myself.

“Can I be excused to go to the restroom,” I whispered.

“Of course you can,” she said, completely unphased by the request. “Oh, and you can take you time. The hearing needs to stay on schedule, so we’ll keep it moving without you. And you don’t have anything to worry about. You’ll be staying with your aunt and uncle.”

I wanted to skip out of the courtroom, but I remembered the attorney’s advice about maintaining decorum, and I kept myself to a normal pace, stepping out into the hallway before my aunt and uncle even had a chance to ask me where I was going. Once the door shut behind me, I took a glance in both directions. With no one in sight, I jogged toward the far end of the hallway where the restrooms were located.

I yanked the tapes off of the diaper, indifferent but not oblivious to the fact that others in the restroom would be able to hear it, though hopefully they wouldn’t recognize what the sound meant. And even if they did figure out that I had a diaper on, I didn’t care. In the moment, achieving the success of making it to the toilet without wetting myself was worth a bit of embarrassment.

Whoever had coined the phrase “relieving yourself” had captured the almost paradisiacal feeling of emptying one’s bladder, when all the tension of holding your muscles tighter and tighter against their will finally gives way relaxation.

It was only after I had relieved myself that I found time to dwell on the judge’s decision that had brought a whole different sense of emotional relief. I hadn’t anticipated her delivering a different verdict, but the moment hadn’t become real until the minute she announced it. But with the finality of her decision, that meant one more task for me to complete before we left the courthouse to head home. Aunt Lydia had asked me multiple times if I was sure I wanted to go through with it, even though it had been my idea from the start, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was what I wanted for myself.

I gave the diaper a careful examination while putting it back on. The interior of the diaper was solid white, with not a single yellow stain in sight. I did it. It was, to be sure, a small victory, a minor battle that I’d won in the course of a much longer war. But for the first time in longer than I could remember, I was filled with a sense of unbridled hope that the war to gain control over my bladder was one I was capable of winning. No matter what needed to be done. No matter how long it took. After all, diapers never lie.