CHAPTER SIXTEEN -- EMILY’S BIG DAY: MAKING IT ALL PERMANENT
Emily thought his capacity for shock had reached its limits, but when he turned the corner into the kitchen, his knees buckled once again when he saw the highchair.
“Mommy, no . . . ” he bleated around his pacifier. “Please don’t make me . . . ” He tried to plant his feet and stop moving forward, but he had no fight left at this point, and Melissa and Dr. Thurman, poised on either side of him, easily lifted his arms and pulled him forward, between them, with little difficulty.
Standing before the highchair--which was white with a lavender seat and trim and which was obviously sized to fit him--Emily’s heart raced a million miles an hour. He’d told himself, all throughout this process, that while things like breastfeeding and wearing pull-ups were strange for a boy his age, they were just part of his therapy. But this? A highchair? A highchair was for babies, period. No way around that. He continued to mewl into his pacifier as Dr. Thurman removed the highchair’s tray and Melissa helped him climb up a small set of lavender plastic stairs so that he could sit in the seat of the highchair. Once he was in, Dr. Thurman wasted no time pulling restraining straps over his shoulders and buckling them into the seat below, just between Emily’s legs, which were spread wide by his diaper. There was no way he was going anywhere now, and when his Mommy pushed the plastic tray back into place, his arms were pinned beneath the tray. Then, once the small plastic steps were moved away, Emily’s feet dangled in the air, about a foot off the floor. He could not stand, raise his hands, or even move around within his seat. Any movement he made served only to make his diaper crinkle loudly. He was trapped, and he’d be trapped until one of these women decided to release him. The humiliation of it all was too much to bear: Emily was hyperventilating and sobbing, tears streaming down his red, puffy face.
“There we are,” Dr. Thurman said with a cool smile, “Baby’s first tantrum in her high chair.”
“Mommy!” Emily blurted, spitting out her pacifier, which landed with a clunk on the white plastic highchair tray. “Mommy! Please don’t let her do this, Mommy! I’ll be good . . . I’ll . . . I’ll do anything, Mommy, please, please, please just let me out of here!” Emily’s spirits soared for a moment as Melissa rushed to his side.
“I know you’re going to be good,” Melissa said, sliding Emily’s pacifier back in his mouth. “That’s exactly what Mommy and Dr. Thurman are here to help with.” As Melissa spoke, she grabbed a plastic strap that Dr. Thurman handed her and attached it to Emily’s pacifier. “And Mommy knows this is hard. Mommy knows today is going to be hard and that probably the next few months are going to be very, very hard for Mommy’s special baby girl. But we have to work together, sweetie, not just to treat you like Mommy’s special baby girl, but to get you thinking that way too. We have a lot of nasty ego and pride to destroy, don’t we? Yes, we do.” As Melissa talked down to Emily in her cloying voice, she wrapped the strap around the back of his head and cinched it tight. Emily’s pacifier was now stuck in his mouth, no matter what.
“Now,” Dr. Thurman said to Emily, “you just sit there, baby girl. The sooner you get used to not talking, and to not being talked to directly, the better.”
Emily’s highchair was positioned so that he had a clear view of the kitchen table. As he bleated in frustration behind his unmovable pacifier and kicked his legs in the air, Dr. Thurman stepped out to the living room and returned with her briefcase. After she and Melissa sat down at the kitchen table, Dr. Thurman pulled out a large stack of what looked to be legal forms.
“First thing’s first,” Dr. Thurman said, sliding the top form over to Melissa. “Name change. Say goodbye--forever--to Michael Nicholas Harper and say hello to Emily Nicole Harper.” Tears of joy filled Melissa’s eyes as she signed her name on the form.
With smooth, almost mechanical efficiency, Dr. Thurman reclaimed the signed form, stowed it in her briefcase, and passed Melissa the second one. “Gender change,” she said. “Emily Nicole is no name for a boy, and once you sign this, your child will no longer, legally, be a boy.”
Remembering the times in the past when his Mommy had balked at the idea that he was a girl, Emily held out some ember of hope here. Maybe his Mommy would come to her senses at last. He was thrilled as Melissa paused before signing the form and said, “I do have one problem with this form.”
“Oh?” Dr. Thurman asked.
“I hate the idea that it’s a gender change,” Melissa said. “I hate that it implies that Emily was ever a boy, when you and I both know that that’s not the case.”
Dr. Thurman grinned. “I’m proud of you, Melissa.”
“I couldn’t have gotten to this point without your help.”
“I just had a feeling about you,” Dr. Thurman said, “For years I’ve been looking for the right kind of daughter with the right kind of mother, a mother who would really, truly, deeply understand my work and how far it needs to be taken.”
Melissa said nothing, smiled at Dr. Thurman, and signed the form.
“Next up,” said Dr. Thurman, taking the signed gender change form and passing Melissa a different form, “is school withdrawal. This states that Emily will be withdrawn from Central High School immediately, and that you will be homeschooling her in a manner that is appropriate for her age and maturity.”
In his high chair, Emily shouted into his pacifier and kicked his legs in anger. He tried, with all his might, to use his arms to push up on the highchair tray that they were pinned under, but none of this actions had any effect. He was exhausting himself with rage, but to anyone else in the room, he just looked, and sounded, like a toddler having a tantrum about being put in his high chair.
“Was this hard to get approval for?” Melissa asked as she signed the doc-ument.
“Oh no,” Dr. Thurman laughed. “Not at all. This little girl’s teachers all agreed that high school was too much for her and applauded your decision to remove Emily. Every single one of her teachers was happy to sign and attest that high school demanded a level of maturity that Emily was incapable of.”
Emily continued to howl and thrash ineffectually in his highchair. They could not possibly be serious! They were taking school from him? School? Without school, how was he ever supposed to . . .
“No prom,” Dr. Thurman said, looking icily at Emily. “No dating. No driver’s license. No homecoming football games. No SATs, no ACTs, no college admissions. No graduation. No senior prank. Not for our baby girl.”
Emily was safe and secure in his high chair, but internally, he felt like he was dropping, falling, sinking, watching his old life get smaller and smaller as it receded in the distance.
“Isn’t this for the best, sweetie?” Melissa asked him. “Think about how miserable school made you, and how hard we tried with organizational planners and tutors and extra help. Now, none of that matters. You’ll be here at home with me, twenty-four-seven.”
If either woman cared that Emily was sobbing profusely, neither seemed to acknowledge it. Dr. Thurman simply continued her process. “There’s one more legal form, but we’ll save that for last. Right now, we’ll move on to the contracts from A Caring Place, the doc-uments that lay out the rules for Emily’s therapy, the rules that must be followed if --”
“That will be followed,” Melissa said, with certainty.
Dr. Thurman laughed. “The rules that will be followed if you and Emily are to remain my clients.”
The doctor closed the folder containing the legal doc-uments and placed it neatly onto the table. She then reached for a large purple binder, which had a paper insert on the front containing the name and logo for A Caring Place, and opened it up, flipping the pages until she found the section she desired. She cleared her throat and began to scan the page in front of her.
“Alright, I won’t read these directly from the page, since this doc-ument is filled with lots of legalistic and technical jargon, but I’ll be sure to summarize everything as best as I can. Emily, as someone who is now enrolled in A Caring Place’s ‘Intensive Regression-Therapy Program’, you will be given a list of rules and general guidelines that you will need to follow at all times. Failing to do so will result in any number of disciplinary actions. The terrible spanking I just gave you is one of the lighter punishments on the list, so I advise that you listen to me, and listen well. These rules will govern your day to day life for the foreseeable future. You will be expected to follow them at all times, not just to the letter, but in their spirit as well. They are as follows:
Rule #1: Your Mother and I are now completely in charge of every aspect of your care, and we will be making all of your decisions for you, regardless of your consent. From this moment on, you are done making any decisions for yourself. You will do everything we tell you without backtalk or complaints, and anyone we put in charge of you will have authority over you as well. You will go where we tell you to go. Stay put where we tell you to stay put. You will eat what, and when, we tell you to eat, sleep when we tell you to sleep, wear what we tell you to wear, and do it all without question. You are no longer an independent teenager. You never were. You are now--have always been and will always be--a fragile, dependent toddler girl who must do whatever she is told, no questions asked.
Rule #2: As per your new infantilized status, you are no longer permitted to speak like an adult under any circ-umstances. From now on you will do most of your communicating through a mixture of body language, crying, and simplistic, one word responses. From this point forward, speaking in sentences of any kind will be strictly prohibited, and you will only be allowed to speak if you are responding to a question someone has asked you. Even then, you may only respond to them with one word answers, and absolutely nothing longer than two-syllables is allowed. You will also lisp whenever you speak, and try to sound as close to how a real baby would as you possibly can.
Rule #3: From now on, the toilet is strictly forbidden. When you feel the need to relieve yourself, you will do so in your diaper, just like any infant. You are also not permitted to remove your diaper under any circ-umstances, and diaper changes will be carried out either by your mother, or anyone else who she deems fit. You will also never be allowed to ask for a diaper change yourself. Instead, you will be given routine diaper checks by your mother, and you will be changed entirely at her discretion.
Rule #4: As of now, you no longer have any right to privacy. Nor do you have any kind of adult sexuality. As a diapered baby girl, you will be given many diaper changes where people will have access to parts of your body that you may consider taboo for other people to see or touch. Even though you are currently locked up and unable to gain pleasure through physical stimulation, it bears repeating that as a little girl you will have no sexual thoughts or urges whatsoever. If you ever try to respond to routines such as your diaper changes or bathtime in a sexual manner, or if you try to initiate physical contact with anyone or anything in a sexual way, you will be punished severely for it.
Rule #5: Unless someone in charge of you is holding your hand and giving you express permission to walk on two legs, you are no longer allowed to walk or stand up on your own. Instead, you will crawl around on your hands and knees just like a real infant would.
Rule #6: Your mother will control all of the media you consume from now on and make sure it is age-appropriate for a baby girl. You will no longer be allowed to watch adult television, read adult books, listen to adult music, or use the internet on your own without your mother there to supervise you, and even then I have the feeling that she won’t want to expose you to anything too inappropriate. Get used to Sesame Street and Sofia the First, baby girl, because you certainly won’t be watching Star Wars or Marvel movies any time soon. You will also be barred from playing video games, as the hand eye coordination required is much too complicated for a girl your age.
And finally, Rule #7: You must never, under any circ-umstances, insist that you are, or ever were, a male, or make any reference to your past life. As far as we are concerned, we are starting you over from the beginning as an innocent, adorable baby girl, and you will be expected to act as convincingly in that role as possible. If someone calls you a good girl, you will be thankful. If they call you pretty, you will act like you just received a compliment. If you are caught accidentally acting too much like a boy, you will be expected to self correct and change your behaviour to be more feminine, or else you will be punished.”