All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 19: My Only Wish

"I told you already. The pull-up is dry."

Mom gave me a look that suggested she wasn't entirely sure I was telling her the truth. I had barely finished taking my shoes off inside the front door and Mom was already interrogating me about whether I'd had any accidents at school.

I told her that I'd had none. That was a lie, but since it was my sister's pull-up that I had wet, there was no way Mom would be able to know otherwise. But I was also a bad liar, so while there wasn't any proof that I hadn't told Mom the truth, I suspected that she could tell something was amiss.

"Well, let me see the pull-ups I sent with you to school."

I made sure to reach into the section of the backpack where I'd placed the nighttime pull-ups. I'd kept those separate from the pull-ups I'd taken from Emilia to reduce the chances of Mom finding out how I'd been disobeying her potty-training rules. I removed the two dry and unused pull-ups from the backpack and handed them to Mom.

"Let me see the other one."

That gave me a brief jolt of terror. Had Mom sent me with more than two of the nighttime pull-ups to school? I was certain it had been just those two. How could I have lost one?

"Those were the only two you gave me," I said at last.

"Sweetie, I meant I need to see the one you were wearing."

I did not want to strip off to just a pull-up in front of her and my sister.

"Mom," I said in a drawn-out whine. "You didn't need to. Of course it is dry. What do you expect?"

"It wasn't dry this morning. Now let's get your pants off."

That wasn't fair. I couldn't help what happened while I was asleep. Before I could utter a word in protest, Mom was already undoing my belt and buckle. Seconds later my jeans were in a pile on the floor. I avoided eye contact with Mom as she examined the pull-up I had on. Once Mom was satisfied that it was dry like I had said it was, she sent me off to my bedroom to get started on homework.

I hadn't doubted that Mom would make me wear pull-ups for a week, but I had kind of hoped she would at least spare me the indignity of having to parade them around the house for the whole time. I took a seat at my computer and began working on an essay for one of my classes.

I hated not being able to cover up the pull-up. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep myself from constantly glancing down at it. But the pull-up remained wrapped around my waist as a humiliating reminder of how I'd been losing control of my bladder. Every time I tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position in my chair – sitting too long in one spot caused the fabric to make my skin feel uncomfortable – the tell-tale crinkle from the pull-up was there to remind me.

I'm sure there were things I could look up online that might help me figure out what was going wrong with my body. I knew I wasn't the only teenager to ever experience this problem. The pull-up I'd found at school stood as evidence of that. But Mom had those child monitoring – spying was what they actually should be called – apps on my computer and my phone, so any searches about the subject would raise way too many questions.

The nurse at school was a no-go as well. The school district's policy was that parents had to be informed about any visits to the nurse. That policy had gotten put in place after a spat over students being given medications without their parent's knowledge or consent, but the policy extended to parents being informed of any trip to visit the nurse and the reason for that visit.

I struggled to get started with the essay for the history class. It only needed to be five paragraphs. Why did it have to be so hard to write even that much? I'd rather do a whole page of algebra equations. The paper wasn't due for a week, so maybe I could offer to do some of Samantha's math homework in exchange for her ghost writing this assignment.