"That is very naughty," Mum had said, "but I did make it clear that this punishment does not include being humiliated in front of your school friends. Linda? You're supposed to be setting a good example for the baby, and this isn't it."
"I didn't tell anyone!" she protested. "It was Sally on the phone, when she's not supposed to be."
"It was you who raised your voice to mention diapers, knowing that you would be audible to whoever she was talking to. That is over the top, I think. And I'm inclined to send you to your new school in diapers for a week, so you understand the impact that can have on someone's social life."
"Yeah, but she needs punishing. She's a–"
"Linda Alouette Bernstein!" Mum yelled, and everything froze. If Mum didn't abbreviate our names, we always knew we were on thin ice. But adding one of Lindy's middle names made it absolutely clear that a single step further would lead to disaster. She waited for that to fully sink in before she continued: "I have told you already that trying to embarrass your sister in front of others is unforgivable. That is the point where I would have to ask myself where I went so wrong in your education and ground you permanently, or subject you to the same kind of humiliation so that you can really understand what a big deal it is. Perhaps I should put you in diapers as well before your first day at school, with the little addition that you were so eager to see your sister suffer. How do you think you would feel if you were in that state in front of your friends?"
"I wouldn't–"
"Exactly. You don't want to go through that, it's absolutely intolerable. So what makes you think it's okay to add public humiliation to your sister's punishment? You've tried that twice now, that I know of. And this is your last warning. Sally is getting one week of this punishment for what she did. If either of you thinks that now is a good time to raise the ante, you should think about being in diapers full time until you graduate high school. I strongly recommend that you both learn to stop bickering, accept that some kind of justice has been done, and let it end here. Do I make myself clear?"
Lindy nodded. I wondered how that ultimatum would affect her feelings of guilt. It was turning the issue into a more adversarial one, which might move Lindy's focus away from the consequences of her actions. If she thought more about what Mum would do in response and less about how she was making me feel, she was less likely to experience genuine remorse. But I could see why Mum had felt it necessary to lay down the law in that case, and it made me feel a lot safer.
"So..." I mumbled, after the awkward silence became too much to bear. My words were rendered incomprehensible by the pacifier in my mouth. It had become such a common fixture in the last few days that I barely even noticed that it was there, and I couldn't remember how long I'd been sucking on the thing. That had the potential for so much embarrassment, but it just felt natural, and I wasn't really sure if I wanted to stop it. But I did want to be understood, and to diffuse the tension in the room a little. So I tried to grab the paci out of my mouth, and found my efforts thwarted by the mittens again. Still, it only took a couple of swipes with my hands before I could catch the edge of the thing and knock it aside. "So what we doing today?"
"Ah, such a little baby," Mum said with a sideways grin. "Always looking for something new to entertain her. Well, baby, I thought that we might go to the twine museum. Unless your sister has any other ideas."
That was a response I hadn't expected. I knew there was a twine museum around here somewhere; a place that had some kind of historical background, but was now something like an activity centre, mixing exhibits on the history of twine making with all kids of weird lateral thinking puzzles which were centred around making kids follow a thread, or untangle strands in different colours. I vaguely remembered going there once with Mum and Dad, and finding myself overwhelmed by all the bright colours, sounds, and puzzles that were just a little too hard for me to solve. Of course, that must have been when I was very small, because Lindy hadn't been there. I'd asked to go again a few years later, when I was old enough to read the words on a sign but still young enough to be excited by the memories of that time. But then I'd been a little too old for the exhibits, and even after all my begging to go there I had refused to interact with displays that I arbitrarily decided were too babyish for me; while Lindy hadn't quite been old enough to understand what the puzzles were asking of her. We'd been at just the wrong ages, I guessed, but neither of us had asked to try again in another year.
"What's a twine museum?" Lindy asked. "That sounds kind of..."
"It's in an old ropeworks," Mum answered quickly, so she must have looked up the details in preparation for our visit. Or she remembered better from when we had been younger. "There's preserved shop floors, showing the evolution of the business through the years from traditional manual ropemaking, through the industrial revolution, to a modern day factory that only needs two people to operate it. There's a sign explaining that the owners always kept the old machinery in case the new one didn't works, and set it up in a shed on the site occasionally to teach apprentices how the job used to be done. And then when it became fully automated, they only needed half the factory floor to make ten times as much twine. And the owner decided to turn the remaining space into a museum so he wouldn't have to make all the staff redundant. And there's topology and game theory for kids as well. Like those puzzles where you have to connect all the blue dots with blue lines or whatever, but done on a board with actual bits of string." She started to realise that Lindy was staring in confusion at her rather extreme level of enthusiasm. "Well, it's this weird museum now. We went one when you were younger. I think Sally wasn't quite old enough for the adult exhibits, but too proud to play in the kids' area, and you were just staring around in awe, too young to understand what the place is."
"There's a place where there were people making a giant braid by throwing ropes across a courtyard or something?" she hazarded; a detail that I didn't remember, but Mum nodded.
"I'm surprised you remember it at all, you were so young. Probably even littler than Sally is now, but maybe not. We'll have to see how much she can understand, I guess. It might be difficult making sure that the baby stays entertained, but I'm actually looking forward to seeing how the place has changed. There was so much that I think we missed the last time we were there."
I opened my mouth again to say something, to protest about the humiliation of being treated like a baby in a public space. But I hesitated, and I couldn't find the right words. I needed to say something, to tell them that this was going too far, but the fear gripped me and I couldn't make a sound. My heart was racing as I thought about it, being pushed around in the outsized stroller so that I could only look at the exhibits in the kids' section again. Things that I'd protested I was too old for seven or eight years ago would be of no interest now, and people were bound to look at me strangely. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to realise that the feeling inside me now wasn't all fear. I was actually getting excited about the day ahead, wondering what I could do to make people notice me less. I knew that Mum would tease me, and try to make me feel like people were laughing; but she wouldn't actually draw too much attention and get us in trouble. I'd known for a long time that she was a very good judge of people's feelings, and when we teased each other as a family, Mum had always been the one to see before some comment went too far. But I had recently been realising that she was even smarter than I had thought, perfectly aware of when other people were watching us and what they were likely to think; as well as knowing exactly the right things to say so that I would feel just like a little baby.
Lindy seemed to notice that I was gasping like a fish, trying to decide if I had something to say or not. A second later I felt the pacifier back in my mouth, and I returned to sucking it without any complaint. I was just the baby now; I didn't have to say anything because it wasn't my choice. And that was all I needed to think about. It was a relief in a way. I knew that Mum wouldn't push me too far, although I suspected that she knew more than she was letting on about Lindy's smart watch and the sudden reappearance of her bedwetting problem, so she wanted me to feel just enough discomfort to discourage any further problems.
"Is she going to be a proper baby?" Lindy giggled, presumably judging from Mum's expression that she might be allowed to push me a little for answering the phone now that her own transgression had been dealt with. "You should give her–"
"I don't want to cause pain for my little girl," Mum answered quickly. "I'll have to think more about it before I consider using some things again. But I do think that this trip might be more fun if she has some encouragement to act her age. And, of course, I need to call Nadine Newman and make sure she knows that Lindy was trying to start false rumours as a form of projection."
"You can't do that!" Lindy shrieked. "She'll think I'm the one wearing... They'll... Crap."
"Exactly. If those rumours are beyond the pale, so totally abhorrent to you, then you shouldn't think about doing that to your sister. If I can trust you never to attempt something like this again–" she paused there, waiting for a brief nod from Lindy, "– then I'm sure I can see a way to defuse any potential whispers without collateral damage. However, I do need to make that call, just to be certain. So would you mind keeping an eye on the baby while I do that? There's probably time for her to watch her special video again, and help her feel a little babyish before we go out."
"Yeah," Lindy said with a grin. "I'll just... just get dressed properly first, okay?"
She darted off upstairs without waiting for an answer, and as Mum lifted out the headphones for me again, I had no idea whether the most powerful thought in my mind was nervousness or excitement. And I didn't really care, because I knew that I was going to enjoy being a baby today.