The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

by Sarah Silverman

  "Thank you for calling Bedford Mall Cinemas 1, 2, 3, and 4, where all bargain matinees are only two dollars Monday through Saturday. Now playing, Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford!..."

  Instead of a cash payment, we were all allowed to go to the movies for free, plus one, anytime we wanted.

  In May of 1964, my mother-to-be (at this point she's borne only my eldest sister, Susie) got on the game show Concentration, with Hugh Downs. She won the first two games, then came back the next day and won two more. When she repeated her success on day three she automatically became a contestant in that fall's "Challenge of Champions."

  She remembers winning some SCUBA gear and that Hugh Downs asked her smugly if she knew that SCUBA was an acronym and what the letters stood for. She immediately answered, "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus?" To which, according to my mother, he blanched and said a very small, "Yes." She said she didn't even know she knew that information until it came out of her mouth. She was twenty-three.

  Among the stuff she won was:

  a Triumph Spitfire sports car

  a dozen leather handbags (all of them yellow)

  a twenty-foot speedboat

  a twenty-seven-foot "party barge"

  two outboard motors for the boats

  a mink stole

  100 pounds of coffee

  a dozen pairs of men's pants

  20 pairs of men's shoes

  a suite of living room furniture (some of which, forty-five years later, can still be found in the house I grew up in--a bachelor's chest on my stepfather's side of the bed, two maple end tables, and a large hassock in the living room)

  and

  a cruise to Bermuda

  Other than those pieces of furniture and the fancy cruise, my parents sold the prizes for cash and with it bought their first house, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Since my mother was pregnant with kid number two, they decided to wait until a few months after the baby was born to take the cruise.

  * * *

  The First Time I Bombed

  * * *

  My parents' second child, Jeffrey Michael Silverman, was born on February 9, 1965.

  That May, Donald and Beth Ann went to New York City to take their cruise to Bermuda, after which they returned to New York to spend the weekend at the World's Fair in Flushing, with their friends Ellie and Harry Bluestein before heading home to New Hampshire. Susie, who had just turned two, was staying with my mother's parents in Connecticut, and the baby, Jeffrey, was in Concord with my father's parents (Nana and Papa), Rose and Max. When they arrived at their hotel near the fairgrounds in Flushing, my father called his parents to check on Jeffrey.

  My mother heard my father say, "Gone? What do you mean, 'gone'? Where is he?"

  She walked over to him, "What's going on?"

  He listened a few moments longer, then collapsed into tears, which curled into wails of despair. Jeffrey was dead.

  Donald and Beth Ann arrived at the Concord house, where many friends had gathered around weeping, inconsolable Rose and Max. When Max looked up and saw my parents, he cried out, "How can you forgive me?"

  My parents were told that Jeffrey had been crying a lot during the night and that Papa was the one to keep checking on him, since Nana was hard of hearing and couldn't hear him cry. In the morning Papa got up and went to look in on the baby. He got to the crib and didn't see him. He called to Nana, saying, "Rose, where's the baby?" Then they both found him, down in one corner of the port-a-crib. The metal support frame had slipped off its peg, allowing a little narrow space between the mattress and the bottom rail of the crib. My parents were told that he had strangled in that space.

  Any concept of closure, if it existed in the '60s at all, was a notion invented by hippie fruits. My parents' friends cleaned up any sign of Jeffrey's existence by the time they got home. He was imagined.

  In 1976 I was five and cute as a really hairy button. My eldest sister, Susie, was twelve. She was fair with very long dark brown hair and big brown sad eyes reflecting a heartbreaking need for love--by any means necessary.

  Sweet Susie

  When I was three she would babysit me and say, "If I drink this orange juice I'm gonna turn into a monster!"

  I'd cry, "Susie no!" But she drank the juice anyway, went into the closet where the washer-dryer was, put a brown suede ski mask on her head, and came back out, monstrafied.

  "RAAAAARGH!! The only way I'll turn back to Susie is if you hug me!!!"

  Terrified, I ran in a burst toward the monster, hugging her, eyes clenched.

  Susie once pulled a steak knife out of the silverware drawer, turned to me, and mused, "It's so weird, like, I could kill you right now. Like, I wouldn't, but I could. I could just take your life..." One way to interpret this is that it foretold her eventual future as a rabbi. At age fourteen, here she was, already pondering the biggest issues of the human condition--life, death, morality, and the choices we must make. An alternate interpretation is that living with me eventually causes one to contemplate murder. But I'm feeling the former explanation is the right one, as it is a scientific certainty that I'm pretty adorable.

  Laura, a.k.a. "Mowgli"

  Laura was in the middle. She was eleven. A tomboy, she looked just like Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

  She had olive skin with bright green almond-shaped eyes, and dimples on either side of her perfect smile. A lot went on inside her, which she mostly kept to herself. She was popular, smart, and could play any instrument she picked up without a single lesson.

  We moved from Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to Bedford, New Hampshire--a small town of about twelve thousand people. We lived on a big lot of land--an old farm with a big barn where we would spend our summer days playing. One afternoon, Susie sat us down and told us the story of our brother, Jeffrey. She spoke with the measure and drama of a campfire ghost story. It was chilling and shocking and tragic, but mostly it was exciting, as most ghost stories are. And like only the best ones, it lived in the front of my mind for a long time after.

  At this point I was on a tear with the zingers--killing with my parents and sisters, strangers in markets--just being five and saying, "I love tampons!" or any shocking non sequitur was rewarded with "Oh my gods" through frenzied laughter. The approval made me dance uncontrollably like Snoopy. The feeling of pride made my arms itch. It fed this tyrant in me that just wanted more more more push push push. So when Nana picked us up to go to Weeks' Restaurant for lunch, as she did every Sunday, we got into her big boat, a dark blue Cadillac Seville with a beige leather interior, filled with the odor of stale cigarettes--a smell I loved because it meant "Nana." As all grandkids are to grandmas, we were her world. Before starting the car she bellowed, "Everyone put their seat belts on!" and without a beat I said...

  (...oh this is going to be GREAT...)

  "Yeah--put yer seat belts on--you don't wanna end up like Jeffrey!"

  Crickets. No one was even breathing. Susie and Laura looked at me with wide, angry eyes. And after several excruciating seconds, Nana broke the silence with an explosion of sobs.

  Four words swam in my head--the most grown-up arrangement so far in my five years: What have I done?

  THE BEDWETTER

  * * *

  Pee Is for "Party"

  * * *

  On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley saved my life.

  The previous afternoon, I played with my six-year-old peers in Heather Peters's backyard. Heather was a towheaded, Aryan dream of perfection. She had one of those pageant moms who resolved that her daughter would be the princess she herself never was. Every other week, Mrs. Peters set Heather's long blond hair in hot curlers, and sent her to school in tight Shirley Temple banana curls. Heather despised this constant humiliation, but I'm sure she understood, as any first grader would, that having your head vandalized is a small price if it can ease Mommy's emptiness. Plus, her father built her this really awesome, gigantic jungle gym.

  I was blissfully helpin
g myself to pizza and cake, and to the backyard jungle gym, when Heather asked me where my sleeping bag was. Heather explained--because I had somehow missed, or perhaps willfully ignored--that this party was a sleepover. Fuck me, this is a sleepover?

  It's helpful to mention, at this point, that I was--and would be for many years to come--a chronic bedwetter. The word "sleep-over" to a six-year-old bedwetter has roughly the same impact of, say, "liver cancer" to a forty-year-old alcoholic. The moment the word is spoken, gruesome images of your near-future flood your mind. At least with liver cancer, people gather at your bedside instead of run from it.

  I had one reliable means of escaping these situations. I'd explain that I needed my mother's permission to spend the night. I'd call her from somewhere with sufficient privacy, then rejoin my friend with the bad news that my mom wouldn't let me sleep over. But Heather eagerly stood right next to me as I called Mom. Like a hostage with a gun at her temple, I put on an act to satisfy my captor. I "pleaded" with Mom to let me stay over, and, not detecting my insincerity, she granted permission. "Of course, Sweetie. Have fun."

  I won't offer much advice in this book, but here's one tip to bedwetters or parents of bedwetters out there: have a code word or phrase. So if your child calls and says, for example, "Your package from Zappos is on its way," or "The man from Moldova wants more lemons," or just "fuzzy dice," you'll know that your child is in danger of pissing herself in someone's house, and you should order her to come home at once.

  I hung up the phone, turned to Heather, and harnessed the momentum of my plummeting heart to sling it upward into a joyous, "She said yes!!" It was settled. I would be sleeping in the same living room as Heather and about eight other girls. By this age, I'd peed myself on numerous sleepovers, but here was a chance to do it with a substantial audience.

  The anxiety of the impending night took over. I felt like a zombie. Like a paralyzed person in a mobile person's body, going through the motions of a child at play. I didn't bring my own pajamas or linens, so Mrs. Peters provided me a sleeping bag and a pair of Heather's way-too-sexy-for-a-six-year-old pajamas. They were harem-girl bottoms with a short cropped matching top. The anxiety of being in Heather's stuff was stress-gravy on an already terror-filled plate.

  As the other girls drifted into their sweet little dreams, I pinched myself awake, constantly testing my bladder. "Do I need to go again? I'll stay up to go one more time..." Of course, if you battle against sleep this ferociously, when it finally conquers you, it takes you down hard.

  The next morning, I'm the first to wake up. I am warm--which is a trick on people like me. I can stay in denial, lying perfectly still in the warmth, or test it, by moving just the tiniest bit. I venture, rocking my body just slightly to the right. Ice-cold air whooshes along my body and I freeze, heartbroken. I lay, motionless, in panic and urine, for what seems like hours before the other girls start to wake up. I do the only thing a terrified zombie can do: I pretend it didn't happen. I get up with the other girls, take off my PJs like the other girls, and change into my clothes. They are so lucky to be able to move through life so effortlessly. I know at six how lucky they are--they probably still don't know.

  Mrs. Peters walks into the room, and before she can say anything, steps right onto the pile of my sexy urine-soaked pajamas. My heart stops as I watch her face burn red like a Disney villainess.

  "WHO DID THIS!?!?!" she screams, with a look so scary--like when someone's eyes go wide but with no innocence in them. Just pure fury.

  I stand there, quietly enduring the world's youngest heart attack, wishing for my fear to somehow transport me. Am I supposed to answer? Is the onus actually on six-year-old me to fill this silence?

  And that's when it happens--Mr. Peters comes in and grabs his wife,

  "Elvis Presley died!!!"

  The news of the King's death overtook Mrs. Peters, and I was spared. Somehow I got home without the other kids knowing what had happened.

  What kind of person reacts to a child's wet pajamas with rage and not compassion? I guess the kind of person who would force hot curlers biweekly on a first grader's head.

  Put banana curls on your own head, cunt.

  * * *

  Pee Is for "Partner"

  * * *

  I met Julie Blenkinsop in kindergarten. She had yellow hair and was almost always sucking on her middle two fingers. Her parents were from England. Julie's name was really Julia, but that shit wasn't gonna fly in New Hampshire. Somewhere there's some kind of Ellis Island in New Hampshire (probably in Concord, near the two New Hampshire Liquor stores that taunt each other from across the highway), where they look at your name and say,

  "Julia?? What ah you, a fuckin' princess? No, youah Julie. If you don't like that you can be Shelly, Dawna, Heathah, o'ah Pam."

  The first time Julie slept over at my house, her mother came in to talk privately with mine. When she left, my mother looked at me and smiled. Apparently, Julie had a problem with wetting the bed, and Mrs. Blenkinsop wanted my mother to walk her to the bathroom at some point in the night. This was the greatest news I had gotten in my entire tiny, hairy life. I had my very own partner in shame.

  I had no doubt that my chronic bedwetting would be the darkest, most disgrace-filled secret of my life. Only now I had Julie to share it with. Sweet, lovely, finger-sucking, allergy-ridden, rigorously-rubbing-her-nose-with-the-palm-of-her-hand-in-a-circle, Julie.

  * * *

  You Are Getting Very Sleep Pee

  * * *

  At eight years old, my urine showed no promise of abandoning its nightly march out of my urethra and onto my mattress. New Hampshire was running out of clean sheets.

  My parents sent me to a hypnotist named Dr. Grimm. Hypnosis was pretty new-agey for New Hampshire, but Julie had been going, and my parents were getting desperate. I had been to doctors before, but all they could offer was a diagnosis of enuresis--meaning my bladder was too small. I was tiny for my age, and with enuresis, there was no medical cure but to grow.

  Dr. Grimm was a small bearded man with the kind of gentle voice that sounded suspiciously cultivated. I'd sit on his couch and he'd tell me to close my eyes, and imagine the scenario he described:

  "You're walking through a forest and it's peaceful. There are leaves on the ground making a path for you, and you follow it. The sun warms your back. You hear a breeze tapping the leaves of the trees just before you feel it on your face. You can also hear the birds calling to each other on the branches above you, and from a distance, flowing water. You follow the path to a clearing..."

  What the fuck is a clearing? I'm eight.

  "...As you come to the clearing you see a stream. You walk to the stream and sit on a rock, welcoming the sun's light..."

  I was not a cynical person. I was genuinely open to the idea of hypnosis. But as he spoke in his affected gentle voice, I could only pretend to be falling under his spell. It was less therapy than experimental theater, with two actors performing a play for no one. I was trying to imagine his path and his forest and whatever a fucking clearing might be, but instead my mind raced, and focused on anything else--the room I was in, the fake calmness in his voice, his beard, the fact that he had a penis and balls. Does doody get on his balls when he poops? Do boys wipe from front to back like girls do? And if so, where does their front start? He can't see what I'm thinking, can he? STREAM! CLEARING! FOREST! DOODY ON HIS BALLS--NO! FUCK! STOP!

  Was it my responsibility to let him know his treatment wasn't working? Or was it his to see it? He probably did see it, which is weird to think about--that two people can sit in a small room for an hour, fully aware that they are wasting each other's time, but neither will acknowledge it. Anyway, it was back to the piss-and-shame factory that was my bedroom. But at least I had Julie.

  * * *

  Losing Julie

  * * *

  By the end of seventh grade Julie stopped sucking on her fingers, blossomed into a beautiful young woman, and outgrew her enuresis. This all pleas
antly coincided with Sarah Wildman's decision to make Julie her new best friend. Sarah Wildman: the most popular girl in school, an effortlessly cool, natural beauty. And all in one day, after eight years of sisterhood, Julie traded up.

  This move was not a shallow, heartless, or calculating one. It was a healthy progression for her. In our relationship, I had always been sort of the leader, the alpha female. One day, Julie and I were at our lockers, and though I don't remember what I said to her exactly, her response was, "I'm not going to be bossed around by you anymore!" I was stunned. She was dumping me.

  I couldn't even justify being mad. Even then I knew she deserved to hang with the cool crowd. The kind of crowd that wakes up on bone-dry sheets.

  * * *

  While Trying to Prevent My Suicide, My Father Introduces Me to the Concept of Suicide

  * * *

  Unlike Julie, I did not blossom. I didn't grow at all. I was as small in eighth grade as I was in third. Girls were getting tits and periods, and I had seemingly plateaued, elementary-sized. My parents worried, but I also think there was something about me being so small that felt right to us. My dad would always say, "Keep passing the open windows." I didn't know what he meant until he explained that in John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire, there's a girl in it who never grows. She becomes a revered novelist but eventually kills herself by jumping out a window. Until then I had never thought of open windows as the opportunities for suicide they truly are.