All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 31: Pull-up Twins

I continued holding Lisa's hand as her meandering story arrived at its conclusion and transitioned into a lengthy, silent pause. Lisa had rarely stopped to take a breath as she went through an almost monotone recitation of the events that had led up to her coming to live with her aunt and uncle earlier this year.

Never before had I had someone share something so deeply personal with me. I'd known my closest friends — Samantha and Desi — since our days together in kindergarten. We of course had confided in each other as young girls are prone to do, swapping tales about our crushes, both real and fantasy. Who we had kissed. Who we wanted to kiss. And the creeps we wanted nothing to do with. Had I been asked before today, I would have been inclined to say that I knew everything there was to know about my friends. Now I wondered how superficial our connections were, and if there were parts sunk beneath the surface that had yet to emerge despite all our years together. I thought about Samantha, and how, in my quest to take one of her younger brother's pull-ups during the sleepover, I had come across her pranking him into wetting himself in his sleep. What other secrets do my friends keep?

After the initial uncertainty of how to respond to Lisa during the first several minutes of her tale, I ended up grabbing hold of her hand, our fingers intertwined. Her grip got stronger as the story reached its climax, as she described the night she nearly killed her mother, my fingers squeezed painfully by her hands. I didn't dare interrupt with the many questions her story inspired, and she didn't leave me with any opportunity to do so.

I wasn't sure what had shocked me most about Lisa's story. The death of her father and younger sister in a car crash. How she had never once in her life been fully toilet trained. Her parent's abuse and torment over her incontinence. How she had barely managed to escape her mother's grasp to come live with her aunt and uncle. Or the fact that she told this entire story without shedding a single tear.

All my problems seemed to pale by comparison. Mom was strict, but her rules were also clear, and you could count on her to follow them both fairly and scrupulously. As much as I disliked some of Mom's methods, her intentions nonetheless had me and my sister's best interests at heart. My mind darted forward to thinking about the next step that Mom was planning on taking to resolve all the toileting issues once and for all, for me and my sister. True, the laxatives had been my idea, but she had gone ahead with buying them and the plan was to try them tomorrow. Mom would make me and Emilia wear diapers or pull-ups when she thought we needed them, but she was still intent on doing what she could to get us to no longer need that protection.

With Lisa finished with her story, I didn't make any attempt to fill her in on any more of the details of my toileting struggles. I didn't want to minimize what Lisa had experienced by bringing up my own minor problems.

"You're the first person I've told this to, I mean, besides my aunt and therapist," Lisa said unprompted.

I took a look at the clock after releasing her hand. We'd talked for over an hour, and it was nearly time for dinner, though Lisa's aunt hadn't made any mention of it yet. And my pull-up was wet. I had been so engrossed in her story that I had managed to completely ignore my bladder. That made it three accidents today. Twice at Lisa's house and then once previously in the morning when I hadn't been able to get to the toilet because mother had been taking a bath.

At least Lisa had extra pull-ups for me to change into. The initial mix of embarrassment and awkwardness of having Lisa be aware of my bladder problems had gone away, and I didn't feel any discomfort letting her know about the accident.

"Can I have another pull-up? I need to get changed again."

"Of course. I... need to get changed as well."

Lisa grabbed two of the cupcake pull-ups from the drawer, surprising me since she had mentioned how they weren't as reliable for her.

"We can be twins for a bit," she said. "You can have the bathroom first to get changed. It's better to change in there so that there aren't any leaks onto the carpet."