Stumbling Blocks (Parts 10 - 13 Updated)
Date Published: October 12, 2022, 11:01pm
Written By: steadyNoon
Teenage sisters Anna and Taylor have a lot of growing up to do in a short amount of time. It’s not a race, but does it matter who gets there first?
All characters 18+
PART 1
The morning light shone through the kitchen window onto Carrie’s white sweatshirt. Her sleeves were slightly rolled up as she used a spatula to flip three pieces of French toast on the skillet in front on her. Looking over to the stove clock, she saw the time was 8:56am. She put down the spatula and began to wash her hands. It was time to wake the girls up.
Carrie had been the only caretaker of her little cousins, Anna and Taylor, for about three months now. Ever since their mother had picked up and left town under dubious circumstances, there had been quite a shuffle within their family to find someone to take care of them. Normally, two girls their age would be ready to leave home on their own, or at least be responsible to babysit and take care of themselves. But Anna and Taylor, as the whole family knew, would require a little extra push.
Carrie walked towards the end of the kitchen and made her way up the stairs. Coming to the first door on the right, she gently knocked on the door and entered.
“Taylor,” she said, “time to wake up, sweetheart.” Carrie nimbly walked across Taylor’s room, careful not to step on any of the toy dinosaurs or Legos scattered across the floor. She came to Taylor’s bed, covered in a thin purple canopy and lifted it. Carrie rustled the eighteen-year old and said, “Breakfast is almost ready, come on downstairs.” Taylor flipped on her side, tightly gripping her green stuffed animal, a Brontosaurus. Carrie began to exit the room and head back down the hall.
Moving past the bathroom and reaching the next door on the right, Carrie knocked and said “Anna, time to wake up. Breakfast time.” Carrie navigated the equally disorganized floor, covered in dolls and tea time accessories. The nineteen year old Anna did not have a canopy setup like her little sister did, but instead had an all-white bed frame with a galloping unicorn on the head post. Carrie lightly rubbed Anna shoulder and said “I made French toast, come downstairs.” Anna groggily opened her eyes and yawned, snuggling a stuffed white polar bear. Carrie made her way out of Anna’s room and towards the stairs.
Back down in the kitchen, Carrie opened up a cupboard and pulled out three plates. She walked towards the kitchen table and laid out a wide, nondescript white plate at the head of the table. To her left, she laid out a smaller, blue and yellow Cinderella princess plate. On the opposite side of the table, she laid out the third and final, red and white checkered, Minnie Mouse plate. Heading back to towards cupboard, Carrie reached into a drawer and pull out matching silverware for the breakfast table: a stainless steel fork and knife, and two smaller, thicker gripped, pairs of silverware each themed for Cinderella and Minnie Mouse.
Anna and Taylor were both as happy and healthy as any other girls their age, but they were quite… immature. “Works in progress,” or “sheltered,” or as Carrie would like to describe them. There were many reasons why they were like this, but the single largest reason came down to their upbringing. The girls were raised in this rural, Midwestern house their entire life by their single mother. Often sequestered away from the rest of their family with limited visits, it appeared obvious, from the outside looking in, that their mother simply stopped putting in the effort to raise them at a young age. When they should’ve been going to school and attending summer camp, Anna and Taylor were being homeschooled and played in the forests by their home. When they should’ve been making friends and learning from role models, they only had each other and the same comfortable kid shows they had watched for years. When they should’ve been out exploring the world and meeting boys, they fell deeper and deeper into feedback loops of the same childish toys, games and media they had always known.
The creaking of the stairs alerted Carrie to the girls coming into the kitchen. Taylor walked down first, wearing a lavender t-shirt and pajama pants, holding her dinosaur stuffie in one hand while rubbing her eye with the other. Her long dark hair was frizzed and covered her face, but after tucking it behind her ears, her soft green eyes were drawn to the sizzling breakfast on the stovetop. Anna followed right behind her, wearing a heart-covered pink and white pajama outfit, holding her own polar bear stuffie. Her light blonde hair was tamed in a ponytail, and her piercing blue eyes stay focused on the stairs, carefully watching so she wouldn’t trip on her descent.
“Good morning girls,” Carrie said in a singsong voice. “How did you both sleep?”
“Good,” Anna mumbled. “Good,” Taylor echoed, mimicking her sister’s response.
“And did Robbie and Alfie sleep well too?” Carrie asked.
Reflexively, both girls pulled their stuffed animals close to them and nodded.
Carrie knew she shouldn’t keep encouraging the stuffed animals, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself. She was obligated to teach these girls the ways of the world and how to grow up, but at the same time, she found her own maternal instincts starting to develop by caring for them. Carrie herself was only twenty-eight years old, and hoped to be an actual mother one day. Part of why she elected to leave the city she lived in to take care of Anna and Taylor was to see what it might be like to be a parent. She felt she was doing a great job of keeping them fed, safe, and on the right track to becoming “big girls.” However her biggest, and arguably most important challenge, had still yet to be solved.
“Alright, before we get situated,” Carrie said, reaching for a black notebook planner on the counter. “Let’s do a morning check.”
Carrie brought a black planner, titled in gold lettering “Accountability”, to the kitchen table. She flipped through the initial pages, all diligently and abundantly annotated with notes, written inside boxes representing the days of the week. Words and phrases such as “PROGRESS” and “NEEDS WORK” were common on the first pages. Different symbols were adorned in the margins, such as the word “SODA” encircled and crossed through in a negative pattern, as well as “7 HOURS, NEW RECORD”, followed by exclamation points and hearts.
“All right, how are we looking this morning?” Carrie asked.
Anna and Taylor began to undo the strings of their pajama pants and brought them down to their knees. Anna was wearing a pink and purple pullup, covered in stars and flowers. Taylor was wearing a much thicker white diaper, with two blue tabs on either side.
Carrie walked over to Anna and bent down to waist level. “Ok Anna, any accidents last night? Let’s see.” Carrie peaked inside the front of the pullup while Anna stared out the window and rolled her eyes.
“All dry! Great job! That caps you off for the week at one wet night. You’re doing great, honey.”
Anna smiled confidently. “Thank you,” she said. She began to pull her pajama pants back up and take a seat at the kitchen table in front of the Minnie Mouse plate.
Carrie moved her way over to Taylor.
“Ok sweetie, how are you doing this morning?”
Taylor’s white diaper was soaked yellow near her crotch, and everyone in the room was able to immediately tell with a passing glance. Still, Carrie thought it was important to talk through both the wins and the “mornings for improvement” with the girls.
Taylor’s head hung low and she said, “I think… uh… I think I’m… not dry.”
“Yeah?” Carrie said soothingly, reaching for the wet padding on Taylor’s diaper. It didn’t take much effort to confirm.
“Well, that’s ok. It looks like…” Carrie reached back for the accountability planner, and tallied up a few dates with her finger. “That’s only four wet mornings for you this week! You’re improving!” Carrie put her hand up for a high five. Taylor made a half-smile, and gave a meek high five back to her older cousin in acknowledgement. She pulled up her pajama pants and took her seat near the Cinderella plate at the kitchen table. As the girls got situated, Carrie took her pen and wrote underneath the Saturday box, “Anna – Dry”. Underneath, she wrote “Taylor – morning for improvement”.
Carrie’s most immediate concern with the girls wasn’t just the bedwetting, but rather that both Anna and Taylor were truly incontinent.Well, semi-continent.Carrie thought.It’s complicated.
The most notable shortcoming of Anna and Taylor’s upbringing was that at some point, their mother simply stopped trying to potty train them. With no outside influences or other parent to push back, their mother allowed the wearing and using of diapers to become simply a normal part of daily life. This of course became a hugely limiting factor in their ability to grow outside of the context of their home, and precluded them from so many of the opportunities they needed to have to fully grow up. The family had long speculated why their mother would allow this. Was it too difficult to teach both girls at the same time? Did she condone it on purpose? Once Carrie became their primary caregiver, she had taken the girls to the doctor to see if they had anything physically wrong with them, but they were in perfect health. They simply just had to start their training late.
Despite their current age and greater understanding, the girls and Carrie had their own struggles in the initial phases of potty training. It was hard to juggle constant diaper changes between running errands, traveling to visit family, educational visits throughout the state, and all the other activities Carrie had been leading them through to show Anna and Taylor the world around them.
Carrie brought the skillet full of French toast to the table and began dropping slices onto each of the plates. “Are you guys excited for today? Did you think of anything to add to list?”
Taylor began to smile as she reached for her fork. “The pony game…” She said slyly.
“No,” Carrie chuckled, “what did I say about that? No more video games for you. When you’re in the electronics section I want you just getting the basics: chargers, batteries, phone cases. Don’t get distracted.”
“Anna,” Carrie continued, putting down the skillet back on the stove and moving to her own seat, “anything else you thought to buy?”
Anna lifted her head up in thought. “Can we get an inflatable pool for the backyard? It’s almost summer time.”
“Yeah!” Taylor chimed in.
“No,” Carrie said, slightly more exasperated. “We’re going to justget the essentialstoday. We’re not made of money, alright!” She rustled Anna’s hair.
“When we go to Target today, I don’t want you guys getting distracted. Part of being a ‘big girl’ is doing this busy work. And doing it fast and accurately.” Carrie added.
The girls nodded and went back to eating their French toast.
“We have to keep this in mind this summer. You both have come a long way this past spring and I’m very proud of you,” Carrie’s voice drifted into a more serious tone as she finished her thought. “But when you go away to college in the fall, I’m not going to be there.” She paused to let her the weight of her words sink in.
“But if we need you, we can call you, right? The dorms will have phones?” Anna asked, her mouth stuffed full of French toast.
“Yes, you can call me. Onyourphones, silly. The dorms don’t have phones. But I won’t drive all the way up there to help you do your laundry!” Carrie laughed.
Taylor lifted her head with a perplexed look on her face. “Wait… so when we’re at college, whoisgoing to do the laundry?”
“Who do ya think, honey?” Carrie said, rolling her eyes.
“Oh,” Taylor said quietly.
“We have a lot of ground to cover in the next three months,” Carrie sighed. She stood up from her seat and headed towards the sink.
Filling up her glass, Carrie asked “Anna, since you’re still dry, do you mind wearing that pullup when we run errands? You’ve been doing well with the accidents, we might as well not waste a diaper.”
“Ok, fine by me,” Anna replied, without looking away from her plate.
“Great, just remember to use the bathroom before we go.”
“Taylor, sweetheart,” Carrie added, “I’ll change you after I clean up the kitchen. Is that alright with you?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Taylor said in a high pitched, hushed tone. She knew that Carrie was subtlety asking her was whether or not she had any other “surprises” in her diaper that she’d be uncomfortable sitting in for the foreseeable future. Since potty training began, Taylor had been lagging behind her older sister, and despite her rapid improvement, she was developing a strong sense of embarrassment to her accidents.
“Good, now I think we’ll head out to run errands around eleven. If you guys want to watch cartoons or play in the living room, we leave in about an hour and a half.”
Anna and Taylor finished up the final scraps of their breakfast and put down their silverware. They pushed their chairs out and made a dash for the living room.
“I’m putting on Nick Jr!” Taylor yelled.
“No, I’m putting on the Lion King!” Anna replied, chasing after her.
Taylor rounded the corner of their kitchen and entered the living room, leaping for the remote on the couch. She grabbed it and extended it towards the TV.
Following behind, Anna quickly grabbed the remote out of Taylor’s hand and held it close.
“Hey! C’mon! I got here first,” she grumbled, trying to pry the remote from her older sister.
“It’s mine now, you can watch after we get home later.” Anna said.
Taylor leaned back and pouted. “That’s not fair. We’re not even going to finish the Lion King before we leave. We just watched it last week too.”
She jumped off the couch in a huff and walked towards the color coded, plastic buckets of toys next to the TV. She laid down on her stomach in front of the boxes and pulled on a large yellow bucket, full of toy cars. Already putting Anna out of her mind, Taylor began studying intently which cars she wanted to line up for a hypothetical race.
Anna watched her sister from an elevated position on the couch and saw the top of her thick white diaper poking out of her pajama pants.
Geez, what a baby, Anna thought. She pointed the remote to the TV and turned it on. She followed the instructions to eventually start the Lion King.
As the opening credits began to play, Anna leaned back and relaxed on the couch. She could hear Taylor below making car sounds effects and vague narrations in her pretend race. Anna began to focus intently on the TV screen. She scratched her cheek, and absentmindedly let her hand linger near face. Engrossed in the movie, Anna didn’t even notice as she began sucking her thumb.
A few moments later, Anna and Taylor jumped at the sound of Carrie sharply whistling from the kitchen.
“Anna,” Carrie said firmly, motioning her thumb out of her mouth as a reminder.
“Sorry,” Anna said meekly.
Carrie shook her head and returned to cleaning the kitchen. Anna sighed and turned her attention back to the movie, keeping her hands by her side.