I grabbed my backpack and followed her into the house while my uncle grabbed the remainder of our things. The bedroom she led me to was so much bigger than what I’d had before. The bed itself was twice as large. There were several dressers, a walk-in closet, a bathroom, and a desk with a computer on it.
My aunt laid out a towel on the bed as a makeshift changing pad. I eased myself gently onto the bed, trying not to make the mess in my diaper any more difficult to clean up.
I held my breath as my aunt un-taped the diaper. Not because of the smell – that, I was used to, though the hospital had me on some pills that were reducing it – but because I wasn’t sure of what my aunt’s reaction was going to be. I’m sure she has changed diapers before, with as many foster kids as they’d had, there must have been some younger ones that weren’t toilet trained yet, but an adult diaper, especially a messy one, is something entirely else.
Not a word about how bad it must smell, or how messy it was. She didn’t make a snarky comments about how I shouldn’t have messed myself, or about how good it must feel to get all cleaned up. She didn’t rush through it haphazardly, like it was a task she wanted to be over with as soon as possible.
No one had every treated me this kindly before. Tears began running sideways across my cheeks. Aunt Lydia, paused, grabbed a clean baby wipe, and used it to wipe off the tears on my face.
“You don’t need to cry,” she said. “Everything is going to be OK now that you’re finally here with us.”