Chapter 145: Wish List

It was Monday afternoon. As per usual I was chilling at Beouf’s kidney table after downing coffee from a baby bottle. I licked my lips and ran my tongue over the front of my teeth. The taste of caramel syrup almost covered up the aftertaste of the rubber nipple. Almost.

Beouf had poured herself a cup of coffee, but it remained on the table only sipped at. Beouf herself was resetting the visual schedules, putting the little emblems on each students’ vertical strip of velcro. It was a natural consequence of remodeling the Nap Room into a tantrum space and using mats in lieu of cribs. She no longer had that extra time to reset the classroom or enter data.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“No thanks,” Melony said. “Almost done resetting.”

“Maybe I could help next time,” I offered.

Beouf stifled a giggle. “Maybe.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Nothing,” Melony said. “Just, kind of hard to do some of this when you don’t have fingers.”

My eyes flitted down to the nubby stubs the mittens had turned my hands into. She was right, of course. I couldn’t even use my own visual schedule at the moment. During the day, Ivy acted as my fingers since we had the same activity schedule. I was pretty useless without thumbs.

“I bet I could set the chairs on top of the tables,” I said. “So the custodians can vacuum the floor tonight.”

“If it’ll make you feel helpful, sure.”

That instantly killed any motivation I’d had. I didn’t want to feel helpful. I wanted to be helpful.

“Only one week till Winter Break,” I said, filling in the dead air.

Beouf stood up and put her hands on her hips, examining her handiwork. “Yup.”

“Got any plans?” I asked. “For Winter Break? Solstice?”

Finally, after much too long, she rejoined me at the kidney table and took a drink from her mug. “I’ll be throwing my usual Solstice party.” She took another drink. “Lots of coffee. Couple drinks. Try to beat the sun. Y’know. The usual.”

I’d had fond memories of my own Solstice parties. If Unification was the day free Little’s feared most, Solstice was the night we most looked forward to. Traditionally, Solstice was the night when everyone tried to stay up for as long as possible.

Solstice is a celebration against the darkness by staying up through the longest night of the year and partying your ass off. That translates into giants being a potent combination of too drunk, too horny, too tired, and generally too self-absorbed to take interest in us.

The thing was…I wasn’t ‘us’ anymore, was I?

“How is that gonna factor in with the grandbaby?” I asked. “Got a sitter lined up, or something?”

“Naw,” Melony let out a yawn. “But my place is big enough where we can put her down in a quiet room to sleep.” Another yawn. “Might give me a good excuse to nod off, too. At my age, it’s getting to be less fun staying up.” She lifted her glasses up and rubbed her eyes, and stifled a third yawn. “Excuse me.”

“No problem.”

She chugged the rest of her coffee down like the decaf would do something. “What about you?”

“Plans for Solstice? ” I frowned. “That’s…not exactly up to me anymore.”

“Yeah, I know.” My old friend said so quickly as to make me think she hadn’t. “Just does your Mommy have any Solstice plans she’s told you about?”

My eyes shot down to my naked lap. The cartoon monkeys on my otherwise puffy white diaper wouldn’t let me break off eye contact. “Not really. Maybe it’s a surprise. Maybe not.” I tried and failed to hide the creeping melancholy. I’d gotten everything I’d asked for on Saturday, but there were still too many mixed emotions whenever I thought of…honestly anything about my circumstances beyond the here and now. The future was filled with uncomfortable inevitabilities and my past was littered with so many regrets.

“I thought she was stopping the surprises,” Beouf said.

I looked back up. “She is. More or less. Just…” I didn’t have any good words in me right then and speaking these particular feelings out loud would just cause me to spiral. Melony and I had seen each other cry enough times this year. “I dunno. Holiday stuff.”

“Do you want to come to mine?” Beouf asked. “I’d be happy to have you both over that night.”

A guilty buzzing invaded the back of my skull, not unlike how it felt on the playground. I’d never been to one of Beouf’s Solstice parties. Or any event with her outside of work. We’d seen one another outside of work more in the last few months than the previous decade combined. I’d always been too worried about being snatched up for yawning or something; by a guest or family member of Melony’s if not by Melony herself.

I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Sure. If you want.”

“I’d like that.”

I tried to hide my smile. “Me too.” We both let out contented sighs. “What do you want for Solstice?” I was still trying to think of something to get Janet for the occasion. It figured that I would spontaneously decide to add to the list.

Melony blinked and tilted her head. “Hm? Like a present?” She waved the idea off. “You don’t have to get me anything, bud. Just come and hang out next week.” Then, like the wonderful well-meaning hypocrite she was, she asked, “What about you? Any toys or books or anything? Maybe a friend for Lion or something?”

Then, like the persistent bear poking fool I’ve always been, I said, “A training potty?”

Beouf hung her head with her palms flat on the table. “Clark…”

“I’m potty trained!” I insisted. “Or I can be re-potty trained!” Ooof. I didn’t like how that sounded on the way out. “Take me to the bathroom now. I bet I can go within five minutes.”

“I just changed you about twenty minutes ago, honey.”

“So? It’s not like you change me right after my bladder fills up and empties or whatever.”

Another sigh, more exasperated than tired. “If I check you right now, will you be dry?”

I honestly had no idea off the top of my head. I’d gotten so used to letting everything out as soon as I felt the slightest discomfort and the diaper was absorbent enough that it was hard to tell without squeezing my own crotch. That would be a bad look. “Hear me out-” I said, weakly.

Melony didn’t hear me out. She stood up and walked over to her desk and opened the bottom drawer. I held my breath and watched her riffle through file folder after file folder. When she returned she had two folders. One much thicker than the other. She slid the bigger one across to me.

“This is Taylor’s,” she said. “The one Little girl who data suggests that she was ready for potty training.”

I chewed on my tongue. “The one who got sent to New Beginnings.”

Pain flashed on Melony’s face. “Yeah. I tried to send this to them. They weren’t interested.” She gestured. “Look at it.”

I opened the folder up. Most of it was pure gibberish to me. Melony’s handwriting was atrocious, and the typed up notes were all so abbreviated and encoded that I couldn’t make heads or tales out of it. I was familiar with educational technical talk but this was on a whole other level. “What am I looking for?”

Melony leaned forward and tapped a tabbed divider. “Flip over to here. Toileting.” Her voice was whisper soft; just loud enough so that I could hear her regret carried with her breath.

The first few pages were grids consisting of dates and what appeared to be hand drawn smiley faces. Correction. They were all frowny faces. Some with little teardrops drawn in. Crying faces. “What are these?”

“Each of those dates lines up with a school day last year,” Melony said. “One face for every time Taylor got her diaper changed.”

I skimmed along the drawings, finding it hard to believe what I was seeing. As the data went on the frowny faces got more and more numerous. “Five times a day?” My nose wrinkled involuntarily. “Just here? How is that ready for potty training?”

My mentor tapped the paper. “They’re frowny faces because that’s how she looked when we were changing her.” Her face suddenly matched the expressions on the paper. “I’ve never seen a Little with Maturosis be so consistently mortified at having an accident. Or completely able to function in wet pants.”

I should have been angry. I was more mystified. If the data was accurate, she was in a bad way for weeks. I flipped the page over. Make that months. “What did the others think?”

Beouf shrugged. “They didn’t notice. Taylor was always very discreet about asking. She’d beg and beg and beg. Poor dear. Most Littles are embarrassed to need diapers again, but they get over it.

A hot flash spread across my face. “Because you won’t let us try to go,” I half-snarled.

Beouf didn’t flinch or look up from the folder. “Because you’re trying too hard to not be yourselves. A toddler can only play house for so long before they get bored.” She added “The shame tends to go away when you realize nobody is making fun of you for it. You just do what comes naturally. Taylor? We started changing her more often because if we didn’t she’d be crying all dang day.” She clicked her tongue and shook her head slowly to herself. “Honestly? I think she’d have done better in your class. You probably could’ve potty trained her.”

I didn’t know if her words felt like a clap on the back or a slap to the face.
She flipped through a few more pages. “Here are some doctor’s notes for days she missed. Constipation. UTI’s. Girl was holding it in like needing diapers was the worst thing in the world.”

It is.

It was.

I thought it was.

Used to be…

Beouf closed the folder and slid the other one. “Here’s yours,” she said. “It’s more qualitative than quantitative data, but you’ve given me less incidences to work with.”

I read through her notes. They included the first day in her class when I had been asking to go to the bathroom, yet made to mess my pants and wait to get changed, and a few updates after that with notes saying “no new complaints or developments”. Then there was a large gap of time. Then another entry corresponding to one and only time I’d been allowed to sit the porcelain throne in class. “Showed some initial interest in toileting, but quickly lost interest without immediate praise. Experiencing pressure from similarly developed peers.” The other notes mentioned me bringing it up occasionally after school.

“See?” I pointed to the entry. “Billy and Tommy and the others were making fun of me!”

“I know.” Beouf said, flatly. “You and your friends are sneaky, mister. Just not as sneaky as you think.”

“That’s why I stopped trying to use the bathroom, though.”

She closed the folder. “Would you think a child was ready if playing with their friends was more important to them than stopping and using the toilet?”

“I…I…I’m…” The words wouldn’t come to me. When you phrased it like that…but that was just backwards Amazon bullshit. A pre-made determination looking for proof. “That’s not fair!”

“It’s not,” Beouf agreed. “But your block tower is all tipped upside down. You’re not as good at listening to your body as you used to be, and you don’t feel shame like you used to either.”

“That’s because… I’ve gotten…used to it,” I croaked out through a clenched jaw.

“Do you think a big boy would get used to it?”

For as much as she was my friend, Beouf was still a brick wall in so many horrible ways. I folded my arms on the table and buried my head in them so that I wouldn’t scream at her. This was a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have expected or hoped for anything else. As pleasant as it could be at times, my life was doomed to being forced to pretend to be a dumb pants filling toddler in a below preschool level daycare class. It had been that way since that first accident and was always going to be that way. Everything else was just me struggling with accepting that.

Acceptance isn’t the same thing as happiness, though. I just wanted to be happy.

I felt her hand come down and rub my back gently. She’d moved around and taken a seat beside me. “Shhhh,” Beouf said. “Look at me, baby. Clark. Look at me.”

I took three deep breaths and stared down at the darkness contained within my folded arms. My breathing was steady enough. My throat wasn’t so clenched that I couldn’t talk. No tears were looming in that second. I looked up at her.

“You are not your Maturosis diagnosis,” she said slowly and deliberately. “You are still the wonderful, clever, precocious Little guy I met all those years ago. You’re just a different version of you. You’re still creative. You’re still smart. You’re still a teacher.”

I scowled. “Am not.”

“Are too.”

“In case you didn’t notice,” I gestured to myself. “My spot in the yearbook isn’t going to be under staff this year.“

My friend rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Once a teacher, always a teacher. You’re a leader, an entertainer, and a salesman. You find creative ways to present things that really stick with people and influence their thoughts.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

“Wanna bet?” Beouf laughed. “Do you think Billy and Tommy and them gave me half the trouble before you were enrolled? This has easily been the most stressful school year of my life.”

“More than Amy?” I asked, sitting up taller and prouder before I knew what I was doing.

She hid her smile behind her hand. “Yes, Clark. More than Amy.”

I leaned in. “How so?”

“Why do you think I sent bad students to your place all the time? You’re really good at tricking people into buying in and going along with the program. That’s like seventy…eighty-five percent of a teacher’s job some days.”

Oh gods, my ego! “So…?”

“Amy was always a loaner,” Beouf said. “You’re a builder. You build people up. You direct them. You influence them.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m a teacher,” I said, determined to bring the mood back down, “Lots of kids do that.”

Beouf set her classes down and rubbed her temples. “Clark, do you think I see you as a child?”

My posture slumped back down. “Yes.”

“Are children just blank slates? Stupid little dolls that do whatever their Mommies and Daddies and teachers tell them to do?”

“No.”

“Then why do you think I see you like that?” she asked me. “Just because you need more help than you used to, doesn’t mean you lack the qualities that made you a good teacher. A baby is just a person who needs time to figure stuff out.”

“So you’re saying I’ll never figure stuff out,” I quipped.

Beouf’s nostril’s flare and her eyes widened. Her lips retreated inside her mouth. I was pretty sure she was cursing to herself. “Tell you what,” she said. “You want to get me a Solstice present? Prove me right.”

“About me being a baby?” I thumbed over to the tantrum room. “I can go shove something up my nose, I guess.”

She laughed again, surprised. “About you still being a teacher deep down, dum-dum. See if you can’t teach your classmates some good habits so that they actually play in the afternoon instead of hiding behind the big oak tree saying nasty things and making kissy faces.” Damn. I really wasn’t as sneaky as I thought. “Unless,” Beouf smirked. “you don’t think you can.”

A different kind of buzzing rang out from my skull.

“You’re playing me, aren’t you?”

She put her glasses back on. “Mmmmhm!”

“You know I’m too competitive to turn this challenge down.”

She flashed all of her front teeth with the grin that followed. “Uh-huh.”
“And if I do it, you’re probably going to find a way to justify it as a sign that I’m just a big toddler or something, aren’t you?”

Her smile faded to something more professional, but there was still mischievous joy in her eyes. “That is a distinct possibility.”

“And if it sticks, it’s going to make your life a whole lot easier, won’t it?”

She tittered like a witch that had caught me a trap. “It definitely will.”

“But it would make you happy?”

“In more ways than one.”

“And it would count as a present to you? For Solstice”

Her hand laid itself on my shoulder. “It would be a better present than all the gift certificates I get from students’ parents every year combined.”

Damnit. When had I gone so soft? I’d gone from wanting to make Beouf cry, to wanting to make her happy. Now she was asking me to turn my bratty disciples from the Adult Little League into the Helper’s Association. It really was to laugh.

Fuck it. I liked Melony better than I liked Annie, Billy, Chaz, and Tommy, anyways. That and if I was going to be stuck like this for the rest of my life I might as well find new ways to entertain myself. Trying to undo months of my own brainwashing could be a fun challenge.

“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Beouf was already writing something in my file. “I know.”