Unfair- A Diaper Dimension Novel

Chapter 1
Chapter 108: Moonshine Memories and Mentor Meditations

Chapter Description: Shocked but what he's learned, Clark's past and present collide in his mind over what he 'knows' and what he 'thinks' about Amazons.

Chapter 108: Moonshine Memories and Mentor Meditations

“Careful son,” Herbert Braun said. “There’s moonshine in that lemonade. Have too much at once and you won’t need one of your coworkers to make you piss yourself.”

Casie scoffed. “Dad!”

“Bert…” his wife warned him.  The old song and dance wasn’t old yet, and I was just stupid enough to try and challenge my father-in-law to a drinking game on what was supposed to be a casual weekend visit.

“What?” Bert said to his wife. “Blackout drunk is blackout drunk. You take too much moonshine too fast and you either vomit everything up or you pass out and you piss your pants. Or both.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, Bert, and you know it.” 

The barest hint of a smile played underneath Bert’s mustache. The games had unofficially begun.

We were in the kitchen of the Braun’s heavily modified trailer, sitting at the table: Cassie, Bert, Irene, and me. Cassie’s sister, Michelle, was out and about; chasing boys, doing online college courses or both. Just us married and working folks. 

In front of us were paper plates and Little sized hot dog buns.  They cost more per unit that the Amazon sized hot dog meat which had to be chopped up and spread out in bite sized pieces to fit on the bun. To cover that up, they were drenched in so many toppings that you might not guess there was a hot dog underneath.

Next to the plates were tall, clear, Tweener sized plastic cups that wouldn’t fit in the top rack of a Little-centric washing machine. They had logos for sports teams I didn’t care about, but oh the things you can find at a garage sale. 

I’d taken barely a sip when Bert worked in his little quip, and I set the glass back down.  So it was gonna be like that, eh?  Bert subtly nodded.  Yup. It was gonna be like that.

Bert Braun’s baseline parenting style was definitively old school. True and tender shows of emotion and affection were rare. Criticisms and competition were expected.  Cassie warned me as much when we’d reached the ‘Meet the Parents’ stage of our relationship.  My own dad was much the same way; same with my mother.

To their generation, and likely many more before, support and love didn’t need to be affirmed because it was assumed. One didn’t need to tell family members they loved them any more than they needed to remember that the sky was blue. 

It was known. A fact of life. A pledge that had to be renewed every day was less powerful than a once in a lifetime commitment.  When I brought that philosophy back up around Bert and Irene’s anniversary dinner one year, Bert’s exact words were, “Clark. Don’t get punched in the teeth.”

A criticism though? A challenge? That was just a game. A way to test yourself and keep your wits sharp.  Life was a competition of sorts.  Might as well keep it going at home.

“Bet,” I said.

I picked up the glass with both hands, glugged it down, and slammed it on the kitchen table. 

“Another!” A second later my face felt fuzzy, my stomach gurgled in protest, and the room was just spinny enough where I might need to concentrate in order to walk.  I wrinkled my nose and the gasoline aftertaste kicked in, sneaking up just behind the powdered lemonade.  “Maybe without the moonshine though…”

Irene chuckled and refilled my glass from a pitcher that hadn’t been spiked.  Bert smirked, downed about a third of his glass and put it down.  Not sipping gingerly, just not chugging it like an idiot.  Ever her father’s daughter, Cassie did the same and then some.

“URP!”

“URP!”

“URP!”

“Savages,” Irene said. “Complete savages.  I don’t know where I went wrong.’  She bit into her hashed up hotdog and took a sip of boozy lemonade.

“Maybe it’s genetic,” I offered, motioning between father and daughter.  “Maybe it’s parenting.”

The color was rising to Cassie’s cheeks, and she was looking at me with flirty bedroom eyes. The moonshine was hitting her, too.  We were so gonna fuck later… “How does that explain you?”

I scrunched up my face and overacted like a teenager in a made for T.V. movie.  “From you! I learned it from watching you!” Talking circles around Cassie was easy when she was tipsy. It was even easier when I was tipsy because I didn’t over analyze every little thing.  Between Cassie, Bert, and Irene, if I could out talk them while drunk, I could definitely talk around your typical everyday Amazon while sober.

This wasn’t self medicating, it was weight training for my mind.

I buried my hands in my face to keep up the fake crying and felt the tipsy topsy turvy-ness of the world more acutely with my eyes closed. That was a mistake! I cut the act and attacked the hotdog, hoping the sensory input and fuller stomach would accomplish something. 

Okay…yeah…I was feeling the moonshine too.  Mistakes had been made.

If Bert was feeling the effects of it, he wasn’t showing it. “First week of work stressing you out that much?” Bert asked me. He fingered toward my glass.  “You don’t normally drink like that when the sun is up.”

Cassie defended me.  “You do, Dad.”

“Yeah, well that’s me,” Bert said. “What’s his excuse?”

I chewed and swallowed about half of my hotdog mush and wiped my mouth. “No excuse, Bert,” I said. “Just enjoying getting to act like an actual adult.  This was week three by the way. One for setup, two with the kids.”

Bert arched an eyebrow, which in my experience had been the closest I’d seen to him showing concern.  “Actual…adult?”

I took a few gulps of lemonade. My blood alcohol level had already skyrocketed past the point where my body was telling me to shove everything into my mouth and I was focusing on my father-in-law to stop that from happening. 

“Yeah, you know.  Right?” I looked over at Cassie.  Fuck I was already running out of gas. “Right?”

“He’s the only Little at his school,” Cassie explained.

I snapped my fingers. “Yeah! That’s what I mean. So…yeah…that.” 

Bert was unimpressed. “Hm.”

I closed my eyes, inhaled and put on my best professional teacher face. “Okay, okay, okay. Hear me out,” I said. “You know how when you do a job, I talk one way to Littles, one way to Tweeners, and one way to Amazons?  Different levels of..of…being on guard?”

Bert lowered his eyebrow back down. “Yeah,” he said.

“Most of my co-workers are Amazons,” I said.

My father-in-law nodded upward. “Ah. So as far as coworkers go, you’re heavy on the ‘work’ but not so much on the ‘co’.”

“Pretty much,” I took another bite of hotdog. “They’re not mean or openly trying to Adopt me. They’re just…Amazons.”  Correction, the receptionist at school was definitely taking an unhealthy interest in me.  If she wasn’t actively gunning to Adopt me, she was watching me like a hawk and waiting for me to fail.  Same for the Vice-Principal. 

Best not tell the family that, lest they frown on me working at Oakshire Elementary.

“Do you have lots of interactions with Amazons, Clark?” Cassie’s mom asked. She was curious but suspicious. I heard that tone from Cassie often enough to recognize where she got it from.

I felt a kind of dip in my perception. The room spun a little bit faster and then slowed. I already felt like I was starting to come down and sober up.  Nope! Never mind. I was approaching sensory overload.

Fuck it. I took a bunch of lemonade and gulped it down.  “Not really,” I said. “I tend to…tenta…tenta.” Damn it. “I. Tend. To. Keep. To. Myself.” If I were more sober I’d be embarrassed at how hard it is to enunciate.  Another deep breath and I spat out the next line like it was rehearsed from a play. “I’ve got a teacher’s aide, but other than that and faculty meetings, it’s just me and the kids.”

The center of the table had more cutlets. I reached out to load them up on another bun when Cassie practically smacked me in the face with her words.  “That and your mentor.”  Ooof. Phrasing!

“Mentor?” Irene said. “I thought you had a degree already.”

I recovered and started piling on onions, sweet relish, shredded cheese, ketchup, mustard, and mayo. Oh gosh I was gonna regret this later, but it looked so delicious in the moment. “Not that kind of mentor,” I told them. “She’s more like the person I’m supposed to go to when I have a procedural question. What paperwork to file where and when. That kind of thing.”  I took a bite and swallowed.  The ratio to booze and bites in my bloodstream was starting to level out.

“She’s the Little’s teacher.”  Cassie said. She took a massive gulp of lemonade.

Well…fuck.

My in-laws didn’t reply.  Irene’s eyebrows were skyrocketing towards the ceiling and Bert’s were knitting together into a unibrow.  Verbal sparring and outmaneuvering Amazons was easy. Cassie had just upped the difficulty with hard mode.

“Yeah,” I admitted, and shrugged like it was no big deal.  “She teaches the Maturosis and…and…” I snapped my fingers rapidly like I was trying to recall a bit of trivia.  “Maturosis and Developmental Plateau Unit.”

“The hell does that mean?”  Bert asked. His brows had yet to unknit.

“It means she breaks Littles,” Cassie finished her drink.
She got me that scooter. She let me go to the job interview. She helped us buy the house in a mostly Amazon neighborhood. Right now she was saying stuff that might start a fight between me and her family.  Sometimes I didn’t understand my wife.

Time to retake the narrative.

“It’s a relatively new fad,” I explained. “Basically, there are Amazons who are pretending that Littles have a disease.  They’re trying to justify the whole ‘adoption’ thing with some psychological, neurological, genetic mumbo jumbo.”

“Not just trying to call us immature before they take us.”  It did not sound good coming from Bert.  “We’re now defective on top of it.”

I didn’t want to defend Maturosis.  It was bullshit pseudo-science at best and a cult at worst.  I just didn’t want my family to worry about me. “Look,” I said. “Beouf is crazy. She’s an Amazon. She’s a nutter. Her world view is skewed.  But she’s not directly malicious.”

“Is she indirectly malicious?” Irene asked. 

Nobody but me was eating anymore.  I put down my second dog and let out an exasperated sigh.  It was bad enough that I was on my toes the moment I got on campus.  I didn’t want my inlaws trying to constantly shame me for taking a risky career path. We couldn’t all be artists and handymen. Shit like this was exactly the reason I was drinking.

“I don’t think she’s actually a teacher,” I admitted. “But she knows a lot of legitimate educational theory and practices.  Stuff I just got done learning about in college. Looking at her lesson plans and room set up, the worst thing she does is she treats her prisoners like actual children.”

“That’s better?” Irene asked.

“According to guidance records and I.E.P’s, she’s got a two to three year rollover period before dismissal.”

Bert was now squinting his eyes.  The man had no face from the nose up. “Meaning…?”

“Meaning she’s mindfucking them but isn’t doing hypnosis and drugs and shit. It doesn’t take three years for hypnosis to plunge somebody past the point of no return.”  The significance wasn’t landing with them. 

“And…?”

“It means she’s a true believer.” I paused for effect. “She literally believes the poor sons of bitches in diapers are babies. But she also believes that Littles who haven’t been caught yet aren’t.”
They didn’t seem impressed.

  
Arguing was literally sobering me up. Adrenaline was the greatest drug of all sometimes.

“I’ve been putting out feelers for like…close to a month, now,” I said.  “No offers of food or drink. No wanting to get me to watch anything. She’s avoided the subject of bathrooms entirely so far.  No asking if I’m tired or needing a nap. No baby talk. No trying to hold me or carry me.”  Her assistant, this Yamatoan woman old enough to be my mother, had offered…but I wasn’t going to mention that.  “Calls me Mr. Gibson.  She literally helped me set up my classroom by moving heavy shit and reaching and then asked me to return the favor.”

Cassie blinked. I hadn’t told her this part.  That and/or she was getting more drunk.  “What kind of favor?”

“Nothing big,” I said. “Unstacking and moving tiny chairs. Unpacking bins from cabinets. She’s almost forty. She’s tall.  She doesn’t want to bend over as much.  It’s not like she’s asking me to climb up on her changing table or anything.” 

Wrong move, Clark. Wrong move.  Your family is worried about you and you just admitted that your co-worker has a changing table in her classroom. Maybe I wasn’t as sober as I thought I was.

They weren’t coming at this from the same outlook as I was. Amazons were crazy, but they were also bad faith actors and self-serving. This was true; just not as true as they thought.

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering, “She donated some old toys for my students to play with. Would an Amazon purposefully give something meant to sabotage LIttles so that they were in the hands of actual children?”

Bert’s jaw worked and wiggled for a second.  “I don’t suppose she would.  Awful nice of her though.  Just donating toys and supplies like that.”

“It’s kind of an unwritten rule in schools. Teachers try to look out for each other.”

Irene reached out and grabbed a second helping.  “You teach three year olds and have to supply their toys?”  Bert glanced at her. “What? Three olds need playtime. I don’t care how humongous they are.”

Yes! Irene was getting it! People could be shit, but children were still children!

“Anything that isn’t a chair, a desk, printer paper, or a mandated textbook of some kind is out of pocket, unfortunately,” I said. “Beouf says she’s gonna help me write a mini-grant so I can get some better materials for free.  Puzzles, games, educational toys.”

“Maybe we can go to a few garage sales,” Irene offered. “Get some toys that neighbor kids have outgrown.”

“Hell yeah!” I almost slurred. “Not that I’m a daycare. But like you said, they’re three.  All work and no play.”

“This Buff,” Bert slugged back the rest of his cocktail.  I didn’t know if he mispronounced her name on purpose or not. “Did she let you pick the toys yourself, or did she pick them out?”

Trap incoming!  “I’m not sure if I like where this is going,” I said. “If I say ‘yes’ you can talk about how she’s eyeballing me and trying to create a justification or something.  If I say ‘no’ you can make the claim that she’s only giving my class the toys she knows are safe.”

The women folk stared at the patriarch.  “He’s got a point, honey.”

“Okay,” I said, placing my palms on the table.  “Let me lay it all out: Would this lady rescue me if your average typical Amazon put me in a diaper? Probably not.  But is she gonna be the one that diapers me? I don’t think so.”

I started putting out all the different calculations I’d made so far.  “She’s got a daughter in highschool she talks about, so there’s no empty nest syndrome going on yet, and her job is to literally play teacher with eight or nine Littles who already got caught. I think that particular itch is thoroughly scratched. And other than the introduction, she doesn’t tend to talk about her whack theories. She bitches about administration. She complains how she needs a drink at the end of the day.  She talks about union stuff.  She…”  I almost brought up how she saved me my first day on the job by invoking the union card.

“She what?” Cassie asked.  I don’t know if everyone was swaying, or whether it was just me.

“She curses sometimes and doesn’t act offended if I curse.”  I saw Bert’s eyes again. Amazons hated using ‘naughty words’ around people they supposedly thought were babies. 

“I’m not saying I’m friends with her,” I hammered on. “I’m not saying that I’m gonna be hanging out with her every day before or after school or that we’re going to be helping each other more than ‘hey can I borrow some supplies’ or whatever.  I’m saying that this lady is both bugnuts baby crazy and extremely sincere at the same time. I’m probably safer around her than any of the other giants.”

Bert’s face softened.  Not a lot, but I knew him well enough to tell I’d scored some points.  “Alright,” he said. He got up and fetched the pitcher of moonshine and lemonade.

“You’re welcome,” Cassie whispered to me, nuzzling me.  She was feeling it too.

“For what?” I hissed back.

“Getting the fight over with.”

She…okay she had a point. I wouldn’t have brought any of this up if not for her.  I kissed her on the lips. One  kiss became two. Then three. Then four. Our tongues started exploring.

“Ahem,” Bert said.  He’d had just as much to drink as us but still seemed completely sober.

We stopped and remembered where we were. “Glad you feel you’ve got a good handle on your work situation,” Irene said, smoothing things out.

“Just don’t drink any coffee she tries to give you.” Bert filled up his class and topped off mine.  “Can’t have you getting tossed in a crib before I become a Pop-Pop.”

“Bert!”

“Dad!”

Bert grinned, full out grinned. It was kind of terrifying. Old man loved pushing buttons almost as much as his son-in-law.  “What? I just want the boy to be careful.  Play with fire and get burned and all that.”

Cassie kept her hand on my shoulder. “Clark’s very good at reading Amazons. He knows how to be very charming when he has to be.”

“Thank you, hon….I think.”  That got a good natured chuckle from the table.

“Enough about co-workers,” my mother-in-law chimed in. “What about the kids?”

“What do you teach a three year old anyway?”

“Three and four, actually,” I said. “And I’m working on a lot of things with them.”  I sipped the lemonade and winced the awful aftertaste again. Yup. This was the moonshine. “Right now it’s mostly how not to be toddlers.”

“Whaddya mean…?” Bert glugged back more moonshine and shook his head like he’d just been slapped. Finally he was relaxing enough to look drunk. 

“Most of my kids are first and only children,” I started.

“Amazons only send their oldest to school?” Bert interrupted.

“They’re three, Bert.”  Irene said. “If they have younger siblings they’re too young.” She looked at me. “Continue,”

I nodded gratefully to my mother-in-law. “So I’m working on turn taking, sharing, conflict resolution, that kind of stuff. How to work and play with other people besides pushing and screaming.”

“I’ve met a couple people who still need to learn how to do that,” Bert chuckled.

“There’s a reason I only work online,” Cassie agreed.

Irene raised her giant cup and clinked it across the table with Cassie. “Here here”

Fuck it.  Worst of it was over. I took another gulp.  “Yeah, I’m also doing letters, numbers, shapes, colors, all that stuff,” I said. “But doing the other stufffirst.”  Yeah, no. I was well and truly drunk and wasn’t going to recover until I slept it off.  Too bad it was only one in the afternoon.

“Can’t learn if you can’t act right,” Bert agreed.

“Yeah.  That an’ potty trainin’.”  I shook. “God I gotta do a looooootta potty training this year.”

“Hm?” Bert melted forward.  Oh gosh I might actually drink him under the table. “Why?”

“None of my kids are potty trained!” I half shouted on accident. “None!”

“All in Pull-Ups?”

I laughed.  “Ha! Workin’ on it. Got two of them in Pull-Ups.”

Irene’s jaw dropped. “What about the rest? Diapers? At three?”

I nodded with the dumbest, smuggest look on my face. “Some of them are four. Their parents have barely tried or have given up.”

“How do you even change them?” Irene said. She was by far the most sober and her eyes were crossing, imagining the physics involved with me trying to clean up a three year old that outweighed me. 

“That’s the best part,” I said. “I don’t. Little hands can’t even rip at the tapes. So I make my assistant do it! She’s already getting sick of it and calling parents with me to get them to switch.  The ones in Pull-Ups I make change themselves.”

Bert was still visibly puzzling things out.  “Do the kids have special needs? Medical needs? Something with their musculature?” 

Wow. Bert giving Amazons the benefit of the doubt. He really was drunk.  “Some of them are um…whatchamacallit…developmentally delayed.  Fine motor problems, speech and language delays, late bloomers and such, but as far as I can tell there’s no reason why they should be standing up in the middle of circle time so they can squat back down and take a dump.”

“Typical Amazon parenting, sounds like.”  Bert said. “Like they’re compensating for something.”

“Amen.’ It was Bert and I’s turn to clink thick plastic glasses.

“What do you think about the Littles in Beouf’s room?” Casie asked.

“Honestly?” I said, starting to feel the slightest bit woozy again.  “I don’t.”  That was met with somber and respectful nods all around.  Probably for the best.

There wasn’t much point in fretting over Littles that had been captured and put back inside padded pants.  It was like mourning the dead. You did it when you could emotionally afford to, but then you moved on and tried to live your life.

The world wasn’t fair, but we all played the game and took our chances every time we walked out the door or talked to someone taller than us.  All those poor bastards in Beouf’s class had played the game and slipped up at some point along the way.  They’d been too friendly or too distant or too trusting or too cute or too beautiful or too handsome or too sickly or too independent.  It was bullshit, yeah, and sometimes it was just dumb luck of wrong place wrong time, but every Little past five knew about the dangers of the world on some level.

Every Little, it turns out, except for Ivy Zoge.

*************************************************************************************************
The Sunday after Ivy told me her entire life story I wouldn’t leave my room.  I sat on the carpet with my back up against the crib leg, clutching Lion like he needed the comfort instead of me. The words didn’t vibrate in my throat but I kept mouthing “The fuck?” again and again to him.  Lion knew what I meant.  He didn’t have any answers though.

My onesie was periwinkle blue and very comfortable, my diaper was soaked, and I didn’t care. Not griping about my outfit was a form of self-flagellation. Janet had been treating me with super kid gloves since we’d come back.  Ice cream for dessert, and a shower with Janet hadn’t made me feel any better. We weren’t cold to another, but there was weight between us yet unvoiced.  I fell asleep that night without struggle, craving the oblivion of unconsciousness.

It was probably for the best.  If I’d talked more I’d probably have said something I’d regret that would only hamper me in the long run.  Such tactics would be unwise.

Tactics?  Why the fuck did I care about tactics?  I was dead. I had died. I had lost.  Clark Gibson was a memory and a myth.  Legally I was dead and reborn. I was a ghost lingering with the idea that I might yet raise myself from a lavender scented afterlife.

Regrets? Of course! Bad mistakes? More than a few!  But I’d gotten to make them! I’d gotten to grow! I’d gotten to live!  My life was in stuffed animal shambles, but it had been MINE!  I’d taken my chances and made out better than a lot of folks my size; or at least a lot longer!

Poor Ivy never even got that chance. She never got to play the game.  When she was kissing and crushing on me and asking me those bizarre questions, she hadn’t been trying to recapture something that had been taken from her.  She’d been longing for experiences that no one had ever offered her.

Gaslit and betrayed by her own flesh and blood parents. The girl was older than me but never got to grow up.  Not even close.  She would have only been a bit older than my students when her parents got a doctor’s note allowing them to shove her back into diapers and put her back in daycare.  It’d be like me deciding it would be too much effort to teach my students and somehow finding a way to shove them into Beouf’s room.

Why? For what reason?  Because of some genetic anomaly? Because she was done growing? Because she was socially awkward and nervous at school…for a five year old?   

Who the fuck did that to their own kid?! Who gave up on their own family that goddamn fast?! Who would deprive a literal child of decades of development and life experience because they were born short?! 

“Typical!” I mouthed to Lion.

No!  

That was worse than typical! 

What had been done to Ivy was downright Yamatoan. That was the only word for it.

Yamatoans were the most Amazon of Amazons and how Ivy had been raised really showed how they saw the rest of the world: Judging people by one metric and only one metric.  A stupid one that couldn’t be controlled, no less.

“How?” I mouthed.  “Just how?! The fuck?!”  Lion had no wisdom in his black beady eyes and no friendly comfort in his stitched up smile.  Stupid plush never did.

I’d hated Ivy. I’d resented her. I’d manipulated her. I’d ostracized her. I’d detested and caused her harm. Just like an Amazon, I had been willfully cruel to her for things completely beyond her control that caused harm to no one.   The fact that I hadn’t known her exact circumstances didn’t make me feel any better.

I’d done all of it specifically to make myself feel superior to her in one way or another.  I’d craved that moral high ground; that toxic false integrity that I was so willfully resisting compared to her.  I’d made it longer than her without getting caught and I’d keep my sense of self longer too. I’d escape, goddamn it!

Thing is that I’d beaten Ivy’s freedom record by my second day of Kindergarten. The second Janet took me home with her I’d beaten Ivy’s resistance streak.  If she somehow escaped, she’d be pulling off an even more miraculous feat than anything described on the wildest reaches of MistuhGwiffin: Escape to an adulthood that she’d never had.

Never had a choice. Never had a chance.  Never knew the options. Didn’t fuckin’ have them.
And I was just another in a long list of loser Littles who soothed their ego by ostracizing her as teacher’s pet.

How very typical of me.

Selfishly, my ego tried to preserve itself by harping in the back of my head that Ivy wasn’t technically a Little. Her freakish strength and the strange intuitive ways her brain worked like with the puzzles were leftovers from her Amazonian heritage that leaked past her accidentally inherited stature. 

Did that really not make her a Little, though?  Was she not ‘one of us’ just because neither of her parents weren’t Littles?  The tiny voice that was my conscience told me I was making excuses for myself.  People had been cruel to her and disguised it as kindness, same as with me and for a lot longer.  It was a miracle she was only as mindfucked as she was and could still walk and talk- in two languages no less!  A small mercy from Beouf’s kinder gentler brand of conditioning that nudged one over a line instead of shoved you off a cliff.

“Fuck.”

Janet poked her head through the open door.  “Hey, bud.”

I averted my gaze and stared into Lion’s.  “Hey.”

“You doing okay?”

No. Not at all. Not even close.  “Oh….y’know.”

She stepped in.  “Yeah. I figured.  She crossed the room, bent over, and slipped her fingers past my leakguards.  “Want me to change you?”

“I don’t care.”  I gave Lion a bone shattering squeeze. “I really don’t care.  I don’t.” 

She stepped back and gave me my space. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“I heard what Ivy said on the baby monitor.’

“I know.”

“I understand why you got upset. It’s okay that you’re upset.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Mrs. Zoge said she understands too.”

“Good, I guess.” That one came out with more fire.

“She’s not gonna be mad at you tomorrow…”

I looked up at her and bored right into her eyes.  That wasn’t the consolation Janet thought it was.

Janet bit her lip nervously. “Can I say why I think you‘re upset?”  

I gave the barest shrug.

“Do you wanna vent? Yell about Mrs. Zoge? Talk about Ivy?” Janet tried to smile.  “Just cry? I can listen.”

“No. I’m good.”

“Do you want advice?”

“No.”  I practically said ‘Fuck off’ with how I said it.

Janet nodded and kept chewing a hole through her lip.  “Mrs. Beouf is coming over in a few minutes.  Do you want to talk to her?”

That got my attention.  “What?!” 

Not again!  I have one bad reaction (okay very bad reaction) to new levels of Amazon crazy and now my behavior is something to be modified again?  My skin sizzled and I started shaking.  I drew my knees up to my chest and put Lion between my face and Janet’s.

Panic! I was on the verge of a panic attack!

“I’m sorry!” I lied. “I didn’t mean..!  I just…!”

“It’s not what you think.” Janet’s voice was measured like a hostage negotiator’s.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.  You didn’t say anything wrong.  Mrs. Beouf just wanted to come by and I said yes.”

I suppressed a scream and fear swang rapidly into frustration. “I thought we were done with this bullshit of talking behind my back and making decisions about me without me there!”  I tried to sound angry, but so much of the fight had left me and refused to come back.  I was really about to collapse into a pile and hide my face in the carpet. “Why are you doing this to me?!”

“I’m not doing anything.” Janet said, choosing each word carefully, stepping around land mines with every syllable.  “Nothing is even being suggested.  Mrs. Beouf is just coming to visit.”

“Are you mad that you didn’t get to baby me since I was five?” I half-shrieked half-rasped. “Jealous? Jealous that I know better?!”

Janet looked like she’d been slapped. She was visibly wrestling with the idea of slapping me back and bending down to give me a hug.  I could see it in her eyes, mouth, and hands.  “You’re trying to hurt my feelings so you can distract me and feel like you’re in control.”

“You’re goddamn right I am!”

We stood there and stared at each other a little while until my breathing slowed down.  It took a good five minutes.  “No one is talking about you behind your back, love.”

“Then why is she coming?” I screeched, my voice breaking again. “Why is Beouf coming?”

“She texted me just before I came to check in on you,” Janet said slowly. “She asked how you were doing, and I said you were having a rough day.  I didn’t say why.  Then she asked if she could come over and I said yes.”

I hugged my knees as tightly to me as I could. My diaper was so swollen that I was still  having trouble making my thighs touch.“Why is she checking up on me?”

“Because she’s your friend. No other reason.”

“Did Zoge tell her?”

“Probably.  That’s not important, but probably.’

I tried to clench even tighter.  “I don’t want her to come. I don’t want her to check up on me.”  I grit my teeth and gnashed at my tongue.  “I just want to be alone for a while.”

“That’s fine,” Janet said. “You have that choice. She’s my friend, too, though. So if you don’t want to talk to her we’ll just hang out in the living room and visit with each other.”  She half bent over and stopped herself from giving me a kiss.  “I’ll give you some more privacy. I’ll tell you when she’s here. Call me if you want anything or just come and find me.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. When she was almost out the door I called out. “Janet!”

She stopped and looked at me. “Hm?”

“Beouf is coming over?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Please change me.”

“Sure.”
**************************************************************************************
The doorbell rang twenty minutes later. Thank goodness I was still dry. Thinking about it would just lead me to overanalyze and then agonize as my bladder slowly refilled, which might inevitably lead me to drop my internal coffee cup.

Instead I focused on the approaching footsteps. “Clark?”  Janet poked her head in again. I’d resumed my post against the crib. “Mrs. Beouf is here, sweetie.  Would you like to talk to her?”

I gave a last look to Lion and then gently placed him aside so Melony wouldn’t see me cuddling him.  “Yes, please.”

Janet withdrew and in her place came my batshit best friend who just so happened to wipe my bottom from time to time.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” I returned the greeting.

She stepped in and Janet popped her head back in from the hallway. She was a spectator in the operating theater.

“Wanna talk?” she asked gently.

“Nnnn…” My tongue froze.  “Only if you do.”  I looked past her and towards Janet: Hopeful. Curious. Slightly jealous that I was opening up to someone else.

My mentor didn’t even need to see where we were looking. “Want some privacy?”

Mercifully, Janet took the hint.  “I’ll close the door. Let you guys talk. Come find me or call for me,” she pointed to the baby monitor.  She closed the door and her footsteps faded.

I allowed myself a questioning glance at the stupid box by my crib. How were we supposed to have privacy if she was going to be close enough to hear us on a monitor?  That could wait for later.

“Where can I sit?” Beouf asked, looking around.  “Toybox? Lean against the wall? That rocking horse in the corner?”

I gave her a half-hearted shrug.  “Wherever you feel comfortable, I guess.’  At least she was asking permission.

“Mind if I sit next to you?”

I looked to my side and imagined her sitting there, just chilling. 

Yeah.

Okay.

“Knock yourself out.”

She let out a groan and lowered herself down to my level, leaning her head back against the crib bars.  “Ow!” she said. “That was a mistake. You should get  a rocking chair or something.”

“Janet doesn’t spend a lot of time in here.”

I wasn’t looking directly at her, but I could almost picture Beouf wanting to ask questions or try to convince me of something. Bedtime stories. Before bed bottles in Janet’s lap. Or I should call her ‘Mommy’.  Wisely, she opted for “Sorry, I don’t have any coffee with me.”

“It’s no big deal,” I monotoned. “I didn’t have time to brew any either.  No biggie.’

My old friend laughed a little at that. “Touche.” A beat, and then she clicked her tongue. The band-aid was about to get ripped off. “So,” she said. “You know about Ivy.”

My nostrils flared.  Just thinking about it made me heat up again.  “Yup.”

“Including the part where I mispronounced her name so many times that she wanted to change it to Ivy?” The smile in her voice was rueful, but still a smile.

“She said it was only once, but yeah.’

“Any questions?” Beouf asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “What the fuck?”

She let out a “Heh,” and stopped herself from full out laughing. We weren’t at school but I was still a ‘kiddo’ to her now. Children cursing was funny to adults but they didn’t want to encourage it.  “You’re gonna have to be more specific, sir.”

“How could her mother do that to her?” I asked. “Ivy didn’t even have a chance! It’s not fair!”

“No,” Beouf agreed. “No it isn’t. Life isn’t fair. Maturosis isn’t fair.”

Full agreement. We’d be disagreeing on the exact definitions and particulars of that sentence, but I completely agreed with her. “I don’t get it.  I just don’t get it.”

“Ivy was about twenty-one or twenty-two when the Zoge’s moved here and Mrs. Zoge took up the assistant position to get her in,” Beouf said.  “I don’t know if she really had early onset Maturosis or they just kept her as a toddler until it kicked in post puberty like most Littles, but she had more or less reached her Developmental Plateau by then.”

I tugged at the bottom of my eyelids so that the sensitive pink parts stung against the open air.  “Melony, please. Stop.  I really don’t have the energy to listen to your beliefs right now.”

“Okay,” she replied quickly enough. “How about I tell you about Mrs. Zoge’s beliefs?”

I looked to Lion and then back to Beouf.  “Huh?”

“Just follow my train of thought,” Beouf took a deep breath.  “Pretend for a second that Maturosis isn’t real.”

“Done,” I said a bit too quickly for her comfort.

Nevertheless she continued.  “Does that change how the Yamatoans treat Littles?”

“Of course not,” I scoffed. “Yamatoans have been doing what they do forever.”  I had the courtesy and strength of character not to emphasize that Maturosis had only been made up for less than two decades.  I knew my mouth wouldn’t be able to pronounce ‘identified’ or ‘diagnosed’ sans the sarcasm.

Beouf was bobbing her head along. “Yeah, it’s practically their religion. All Littles must be taken care of, Maturosis diagnosis or not.  Mandates from Heaven and all that.”

“Yeah, Ivy included that,” I told her. “A lot.”

“Now,” Beouf said. “Close your eyes and keep imagining.”

“What? No!”  The idea that I needed to close my eyes to imagine something was just condescending enough to irritate.

“Just do it, Clark.”

“I can visualize just fine with my eyes open, thank you.”

“Fine,” Beouf said. “Whatever. Pretend you’re not a Little. Pretend you know nothing about Littles.”  I almost made a crack of saying that I was basically any Amazon ever.  Beouf could read me like a book and gently elbowed me. “No backsass this time, mister.”

“I didn’t…” I muttered and settled for mouthing “yet.”

“Now pretend you’re born in Yamatoa.”

“Where the only time I’d see Littles is if they were in diapers,” I droned on. “I get it.”

Melony and I looked at each other. “Do you?  Did you have any Amazon friends growing up? What did your parents teach you about people taller than you?”  She’d probably heard enough from the Littles in her class over the years.

My upper lip curled. “You’re not ‘both sides’-ing this thing.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’m saying people’s upbringing can really mess them up if it’s the wrong one.  Ivy and her parents and her grandparents and on and on all grew up on this island with next to no contact with the rest of the world. They’d never dreamed of a Little being able to function as an adult, even temporarily.”  A beat. “What would you have been like if we had never worked together?”

Free. Married. Working. Untraumatized.  I swatted those intrusive thoughts away. Those did me no good.

“What would you have been like if you’d never met me?” I threw the question back at her.

Mel answered without hesitation. “Unlucky,” she said. “Poorer in spirit. A few less gray hairs to dye, but less happy and not knowing it.”

I fell sideways and let my head hit her lap..  “Yeah,” I said. “I get it. Zoge didn’t know any better.  We’ve been over this. When she pulled back my pants last year, remember?”

“I remember,” Beouf said, patting me on the shoulder. “Did you know about the Heaven stuff? Those beliefs?  She was practically committing blasphemy when she apologized to you the way she did.”

“Yeah, I pieced that out pretty quick.”  My hand went up in the air and I flapped my fingers and thumb together like a sock puppet.  “And other than that one time, and the time she offered to carry me she was very civil to me and restrained. Yada-yada-yada.”

“You’re still holding onto that grudge? From ten years ago?”

“Yup.”

The conversation started to be steered a different way. “Was Ivy clear why they moved when she told you?”

“Yeah,” I said. I continued flapping my hand like the most uninspired and out of sync Muffet. “New law. Mandatory cartoons. The bad kind.”

“Mmmhmm.’  Beouf brushed some of my own hair out of my eyes that had drooped over. “But if Maturosis doesn’t exist and she just wanted to make Ivy stay a baby anyways, why not just make her watch the cartoons?  Why didn’t she start Ivy watching them right out of Kindergarten?”

I huffed and pushed myself back up to my sitting position. “Because she really thought Ivy was a baby.”

“And…?” Beouf prodded me. “What else? You’re smart, big boy.”

“And real babies don’t need hypnotic conditioning to make them act like babies. They just do it naturally.”  I climbed to my bare feet and dug my toes in the carpet out of anxiety.  “So Zoge did the brave thing and ventured out into the wide scary world and got everything she ever wanted.”

Beouf remained seated beside me.“Come on, Clark,” she said, sounding sad.

“What?” I asked. “You said it yourself. It’s very likely Ivy didn’t have early onset Maturosis.  Even by your standards she was probably neglected or abused for years. Abuse coming from a sincerely and deeply held belief is still abuse, Mel”  I gripped onto the crib bars to stop myself from pacing.  “If what Zoge did her daughter is okay, why not just do it to all Littles? Catch us wherever you find us, dress us up like this, and wait for Maturosis to kick in?  Why not if it’s gonna probably happen anyway?”

“That still happens,” she admitted. “Happens less than it used to since doctors started identifying and diagnosing Matur-”

“Good for you and your conscience,” I interrupted her.

“Oooooooooof,” Melony exhaled. “You are hurtin’ extra hard about this today.”

“Yeah,” I said a little louder than we’d been talking. “I am.”

“Why?  Why does Ivy bother you so much?  We’ve got other kids in class who’ve lost a lot, too.”

“Because she never had anything. She never got what I did. Or what Billy or Annie or anybody else at school did.  She never got a life outside of…of…” I waved my arm indicating the nursery. “This!”

My friend copied my gesture, “And you think all of…this…invalidates everything that came before it. And ‘cause Ivy never got some version of the Independent Adult Little lifestyle that makes it worse; puts her in the negatives instead of just canceling it out.”

“Kinda,” I admitted. “Pretty much.”

Beouf tapped her chin in thought for a second and slid her glasses back up her nose. “Question: Keep pretending Maturosis isn’t real.”

Not pretending.  “Uh-huh.”

“What would have happened to Ivy if Mrs. Zoge had just decided to stay in Yamatoa?”

I answered immediately. “Doll. Full doll. Anywhere from being rewritten as a person so that the real Ivy functionally never existed, or full brain death so she’s a drooling blob, or having so many triggers that she loses her free will, or she’s trapped in her own body. Basically what New Beginnings does that nobody wants to admit to.”

“Mmmmmmhmmm…”

“Basically the same thing that would’ve happened to me,” I heard myself say. “If…if…”

Janet’s words that day screamed back into my conscious thought with a new weight: “Yes!  I’ll Adopt him.  He’s mine. I want him.  He’s mine!  Please!”

“If she hadn’t…” I was starting to shake again.

“Can I give you a hug?” Beouf asked.

“Yes please.” 

An Amazonian dragged me into her lap and she squeezed me like I was her Lion, except it didn’t hurt. “Feel better?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s still not fair.  Ivy shouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“Ended up?” I heard Beouf laugh. “Her life isn’t over buddy.  And neither is yours.”  She ruffled my hair and turned me around so that I was sitting in her lap and facing the same direction as her.  “It’s just different from what any of us expected it to be.  Y’all aren’t dead.”

The grim pallor of my mood wasn’t ready to part ways with me.  Being happy, or at least forgiving felt like losing.  Even giving an ‘it’s complicated’ pass felt like less than a draw.  “How do you figure?”

“Because a very smart Little boy that I’m friends with reminded me that my students are not the same thing as their diagnoses.”  Her voice shot up nearly an octave. The top of my head was under her chin and I could still hear the sappy near condescending smile.  Was she cosetting me or teasing me?  Maybe both?

I wriggled out of her grasp and scrambled back to my feet.  She wasn’t trying to restrain me so I managed it.  “It still sucks for her,” I said.  “Do you have any idea how often people mess with her?”

Beouf crossed her arms and shot me a teacher glare that made the bare handful of hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.  “Really? Really, Clark? Do I?”

My cheeks flushed with shame. “Point taken,” I said. “But even if I stopped, it was happening before me.”

Beouf stood up and smoothed out her clothes. “Good thing you two get to stay together.”

My mouth went dry.  Was this a trap?  “Huh?”

“Ivy’s had some friends over the years, but they always graduate. Now that you know more, maybe you can be her friend.”

“How is that gonna stop literally everybody else in class?” I asked.

Beouf smiled softly down at me.  “Only child?”

“Both times,” I joked.

She didn’t laugh, but neither did she scowl or scoff.  “I don’t wanna assign labels or imply relationships that aren’t there, bud, but Mommies and Daddies aren’t the only ones who protect their Little ones.” 

“Hm?”

“Family is family,” Melony told me. “Doesn’t matter where your plateau is.  Doesn’t matter who’s functionally the older sibling and who’s the younger one. Someone comes for my sister, I’m stepping up.”

“Ivy is nowhere near my sister,” I said.

“Yeah, but it sounds more powerful talking about family.”

“You could have just said something about right is right and wrong is wrong,” I grumbled.



She scooped me up and placed me on her hip.  “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t get to say it.” She laughed at her own joke while I pouted.  “Good talk?”

“Good talk,” I said.  “Ready to go see my Mommy?”

Beouf pointed to the baby monitor.  “I think she’s on her way, bubba. Talk’s over.”  The light was blinking again. “Do you wanna tell her what we talked about or not?”

“What do you mean?” I thumbed over towards the monitor. “She’s probably been listening the whole time.”  Frankly, I was just glad she wasn’t staring at us or adding in extra comments during awkward silences.

“Nope,” Mel said.  “You just turned it on.”

“Turned? It? On?” I  suddenly felt like I was being interrogated after downing a tall glass of high proof moonshine with just enough lemonade to mask most of the taste.

The door squeaked open and Janet came in.  “Hey guys. Did you have a good talk?’  She reached over and took me from Beouf.

“Janet Grange!” Beouf said, like she was scolding a puppy dog.  “Did you read the baby monitor instructions at all before you set it up?”

Janet looked just as confused as I.  “What?  What are you talking about? Is it broken? Did it get switched again?”

Beouf snatched it up and pressed a button on top.  The light stopped blinking.  “This is a King Fisher, Janet!  It’s language activated to give the kid some privacy and to encourage them to call for their Mommy or Daddy when they need something!”

The light started blinking again and Beouf pressed the button to turn it off.

“This is both a great safety tool, and a great educational tool,” Skinner had promised.

“Yeah,” Janet said, sounding baffled that this was even being discussed. “I know. Why what’s up?’

“Know what?” I asked. I had no reason to but I kept looking around.

“Janet!” Beouf smacked her head. “Don’t tell me…” she gestured to me.  “Did you forget to tell him?!”

Janet’s eyes darted around wildly trying to remember.  “Did I?’ she asked me.

“Did you what?”

“Clark,” Beouf said, holding up the monitor.  “Say the M-word that she likes you to call her.”

“Mommy?”  I said. 

“That’s right,” she said. “Now it’s recording, and wherever your Mommy has the other end, she’d be able to hear it.”  The faint echoes of Beouf’s voice coming from the living room put truth to it.  “Before you said ‘Mommy’, it was off. Like this.”  She pressed the button and the light stopped blinking.  “That way if you needed to cry or self soothe or just snored a lot, you could have that privacy without waking her up; and if you woke up in the middle of the night and needed a cuddle or a bottle or a diaper change you could just call out to her.”

“I could what?!” I said.

Melony started cackling and doubling over in laughter.  ‘Holy crud! What?! Really?”  She fell to the floor clutching her sides.  “Janet!  Rookie mistake! Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I forgot! That was a really stressful day!” Janet’s face went rose petal pink. “You’ve used it before,” she said to me.  “I thought you knew.’

“When?!” I demanded to know.

“When…?” Her face grimaced searching for polite phrasing. “Um…I wanna say it was last week…? A night or two before you used your rash gel. The green kind…”

The green kind? The masturbation goop?!  That was right after I’d had that weird sex dream turned nightmare and was trying to relieve some tension to get back to sleep. The light had been blinking then, too.  And Janet had taken out the monitor entirely when she’d squirted the green stuff down my crotch.

When would I have said ‘Mommy’? 

Oh no!

“Janet! I was talking in my sleep!”

“You were?!”  Janet opened her mouth, and then her eyes went wide and sorrowful.  “Oh no! Baby! I’m sorry! I thought you’ve been sleeping fine all these nights and you probably thought I’ve been ignoring you this whole time!  I am so sorry!” She started planting kisses on my cheeks like they were money trees. “So, so, sorry!”

I didn’t resist or blanch away from the unasked for affection.  I was too deep in the realization that none of my spiteful sleep deprived declarations of hate had ever made it to her ears.  I’d been keeping myself up for nothing.  Why couldn’t I tell her I hated her to her face, then?

“Talking in his sleep!” Beouf continued to howl.  “Oh my gosh! That’s too funny!” She pounded the floor.  “We’ve probably used it more than he has!”

“Hold on!” Janet realized. “You talk in your sleep?”

“I guess,” I said.

The biggest, dopiest smile spread on Janet’s lips.  “You’ve been calling me ‘Mommy’ in your dreams?”