All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 5: Eureka

Mom was the only one of us enjoying dinner. I unenthusiastically poked away at the taco casserole. Was Mom really capable of making anything other than casserole? Despite the heavy workout from earlier today, I just wasn't feeling all that hungry. Mom's constant babying of Emilia was getting on my already stressed out nerves. I had been potty-trained young enough that I had no recollection of ever wetting myself during the day. I was both relieved that I'd managed to avoid Emilia or Mom noticing and perturbed that it had even happened.

"Choo choo! The spoon train was coming through," Mom cooed at Emilia, who was sitting in a highchair with a bib around her neck.

I caught myself just as I was starting to roll my eyes. It's a spoon, not an airplane, train, or boat.

Mom slid a spoonful of casserole into Emilia's mouth, wiping it against the top of her lip as she pulled the spoon out. Since my three-and-a-half-year-old sister was back in diapers for the time being – most likely through tomorrow night – she wasn't allowed to do anything herself. I'd already had to endure ten minutes of Mom making cutesy faces and noises as she coaxed Emilia into eating her supper.

I didn't get the point of what Mom was doing. So what if Emilia had a couple of accidents at preschool today? Putting her back in diapers and treating her like a baby was still interrupting the progress we had been making toward potty-training. There had been a couple times in the past few weeks where it felt like we might be on the verge of a breakthrough. Now, I worried that Emilia might become too discouraged to even try.

At the beginning of dinner, Emilia had thrown a tantrum about being fed like this, but the threat of another spanking, which would be her second for the day, was now keeping her in line. I watched as Emilia squirmed in her seat. Though I'd changed her less than an hour ago, the diaper was almost certainly wet again, at least a little. Even while potty-training, she'd only been able to last about a half-hour before needing to go. But while in diapers, Emilia was only getting changed about every two hours, which at this point meant she'd remain in the same diaper until her pre-bedtime bath.

As Mom laughed while feeding Emilia, she seemed genuinely happy with babying arrangement. With Mom in as good of a mood as I'd seen her be in the past week, now was my time to strike. The revelation that I hadn't actually deserved the spanking I'd received last night would hopefully be enough to get Mom to do me a favor and allow me to go on my first ever sleepover.

"Mr. Higgins handed back our history quiz grades today. I found out I actually had gotten a perfect grade on that quiz I told you about last night. He told me that he'd just made a mistake when he had posted the results online."

"So?"

That's all she had to say? Not, "I'm sorry I gave you the worst spanking of your life." Not, "What can I do to make it up for you?" This was not getting off to a promising start.

"So... I was thinking you might be able to make it up to me by letting me go to a sleepover at Samantha's place."

Desi would be there as well, but Mom viewed Desi as a bad influence, so having Mom know about that wouldn't increase my odds of success.

"It's not my fault you told me right away about the grade rather than checking with Mr. Higgins first. You need to be more careful next time. And I'll let you go to a sleepover when you were old enough to, not any sooner."

"But he'd never posted my grades wrong before. How was I supposed to know it wasn't right?"

"And he'd never given you a 'C' before. That should have made you want to double check."

Mom wasn't budging. Every last one of my arguments was defeated. I had gone into battle with the perfect plan and couldn't stomach the thought that I would be forced into a retreat.