Mommies and Daddies

Just wanted to tease another project I will be releasing soon for the community.   It will be a full sketch comic that has multiple parts. Looking forward to sharing this in the future!  It will have themes of AB/DL, Diapers, Mental Regression, and Hypnosis.

for the last 20 years i've been playing with my hole and have wrecked it so hard it suffered permanent damage to the muscle and nerve tissues including surrounding areas such as the bladder. it slowly lost about half its capacity without me noticing and i can't completely empty it anymore. i've also started to leak piss more and more every night so i've been sleeping in diapers for the last year. recently i also realized that i couldn't fully control my hole anymore and still can't today. it's been staying open now for a month and i have already had accidents. for the last year i've been wearing a plug about one out of three days but in the last month i've had it inside about 95% of the time to keep it closed. first accident was when i was out for a run without wearing the plug when suddenly my prolapse fell out about 5cm and i couldn't get it inside anymore. when i was home i immediately plugged my hole. second accident happened last week when i was out shopping with the plug inside when i couldn't hold the plug anymore and it fell out into my underwear. went into a changing booth and put it back in. i realized that when i couldn't hold the plug in and not even the hole itself anymore that i actually became incontinent. i even need a plug harness now to keep it from falling out again and leave it 24/7. i'm only 31 and already damaged for life and soon have to wear plugs and diapers 24/7 for the rest of my life. i am aware that such accidents will happen again and that they can be really embarrassing. i'm also slowly realizing how much this affects my whole life to be plugged pretty much all the time with a harness around and a diaper on, even worse at only 31. i can't hide it forever, people will definitely see it sooner or later and i have to explain it. i have to admit that this all really turns me on since i've been fantasizing about this for years. i'm a little worried though that it already happened so young and almost too fast for me to adapt to all parts of my life. i'm still not truly aware of the full impact this will have on my life but i've accepted the fact that this is permanent and irreversible. i'm really excited about where this is going in the future 

Uggghhh, you caught me. I distinctly remember mentally noting this while proof reading.  I thought that I went back and fixed it, but clearly the AI that exists between my ears failed on this one.   This is the bane of writing when tok little brain power is left and relying on oneself as the sole editor.

I like it so far 

Chapter 100 Panic and Love “Kinsella,” Grandma answered the phone after they got Grace into Front City and Cait had talked both of her big peer people to play with her on the floor. Grace was wearing Grandma’s long night shirt and clean panties. Cait was in overalls and a pink stop, and Shane was wearing some of the clothes they bought him on Tuesday, a pair of jeans and a green tshirt. The three of them had peed before they were home, so Grandma helped Grace actually bathed her. Daddy bathed Cait, and they let Shane do himself because he seemed to want to.   “This one is Front City…,” Cait was telling her peers. “It’s Front City because Daddy says I can keep it here, and Grandma never touches it unless it accident. And then they let me fix it because they said I know where it goes, and they don’t, so they just put the blocks that fall out of my town’s place over here for me.”   “That’s cool, that they let you keep toys in the living room,” Shane frowned. “That would never work in my house. Too many kids with their own places to play? We wouldn’t have no where to move around.”   “I couldn’t put anything in the living room even if my parents wanted to let us,” Grace frowned.   “Why?” Cait got into Grace’s lap again.   “Because…. I just can’t relax in there anyway. I’d pee my pants and then everyone would see.”   “You pee in your living room?” Shane asked.   “Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t sit in the living room no more. I don’t want to embarrass my Mom.”   “I get that,” Shane sighed. “I don’t like to go with them anywhere in public. What if I pee? But if I pee in the living room and someone comes in, I just run and hide in my room so they don’t have to show their wet kid off, but usually, they call me out anyway. Mom never says… ‘There’s my stupid pee pants kid. It’s just. I feel like I am, though.”   Grace nodded. “My mom does say those words, exactly, except to my aunt when she’s cleaning up another mess, she says to me not to even touch. Just get to the bathroom before I make it worse, but I’d already went fully in my pants, but she acts like I’m arguing if I try to tell her, so I just go sit on the toilet my pants up, if I pooped, so I don’t get my stuff all over the toilet seat.”   “That’s lonely,” Shane frowned. “My Mom tells me to at least clean up after myself after I pee unless someone knocks. Then she lets me go hide without telling anyone what happened, only my little brother and sisters can’t help telling on me if someone sees it, and they accidentally tell people… oh, um big brother did that on accident.”   “My sisters never done that to me or Grainne,” Cait frowned. “My Daddy is kind of strict and makes me keep my mess in one place if I started to pee, or stay in bed and pee there if it’s night. He really strict. The one in Mysery. But my sisters never ever told on me that I peed. Dad even asked them before. Aoibhe is just turning seven in this year… in like November. She puts her thumb in mouth if Daddy asks her if I peed my pants. Roisin looks up at him and says she peed. She wets her pants sometimes. She’s almost eight, in August. But they never told Daddy or no one that Cait ask a dent tally pees her pants…. Assep they telled Grainne. Roisin telled Grainne because Grainne tried to give me a bath before Daddy knowed so I don’t get trouble if he thinkeding I peededing in bad place.”   “Wow!” both Shane and Grace mouthed.   “Yes,” the kids heard from the kitchen, Grandma talking. “Yes, we took Shane to our house for a bit. We picked him up. We thought he asked you….”   “I did ask my mom,” Shane frowned. “There must be a reason she’s calling.”   “Oh? Yeah, Grace is here. Oh, her mom? No, I don’t have her phone number. Yeah. Okay….” Grandma was still talking.   “My mom found my bed, and now she found me…,” Grace pulled her legs tightly together.   “I know that position,” Shane told Grace. “Cait, she’s scared. She’s about to pee.”   “I know. I know that look, too. We both do it, right, Shane?”   Grace’s face got red.   “Just pee,” Cait rubbed her back. “I promise. It’s okay.”   “I don’t have to pee. I promise. I just did it in the car not long ago. Remember?”   “How come you look like you’re gonna pee then?” Cait asked. “Grace? What’s wrong?   “Nothing.”   Cait stood up. “I not telling on you to get you trouble,” Cait told Grace. “You scared. I need help. I sorry.” She ran out the back door, and towards the sign and started waving at Daddy. “Daddy!” she yelled.   Daddy held up a finger that Cait understood. He wanted her to wait. He was always careful with her, making sure she didn’t go too far from her own pen without him being there in case of snakes or other things.   Cait sighed when she looked up at him as he approached. “Grace in like pee going to pee her pants scared way, but she not peeing, Daddy. She scared. I think Grandma talking Shane mom, and Grace mom trying to find, and Grandma has to call Grace mom, and she getted really scared. She need strong Daddy hands and Daddy ‘Now’ to tell her it okay if she lets out and pee her pants. She scared.”   Sean picked Cait up. “Let’s go see how your friends are, hon. You are really starting to get it. You get help when you can’t talk it out. That’s the right thing, Cait. And you don’t just yell your friend’s problem at me. You wait for me to get close enough you can tell me privately. And those idiots in Missouri called you stupid! They don’t know what stupid is, baby. You know there are a lot of kids your age that read a lot better than you, but they don’t know any better than to yell out things like this.”   “Shane said his brother and sisters do that.”   “Well, that’s normal kid behavior. It’s not that they are stupid, either, Cait. It’s that YOU are smart, baby.”   He walked into the house and put her on her feet in the kitchen. Then he approached the living room. He frowned when he saw Shane sitting there quietly just rubbing Grace’s arm, and Grace was shaking like there was a snake-ghost and poop in her panties and none of it was really there.   “Gracie?” he whispered. “Come on over to Uncle, hon.”   “Uncle?”   “Yes, little lady. It’s time you learned what Uncles do when teenagers need help.”   “I didn’t do it, I promise.”   “Didn’t do what?” Daddy asked raising an eyebrow.   “I didn’t poop my panties. I promise.”   “No one said you did, sweetheart. That’s not what I think you need help with. If it was, I’d have Aunt Eiboline take you to the bathroom to clean you up. Even teenagers need help when they poop their pants, sweetheart.”   “I don’t….”   “Non-sense, baby,” Daddy motioned her over. “Just because you don’t get help at home sometimes when you poopy your panties, it doesn’t mean you don’t need it. Poopy is really hard on a big growing kid. It hurts not just that it’s hard to clean all the way by yourself, but it hurts your heart and makes you feel things no kid should ever feel sitting alone.”   Grace finally moved and stood up. “You don’t care about holding me? What if I pee my pants on accident?”   “Cait pees a lot on accident. It’s because you three have hurt insides, not just physical hurts, but emotional ones. You can’t stop peeing or pooping your panties as long as you are emotionally hurt, little girl. You need to feel safe. Until then, you are not going to stop going potty in your pants.”   “That’s not what Auntie says… mom’s sister!”   “Auntie is wrong, baby. She might not know better. But you come over here, and if you need, you pee on your new uncle. I don’t mind, baby girl.”   “Go on,” Cait pushed her. “That why I got Daddy. He fixes your feeling. He can’t make you stop pooping your pants, but he can make you feel like you should feel instead of making you always hurt your own feelings more.”   Grace looked at Shane. “I’m not judging, Grace. Hell, maybe I… I would like a hug. This house… it’s not a regular people, but I like them, Grace. They are nice.”   Grace was shaking. Cait took her hand and walked her over and helped her get into Daddy’s lap. “You’re allowed to poop your pants in Daddy’s lap, if you do it, or if your body does it…. I do it. I don’t tell no body. Only Shane knows if you potty your panties ask a dent or not ask a dent, we don’t care. Right, Shane?”   “Yeah. It’s no one’s business if the Kinsellas help us feel not scared and feel it’s okay to pee our pants sometimes.”   Eiboline came into the living room, and she saw Sean sitting in his usual seat, holding the teenager, and rocking her. “No shame here, hon. No shame.”   Cait ran over to Grandma. “She scared, Grandma. We heard you talking Shane’s mom. We know Grace mom looking for her, and she started acting scared like she’ll poop in front of a bunch my Mysery Daddies, but no pee was even coming on the floor… so I got Daddy.”   “That’s exactly what you do, hon.”   Grandma walked over and squatted by the chair. She touched Grace’s arm. “Sweetheart? I have to call your mom, but I didn’t want to do it until I told you. She’s pretty worried about you. Shane’s mom said she just saw your bed wet and then you were gone. No one knows where you went, so she started trying to call people of your playgroup. She didn’t know our number, so she asked Shane’s mom to call us for her.”   “Mom’s gonna hate me!”   Grandma sighed. “I’m sorry, hon. I know how scary it can be to tell someone you peed the bed at sixteen years old. It’s really hard, and I guess Shane’s mom knows you pee your pants at school all the time?”   “I pooped my pants yesterday at Aunt’s house before group. Well, I did worse. I pooped my pants babysitting my little cousins but in public, and when we got home…. My Aunt told me I didn’t earn money for babysitting three hours because… my stupid body pooped at the park!”   Grandma frowned. “You babysat for three hours and they ripped you off because you had an accident?”   Grace nodded.   “Fucker!” Cait whispered.   “Now,” Daddy put a hand on her head. “That’s her mom and aunt, Cait. Be careful, hon.”   “My Daddy in Mysery is a fucker.”   “Not all kids can say that easily, Cait. Be respectful of Grace’s feelings, okay?”   “Sorry.”   Eiboline frowned. “Cait is right, though, Sean. That’s no way to treat a child that spent her free time trying to control kids especially when she has her own uncontrollable problems.”   “I know,” Sean sighed.   “I want to give the child what she should have gotten, Sean. With your permission?”   “Go ahead, Eiboline. She deserves that much.”   “Cait, go get Grandma’s purse in the kitchen, okay? And let’s show Grace that it’s okay to love her mom and Aunt but still correct a wrong.”   “Okay.” She ran to get the purse.   “No. I don’t want your money,” Grace whispered. “I didn’t say it so you’d give me nothing.”   “I know that,” Grandma whispered. “It’s not about the money, hon. It’s about the principal. You worked your little butt off, and just because a child had an accident, they decide not to pay you for giving up an afternoon after they promised you money. It’s the justice, sweetheart, and the fact we have the money. This isn’t us giving you what you deserve, sweetie…. It’s the universe telling you that God loves you and he saw what happened, and now, he’s telling you that it was wrong you didn’t get paid.”   “That happens all the time.”   “I’m sorry,” Grandma frowned. “God can’t tell us what to do. If he did, he would go against his own word, that he says we choose good and evil. But what he did do, was put you in our laps to show you it’s wrong to treat a little lady like that. If I ask you to babysit Cait, poop in your panties or not, you’ll get the money we promise you, hon.”   Grandma gave her three ten dollar bills.   “I was only supposed to get twenty,” Grace tried to push the last ten back at Grandma.   “Well…. I didn’t make the contract for babysitting, did I?” Grandma asked. “If I needed Cait babysat, I’d give you a minimum of ten per hour, not that Cait is a hard girl to control, but because a teenager on her summer break, shouldn’t get jipped when she’s giving up her summer playtime to help someone out by babysitting. So… this is ten dollars an hour, same as I’d pay you if I asked you to watch Cait.”   “I… I don’t know what to say.”   “Say you’ll babysit for us if we ever need it?”   “Okay.”   “And say you’ll call us instead of just running away the next time you wet the bed and get scared, or poop your pants and get scared. A child shouldn’t be alone when she’s that scared, child.”   “I… I guess?”   Grandma pushed the last ten back into Grace’s hand. “I have to call your mom. Are you okay with that?”   “Yeah. I have to face her sometime.”   “You can face her at our house, baby. Matter of fact, when she gets here, the three of you go upstairs and play with Cait in her bedroom. Just be careful of my Shrine to Ron. Cait knows why. Or better yet, Cait? You take your friends to play in your yard with the horses if you want.”   “Okay. And if one of them pees?”   “They can stay wet just long enough for us to talk to Grace’s mom. I forbid her mom to see Grace until she’s ready to listen to her anyway, especially if Grace has a mess in her pants. Okay, Grace?”   “Okay.” Then Grace turned and hugged Daddy even tighter.   “If you goed potty your pants, Grace, you can tell Grandma.”   “I didn’t. I promise.”   “Now,” Daddy rubbed her back. “Cait, let her alone. She can tell you, or you can get help if you see it show. Stop talking about it though. She’s older and it hurts her a lot because no one’s allowed it before. Let her just feel safe, okay?”   “I’m sorry, Grace. I still learning how. That’s why I got Daddy. He knows how to make you feel good inside, right?”   Grace smiled softly and nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think I’m scared to tell him if… if I do it.”   “You can just go get him, then. But always look at the ground if you run out in the field, and better yet, take Shadow with you if you go get him. Snakes out there, but Shadow won’t let you run into one if you listen to him growl and you stop as soon as he does it. He can’t fight a snake… he can… but I don’t want him to. He might die if a snake bited him. But he can tell us it safe or not it safe isn’t.”   Grace smiled. “Okay.”   “Come on, Shane. Come on, Grace. We go see Summerstone. He my horse.”   “Can you ride him?”   “He only a baby. No one can ride him yet because it hurt him. He too young. But if you know what you doing and Daddy say so, you might can ride Ginger. Ginger his mommy.”   “Not Ginger,” Daddy frowned. “Ginger still needs to look after Summerstone. I do have horses you can ride, though, if you wanted.”   Cait got summerstone out of the stable and Sean got Ginger, and they guided them to Cait’s pen.   “Daddy made this yard just for me. He and Grandma worried me and know I like outside, so they said I can play in here. See?” She walked the to the side of the pen and pointed down at exposed chicken wire… that’s what Daddy called it. It went up to the first board on the fence. “It keeps the snakes out. Not really, but it gives them a choice to take an easier path or they have to work harder to get inside here. It keeps some out, but we still look around before we just start playing to make sure. And anyway we got Ginger. If Ginger knows there a snake, she start getting upset and Shadow would growl. So I know there no snake.”   “Wow! You know a lot,” Shane whispered.   “Just only what Daddy told me.”   “You love him a lot,” Grace said. “And he… he just lets you pee on him… like he told me to pee my pants if I felt like it?”   “Yeah. Even if I pooted, he put me in his lap, and if I started to pee again, he hold me tight so I don’t run away scared, and he tell me it just water… just rain water. You don’t drink it, but it is just water. It doesn’t hurt.”   Grace smiled. “Did you pee your pants in front of them yet?” she asked Shane.   “Tuesday,” he reminded her he told her already. “Twice. They got me clean stuff for when I visit. That’s why they had clean clothes when we got here and I peed in the car, remember?”   “Oh,” Grace’s face went red. “I… I was….”   “You were hurted,” Cait hugged her. “You didn’t see what no one else did because you scared we mad you peed your pants. But now, you know we don’t mad, okay?”   The children sat down on the ground, and talked some more. They laid on their backs and looked up at the clouds, telling each other what they saw. They had a quiet while before the house door opened again.   Cait sat up.   “Cait, you and your friends play a little longer. I am just getting Daddy. Grace’s mom brought the police, so you kids stay here, and let us adults handle this. Kids… you just pee your pants if you need the bathroom. I don’t want you going into yelling adults. We’ll get you when things calm down.”   Cait nodded. “We will.”   Shane nodded. “We’ll hold Grace in a hug until she pees her pants if we need to.”   Grace frowned. “You’d hug me, Shane… even if I was peeing myself?”   “Ye… yeah? I mean. You need help until you get it, right? I… I needed to learn to trust them. You don’t know yet. You just… you need to know it’s okay. Accidents here are okay, and Cait showed us yesterday at group, even just to do it so it doesn’t bother us no more is okay, too.”   “Yeah,” Cait frowned. “Don’t think it like you choose it. Think it like… if you have to do it, then you can choose to do it how you want, and let who you want see you do it. It doesn’t mean you want poopy panties… it just means, you want only those you trust to know it happened.”   Grace looked at Cait for a minute. Well, it was a long long minute. It was like… Cait said something. Then she started to pee her pants.   Cait hugged her and peed her pants, too.   Grace sighed. “Thank you, both,” she puts both her hands on Shane, Shane so much younger than her… being closer to Grainne’s age, but still bigger than Cait and understanding the act of Grace being sixteen and doing this and what it took to finally admit she was holding it too long.   “You’re my peer-sister, right? I mean, I and Cait were paired, but Vance said yesterday, that the group is for us to help everyone. Pairs… just makes sure no one is alone, but it doesn’t mean we not allowed to help someone else.”   “Yeah,” Grace looked down. “I… I been going to the meeting and even when I pooped my pants in class… I was always scared everyone was laughing and pointing at the pathetic high school kid… just pooping her pants like… like….”   “No!” Cait told Grace. “Don’t you dare finish that words! You not pooping like whatever you were going to say. You poop your pants because you had to go too bad, and you scared to move because you already peeing! I know it. I do the same at school all fourth grade, when I felt almost to poot my panties…. It always started with too much peed, and I scared to move because everyone laugh, and then the poop just goes.”   Grace frowned. “You pooped your pants at school last year?”   “Yeah. And I get made fun. The teacher said I grow up. The nurse mad and say I always do this. No one my side. And suddenly, at summer, Daddy at farm need to get a job in town and big sisters can’t help me because I … I called myself names. And then these other kids… Billy and Ruth and the whole Sunday School at Daddy’s church… almost all them… I pooped my pants, and they hugged me. I was loved, and Billy… he going to be sixth grade… he said don’t call his sister’s best friend names when I said what you were going to say.”   Grace frowned.   “He was right. Those words. They worse than anything you can say that adults usually mad. They worse than saying fucker. That’s why I say fucker when something make me mad. Because it doesn’t hurt like… stupid and baby and other mean things kids say when they can’t understand you don’t want to wear poop in your pants.”   “Yeah.” Grace frowned. “I guess… fucker doesn’t sound like it’s a judgment… well, not like those other words.”   “So you stop calling my friend Grace those other mean words, please?” Cait asked.   “Okay. But I… I still go potty my pants.”   “Me, too. That part is okay. Just not the words that make you feel alone not okay.”   Cait and Shane quietly held Grace as she eventually pooped her pants.   “You know what?” Cait frowned at Grace. “How about you come Sunday school wit me. I show you Billy, and you sit with him. He won’t be mean if you pee your pants, and he’ll tell the whole sixth graders not to pick on you to read if you potty-pants or you can’t read. He did for me. And the sixth graders. They listened him, not because he boss, but because they think like him. You don’t hurt hurting people.”   “I don’t know,” Grace frowned. “My mom might get mad if I go to another church.”   “How people your church say if you pee your pants?”   Grace looked down.   “Just like my Daddy in Mysery church. That wrong church to tell you what Jesus see you. You come our church, Grace. I promise. It hurt lesser than you think.”   “I can’t.”   Cait sighed. “Okay. But I love you.”   The kids laid back and watched clouds and spoke a little bit about this and that… like what color they thought the moon really was, or if clouds are really just water drops in the sky like Science says.   By the time Grandma walked out the door, Shane has peed, and Cait had peed a second time, but the kids just walked up to Grandma.   “We did what you said,” Cait whispered. “Grace ask a dent tally….”   “No, I didn’t Cait. I… I chose to poop when I wanted. I pooped because where I was, you and Shane didn’t scare me. I didn’t want to poop in front of my mom.”   Cait shrugged. “She ask a dent tally didn’t want her mom to see her poop her pants.”   Grandma took Grace’s hand. “We face her together, child. It’s okay.”   The police were gone. Only a woman sat on the sofa that Cait didn’t know. She looked up at Daddy, and Daddy picked Cait up and put her in his lap. He hugged her in his chair.   The woman saw Sean holding Cait in peed pants, but then, Daddy reached his hand to Shane, and he guided him to sit right next to him, his wet pants touching Daddy. “These are kids.”   Eiboline directed Grace to her mom, and she lifted her a little, it was hard for her, and she put Grace in the woman’s lap.   “That’s your child, woman. Hold her and feel her.”   Cait could see Grace shaking.   “Your sister, though she might think your child is not perfect and maybe you shouldn’t let your child sit your sisters’ children if she’s going to withhold pay just for an accident… you saw what it does if you take your sister’s side. Your child ran away from home. What if she didn’t have someone to call? What if someone bad gotten her? You would regret it. Trust me.”   The woman was crying. “Baby? I don’t care if you pee the bed. I really don’t. Don’t ever run away like that again. Please!”   “You always on Aunt’s side. I always have to babysit them. No one even listened why I couldn’t get to the bathroom and pooped my pants. You just… I… I know I’m stupid!”   Cait started to move like she was going to tell Grace to stop that, but Daddy patted her back and when she looked up at him, he put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Listen, baby.”   “Yeah. You told your friends why you pooped your pants?”   “They listened. That boy…,” she pointed her finger at Shane. “He held me when I pooped my pants outside just now, and he held me until I went all the way, and he and Cait told me…. I’m not doing it on purpose. I’m just choosing if I have to, who gets to see me do it, people that love me, or people that will be mean to me… and it’s true, this time, I chose to poop my pants so they saw, not you.”   “You don’t think I love you?”   “It’s not that you don’t love… it’s that… they understand. Cait poops for the same reasons, kind of, that I do. Because it’s already going to come out… and I can’t wait no more. But now, Cait does it when she feels the least scared to do it, instead of in front of people that are mean to her. I want to do what Cait does. But you’ll get mad and yell at me if I do that. I am sixteen. I’m supposed to wait… only I can’t!”   Grace was crying now.   “Gracie…. I just want you to be healthy and to be a teenager.”   “That’s the problem,” Shane frowned. “You want her to be a teenager. You don’t see her as your kid first, so she can’t tell you if she has troubles. Like I can’t tell my parents because I’m the oldest at home. In this house, they don’t tell Cait to grow up or to be a big kid. They tell her she is a big kid, and they tell her what she does right… even when she’s got peed pants on.”   The woman looked at Shane sidewise. Shane flinched.   Daddy patted his side. “And as you can see, he flinches if you look at him wrong. He’s been conditioned the same way you condition your daughter. And I’ll tell you something else. Teenagers don’t poop like that if they can help it. You need to have her see a doctor and you need to encourage her to feel safe going in her pants first, so you can work on healing her. You don’t do it the other way around.”   “Our leader at group yesterday lost his kid,” Cait whispered. “His girl was Grace age. That what he said. She drowned on purpose with weights on her hands and feet because kids at school called her names, and no one on her side, and she can’t tell no one because no one gets her. And it got too much even she drink no water at school at all, even she tried to do drugs that someone said help her not pee in daytime. She did finally diapers, and someone at school found out and told, and then she killed… just like it. If you think Grace run away bad? You think if you want Grace died because no one listen. I told Grace go church me Sunday. I have safe church. No one said Cait bad girl. Sunday School teacher hugged me and let my friends get my Daddy to change me. My friends, Billy a year older me and his sister a year younger me… they take me to daddy. Whole stupid fifth graders table blocked the bathroom when Billy took me bathroom because I scared I pooping my pants. My church doesn’t hurt hurt people. You let her come and feel love my church. Not because she has to believe our words, but she just feel the safe of my friends and my Sunday School. You let her come. She feel assepted.”   “Your little cousin doesn’t talk like a kid going into fifth gra….”   “Stop it, mom,” Grace turned around still in her poopy pants, but she looked in her mom’s face. “She talks just fine. Her words are messed up, but her heart is not.”   The woman got quiet for a moment.   “If take her to your church, this Sunday, and let her go to Sunday School with Cait, she’s not being converted.”   “Conversion is not something of words,” Sean frowned. “It’s heart. If you have strong beliefs, and your daughter learned them as good beliefs, she will not be converted just because she finds friends that love her as she is. It’s just a safe place then, not a place where she seeks God. However, she is a thinking Soul. If your church didn’t speak truth to her soul, you cannot blame anyone for her lack of faith in it except the church’s judgment and your own ignorance in your child’s hurting.”   The woman sighed. “You’re right. Grace. If you want to stay the weekend with these people and come to their church on Sunday, I won’t stop you. If you want to go home but still go to their church, I won’t stop you. You do what you feel safe doing.”   “I… want to spend tonight with Cait’s family. Then… make up my mind tomorrow about church and staying the next night. I mean. Only if Mom is okay with that. I didn’t mean to be bad and run away. I just… I thought you were finally tired of me and wanted me gone anyway.”   “No, baby.”   “Prove it to her,” Eiboline told the woman. “Take your child to the bathroom, and wash her as if she was eight years old again, in a car too long, and pooped her pants. Don’t treat her like an eight year old, just give her the same understanding you would an eight year old. If you can’t do that….” Eiboline frowned. “It shows you need help, too.”   “Wash a teenager?”   “Yes. Come child. Auntie Eiboline will clean you up now. You are scared, sad, and need help in this state. No teen should have to change dirty pants on their own like this.”   The woman watched Eiboline guiding her daughter, who crawled out of her mom’s lap with a sad look back, and then she took Grandma’s hand, and they walked up the stairs to the bath together.   “You need some family therapy,” Sean told the woman. “I see it in your eyes. You love her, but you don’t get her. If you want to make a connection with her, you need help.”   “Maybe.”   “It’s not that you are bad,” Sean whispered. “My wife’s cousins…. I want to suggest the same to them, but they won’t listen. They aren’t ready. But are you?”   “I don’t know.” The woman stood up. “I’ll call her tomorrow to see if she’s staying the night or coming home if that’s okay.”   “We’ll have your daughter call you by noon if you forget. You have a lot to think about. You are not perfect. Children don’t need perfect parents. They just need parents to hold them when they aren’t perfect.”   After Grace’s mom left, Sean squatted down to Shane. “As for you, it’s up to you. You’re just wet, son. I can help you, or you can do it yourself. If you poop, I do it though. You understand? You will not be alone if you poop your pants.”   Shane nodded. “I can clean up when I pee.”   “Okay. You can clean up after I clean Cait up. I would normally let Guests clean up first, but Cait has a health issue.”   “Yeah, I didn’t miss that. I would have said I don’t need a bath if you didn’t let Cait go next anyway.”   “You’re a good boy,” Sean patted his shoulders.   “Come on, Shane. I’ll show you my bedroom now. Only the bed might smell. I pee the bed.”   “I do, too Cait. I won’t mind.”   “And never touch the stuff on the dresser. That’s Grandma’s stuff. I’ll explain when you both can hear. It’s a shrine to someone.”   “Okay.”       Chapter 101 Cait Talks to Harmony, Honestly   Cait walked up and looked in the bathroom on Grandma. “Can I come in?”   Cait felt a tightening of her chest and a fluttery in the stomach. It was a feeling, something that was a little new. She didn’t know what it was. It pulled at her inside of her chest and it pushed at the inside of her stomach. Why was she there? Why did it matter if she saw Grace wearing poopy panties? She couldn’t explain.   “Cait, hon. This is a priv….”   Grace whispered. “No, Grandma Kinsella. No. This is a private space because Cait made it one. Let her come in.”   “Are you sure?”   “At home, I’d have had privacy, but only because I’d be lonely. Cait made me safe. She got Shane when I asked. She got you to talk to my mom. She is one of my safe people. I don’t think all safe people have to be big. They just have to know what to do.”   Grandma nodded. “You’ll be okay?”   “I promise…. You’re nice, but without Cait, you wouldn’t be making me feel okay with this. I trust her.”   Cait walked in.   “I’ll show you what my friend teached me.” And she reached up, and she touched Grace’s still poop on leg, and she whispered. “My friend. I don’t let go.”   Grandma put Grace’s messy off of her and put her clean wash all over her, and then she let me get in the bath with Grace, and I pulled myself into her lap. “You allowed to pee in the water, only if you want to or you feel you can’t do nothing else. I don’t care. You can pee. I promise.”   Grace smiled. “I already went all the way in my pants.”   “I know. I just saying… if we taking a bath, you can pee in the water. It’s just water, and we can remake a bath. We can’t remake the heart.”   Grace hugged Cait. “You, too. You can pee in the bath… if you want.”   “I don’t want to right now. I want to enjoy Grace and quiet. You my friend.”   The one thing Cait remembered that her dad did when he first dropped her off there with Grandma and Daddy. He left. He didn’t wait for Cait to catch up, she only saw him driving away. Her clothes forgotten in the back trunk of the car, so she thought she had nothing to even wear. And then, she saw Grace’s mom do something different.   A knock at the bathroom door showed Grace’s mom was there. She had a small overnight thing, that’s what the big people called it. An overnight… she didn’t know what exactly, but it was like a small suitcase. She put on the floor, as if she knew Grace would pick staying the night for at least one night.   Grandma looked to the door as Grace’s mom talked really low. So low, that it was like a whisper, but it wasn’t airy like a whisper.   “Grace. I packed a few things so you won’t be without clothes. I put something on the top, but if you wear them is between you and the Kinsellas. They are just there, in case you want to not… well… you know what? I just put them there. It’s your choice.”   Grace frowned and Cait looked back at Grace’s mom. Her face was red. Grace’s mom’s lip was trembling. Her hands shook as she push the case into the bathroom. “We’ll call tomorrow, okay? I do love you, Grace. I’m glad you are here. You are safe. That’s important.”   Cait looked up at Grace who had her eyes doing this really fast blinking. Tears were running down her face. Maybe Grace’s mom finally gets her.   “I’ll call tomorrow, mama,” Grace almost sounded a few years younger the way she said it, but Cait didn’t tell her that. Cait put her thumb in her mouth. She’s not going to call Grace a baby.   “I can’t promise I won’t wet the bed,” Grace whispered to Cait.   “I can promise… that I will wet the bed,” Cait told Grace. “I don’t wear diapers. I don’t like it and Grandma never put me. If you stay the night, you sleeping my bed, so I pee on you. You allowed to pee on me, too.”   Grace smiled. “Okay.”   Cait looked up at Grandma. “Let her get out first and put clothes on in the bedroom. Daddy sees me naked. Let her have pribasee so she feels good because she bigger girl, and I can talk Daddy, and he can put clothes me. Anyway, my medicine.”   Eiboline shook her head. “I’m sorry, Grace. I… I need Sean to see this. You need to be taken care of. You said you have itchy-ditches, and now I see it. This is bad, hon. So I need Sean to see.”   “Why?”   “We have medicine, but it’s Cait’s. It helps with this, but if we use Cait’s medicine to help you, well, Sean and I never spend money without talking about it first. So, he needs to understand why I’d use Cait’s medicine, and why we’d need to talk to a doctor about getting more.”   “I don’t need….”   “Nonsense, child. You are not staying with us and suffering. That’s not how we do, here.”   “He’s going to see?”   “Only enough to understand the need to use the medicine.”   “Oh. Um. Okay.”   “Sean! Get up here, and tell Shane to stay out of the bathroom, please! This is… serious!”   Sean came in, and then Grandma moved.   “Damned! That’s worse than what we noticed with Cait.”   “Yeah,” Grandma sighed. “So?”   “You want to use Cait’s medicine on her?”   “Yeah?”   “You take care of that little lady,” Sean frowned. “Do what you know is right. I’ll just go so I don’t embarrass her any more.”   And Daddy reached his arms at Cait, and carried Cait out of the bathroom with him.   “You know you are both girls,” Sean told Cait. “You could just let Grandma dress you in the bedroom while Grace….”   “No. Daddy. I don’t have to hear the word to know that woman packed diapers. She was uncomfortable and Grace looked really like she wanted to die when her mom said something on top. I know the feel of a diaper word without hearing the word. I got told secret like that when I first go school in first grade! I know the words. I know the feel. I know the look. Grace was about to cry I find out. I don’t want her know I know yet. She tells me when she safe, not I find out on her against her wanting it.”   Sean frowned. “She talked like that in front of you and Eiboline?”   “She didn’t say diapers. She using people who don’t know diapers don’t know words, but I also see Grace face. Her face say she never wear diapers before. It not right I see her have to wear one… and I hope she choose not to, but it still her idea to make, and she my friend if she wear it or not.”   Daddy patted her butt and whispered. “You are exactly the friend Grace needs.”   Cait smiled at Shane when he looked down and his face blushed. Daddy was carrying her. She had Kooks, and she had her clothes tightly in her hands. She didn’t care. She was safe. Okay, maybe ten year old kids don’t get seen by friends without clothes, but then society picks on kids for things they don’t want to do. What’s more wrong? Shane sees her, or she embarrasses Grace when Grace has to think… Do I want a diaper. Even if Cait saw the diapers, and she chose not to wear one… Cait frowned. “I still know what her mom wanted even if she disobeyed it. And if she put it on… It not fun her. I am little kid. Shane has little kid sisters. He said so. He had to see them sometimes not clothes on.”   She whispered to Shane. “I’m just your peer-sister. You don’t have to care you see. Just don’t look Grace on her. Okay?”   Shane looked over while Daddy was putting her panties on her. “Okay. I promise. I could just go in the kitchen, if your Daddy doesn’t mind and get some water. You know… so you have a minute.”   “Shane?” Daddy said sternly. “Uncle Sean, son. To you…, you can call me Uncle Sean if you are afraid of calling me Sean without a title. You are part of Cait’s world, and anything that protects Cait, is related to our care for her.”   “Yes sir.”   “And going to get some juice for you and Cait and even Grace would be a great reason to excuse yourself. You may do so. Glasses are on the right side of the sink in the cupboard. Juice mix is in the fridge, and you put a little in the glass, and then fill it with water.”   “Okay.”   Then Daddy dressed me. “We’ll put the medicine on you once Grandma is done with Grace, okay?”   I hugged him. “Okay.”   When Grace came down in pajamas, a long sleeping shirt and Cait heard the strange plastical noise of the panties she had on, and saw her red face, she ran over fully dressed in her own pajamas, and she hugged her around the waist. “You’re my big peer sister, Grace. I love you.”   Grace smiled, and the red in her face seemed to get a little light.   Shane handed her a glass of juice. “Here. Uncle Sean says you can have some.”   “I… I best not. I pee the bed…,” she whispered.   “You’re allowed here, hon,” Daddy told her. “You drink the juice, and if you wet the bed, it’s Uncle Sean’s fault, not yours. Besides, it’s like five in the evening. Even if we thought cutting off water would stop something like that, it’s way too early. You didn’t even have dinner yet, child.”   She looked down. “I try not to drink too much even in the day. That way….”   “That’s why your skin looks the way it does, child. You don’t ignore thirst. It makes you sick. Now, if you been avoiding drink like that, and that’s why you have ‘itching-the-ditches on your body, then you don’t ignore drinks in my house. You drink even at night, and you pee the bed, hon. It’s just water.”   “But it’s bad.”   “Say people that don’t understand,” Sean frowned. “You ignore those idiots. You hear me, sweetheart? Anyone that would shame you for drinking enough water are not worth your time.”   “But at school…,” she started to cry.   Daddy ran over and pulled her to the chair and pulled her into his lap. “School is very cruel sometimes. I get it. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to hurt your health though, little girl.”   “Shane, go take a shower, okay?” Daddy said. “We have clothes for you. And put on some that you can go out in. We do have to take Cait to Harmony.”   “Oh, I thought…,” Grace frowned.   “You’re okay, hon. You don’t have to change unless you want to,” Daddy told her. “There’s nothing wrong if you want to wear pajamas out. They cover you just fine. Shane… well, boys tend to sleep a little more free, and he can’t go out that way.”   Shane smiled. “Yeah. Actually. Mom is probably worried. Can you take me home on the way to Cait’s appointment.”   “Sure.”   Shane went up and Cait looked up at Grace. “You a big kid. You more comfortable in regular stuff outside. You can change my bedroom. I don’t go up unless you say you feel okay.”   “Why?”   “You’re big. Big people don’t like little kids like me looking at them when they change. It’s just a big people thing, I think.” Cait knew she was lying. She was trying to invent a cover story so Grace didn’t have to show she was wearing diapers.   “Cait?” Grace looked into my eyes. “I know there’s another reason. I have 2 little cousin boys and 1 little cousin girl, and I know one thing. Okay, the older boy is only eight, but you… you are hiding something. Out with it.”   “I… It’s private.”   “Private for you, or for me?”   Cait looked down.   “You know I’m in a diaper. I can hear it every time I move and so can you and Shane.”   Cait looked down. “I don’t think Shane heard. It’s not that easy to know unless you know what it sounded like. I hate them. And you… you sounded scared I’d know when your mom said a secret word… but I know that words. I be member the think of let’s hide Cait pee her pants at school.”   Grace sighed. “Yeah. I never wore them before. Mom just….”   “It not your mom choice here, Grace. It you choice. I told you I pee on you. I not wearing a diaper. You don’t wear a diaper. Or you wear one. It is only you who say it. Not me. And I promise, not my Daddy or my Grandma, too.”   Grace frowned. “Well… I have to….”   Sean got up. “You are wearing a diaper because you have to?” he demanded?   Grace flinched and move back a little.   “No, little lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I meant it’s not going to help you. If you have a diaper on because you ‘have to,’ then you take that garbage off right now, little lady. We don’t wear things just because some one who doesn’t understand says so. You wear what you want for comfort. You understand, hon?”   Grace looked up. “But your bedding?”   “Cait will pee the blankets anyway. It’s not a big deal. It will have to be washed. That’s what happens when you have a body that does it’s own thing sometimes. You don’t hurt the kid. You wash the sheets, child. Even if that child is sixteen years old, you hear?”   “Yeah.”   “Good. Go upstairs, put on something comfortable and put on panties like the little young lady you are. If you pee in public, we just bring a change of pants for you. No harm, sweetheart.”   “Okay.”   Less than an hour later, Cait had medicine on her, Grace was in clean clothes and panties that didn’t sound plasticly, and Shane was trying to make Cait laugh in the car with silly words he put together like…. ‘Peanut butter and ants sandwiches.’ Even Grace was starting to laugh.   It had been quite a day for Cait, and she leaned against Grace sucking her thumb. “Can I be a baby for a little while?” she asked Grace.   “What do you mean?”   Cait pulled out her thumb, showed Grace, and put it back in her mouth.   “I don’t see anything babyish happening. I see a peer that’s just relaxing. You spent the last several hours protecting me and getting me help. You earned whatever makes you happy, little peer.”   Cait cuddled against her. “I love my two big peers… my brother Shane and my sister Grace.”   Then….   Cait was in a small office with Harmony and Grandma.   “Good evening, Cait,” Harmony smiled her usual friendly greeting.   “Yeah?” Cait looked up at her. “Why you say it good?”   “You’re here. You’re not scared somewhere, thinking about doing something that could hurt.”   “Yeah? But I got my Grandma. Some people don’t got no one.”   Harmony frowned. “Go on, Cait. You can talk.”   “Did you know a high school kid can commit kill herself because they feel sad?”   “Yes, hon. That’s call suicide.”   “Sue I side sounds make up,” Cait frowned. “It doesn’t sound like kill. It sounds not something. It sounds. I don’t know what. It’s not strong like kill.”   “Well, adults take it seriously.”   “Okay. But kids don’t eben get this word. It just a word becuz we don heared it too much.”   “You don’t hear about it because parents often protect kids from violence that causes it.”   “If adults protect kids from bio lance, why come someone can put weight on body and drop in a pool because kids mean, parents don’t hear, and schools don’t care?”   Harmony frowned and sighed. “Parents try, Cait. We don’t always know what is going on.”   “Yeah? Why come my daddy mad just because Grainne peed her pants dinner, but Daddy who is Grandma house band lets me pee all time in his lap? My mysery Daddy not protetin no body. He maked Grainne scared to poop while work outside, so Grainne get waterpoops like me.”   Harmony frowned.   “Vance girl is died. My friend. I don’t say name. I don’t mean her. But she scared, she try run away. But My Daddy help her when she called my house for help her. Why come her mommy no help? Why come a high school kid give up playtime, but lose promise pay when she put long time in take out her playtime, just because she make a one mistake that don’ted hurt people?”   “Hon. It’s confusing not just for kids. Lots of adults don’t understand these reasons, either. It’s….” Harmony sighed. “I think we should work on Cait in our sessions, Cait. Your friends need help, but these sessions are to help you.”   “Okay. But my friends hurt, then I hurt.”   “Well, sweetheart, if you want to help others, then first, you need to understand who you are, and how you need help first. If you can show others you can talk about your ghost, and you can talk about your worries and your feelings you think you are bad sometimes…. The stronger you can do that, the easier for other kids to listen. If enough kids can say it strong enough, then sometimes, people do hear.”   “Why come only sometimes?”   Harmony frowned. “There are a lot of reasons that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t explain, Cait. What is important, is what people do about it. And right now, people don’t really do anything. They say… let’s teach kids not to do drugs, but drugs have nothing to do with what you are talking about. Some companies make teen diapers, but diapers don’t make parents listen. I don’t know how to make people listen. I just teach people to speak for themselves, and hope their words reach people that help them.”   “That is more truth than any teacher tells kids,” Cait said. “My teacher said once at me… kids don’t need to get it. Just do what you told. I was like third grade. I don’t be member what was question, but I learned don’t ask teacher something that not school stuff.”   Harmony frowned. “I’m sorry you learned that. Not all teachers are like that.”   Cait looked up at her. “But there are teachers that let kids say bad things and then high school kids go get killed on their own way.”   Harmony sighed. “Yeah, there are teachers like that. But not all, Cait.”   “Okay.”   Cait looked up at her. “Want to see something?”   “Okay.”   “Get two papers.”   “Okay.”   “Get ruler.”   “Okay.”   “Grandma. Can you have in your purse the biggafier that you use?”   “Are you going to teach Harmony how to teach kids to read?”   Cait smiled a sly smile. “Maybe it help her. Maybe some kid ashamed read, and if she show the trick, maybe a kid less scared to read.”   “So, now we need a really really hard book, you know I can’t read.”   “Oh?” Harmony frowned.   “If I just said a fife grade book, you think… but you can read because you don’t know it. But if you get a high school book, you know no kid my grade can read. Don’t it?”   “I suppose so.”   Then Cait got in Grandma’s lap and she started to read. “sci… sky? Um… en Skyen ce is s… oh, wait! S and ci is s Oh! S-siens! Oh! Science!”   Harmony’s eyes bulged. “You… you read that?”   “P-see… cho… okay Sicho… okay… loggy… no… lojy… Oh! P-sigh cholojee!”   “That’s… that’s impressive. The word is psychology, Cait, but that is still really good for a fourth grade kid!”   “Fifth grade, from September.”   “She doesn’t read on grade level at all. People passed her without trying to teach her because they didn’t get it. The idea, is some kids, I had the problem so I introduced it…,” Grandma started to explain how Cait learned this.   Cait got in the car after her session feeling really chatty. Grace and Daddy were talking when they opened the door.   When Cait got in, Grace smirked until she got her seat belt on, and then she said… “Spaghetti-poop.”   Cait was suddenly caught up in a breathless laugh. She had forgotten that they were still playing it when they dropped her off for Grandma to take her in.   “Made you laugh!” Grace said. “One more point for me.”   “No fair! I wasn’t playing. I talking Harmony.”   “Okay. I’ll take the point back for that one…,” she paused. But then… “Spaghetti poop!”   Cait laughed again.   “That one counts!”   Cait frowned. “Fine. Cheese-can pee!”   “Huh?”   “You know, the spread of cheese from a can… it pees?”   “Sorry. Not funny, Cait.”   “Oh. Fine!”   Chapter 102 Overnight When the Kinsellas and Grace got back to the farm, already having had dinner out, and it being around nine, Daddy brought Cait up to her room.   “Is Grace going to be with me?”   “When she’s ready, sweetheart. She’s a teenager, so we’re not going to make her go to bed until after eleven or twelve. But she’ll sleep with you, hon. You’ve had a long day though, and you want to feed Summerstone in the morning?”   “Yeah.”   “Let your peer-sister have her big kid time, okay?”   “Okay. But she can at least say Good night?”   Grace walked in. She had come up and heard everything. “I’m actually tired too, Mr….”   “Hon? Uncle Sean,” Daddy told her. “You call me Uncle, child.”   “Okay. But can I be tired?”   “Yes, sweetie, but how about you try to use the potty just so you can say you tried not to pee the bed… even if you pee the bed.”   “Okay.”   “You should have Eiboline check your sores too before you go to bed. Put some medicine on.”   “I can….”   “Hon, no one has taught you how to properly look after that. If they did, your sores wouldn’t be that bad, and we wouldn’t be doing right by you if we didn’t take care of you for a while until you learn.”   “Oh.”   “It’s not your fault. Kids have to be taught this stuff, child. You’ve only been taught to wash yourself, but judging by what I glimpsed last night, you dig at yourself afraid of not being clean, and that’s not the way to clean hurt skin, sweetheart.”   “Um… yeah.”   “In the morning, whether you pee the bed or not, Cait will probably pee on you. It doesn’t matter. You let Eiboline bathe you, child. You get some proper care. Now go find Eiboline. I am going to be putting medicine on Cait, anyway while you are looking for her.”   “Okay.”   “Hint, she’s probably in the kitchen, sweetheart.”   “Okay.”   “Good girl.”   Sean took Cait’s pajama bottoms off of her and helped her wash off in the bathroom, put her on the toilet, put her medicine on her, and then helped her redress. By the time she was in bed, Grace was in the bathroom with Eiboline.   “Daddy gets mad when Grainne pees,” Cait frowned.   “We’re not at Daddy’s house, hon, not the Missouri Daddy’s house. Grace doesn’t get shamed or spanked or anything humiliating over wetting the bed here. If she acts scared, you remind her that she’s at Uncle Sean’s house, not her mother’s house, or especially not her mom’s sister’s house. She’s at Aunt Eiboline’s, where she gets help with baths and medicine, okay?”   “Okay.”   Eiboline brought Grace in while Daddy was helping Cait read A Spell for Chameleon. Grace smiled. “You let her read when you read to her at night?”   “Why not?” Sean asked.   “Mom used to read to me before I turned twelve. Then she just put books in my room and said I could do it.”   “She skipped a step,” Sean frowned. “Most parents do, but I feel like it is an important step. You should read to your kids. Your mom did that right. Until what age is different for each family. But then she told you to read yourself to sleep. There is step between that I think is very important, especially if you struggle at school like our very intelligent Cait does. It’s called shared reading. This way, hon?”   “Yeah?”   “You support a struggling reader by helping her with words she doesn’t know. You reinforce the words she’s learning by teaching her again, or you praise her when she gets a new word right. You encourage your child. That helps them get stronger at reading.”   “I need a lot of help for read,” Cait told her. “Teachers called me words Daddy swatted my butt once for saying about me. He heard me say fucker a bunch of times and he just met me. He never told me not to. But when I said I those bad words I told you and Shane about? He swatted me after a bunch of me saying. He said, those words are worse than fucker. That’s where I learned it.”   “Oh.”   “If you call yourself stinky or something, and you keep doing it, Uncle Sean will swat you,” Cait looked her in her eye. “It’s because he cares.”   “Now,” Daddy confirmed my word.   “Let’s not go to bed thinking how to be in trouble, ladies. Let’s relax. Grace, you read with us.”   “Really?”   “Sure, hon. You’re sharing Cait’s bed, so you have to share her story time.”   I saw Ghost looking like she peed her usually dingy dress. I scooted closer to Grace and then stuck my tongue at Ghost. “She says she’ll sleep with me. You got nothing for that.”   The Ghost smiled and just-a-dis-peared.   The next morning, I woke up and hugged Grace. She was sleeping. Suddenly I saw her water coming from between her legs. I hugged her more tight. She was peeing her pants, and I wanted her to be okay when she woke up. She did start to wake, and was still peeing.   I felt her tighten. Her voice drew in sharp airs and “sorry” was hard to hear. I held her more tight, and then I started to pee my pants on her, too. I hugged her more tight.   “You at Cait house, Gracie. You allowed. Just keep peeing. Don’t hold it. You hurt your body if you hold it. Pee. I promise, you allowed, and I want you to pee, Grace. See? I peeing. I not apposed to hold it. I hurt my body bad because I used to hold it. Not, I not allowed until the doctor says so. You pee. Grace.” Grace started to relax and her pee fully came out at once. I whispered. “I love you.”   She sat up. “I need to go the toilet.”   “Why? You apposed to pee all the way.”   “It’s not….” she doubled over holding her tummy. Then it happened. I got in her lap and hugged her, anchoring her there, while she pooped her pants.   “It okay, Grace. It okay. I promise. It okay.”   The light turned on. Eiboline stood there, a small frown on her mouth. Her eyes looking into Grace’s eyes.   “Scared, hon?”   Grace looked up at her. “Mom’s gonna….”   “No, hon. You’re at my house. Your Mama left you here to be taken care of by us, child. You did nothing wrong. Your body is hurt. No sixteen year old starts just pooping like that unless something is wrong, baby. Whether it is emotional or physical, you don’t mind in my house, baby. You just come with me. Cait, you too. You both need to be cleaned up.”   “You woked up earlier, Grandma.”   “I have a hurt child in my house that’s not used to our ways, Cait. You might not remember, but I woke up earlier for you, when you first got here, too.”   “I don’t be member. I don’t know. I just feel like it forever, and know you love me. I don’tn’t think about it.”   “That’s as it should be, sweetheart. Come on, up off your friend. She’s messy and scared and needs to calm down in a bath.”   Grandma cleaned Cait first almost like Cait was a baby. Cait played around her cleaning her up and Cait talking to Grace like her being cleaned up was not a big deal. She giggled and just said nonsense.   “Do you always just clean her?” Grace asked.   “Not always. It’s usually up to her how much we do, unless she’s pooped herself. Of course, I do the medicine. She’s still a little kid. But she knows how to wash up if she just pees… if she wants to.”   “So, you just got her up this time….”   Eiboline sighed. “For you, hon. You need to understand that I don’t mind cleaning her up and she doesn’t mind if I help her. She’s old enough to do it herself, but sometimes, it just feels… well, ask Cait.”   “I love my Grandma and my Daddy. If I get scared or really sad, I can even ask Daddy and he washes me, too. It’s not shame if it done because I need help and not just someone says… you did bad, and you too stupid to clean it up, like my old home. My old home, when I wet the bed, I’m too stupid to clean up by myself. Here, I am too sad to clean up my own mess. That the differ. I can be too sad or scared to clean up here, and it not meets I stupid.”   Grace nodded. “So, if I need help, it doesn’t mean I’m… like a baby?”   “That’s right,” Grandma told her. “All of us needs help, sometimes.”   “I told you,” Cait said looking into Grace’s green shining water eyes. “You allowed to poop your pants here. It don’t matter if it because you controlled who seed you, or if you don’t can control at all, in my bed on not your want. Grandma knows. You don’t poop your pants by your want, even if you do it to stop someone to see you lose not able to wait minutes later.”   Grandma smiled. “That’s right, hon.”   Grace seemed to relax and water ran down her cheeks. Cait brushed them off with her thumbs. “You one of my big sisters, now. I love you. You don’t gotta be perfect for me love you. Grainne pees her pants, too. She my sister in Missouri. I love her. She pees her pants sometimes to protect us… on purpose, not she can’t choose, but he does it so Daddy see oldest one do it so he mad her and not a little sister. She even poop in them if it protects a little sister.”   “Ew! Really? She chooses to poop her pants because… her little sister might get in trouble for peeing?”   “Yeah.”   “She’s braver than me,” Grace whispered.   “Grainne got sick, though doing it all the time,” Cait frowned. “And I learned just before you stayed the night, she and Clo, my other big sister, protected me when I was sick. They got in my wet bed, because it they scared I peed too much and Daddy mad there. And they got in my bed, and they know it still not look like they peed, so they peed on purpose, so Daddy think the pee is all us, and I don’t get trouble. Grainne told Clo I sick and Clo agree. And they decide they protect me and wet on purpose.”   Grace’s mouth did this surprise ‘oh’ thing, her eyes big, and she started me like I was lying. “I not lying. I can prove it.”   “I didn’t say you were. Why would you? You just admitted, you got your sisters in trouble, but you didn’t mean to, you were sick. But… I never heard of a sister doing that.”   “Then that’s all I going to say because more will be too much.”   “I would love to meet such sisters! They… they should be in a hall of heroes, Cait!”   “They are,” Cait frowned. “Not one the whole world see. But in my Ghost world, I have a whole Hall I making that will be everything I learn from now on about how they protect my two baby sisters and what I learn they did for me in it.”   “I needed sisters like that.”   “Shane, too,” Cait whispered. “His sisters love him, but in his house, nothing is private. His sisters yell like his Playgroup isn’t something that… well, I think maybe he doesn’t like it called playgroup.”   “Yeah. Playgroup in the room, is okay,” Grace said. “We all understand it. Vance is nice and everything. But I never tell anyone I go to a playgroup. I just say it’s group counseling even though I’m playing like a little kid.”   Cait hugged her.   “Watch. Grandma put my medicine on me. I let her. She said I can do one of them, but I don’t want to touch. It hurts. So I let her.”   “She put it on me last night.”   “Okay. But she put it on you now, too. I telling you, watch. Grandma not say nothing like I shouldn’t be. She make it okay I need it.”   Grace sighed. “I know.”   “Then it’s okay if I watch her put it on you and hold your hand, if you know.”   Grace bit her lip, and then she nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s okay.”   Once both girls had medicine on them, and were taken to their room, Grace dressed herself, and Cait brought her clothes to Daddy to dress her. Grace came out and saw he was still dressing her.   “You love your daddy dressing you?”   “Yeah. It feels good after I peed my pants and especially wet the bed.”   Grace nodded. “I liked that you… I mean that Aunt Eiboline cared enough to wash me and help with medicine for me. I can’t let Uncle dress me though. I’m sixteen. It’s not the world… it’s me, too.”   “That’s as it should be,” Daddy said. “Teenagers are growing up. In this house, we help as much as you need, hon.”   Cait skipped with Grace hand in hand out to find Summerstone. “We don’t play with him yet. He eats first, and we clean his straw. It’s gross. You can just watch if you want. I can do it. Daddy taught me.”   Grace watched a bit, and then she said “let me try.”   Cait pointed at a pitchfork that Daddy uses when he’s helping her.   They worked together, and even though Grace said it’s stinky, she was laughing and they had fun. Then Grace helped her feed other animals, too. She was pulling in big breaths that got bigger and bigger.   “Are you okay?” Cait asked. “You seem to be breathing hard.”   “It’s not that, Cait. I… I don’t know. I feel like I can breath. No one is staring down my back after I woke up pooping my pants even. The air is not city air, but it has a stink to it, and yet, it smells cleaner than the city. I just…. I feel free out here. Like if I peed right now, only you and I would know, and you wouldn’t care!”   “Yeah. It is free out here,” Cait agreed.   “I want to stay the night again,” Grace said. “I want to wake up free again, Aunt Eiboline helping me bathe because she doesn’t hurt my… sore area like I do when I take a bath, and no one watching when I pee, but when they notice they help me get clean. I… I didn’t know I wanted it, but I do.”   Cait held Grace’s hand, and nodded as she rubbed her hand like Billy had done at church last Sunday when Cait peed her pants. “Sometimes, you don’t know it’s there, so how can you want it? But when you know what it is, it’s hard not to want more.”   “Exactly,” Grace nodded.   “If you scared to tell your mommy, Grandma will talk for you,” Cait said. “One thing Grandma and Daddy Sean good at, is being there when you need. They don’t mad it. They just do it.”   “Mom will think I’m being a baby about it if I let….”   “Stop, Grace,” Cait held both of her hands. “Stop. It’s not about your mom. Your mom… she doesn’t mom right. She maybe loves you, but she doesn’t mom right. You don’t care that words because that not love talk. That is pressure your mom is scared. You let Grandma help. I promise. Your mom not mad you when Grandma done talking her.”   Grace nodded. “I know.”         Chapter 103 Church Isn’t Just A Sunday Thing We had breakfast, helped Grandma with the water, and were in the pen Daddy had for me with Summerstone when I suddenly heard a bunch of kids at the main gait that went around the house, and these kids… twelve of them… The whole Sunday School assept for Billy and Ruth ran out towards us.   I went to the cross sign that said where I could go, and I waited for them to get to me.   “Who told you come this way?” I asked my hands on my hips, eyes narrowed at the oldest sixth grader.   “We… I mean, we came to see you?” She stammered.   “I not mad you see me. I mad you might bited by snakes. You don’t just run to a field without know it! You bited by snake like that. Now stay on the road, see it? And this sign means where You find me. The girl picture is me and that’s my yard. The house picture is my house. I don’t want no body get bitted a snake!”   “Oh, okay.” She looked down.   “I promise. I not mad. I just scared. You the olderest. You protect the little kids. Snake is here sometimes. It can make a safe animal kill you. It did before. Please. Don’t think I mad. I promise, my Daddy, Um… Church calls him Uncle or cousin Sean, he can tell you truth.”   “Okay. I believe you, Cait. It’s just we didn’t see any snakes, and I was leading them. I told them not to leave the trail.”   Cait hugged her. “Snakes sometimes can’t see them. They are sometimes in a big lots of grass place, and they bite very fast. I don’t wanted anyone to bite or get hurted by animals that stomping because snake scared.”   “Okay. I understand. But I have been out to ranches before. You know, where they let you ride horses. I was doing the same stuff I do then.”   “I guess I just get scared easy. I sorry.”   “No, Cait,” Rebecca hugged her tight. “You didn’t know if we knew what we were doing, and you just got scared. I understand. But I do know what I’m doing, and I was watching the others.”   “Oh, okay. Come and meet my friend from my other safe group.”   “Other safe group?”   “Yeah. Don’t call it playgroup. She hates the name, but some kids go there to talk about and understand why we have some hard emotions problems.”   “That’s cool.”   “She’s older, but don’t be mean her if something happened.”   “We won’t. We accidentally on purpose forgot to invite the bullies.”   Cait laughed.   “Grace! These my Church friends! But where Billy and Ruth? They not bullies?” Cait looked at Rebecca.   “Well, not everyone could get away. I’m sorry. But I think the Hendersons said they were coming later to see you. After all, you didn’t first meet Billy and Ruth at church, right?”   “No. Not the first time. I met them the park. It was the after the first Sunday I here with Daddy and Grandma cousins. They don’tn’t go church that day because too much happened. They said I feel safe first, then we go next time.”   Rebecca smiled. “Yeah, church is supposed to feel safe.”   Theodore, a short chubby fifth grader took Cait’s hand. “I know you trust Billy and Ruth most, and we won’t be mad if you don’t…, but you are a fifth grader, and I as the fifth grade table leader, I was hoping that now that Angela isn’t making Melissa who was the leader until last week be mean, maybe you can try the fifth grade table. I promise, no one gets to be mean, not to anyone.”   “Can my friend Grace come? She’s sixteen.”   “I have to ask Mrs. Johnson, but I’ve seen adults visit us before. I don’t see how this would be any different. If she can’t, then I’m sure you can go to the high school one with her.”   “I… I don’t want her to go to the high school one, yet. I don’t know it safe. I told you, she in the group for us kids that can’t do our emotions right. I want her safe with my friends who okay if peed my pants in the lesson.”   “If Mrs. Johnson says she can come, she can sit at the fifth grade table with us. I promise. No one will be allowed to call on her to read if she’s nervous, and no one will be allowed to be mean if she gets scared or something.”   “That’s why I want you invite her our Sunday School Class.”   “Oh, you have to actually talk to Rebecca to officially invite her. She’s our Youth leader because she’s been asked to that by the Pastor, but even she has to ask Ms. Johnson, I think.”   Rebecca walked over and patted Cait on the back. “She’s more than welcome. I don’t think Mrs. Johnson will throw out someone who is just there with their friend wondering what we do in Sunday School. Jesus invites everyone… even the murderer who hung on the cross by him, he promised him he can live in paradise, too because he repented to Jesus.”   Cait smiled. “Okay, Grace?”   “Um…. I think they should know that I’m ….”   “You better not say no words that worse than fucker,” Cait glared at her.   “Oh. But how will they know what I do?”   Rebecca put an arm around the teenager. “Jesus made a church not for the perfect, but to help all the not perfect to learn. If you have a problem, just let our Sunday School teacher know if you need help or if it’s something you can’t hide, then tell us when it starts. No one is allowed to laugh. Cait peed her pants both Sundays she came, but no one cares if she does it again, only if she comes to church again.”   “I… I poop mine, sometimes.” Grace’s face was on fire.   “I told you, she’s in my group,” Cait frowned. “She has emotions problems and it makes her scared to go bathroom right, so she… does it… different, but like me.”   “Then we won’t care. Just tell the teacher so we don’t surprise her,” Rebecca told Grace. “We let people who do far worse than make a little mess on the floor into church.”   “What if Melissa or Angela mean? I want Grace to sit with sixth graders, by Billy? He protects people like me.”   Rebecca nodded. “She and you and even Ruth are all welcome at the sixth grade table. You sit where you are comfortable, Cait. If you think Grace is safer at our table, then you join her at our table, and Billy can hold his sister, and the teen can hold you, and you can all sit together, okay?”   “You have to ask Billy and Ruth if Ruth wants to sit in his lap. I’m more the ….”   “Cait?” Grace frowned. “If I’m not allowed to use words like baby, then you aren’t either. I caught you!”   Cait looked down. “Guilty.”   Rebecca frowned. “I don’t see no babies, and anyone that does, well Cait, this your yard. You kick them out and I’ll make sure they leave along with Theodore. We purposefully didn’t accidentally on purpose not invite bullies. If any bullies came, they can go back home.”   The fifth graders gathered around Cait and Grace.   “And remember, we will guard the bathroom for you, just like last Sunday, Cait. No one gets to watch you or Grace if you are scared you are having trouble with the toilet and your clothes.”   “Thank you.”   Cait looked at Grace. “See? Aren’t my Sunday School Friends nice?”   “They are,” Grace had tears glistening on her cheeks. “They don’t care you even wet your pants last week?”   “Nope!”   Rebecca took Grace’s hand. “And we won’t care when you first poop your pants in our class, too, whether it’s this Sunday or any Sunday you come. Well, we will care. Not about the mess, but about your feelings. You are a soul of God, and that’s the most important thing to remember, both of you.”   “Okay.”   “We can play tag, but before you all just start running around, I want Rebecca to come and back me up, since you know something about farms. It safety, not I tell you do it because my house, but I tell you do it so you don’t die. Rules. If you can’t play those rules you go in the house where it safe.”   The kids all gathered.   “We all stay in this pen. If someone says they gotta pee, we stop the game no matter what. Even if you can tag someone, you don’t. That cheating, and someone has to move to not be tagged can get died.”   The kids were all listening. “You see the mama horse? Don’t go behind her when you running. If she doesn’t know you doing, she can kill with a power kick, and only think. I protect. She doesn’t know you just a kid. Wolves are small like us, and they eat horse. You leave the horses alone when you running.”   Rebecca stared at a fourth grader who was jittering.   “If you don’t listen to Cait, you are going inside. This is serious, Jill.”   “Okay.”   “If the horses start stomping no reason, if Shadow growls without good reason, and if someone stays stop, don’t move, you stop where you are, and you do not move until my Daddy comes over and says so. I have Shadow help me to where Daddy is, and when he comes out and checks, then others move. I trust Shadow. I can talk Shadow. Shadow not know you. You don’t know what means snake and what not means snake. You stay still… even if you pee your pants!”   Rebecca frowned. “Even me?”   “Are you group leader?”   “Yeah?”   “What the fourth graders going to do if the group leader moves.”   “Yeah, I see.”   “I not telling you to pee your pants. I’m telling you if you can’t hold it, you stay there and wait for Daddy to say it safe. You might know about snakes, but some kids don’t, and even if you can get away, if you move, a nine year kid will get bited.”   “Alright. I get it.”   Cait looked around at all the kids. “We are not close to the house and if people need to go toilet, some of us will pee our pants. I will just do it. I do anyway. But if anyone choosed to or just doesn’t can explain they did, anyone that makes that kid cry—especially they poop their pants…. The kid that maked the other kid cry is out! You don’t play no more. Church safe place. So it is Cait’s yard!”   The children started playing around after Cait told them that they do a walk through the pen area first. After it was declared safe, and it was a huge area. They had more than enough room to play even with the horses grazing at one end. While they were playing, this one kid kept trying to be it, but people kept not tagging him.   “Stop!” Cait called out. “Stop! New rule!”   The kids moaned but stopped.   “Does anyone know why Kyle keeps trying to get tagged on purpose?”   Other kids shrugged.   “I saw him put himself close enough to be chased… getting closer and closer and even putting his hand out. Why is everyone ignoring him? That’s the same rule as making someone cry for peeing their pants. It’s worse! There is NO reason to ignore each other. Next time I see someone ignoring someone out here, I’m going in the house and you guys can figure out how to move on your own if there is a snake. I don’t play with people that ignore their friends.”   The other kids looked down in shame. Even Rebecca.   “Honest, Cait. I didn’t notice.”   “I don’t care. That’s the main reason people can get picked on. No one noticed. I don’t like that excuse. My yard, we all notice, or we don’t play… at least not with me.”   “I’m sorry, Kyle. I didn’t realize we were excluding you,” Benny said. “I was just targeting the person that tagged me. It wasn’t mean to ignore you.”   “Yeah, sorry, Kyle. I should have tagged you. I just… I don’t normally tag easy targets because I feel like people are doing that because they feel sorry for me because I’m slow or something.”   Cait looked down. “Well, let’s just be aware if someone has to put their hand in you face to feel included, then you not the only one that ignored them, but you can make them feel included even if you not the one wrong? I tell you why it matter later.”   And they were playing again.   “Kids!” Mrs. Johnson called them. “Come and get lunch and thank the Kinsellas for letting us play here.”   As they were walking back, Cait was surprised. Kyle held her hand. “I like your rules.” Another girl, who had wet her dress and was a little older than Cait held her other hand. “I get called dumb.”   When they were all gathered in the kitchen, Cait smiled at all her friends. “You all told me that church not for perfect, right? Well. I not mad nobody today. Just I want no one is mean. Kinsella God not mean, and not want us to be mean. So what how they say two Sunday before? Keeper? No, that Daddy’s words. He said God ask Cain where is Able, and Cain asked about brother keeper. If you are God child, then you ask. Did I see if my brother and sister need help because they alone or not get tagged or not get treated nice and crying? That what we want. Don’t we?”   Then Cait sat at the table.   “Please sit, if you care listen at the most scared, most stupid, most pee potty pants, most bad school girl in third grade. I promised I tell you why ignore someone is more bad than you make a kid cry because peed pants.”   Cait was surprised that even the older kids were sitting, even Grace.   “There is this one girl. She never do it right. Nothing. She wake up, she peed in hall and in bathroom and make mess more. ‘stupid girl’ they said. She peed bed. ‘Good,’ they said. ‘You don’t make mess. You too stupid to go toilet.’ She read is so bad, third grade kids say you need to go back Kindergarten. You so bad, you can’t hit the ball. Why we want you my team?”   Cait looked around.   “But worse than that bad looking at me… not was the stupid word or the potty pants or the you don’t good, you bad. The worse? No friends.”   She looked down and felt a burning wave in her eyes flooding. She shook.   “I am outside, by myself at recess. I see all kids running and playing and laughing… and I just pee my pants again in lonely and no one sees because they don’t even see. I just inbisible assept my Ghost who wear a dirty peed dress and tell me look my own skirt, and it peed on, too.”   Some of the kids moved a little bit where they sitting on the floor. Some wiped noses. Some looked down at their hands.   “I more fun stay in recess in fourth grade to take a read test where I don’t eben can read good, and it more fun that outside where people just pass by while I pee on the ground in my clothes.”   Everyone was quiet. Even the big adotes stopped talking.   Cait started peeing her pants, and she stood up. “I don’t can talk right now. I’m going to be a baby. I want my Daddy.” And she walked through the seated kids and got into Sean’s lap and she buried her face. “No change yet. Just hold, me, Daddy?”   “Of course, Cait.”   Grandma sighed. “Alright, everyone. We thank you for coming to play, but Cait needs a nap. She’s had way too much excitement for one morning. I’m sorry. But everyone goes… everyone except you, Grace. You need a nap, too.”   Daddy picked Cait up and started to take her upstairs. “You too, Grace, hon. It’s nap time. You don’t get a choice right now. I don’t know what happened outside, but you are both very tired.”   Chapter 104 A Pastor’s Words Daddy walked the two girls to the bedroom, not the bathroom, and then he looked down at Grace’s skirt.   “How is your heart?” he asked her.   “What do you mean?”   “Is your heart hurting?” Sean asked Grace.   Grace gave a heavy sigh.   “Then Uncle will change you, hon. Grandma is down stairs getting you some juice and probably something for a headache in case you have one.”   “How’d you know I had one?”   “Watching Cait, sweetheart. We’ve had her for three weeks, now, and one thing I’ve learned, is that when Cait does certain things… she’s got a headache, and while you didn’t pour your heart out like she did, she touched on things that happen to you, too. Did she not?”   “Yeah, she did.”   “Before I help, do you mind if I help you. I know you peed, hon, probably outside, but that doesn’t give me the right change you without permission. You still decide.”   “You never changed me before….”   “And I won’t change you when Eiboline is able to do it right away, child. But she’s busy right now, and you’re wet, hon.”   “Yeah?”   “And you have a bad rash from not taking care of yourself, and I don’t want it get worse. You don’t either. But your respect and your dignity comes first.”   “You can do it. I trust you. But didn’t you say we can take our own bath and change on our own?”   “I did, hon. If your heart is okay. Not if you feel hurt or lonely though.”   “I do feel lonely.”   “So uncle change you?”   “Okay.”   Grandma came in when Grace was in clean panties and shirt, Uncle getting her jeans out for her.   “Are you okay, Grace?”   “Yeah. Actually. If I am to tell the truth…? I didn’t know how nice it could be to be changed by a Daddy sort and not feel… like it’s… well, it felt really good. I don’t understand why my parents refuse to help me? Only because I’m sixteen and in high school?”   “Well…, society,” Daddy told her. “It’s not right, but society can be a little uncaring about what emotional needs people have.”   “Yeah?”   “Sweetheart? When’s the last time your mom helped you when you had crap in your panties?”   “I don’t think ever?”   “Not even when you were sick?”   “No. I shouldn’t have pooped then, not even the runs.”   “You know… society says that teenagers can take care of themselves, but society can be wrong sometimes. The problem is that society is a lot like high school, and people that don’t conform sometimes get labeled. However, sometimes, parents just don’t understand that their house is their rules. Society can’t break into your walls and tell you how to parent.”   “But it is bad that I poop my pants.”   “No. It’s not you being bad, Grace. It’s society failing our most hurt in society. And it’s society being bad. Just like Cait has been hurt by not being heard, you’ve not been heard for a while. Since what? Fourteen?”   “Younger.”   “Younger than fourteen?”   “Well, the last time I did the runs in my pants and mom said anything that was… sort of nice about it, was when I was around eleven and got sick. But I was pooping my pants at school by the age of like nine?”   “Nine?”   “Yeah. On purpose.”   Sean shook his head. “There is no such a thing as on purpose, Grace. Not with that. Nine year olds only do that on purpose if they don’t know how to ask for attention in a healthy way.”   “My dad left us when I was like three days from my nine birthday.”   “You dad left, when?”   “Um… three days before I turned nine.”   “That is a huge change, sweetheart! Of course you are going to act out! How does a nine year old child, who doesn’t even have contact with her Daddy, articulate her need for him? Baby!”   He kissed her forehead.   Cait frowned. “My Daddy in Mysery? If she just… Well, he kind of did, though. He abandoned me here. I love my new Daddy and Grandma, but still. I sometimes feel it. But Daddy helps me, Gracie. Maybe you should let my Daddy be your Daddy. But if he is, he will check you sometimes, not to shame, but to make sure you not too scared to change your pants. That what he do me. And… I love it.”   Grace frowned. “Families can’t just do that.”   “Why not?” Cait asked.   “I don’t know the rules.”   “I don’t either, Gracie. But if you need someone, you can call me Uncle, Daddy, or even Grandpa for all I care. But if you need to be picked up and carried, if you need my help changing your pants, if you need anything that you didn’t get when you were almost nine and your world changed…. I am here.”   “My mom won’t like that.”   Eiboline frowned. “Well, your mother is going to have to start facing some truths. She’s going to lose a wonderful young lady as her daughter if she doesn’t, and I’m not threatening to call anyone. It’s a natural consequence of not caring for your own kid. Those kids grow up, and eventually, they realize their mom never did anything that help them, so they don’t value them.”   “I love my mom!”   “I know you do,” Eiboline said to Grace. “And that’s the tragic thing. She still has time to save this relationship, but I don’t know if she will listen and take it, or if she’ll wait until too late, and your feelings change.”   “Now,” Sean looked up at Eiboline. “Let’s not bother Grace with that right now.”   “You’re right. Here, Grace, two aspirin and some juice. You get a nap, okay?”   Then Grandma pulled me into her lap and she started to change me, too.   Cait looked up at at Daddy. “That’s the real reason she poops her pants?”   “It could be, Cait. I don’t know. I haven’t had her see a doctor. But if her mom can’t figure it out, and she’s in your Playgroup, it is just as likely as your first reasons were when you started to hold it like you did. It might have gotten to be a medical problem where at first it was an emotional one… just like you.”   Cait reached over and hugged Grace. “Be a nine year old girl with me, and pee you pants, Grace. Let Daddy heal hurt little girl inside you. Society sees a sixteen year girl. I see you as both. I see the need to help your little girl inside, and I see the need to get better so you can do the things big girls have fun to do.”   “You think me peeing my pants will let me do the things big girls do?”   “I don’t know. I know that since I at Daddy’s house here, and with Grandma, that it’s easier to read. It’s easier to play. It’s easier to not be cry all the time. And I am allowed to poot my panties. If I allowed to go poot my panties, and it means I play easier, but I not allowed but I don’t play and have friends… why come it wrong to think pee my pant without shame it, is bad?”   Grace frowned. “Yeah?”   “And if that right, why come you can’t poot your panties so you can be a big girl?”   “I… but it’s not… but big girls don’t….”   “But poot panties girls don’t have friends at ten years old almost eleven, and pee pants girls don’t play tag like we do before. And no body hears potty pants, but only, they did! It not the not go potty. It the not shame it happened. I even said I gonna be a baby now, but no one wanted to leave.”   “Yeah,” Grace frowned. “I saw.”   “Try to be my little sister at home and big sister outside. See what happened. Billy said almost same me. He said, let’s try something. He said about the Ghost in me. He said you tell the ghost, ‘no’, and you know what? I did, and I didn’t stop pee, but I stop be scared. If I can’t tell ghost no, I can’t tell no body how be fair and I don’tn’t stop snake bited, but I do it.”   “Yeah?”   “Just try. Be my little sister at home, and just pee on purpose your pants… only at home. Only in bed, only one place, and if it help you better, then try more times, but only private so people not judge outside? Is that okay?”   The adotes had already left the childs-ren to take a nap.   “You really think if I poop my pants on purpose, it will help?”   “I peed on I want to at group last night. I got listened, and I got voice. I got okay that they see me peed my pants by I want them to see me and not look Shane who scared for it. And they looked me. I got… I had seen me people. And I… I felt like I was real them.”   “I’ll try to pee the bed on purpose. But I’m not pooping on purpose, Cait. Even if I need to, I can’t right now. It’s scary.”   “Okay. Small baby mouse steps is good.”   Cait and Grace were awakened, Cait didn’t know how much later, when an excited little Ruth jumped on her bed and hugged her. The bed was wet. Grace was blushed red. Cait saw her frowned at her.   “Ruthie? I feel scared now. Can you down and tell Daddy I scared?”   “Because you peed the bed?”   “Yeah. Can you get my Daddy and stay until I can come in clean cloziz? The Ghost too scary.” Cait was lying… not because she didn’t want Ruth to see that Cait peed, but because she was lying next to someone she promised it would be safe to be the nine year old sister and pee the bed on purpose. Now, like Grainne, she was protecting her little sister, even if her little sister was actually in real Earth time, older than her big sister. In Mysery.   “Okay. I’m sorry you scared.” Ruth hugged her. “You can pee on me anytime though. I want you to know.”   “In my heart, I know?” Cait tried to help Ruth not feel like Cait re-object her, “but my head said I dirty, and I ten, and I make bad thing and you copy it.”   Ruth nodded. “I’ll get your Daddy.”   When Ruth ran out, Grace touched my arm. “You really scared?”   “No. I protecting my little sister who is scared though. Not the sixteen year old that everyone sees, but the nine year old that still waiting for her Daddy to come back.”   “I love you, Cait.”   “I love you, Grace.”   Daddy came in and he sat on Grace’s side of the bed, not Cait’s, but he looked intently at Cait….   “Cait? You scared to tell Billy and Ruth you peed your pants? How dumb do you think she is?”   Cait frowned. “Um… I not saying she dumb.”   “Ruth came and whispered in my ear, hon. She said the big girl next to Cait accidentally peed the bed, and that you lied about it and said you were scared and to get me, and she said… probably to protect the bigger girl like Billy did you?”   “She didn’t tell everyone?”   “She whispered it to me.”   “I told Grace to wet her pants on purpose. Now, she’ll never trust me.”   “You told her, what?”   “I told her to be a scared nine year old and pee the bed, the one that misses her Daddy. That it can be just with her big sister, me, and no one knows, but Ruth found out.”   “I’m sorry, hon. Nor I nor Ruth knew that. But maybe it’s good for Grace to know how Ruth and Billy feel about it, hon? Ruth’s not dumb, just like you’re not dumb.”   “Yeah.”   Before Daddy could even start getting Grace out of bed, Ruth had Billy’s hand and they came into the bedroom together.   “Sorry, I made my sister tell me why she didn’t stay with Cait. She loves Cait, and sits in Cait’s pee, so it didn’t make sense she thought Cait needs space,” Billy said. “She said there was a big girl in Cait bed, and the bed was soaked… that you both peed the bed?”   “Yeah?” Cait frowned.   “Well, is she your friend?”   “She’s in my Playgroup where they help us with emoshunble stuff. She wets the bed sometimes because she lonely for her real Daddy who left her family. She gets scared and pees the bed.”   Billy frowned. “Ruth wets the bed. We have our dad, but she wets the bed. I love her. Cait wets the bed at ten. Cait has other stuff. But Cait pees her pants at church. It’s okay.”   Sean sighed.   “What I’m saying, big girl, is nine, ten, eleven, fifteen, sixteen, even eighteen? If you pee the bed, you pee the bed. You still Cait’s friend, and that means there value to you to us, and I don’t know why, and I don’t care if you tell me why… other than you lost your dad and get nightmares. But if you tell me why, I won’t be mean about it. I see what being mean about it did to my sister. Kids at school get mean to my sister. Now, I hit even girls, if they are mean to my sister. I know I’m not supposed to…? But she’s my sister. I’ll be damned if I let someone make my sister cry especially if she comes running to me about being picked on. Cait’s my little sister now, too. Not by blood? But by something stronger.”   I slid closer to Grace. “I didn’t mean them to see you and find out. I wanted to tell. I knew they okay. Are you… are you okay?”   “You told me I could pee on purpose,” Grace whispered.   Billy took her hand. “I pee on purpose, sometimes, and there’s nothing wrong me. Want to see?”   Billy peed his pants, again! Just like that!   “You’re a little kid?” Grace started.   “I’m going to be twelve this year,” Billy told her. “Actually, I turn twelve in September. So…. I know what I did, and I’d do it again. Cait is my sister’s best friend! They love each other, and if Cait has a friend that’s scared like she was… then it’s worth it to pee my pants to show her friend it’s okay to do it on purpose.”   “I’m six….”   “You are a kid who is hurted,” Billy frowned. “Hurt! Hurt kids don’t need an age to stop acting like a little kid. They need someone to tell them you are okay the way you are. That’s the only way to stop being a little kid… to be told you are okay as you are, so you grow up.”   “Yeah?”   “Yeah. And if you need, you act like a nine year old for a while. I don’t care. Or don’t act like a nine year old and just pee your pants sometimes? I don’t care either way. What I am worried about, is that Cait is sad if you feel hurt. And Cait will make my sister sad, not because Cait wants, but because Ruth is hurt when Cait is hurt. So if you being hurt, hurts Cait, then that makes my sister hurt in the end. That matters to me.”   “You can just not let me see….”   “No. That will hurt Cait, and my sister, and it’s not what church teaches. Jesus loves us as we are. If I can’t love you the way you are how can I say I love Jesus and follow him?”   Billy climbed up on the bed and pulled the blankets off of Grace and sat in her lap in his wet pants, though she was soaked, too. “Are you mad if I sit in your lap in peed in pants?” Billy asked.   “No?”   “Then why do I care if you peed your pants, okay? By the way, my name is Billy. Do you what a little girl did for my sister who I saw on a swing one day, and who smelled like pee, but she didn’t pee her pants, at least not yet?”   Grace frowned.   “That little girl accepted my little sister when my little sister asked her to play. My little sister in sort of in your face honest sometimes, and she told Cait that she smelled like she peed, and asked if she had to use the bathroom or maybe she need to change, but Cait said she’d prove she didn’t and then Ruth held out her hand, and then Cait… even though Ruth said she peed, but she didn’t, Cait just held out her hand and they played together. Cait is my sister’s first real friend outside of my friends and the church. And even the church… well, eight year olds don’t know any better, and she’s only been in the big kid Sunday school going to be her fourth week tomorrow, so she didn’t know anyone that well when Cait met her. That’s why my sister loves Cait. Cait didn’t judge her. Didn’t say she weird. Cait played with her.”   “Yeah, that’s Cait,” Grace whispered. More peed came out of Grace.   “It’s okay, Grace. I’m sitting in your lap wet. Just pee your pants. It’s okay.”   Sean coughed a little to remind the kids he was there. “Billy, both Grace and Cait need to get cleaned up. Not because they peed, but because their peeing has caused some real damage to their skin because people that are neglectful don’t always check things that hurt.”   “The sixteen year old has damage to her skin because… someone didn’t teach her to change her pants when she pees her pants?”   “Something like that.”   Billy hugged her again. “I am mad at the people that didn’t teach you to take care of your body, but I love you, Grace. You are God’s child, too. Don’t you dare think God doesn’t love you. He does.”   Billy then moved and sat on Cait and hugged her. “You, too, baby sister. You get yourself clean so it doesn’t hurt and stuff, okay?”   Cait nodded.   When the children were downstairs watching cartoons on television, and drinking juice and talking like it was another children’s visit, the adults were in the kitchen playing cards. That’s when there was a knock at the front door.   “I’ll get it,” Cait ran to the door.   “Oh, um… Pastor?”   “Hey, little lady! Are you getting better?”   “Yeah, kind of. I got a question though. If you laid hands on me, and I getting better now, do you say that because your hands?”   “No, sweetheart, God’s power doesn’t work that way. What will happen, will happen through love and natural consequence. I don’t believe God would just heal you because we laid hands on you. It is possible, and does happen sometimes, but it’s not the main reason.”   “Then why you do it.”   “Because, even if you die from what is ailing you, the laying of hands is not about taking away a challenge or reality. It’s about giving you peace in what is happening. The spirit of God can make you feel less alone and more loved. That’s it’s real power.”   “That not what my Mysery Daddy says.”   “I know. We talked about that. I know there are a lot of people, especially on TV that say pray with us and believe with us and so on. What they set someone up with though, is if they really believe and really pray, and something doesn’t work, they are not connected through human contact. They wonder if they believed hard enough. It’s not God if it’s not done through human to human contact, Cait.”   “Okay. Daddy and Grandma playing cards with Hendersens. “Kids watching TV with my friend, Grace and me. Can you do me something tomorrow?”   “What’s that?”   “I liked you prayed me. I have a sixteen friend who Daddy left her spirit really hurt. Can you pray that she feel loved before church, not after, so when she go Sunday School with me, she can feel love and not scared. She poops her pants sometimes like me. She really scared. I don’t want her scared, and don’t say you know she poops her pants?”   “I’ll talk to your Cousin-Dad about it, okay?”   “Okay.”   Cait skipped back to the living room to play with Front City with Ruth and watch TV with the other two.   Grace frowned. “Excuse me?”   Grace started to walk out of the living room.   Cait felt her body shake with her wanting it, and she felt her heart tightened. “I’m gonna just check on my big peer-sister.” She ran from the living room, and then she saw the Pastor and Daddy talking, and Grace was at the bottom of the stairs when her shorts started to darken.   Cait ran right to her and hugged her.   The pastor frowned when he noticed the teenager.   As he looked at her, Grace’s pee started to speed up instead of slow down, and she slid down to sit on the first step, fully peeing in her pants. Cait ran over and got in her lap and hugged her.   Pastor Patterson walked over, and he held his hand out to the teenager.   Grace looked up at him, pee still spilling out of her shorts every few … Cait didn’t know if it was minutes or seconds or what, but it came, stopped and came out again. She was having trouble.   Carl, Pastor’s son, walked over and he smiled. “Hey. Don’t be scared. This is your house, Grace. Remember? I was at the play thing this morning. I told my dad that Cait was… really powerful talking about bullying, and I asked if she should speak in church, and then I told him you were out there. I saw you pee your pants. I just… I didn’t know what to say to you, but I told my mom that you’re probably lonely.”   “You… You told all the bigger kids so they’ll laugh?” Grace looked up at him, more pee spilling into her shorts.   “I didn’t tell the big kids anything. I don’t even know the teenagers well enough to really talk to them. I see them sometimes when Dad takes me around with him to meet with people, but I don’t really know what to talk to them about. I wouldn’t even talk to you, except the spirit inside me… God’s messenger… told me to tell you that you are welcome in our Sunday School Class. Rebecca and Mrs. Johnson both say you can come, and the new fifth grade leader says Cait is allowed to sit with them, or Rebecca said even that all the people Cait need… including you… can sit in the sixth grade group, and if you need someone in your lap while Cait sits with Billy, I’ll sit with you.”   “I pee,” Grace looked down.   “Cait does too, but Billy holds her anyway. Billy is an inspiration to me. He doesn’t see wet. He sees a friend that needs someone to say that she’s seen and loved. I want to be that for you, if Cait needs Billy tomorrow.”   “You… you won’t be mad if you sitting in my lap, and I don’t mean to, but poop goes into my pants?”   Pastor frowned. “Sean? Has she seen a doctor?”   “I don’t know. Her mother… well, she’s under some pressure with society, and I don’t know the last time she actually took the child to see a doctor. But it seems Grace has been dealing with this problem for a while.”   Cait looked up at the Pastor. “You could say a prayer tomorrow before church to give her courage to be in Sunday School with us. She barely knows my Daddy and Grandma. Just really met them last night, and she gets really scared when it happens. I know. I was like her, and I still am. If the wrong people see me, I cry and get really quiet hoping no can see… like I inbisible like at school.”   “We’ll say a prayer for both Grace and Cait at church tomorrow if you can come early,” Pastor Patterson nodded at Daddy. “It’s the right thing to do, but we can also say one tonight. Would you let me say a prayer with you tonight, he asked Grace.   “I peed my pants. God won’t look at me.”   “Nonsense,” Pastor Patterson frowned. “However, how about you go ahead and get someone to help you get into clean clothes first just the same. It feels less scary to be around new people if you are at your best, sweetheart.”   “Okay.”   Cait reached out her hand. “Come on, Grace. Let’s go upstairs. Daddy will get Grandma for us. You’re okay. I promise.”   Grandma came up not by herself. The Pastor’s wife was right with her. She took her hands while Grace was still standing there in wet shorts, and she frowned. “Sweetheart. You are suffering. You don’t suffer like that alone, you hear? Tomorrow, if you pee your pants, you get Eiboline and you go with her to change your pants. Eiboline is a good person. She’ll bring you clean clothes, child. Whatever your issues are, church is not for the perfect. It’s for people that love God and try to seek him through our own troubles. Not all troubles are seen like pee, but everyone at church has them, little lady, and God accepts us all.”   “I… I might poop my pants,” Grace said uncertainly again.   “And when that happens, your church mother, right now, that’s Eiboline, will take you to change your pants. No one will care. That’s between you and your church mommy, Grace. Last week, Sean even took Cait and no one cared that Cait decided she wanted her cousin to be her Daddy and help her. We don’t judge. He gets you help if you are alone. You are not alone. You have the Kinsellas. You let them change you at church, hon. Age has nothing to do with it. You don’t think one minute about your age or what you are supposed to do at school. You are at church, not school. Different rules, little lady.”   “Okay.”   “To show you I mean it, I told Eiboline I wanted to help you change to show you that I care, but she shook her head and told me you only peed. She says no one touches you without your permission if you are only wet.”   “It’s okay,” Grace whispered. “I… I never had people want to change my pants… since he left us.”   Cait looked up at Eiboline. “Grace’s Daddy.”   “I know what she meant, hon. But that’s up to Grace to talk about, not you to tell, sweetheart.”   “And when was that?” Mrs. Patterson asked.   “I was only a few days before I turned nine in September.”   “Were you wetting your pants when your dad was with you?”   “No. I started wetting the bed after. Then it got worse and worse until now, I poop my pants all the time.”   “Are you seeing someone to talk about this with?”   “Yeah. Harmony is Cait’s head doctor, too. That’s what mom calls Harmony. And I go to a little kid playgroup. There only two high school kids in there, and only two of us poop our pants. Me and Cait.”   “Does the playgroup judge you?”   “Some of the people kind of do, but Vance, the leader doesn’t. He stops it when he sees it.”   “We are only people at church. I won’t promise that not anyone will judge you. But you stay with your safe people, and you go to Sunday School with the intermediate kids. They learned to be compassionate, sweetheart. They have learned to accept Cait in their class, and they will accept you for as long as you need the safety of friends.”   “Okay.”   Cait watched while Mrs. Paterson didn’t actually participate in the touching. She was just there, talking to Grace while Grandma cleaned her up and made her feel better.   They all walked down to the kitchen, where Cait found Billy and Ruth standing by their parents, and Sean was waving Cait and Eiboline to him, and the Pastor had a hand on Carl’s shoulder.   “You’re not in our Sunday School,” Cait suddenly remembered and looked at Carl.   “No. I’m going into seventh grade this next year. But I came with the other kids because they had to ask my Dad if they could all come out, and it be blessed by the church, so I asked to go.”   “Wait! You let me tell you what to do with the snakes? And you let Rebecca boss you around?”   “Rebecca was the church’s leader out there earlier. It was sanction by my dad acting as Pastor, so it was Rebecca’s play to set the example, and I just did what you are supposed to do. Adults listen to my dad even though I know for sure there are adults older than him. That’s how church works, Cait. It’s not always the oldest that leads. It’s the best person for the time.”   “Oh. Daddy says he don’t go to a church were the leader is younger than him. He says a leader like that couldn’t know what older people need.”   “The one in Missouri?”   “Yeah.”   “Well, God’s children are not perfect, Cait. He just doesn’t understand a few things. That’s okay. God loves him anyway. God can be mad at him and love him at the same time. He showed that with the Israel people many many times in the Bible.”   “Okay.”   “Now, I would like to offer a prayer, that yes, will encourage Grace and Cait tomorrow, but I’d like to bless all the families here, if that’s okay with everyone here.”   Daddy nodded and so did Ruth’s family.   Pastor looked at Mrs. Patterson. “I’m acting as Pastor, so you are acting as the Patterson head of house,” he told his wife. “I need your permission, too, if you want us included.”   “Of course, Pastor. I just forgot myself.”   “I know. And that’s okay. We both remind each other of things, right?”   She nodded.   After the prayer, everyone had dinner with the Kinsellas so the children were allowed to eat in the living room even though that meant they watched TV while they were eating.   Chapter 105 The Healing That Cait Can’t Unsee   As soon as Cait’s car arrived at church, she noticed that they were really early, like no one should be there, early, but there were some cars and some kids outside playing until they saw her car.   Rebecca, Carl, Billy and Ruth, and two big kids, Grace’s age, came to the car with the Pastor.   “I didn’t expect Patricia or Kate to hear me talk to their dad’s on the phone, no less, that we need to bless Cait and her friend to make them feel welcome today. When their dad asked about Cait’s friend, and they found out she was a teenager, the wanted to come.”   Cait smiled. “You already have two teenager friends! See?”   Grace blushed bright and looked down. “Until they find out.”   “They already know,” Pastor Patterson sighed. “They heard me telling their parents and as teenagers do, deduced what was going on. They begged to come with their dads and there they are.”   Kate opened the door for Grace. “Come on out of that car, sister. You with God’s people and friends now, sister. No one at church thinks that struggles are funny, especially when struggles hurt.”   “Kate said it,” Patricia frowned. “I’m so sorry you were so lonely for over six years, but no more. You call me!” And Patricia gave Grace a number. “And if you lose my number because it’s just a piece of paper, you ask Cait to ask her cousins. They have everyone’s number because Sean is… special at our church.”   “Now,” Sean looked down. “I’m just someone that sees someone hurting. I’m not the perfect parent as many of your parents already know.”   “That’s why you’re so special though,” Kate looked up at Daddy’s face. “You lost something very precious and you still come, and you still preach kindness to those that need it, like last Sunday. Your talks… they never judge people like a lot of adults do. They just say… Look what I learned, and take what you want from it. I like your way.”   Patricia put an arm around Grace. “Grace? If you poop your pants in the main meeting, we are sitting on each side of you. You get your Aunt or whatever you call her, but we’re coming, too. No one is alone in our church if they are hurting, okay?”   “What? You’ll lose all your friends!”   “No, Grace. Church isn’t school. And if a church friend said that we couldn’t uplift a struggling peer, then that’s not a church friend I want anyway,” Kate frowned at her.   “Where’s your extra clothes in case your diaper leaks?” Patricia asked.   “I… I don’t wear diapers.” Grace stammered.   “Oh, okay. Well, even more important then, where are your extra clothes?”   “Why?”   “You think I’m letting you carry that burden by yourself, friend? You hand them to me. You’ll need help if you poop, and I’m not letting you sneak off to be lonely in a mess. You will come with me if you poop your pants, even if your Aunt comes with you.”   “You’re not serious?”   “Yes, Grace, we are,” Kate frowned. “We all have problems. We might not all pee our pants, but we all have difficulties that make us wonder if we are good people, and we all need help sometimes. You are allowed to not be perfect, and still have friends that care.”   “I never saw you say nothing at school.”   “Like I said, we not perfect, Grace. I saw what happened. Did you wonder where the sudden skirts and changes of panties came from when you saw the nurse, and you know you didn’t have those at home?”   “You?”   “Well, we both talked it over. You didn’t seem to want anyone to catch you doing it, so we decided just putting it on the nurse’s office with your name on it was enough. It gave you a change without having to face the people that you thought were judging.”   “You did that?”   “Yeah. I’m sorry we didn’t talk to you though, now. We thought we were helping. Then the pastor said Cait was inbisible, Cait’s way to say it, and that their son saw you get invisible, too, and then we knew we made a mistake. We’re sorry.”   “I sometimes came to school in peed in pants. Without your stuff, people would think I’m more… stupid then because it happened in the day.”   The girls looked at each other. “You can come to school with us for now on. We are on your bus. You come with us to the bathroom first thing starting September. If you got potties in your clothes, we change you, not the nurse, and not anyone else. Just three friends, and if people at school want to call us names, then they can do what they want, but I’ll be reporting any bullying that I personally see to the principal.”   “Yeah,” said the other girl.   “See? People already loved you,” Cait looked up at Grace. “You can go to their Sunday School if you want.”   “No,” Kate frowned. “We will come to the little kid one, that way, Grace doesn’t have to choose, and she doesn’t have to poop her pants in front of strangers.”   Grace started crying and peeing her pants right there. Cait knew the feeling. If she learned even one person had been on her side in second, third, or fourth grade, she wouldn’t know what to do, either. Cait started to pee, not because she wanted. Not because it was safe. Her body said… this is too much!   The teenagers frowned.   “Come on, girls. Mrs. Kinsella, we got the girls this time.”   They walked Cait and Grace upstairs to the nursery and they sat on their knees Patricia in front of Cait and Kate in front of Grace. “The bullies sometimes come early. It’s safer to change you girls up here than in the bathroom.”   “You’re going to change me?” Grace asked.   “Not exactly,” Kate whispered. “We are going to help. If you get scared or stop and shake, then yes, I’ll finish what needs to be done, but no, I’m more here to support you as a fellow teen who has, peed my pants before.”   “Not at sixteen…?”   “No, not at sixteen yet, but still. When I was fifteen we were on vacation and didn’t stop on the road quick enough. I just changed. No big deal. My mom said it happens. But from what I can tell, and how you act at school, your mom doesn’t say that, does she?”   “No.”   “Well, I’m saying it, here. No big deal, even if you poop your pants in the main meeting. You just touch my arm and look at your lap, and that’s all you do.” Kate looked at Patricia.   “Exactly. Subtle clues is less… scary.”   The teenagers changed Cait and Grace and then they walked them down to the Pastor’s office.   “Sorry,” Kate told the Pastor. “Private girl stuff. Didn’t mean to keep you.”   Pastor Patteron smile and waved them off so he could bless Cait and Grace. “You remember what I said laying on of hands is?” he asked Cait.   “Yeah?”   “You can still say no, and we’ll just do a prayer. You have agency, child, even if your Daddy says it’s okay.”   “I want a hands on my head thingy to see what it feel. But can I not like it next time?”   “Sweetheart, Jesus understands if you feel scared or weird about certain things. Somethings need getting used to, and Jesus more than understands that. Do you know Jesus must have pooped his pants sometimes?”   “What?” Grace asked.   “The Bible says that when Jesus was alone before they came to crucify him, that he experienced every kind of shame and harm that can come upon man… and that man… means not just Daddies, but it means women and children, too. He knows how you kids feel.”   “I never thought of God… you know…,” Grace frowned.   “Most people too ashamed to ask for his help don’t think of God as taking on the shame and hurts they feel. But he had. That’s why he knows of your struggles, and he knows that if it hurt him, that imperfect people have a harder time with stuff like that. He loves you.”   “Wow,” Cait whispered. “That not Mysery Daddy’s God even close.”   Cait felt a light touch on her head. She felt the prayer over her. And then, something deep with her… A strong thank you and a strong love… and the hands were like not Sean, and Pastor, and two other men she barely knew touching her. No, they felt like something more… different than she ever knew. She felt love. She smiled. She looked up at the men, and her smile was ear to ear. She hugged them. “YOU love ME!”   Grace sat and they asked her permission and then when they were doing it, Cait saw her relaxing. She smiled and relaxed more and more until when they were done, she was in tears.   “Thank you for not judging me,” Grace frowned. “I peed, again. Not now. Before. Kate and Patricia… that’s why I got here late. They didn’t do it. I… made us late, peeing my….”   “No, child. Jesus said, child, your comfort is important. He guided them to get you help. They knew that we were not late to start church. Jesus told them, child. No more self-blame over what you can’t help, child.”   “Okay.”   Grace and Cait sat through the meeting and in Sunday School, Mrs. Johnson did something different.   “Cait, can you come up here and tell us what kindness means to you?”   “You mean talk in front of everyone?”   “If you are okay doing that.”   “What if I get scared and peed my pants?”   “No one should be looking at your pants, Cait. We should be listening to your words.”   “Okay.”   Cait walked nervously up next to Mrs. Johnson. “Can I allowed to pee my pants? I scared. I think it happen talking. I don’t go now. I just tried. Sorry.”   “You have nothing to be sorry for Cait. You are just trying to do what makes you comfortable, hon. You’re allowed to wet or whatever, and so is your Peer-sister, Grace.”   Grace had both Patricia and Kate sitting on either side of her, not really at a table, but at the back wall watching the little kids. Billy sat on the other side of Kate, and Ruth other the other side of Patricia.   “Okay. But I think there different kind doings.”   “That’s alright. Just speak from the heart until I interrupt telling you your time is up, or you finish. You have our full time, if you like, child.”   “Well… there is one kindness where you use the heart. There is one kindness where you doing what you told. There is kindness you don’t do nothing. And there is the kindness that you say hurt stuff, and then there is the kindness you ignore because that person not someone you want to love.”   “Those not kindness,” One fourth grader started to speak up, but Mrs. Johnson glanced at him, and he got quiet.   “I talk about the one where you hurt someone first. I don’t mean be accident hurt, I mean you say the words and you do the actions you mean.”   Cait sighed. Then she started to talk about them in the order of her importance. Second was doing what you were told, third was you do nothing, then the one where you ignore because you don’t love someone, and then the last one, the love.   “Why I say this order? Because for me… and not eberybody has the same thinks, so it not the right order, just Cait order… is that this affect me like this order the more.”   She looked around. “It easy to just not be like someone wrong doesn’t need you see. But this is the worst one. You think… well, I don’t say nothing at all, so I’m not being mean. You be more mean. That person becomed inbivisible and no one see her hurt now. She can’t get help because she doesn’t be for eberybody. She is just alone, like a Ghost that knows she’s there, but no one cares.”   Some of the kids were crying with tears, not with voice when Cait finished words, and then the teacher looked at the clock.   “That’s all the time we have. We can sing and then pray. I have something easy for you to do today. I challenge you to go home, and make someone in your family feel visible. Don’t look for a bad thing they did. Look for something that makes you love them, and tell them, you love them.” Mrs. Johnson gave us homework.   And then after finish, Cait and Grace don’t even wetted their pants. And it was a good day.   Chapter 106 Counseling at the Kinsellas   “The girls got of the car in clean, dry dresses. Billy and Ruth were with them, and even Kate and Patricia had to each hold Cait and Ruth in their laps for lack of space in the car. Both of the big girls brushed back the little girl’s hair and whispered. “If you pee, it’s okay. We’re big girls. We can explain to our moms that a little kid sat in our lap and had an accident. They don’t need to know how old you little ones are.”   Cait smiled up at Kate. “I don’t have to go though.”   “Well, that’s good for you, hon. I’m happy that you won’t wet your pants, for your own happiness. But if you do… it’s okay.”   “What about Grace?”   “If she poops her pants in the car, that’s why are with you in the first place. She needs to know she has friends that won’t leave her like that.”   Patricia patted Grace’s lap. “You are allowed to wet your pants. You are with real friends, right now, Grace. We love you with the kind of love that Jesus teaches. Jesus love means you love someone because they are a child of God, not because they can or can’t do something.”   Grace nodded. “You people… you’re really… I don’t know what to say. But honestly? I already peed my pants earlier at church before the start. I don’t have to go right now.”   “Well, that’s okay, then. I’m happy you’ll get home in a good mood.”   “You two honestly been putting clothes for me at school and that’s why I had a diaper and a skirt to put on? I didn’t wear the diapers.”   “We just thought the diaper would hide you peeing your pants. But we never cared if you wore it. It was in case you wanted to hide your accidents.”   “Where you get the skirts?”   “Out of our own clothes, of course. It was Patricia’s idea. We were thinking about going to Goodwill, but then thought… no. No one wants stuff from there, and kids will be more mean, so we decided we’d just drop off clothes for you and get them the week later from the nurse, telling her we lent you the clothes and want them back so we can wash them. The nurse gave us a funny look, but we just smiled at her. No one likes school lost and found stuff.”   “There were panties in the clothes,” Grace said.   “Of course there were,” Kate frowned. “Boys look at up girls skirts sometimes. Sometimes, it’s an accident. Sometimes, it’s curiosity. Sometimes… it’s just being creepy, but they do it. Do you think we’d leave you in a diaper without something to cover it? That would shame you worse than you peeing! We made sure the panties fit over the diaper, so if they fell down a little bit sometimes, we’re sorry.”   Grace smiled. “I got it held in place with pins. I… I still don’t even know what to think. I pooped in those.”   “So? You also washed it out. We saw.”   “Yeah. The nurse said someone put the clothes there for me. I was embarrassed, and I thought it was just mom trying not to be shamed that she has to give her high school kid clothes so tried to pretend she barely knew me.”   “Why would you think your mom was embarrassed of you?”   “Because she is.”   Both girls immediately hugged closer to her so Cait and Ruth were somewhat squished just as they arrived at the farm.   Our friends had lunch with us and as they were about to go home, their parents picked them up, there was a different knock at the door.   Cait ran over and opened it. Grace’s mom was there.   “Get your pissy clothes and let’s….”   “Hold on, Ma’am. You need to come in and do this right,” Sean said somewhat quietly. “You don’t tell a kid to get their pissy clothes. That kind of shaming isn’t allowed in this house. Grace, don’t you dare do anything that woman says until she asks you to do so respectfully.”   Grace’s mom’s mouth open and closed several times.   “Come and sit. You need to understand a few things before you just take your child home. It’s not about us telling you the rules of your house. It’s about us helping Grace communicate her problems.”   “Okay,” Grace’s mom finally said something from her caught off guard mouth.   “Grace, sweetheart, sit down in mommy’s lap.”   “If she’s….”   “Shut it woman,” Eiboline frowned. “What you do with your child out of our house is your choice, but in our house, even if she’s peed her pants, she’s sitting in your lap. It’s time she learns how much you love her.”   The woman frowned, but patted her lap. “Fine.” Her face was red.   “Do you know how long she’s been pooping her panties?” Sean asked.   “I don’t know… since middle school?”   “Before, mom,” Grace had tears in her eyes.   “Since her Daddy left,” Cait said. “Since her fucking Daddy left and you just blame her and not loved her with hugs!”   The woman looked at Cait. It looked like she wanted to say something. She didn’t.   “Did your Daddy leave you when you a little kid like me?”   Grace’s mom frowned. “I never even knew my Dad.”   “Then you were kind of lucky,” Grace whispered. “Because if I didn’t know I had a Dad, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if he had walked out. But nine years, I thought he loved me, and then I thought he didn’t love me. And I didn’t know what I did. And then I started to pee the bed. But people got more mad, and I started to pee my pants and then more people got mad. And now… it just comes out sometimes. Pee. Poop. It just comes out.”   “Grace, that was six years….”   Cait threw one of her blocks at the woman’s feet! “Don’t say that! Grace still has a nine year old locked in her heart because she scared, and you say six years like that means nothing! You don’t know fuck! You don’t know! Grainne, my sister! My sister!” And she started crying.   “What? Aren’t you going to…?”   “What?” Sean asked. “Smack her leg for being a child and telling you a raw truth? For losing control because she’s a child that knows what shaming a kid does to you? No. Cait is right. Six years mean nothing if you don’t address her losing something she thought was important in her baby years, and make her feel like a baby because that hurt is still trapped in her. Time doesn’t heal… not by itself it doesn’t.”   “I don’t have anything….”   “Liar!” Cait cried through her tears. “You have a sister that tears your baby down and doesn’t pay her fair just because she peed her pants! That you have a sister to talk to, and Grace just pees her pants! Grace has someone to talk to NOW! After how long? Huh?”   “Now, Cait,” Daddy hugged her and held her.   Eiboline frowned and looked at Grace’s mother. “Do you even know how to be a mother?”   “Ask yourself that? Didn’t your kid die from keeping dangerous animals?”   Sean stood up. “Eiboline, go make some tea, please.”   Cait saw tears in Grandma’s eyes and she followed, then she watched as Grandma peed her pants again. That woman got to her. She got mad and walked back in. “Grandma tries, you Sullavich!”   “Did you call me a son of a…?”   “No. I called you something worse. I called you a bully! Sullaviches are bullies, and you are one!”   Sean stood up. “Cait, not helping hon. Go look after Grandma, okay?”   Cait walked away stomping.   “Cait’s right. You are bullying your own daughter by letting your sister call her terrible things and blaming her instead of understanding her. You blamed Eiboline knowing that would make her lose it and need to calm down. The question is why?”   “She said I was a bad mother….”   “No. She asked you if you knew how to be one. Eiboline knows how to be one. She didn’t just let Ron wander by dangerous animals. She was way too over protective of him, actually. But what happened to Ron would have still happened if the bull wasn’t there.”   “The bull gored him.”   “If the bull wasn’t there, the snake would have bitten him. If your X wasn’t there, what harm would have caused your daughter to start peeing the bed? If you had held her the first time she peed the bed, what would have caused her to start pooping her pants?”   The woman looked down. “I don’t know.”   “That’s the reason that your child poops her pants. You are losing her, ma’am. She loves you right now. She said so the other night, but how long that love continues depends on you starting to see a hurting child rather than a burdensome teenager. That little lady doesn’t want to potty her pants. She has a trapped scared little girl in her heart that needs her mother, and you… you aren’t holding her and telling her that a little pee in her pants is okay.”   “It’s not.”   “Says who? Mom? School? Society? Who gets to judge your daughter so roughly for you? Who do you allow to condition your love for her?”   The lady frowned. “Society will shame her.”   “Society does that to teens no matter what they do. It’s the parents’ job to balance that with love. So when do you choose to hold her when she poops her pants and needs to be held and understood? You are running out of time. What you do right now… that’s up to you. But you will not tell her to get her pissy clothes in my house. You will tell her to get her things, if you can’t be more loving than that, and you will not swat her in my presence.”   The mom frowned. “No. I’m not ready to go. Tell me what to do. I don’t mean this. I just… My sister says teens need boundaries. She’s teaching her responsibility. She’s helping me raise her… right?”   “Well, your sister needs to learn how to talk to a hurting teen, or she’s going to hurt her niece far worse than she already is. Now, are you serious? Do you want help?”   “Yes.”   “Call Harmony. Setup a family counseling session and make your sister come to it with you, or else cut her off from Grace’s babysitting services. You don’t promise a teen twenty dollars and then rob her of it after she spends three hours of her own time… just because she happens to poop in her panty. It’s wrong. We paid her for her time, and if you let your sister do that to her again, I will report her to the police for robbery of a minor!”   “I don’t think that’s a law.”   “Stealing is,” Daddy frowned and Cait gave Daddy and then Grace some tea. She brought a glass in for Grace’s mommy, but she withheld the cup. “When you say sorry to Gracie for saying her clothes pissy, then I give you the tea. You don’t get any until you say sorry.”   The woman started to cry and in tears said she was sorry. Maybe they were making some progress. Maybe.   Cait laid on the floor by front city about an hour later, her thumb in her mouth, her Kooks on her chest, and her bottom starting to wet the carpet as she slept.   Chapter 107 Return of the Ghost   “Just twenty minutes, child! Just twenty! You some kind of a baby?” indistinct voices echoed in darkness. “Pissy little kid! I don’t believe you!”   A deep breath. A hurt so bad, it was like a broked rib. A sensation. Poop started into her panties.   “Come on, kid! That’s just an easy word! Are you stupid?”   Burning liquid behind her eyes stung at her. Her legs pushed together harder. Wetness… warm, slime, disgusting pee spilling down her legs to the floor. She was bad.   Still just echoes in the dark. Cait couldn’t see. She tried to reach with a part of her that wasn’t the outside of her body, but like she had an arm inside her body. She expected the overhead light. Where was the criminal stand where they make you go up and confess? Where was the ghost and lawyer Dan Dad? Where were the ac you za shuns?   A single face appears. It was Angela. It just whispers. “You got me thrown out of Sunday School.” It stares into the dark. Then it just-a-dis-a-peers.   A single face. It was Daddy. “You could be working at the farm, but we have to do something with you because you are too stupid to keep your panties dry.” it just-a-dis-a-peers.   The wet is spreading on her back and all over her. It feels like watery-poops.   “She makes Grainne poot her panties,” another echo in the dark.   “She makes messes all over the house and gets her sisters hit for peeing their pants for her.”   Cait starts whispering. “No. No. I didn’t. Don’t do it, Grainne. Let me pee my pants. Don’t get in the way….”   As Cait whispered for Grainne to get out of the way, her face looks different, but it’s Grainne. She’s not in junior high. She’s in high school. She’s in a class. The teacher points to her to read….   Cait sat up breathing heavy. She felt around her, liquid everywhere. She smelled. She looked to Daddy’s favorite chair. Daddy was missing. She called out.   “Grandma!”   Steps from the room just beyond, and Grandma looked at the soaked carpet around Cait’s Front city, her form, and that spread to the bookcase against the wall that the kitchen shares.   “Come here, child.”   “I’m pooping my pants… on real ask a dent.”   “I expected it to happen, hon. It’s okay. You’ve had a really hard day today. Sure, people loved you, but emotionally, it was hard. Grandma peed, too.”   “I know. I got mad at that lady for maked you do that. That not someone I want my house. That why I mad.”   Grandma nodded. “Cait, we can’t always throw things at people and demand they do what we say. You know that, right?”   “Not even my own house?”   Grandma paused. The question. It felt… right in Cait asking. Why was it wrong to defend your own house rules? “If you shoot someone that breaks in, but they don’t have a gun, you still go to jail.”   “Yeah? But a block not a gun. It won’t kill.”   “It’s the same action, Cait. If you throw a block today, what stops you throwing a book tomorrow and a knife next week? We have to learn healthy ways to state our anger without losing control. Anger is righteous, but actions are not anger. Actions are our choice to emotions like anger.”   “I don’t understand.”   “When you get mad at people, do you call them stupid or focker?”   “Word is fucker, Grandma. And I say the bad one.”   “So… fucker is the bad word?”   “Not to me. But school it is.”   “Why?”   “Because stupid is more mean and it’s power is… really bad. Fuck doesn’t mean nothing assept you don’t liked.”   “That’s a choice. Most kids say fucker when they are mad, and they say stupid when they are teasing, unless they have strict parents, then they say stupid both times. You could say stupid, though….”   “Never!”   “Why?”   “Because even boy I hated not deserve dying for bad word like that. Fucker doesn’t mean stupid. It no meets nothing.”   “You draw a line at that word. You can draw a line at throwing and aiming things at people, too, especially when you are mad. It doesn’t make them good, it just keeps you good.”   “Okay.”   Grandma helped Cait up off the floor. “Daddy is out in the yard checking the animals. You should be changed, but if you want Daddy to do it, you can wait.”   “He didn’t leave?”   “Why would he, hon?”   “Why would Grace’s?”   Eiboline shook her head.   Cait whispered. “It gross. Grandma help?’   “Bring Kooks, hon. You need the comfort right now.”   “Did you change your pants, Grandma?”   “No, hon.”   “Grandma. If I get sick wearing wet panties, how come you don’t get sick the same thing?”   “I can…, hon.”   “Do you need help? Not with doing it, but with your heart?”   “Maybe, child.”   “Then let me help and watch you change and hold you like you hold me.”   “Maybe when you’re a little older, hon. Sean is my rock when I need help right now.”   “Okay.”   “You are a child. Your job is to be Grandma and Daddy’s little girl. That’s how you heal my heart if I’m sad enough to pee, okay?”   “Okay.”   After a bath, and Cait was fixed up in clean pajamas, Grandma brought her to the kitchen. “Help me make dinner for Daddy? He’s been doing so much on overtime that he’s now working a bit late on the farm.”   “That where Daddy went?”   “Yes, sweetheart. The animals still need to be bedded down and put in their face places.”   “I should a been helping since I am the one that made all the people come.”   “No, Cait. You were overloaded, and it’s the adults’ job to take care of little ones when they need it. You didn’t make any work for Daddy, no more than any of your friends did, and Daddy is so happy that you felt safe bringing Grace to our house instead of letting her suffer alone this weekend.”   “I sorry Grandma. It not gets you trouble. It for helps. Daddy and Grandma don’t hit for it.”   “Sorry?” Daddy asked.   “Sometimes,” Cait frowned. “It doesn’t lie not to say something, but sometimes, it’s not mean tattle-taling to tell.”   Grandma ma nodded with a small smile. “If you need to, Cait.”   “Daddy? Grandma don’t mean it. Anyway it choice? You don’t hit for choicing? Grandma ask a dent tally forget to change her panty after she had argue with the woman that made her sad. Grandma said you her stone or something.”   Daddy frowned. “What do you expect?”   “Grandma said I too little to hold her sad. And she need holded so she can change pee peed panties. You hold her private so she doesn’t embarrassed I can see so she can be happy?”   Daddy smiled at Cait. “Hon, Grandma will tell Daddy stuff like that when it’s appropriate. You are a smart little girl, but you need to understand, sometimes, if adults have issues, they need their own space to get help. Adults, especially ones like Grandma don’t usually need help like that. And if she did, we talk enough I’d know, Cait. You just love Grandma and don’t want to worry. Daddy will help her, when she’s ready.”   “Okay. I not telling for mean. I scared Grandma sad.”   “We understand. But you should give Grandma reasonable time to tell Daddy before you tell, if you are a little worried.”   “Okay.”   “You do understand that like your Father and mother in Missouri are married, the person you call Grandma and the person you call Daddy are the same age, and we are married, right?”   “I know.”   “Okay. I just don’t want you to get confused, little tiger.”   “I just don’t like it when Grandma is too scared to change her panty.”   “Daddy will take care of it later, hon, on Grandma’s time.”   “She not get sick?”   “No, hon. Daddy is looking out for her and she’s an adult. She knows enough to change herself if it bothers her.”   “Okay. But how come I not smart enough that?”   “It’s not about you being smart, sweetheart. There are two different things that is making your situation a lot more urgent that you change right away. One… and that one might be changing, but we’re not sure you’re fully out of the woods on… is that when you first came to us, you wouldn’t have changed your pants—not because you don’t know you should, but because you were scared to. Two, you have a health issue that the doctor is still working on that makes it very important to change you and keep you clean until it’s healthier.”   “So. Because the stuff in the batter in my body make skin acid to make skin hurt is need to fix, and because I scared, I don’t choose change now?”   “That’s basically it, hon. We will give you control of your own decisions with your body back to you, when you are healthy enough and not scared to do it on your own.”   “Okay.”   After dinner, Daddy and me readed A Spell for Chameleon again, and Grandma sat with me with clean pajamas on because even Daddy told me that Grandma choose when to change her panty, still changed right after we finish to eating dinner.   Cait looked at Daddy while they were reading about this guy called Crumbie. “So, he can tell is something is danger to him?”   “That’s right.”   “So how he gotted injured if he can know it’s danger there?”   “That’s a good question, Cait. Do you want to reread to see if you or I missed any important clue or detail?”   “Okay.”   There was darkness around Cait again. She felt something strange within herself, though this time. What it was, she didn’t know. She felt at her dress that somehow she knew she was wearing. This wasn’t nineteen eighties I know what a car Cait was. This was a different Cait… a magic girl Cait.   Ghost was walking next to her, as a Ghost, and Kooks was walking next to her as a small but real walking bear that talked, too.   “Kooks, Do you think the magician will help me?”   “Well, the elders couldn’t help you. They said it would take the magician. The only way we will know if he will help, is if we ask him, right?”   “What if it happens in front of him?”   “Well, at least then he’ll be able to identify what is causing it. He is the most important wizard in all of Xanth, right?”   “He’ll understand it for sure,” Ghost frowned. “But there is the question, do you want to be cut off from your magic forever? What if the thing that happens and your magic are the same sauce? Do you want to lose your magic just because you want to not do this thing?”   “What thing does she do?” Kooks asked Ghost.   “What do you mean, what thing? It’s the most horrible thing a person her age can do in all of Xanth! It’s a terrible thing that she does. But that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m just saying, if the sauce of her majik is the same as the sauce of her terrible thing, does she want to lose her majik and really destroy being in this safe place?”   “Is it safe if the terrible thing she does makes people pick on her?”   The majik doesn’t let them hurt her though.”   “But they already hurt her even if you don’t see a blood or a cut.”   The two looked at one another, and Cait looked down at the ground as the space between her legs got wet. “I don’t know if I want to lose my majik. But I don’t do nothing with the terrible hard things that happens, too.”   “There’s a boy up there,” Ghost pointed out Shane?   “I think I know him.”   “How can you know him?” Ghost asked. “This is the first time we’ve put our seeing on him.”   “I don’t know. I feel like he might get me though.”   “We won’t, Cait,” Ghost frowned. “He’ll tell everyone how bad you are and ask you why you didn’t already trade your majik.”   “He will?”   “Hi. Are you Cait?” the boy asked the girl.   “Yeah. Why come you know my name?”   “The Magician said to look for you. He said you have a secret in your sauce that might help me. You can come back with me to my town and tell everyone I have majik.”   “But I don’t know if I like my majik.”   “What’s your majik.”   “I don’t say it. Please. It is just a bad thing that no one wants.”   Shane sighed. “Well, better that then something the most powerful wizard in Xanth knows you have something, but there is no proof it’s there.”   “No. My trouble is…. Really bad. I don’t want to stay in Xanth if the trouble and the sauce cannot be apart and the trouble is taked away.”   “Let’s see if the Good Magician will see you, then.”   Shane frowned as he saw the ground, and he lifted her dress. “You peed your pants?”   “I told you I don’t want to stay in Xanth!” she frowned. “Everyone lifts my skirt like it’s their right to know if I pee my pants or not… only majik telled on me and you already know, so why come always you gotta see it?”   Shane shrugged. “It’s surprising. No one expects you to do it, you know.”   Cait sighed and looked down. “I know. So shameful for me Dad who is the powerfullest man in North City.”   “Well, let’s see if it can be taken apart from your real talent. I’m sure that has to be easier than my problems.”   “What your problems?”   “Majik makes me… nervous,” Shane frowned. “It’s hard to explain to everyone else, but since you do that…,” and he lifted my skirt again to watch me pee some more water through my panties, he sighed. “I guess you might understand. I do something like that, too.”   “Pee your pants?”   “Yeah. Only there’s no majik that does that to me.”   “Oh.”   Cait sat up awake in the dim of her room, her butt soaked and she looked around. The animal shrine on the dresser was still there. Bedroom Town was still on the floor. She was where she should be. She was just awake and she’d peed the bed again.   “It was a dream?” she asked Ghost.   “Yeah. Just a dream. Not like Grainne and Clo and Roisin are doing right now. Aoibhe is the only safe sister right now, and she’s not going to be safe for much longer. You are running out of time. And Grainne got hit last night.”   “What do you mean, she got hit.”   “She got out of bed. She tried to go potty like she always does. She didn’t get there in time, and she’s older than you. Dad got real mad her and she got it good last night.”   “That… you can’t know that.”   “Cait?”   “Yeah?”   “Call her. She pottied her pants. I’m telling you and she wet her pants in the hallway. Dad’s hit her like three times for peeing on the floor in the hall instead of in her bed.”   “I… I can’t call.”   “She pooped her pants, last night.”   “You don’t know that. Stop it.”   “If you say so,” Ghost whispered. “But she’s getting worse.”   Chapter 108 Now, Do You See? A sudden phone call and the clock in the hall downstairs puts the small hand on the five and big hand on the four, made Cait jump. The balcony had overlooked the hall where the clock stood as Cait was walking with the ick of pee pulling her legs apart to keep from making it rub on her towards Daddy and Grandma’s room door.   The phone rang through the house as Cait pushed door open and saw Grandma getting up.   The shadow forms in the room like people without color and clear boundaries of eyes and mouth moved in the dim room to put on clothes. Cait looked down at her soaking wet pajama bottoms.   “Pet? Is that you?” Grandma called out to Cait. “Daddy is getting up. You can turn on the light if you want and come and have him hold you. I need to answer the phone.”   “I peed.”   “It’s okay, sweetheart. You know that, don’t you?”   “Yeah?”   Grandma rushed downstairs to get the phone and Cait walked over and let Daddy pick her up.   “I had dream, Daddy.”   “A scary dream?”   “No. Not even a court dream. It was different. But it was… the about me and I pee my pants again, and it was about Shane and he lifted my dress to watch me pee, but then he peed. It was confused.”   “Sounds like it.” Daddy took Cait to the bathroom and started her bath. “Take your clothes off. You just wet, hon?”   “Yeah? Just wet.”   “Then you can wash yourself, but since Grandma is busy, can I just stay with you in case you need emotional support, and someone needs to do the medicine, right?”   “Yeah, you stay. I want you to.”   Grandma came up while Cait was washing her feet.   “It’s Grace,” she whispered panic in her sounds from her mouth. “Her mom can’t find her. She called here first, accusing us of letting her stay the night again.”   “So… where is she?” Cait turned to look at the doorway.   “We don’t know, Caitakins. But Daddy will call the Pastor. He will have the church look for her.”   “Doesn’t eberybody working on Monday?”   Sean smiled and as he stood, he patted Cait’s head. “Now.”   As Daddy walked out of the bathroom, Eiboline sat in his place and she put the back of a hand against Cait’s cheek. “Don’t worry, Pet. People will get to work, but Grace will be found.”   “Vance says that teenagers tie waits to their hands and their feets and they jump in the deep part of a pool and don’t can get out because they alone! I can’t let Grace be alone!”   “We’ll find her, hon.”   Warmth push through her and a strange sensation of water fighting water pushed a pulse of Cait through the bath and she peed fully in the tub against the bathwater.   Tears were blurring what she saw, so Grandma’s eyes were melting into her cheeks. Light dots took over for sharper images of what was what. Cait closed her eyes and more pee pushed and flooded through the water and into the tub. She started crying.   “There, now,” Grandma got her out and saw pee come from the little girl’s body as she got her up and it spilled into the tub as Cait stood in the bath. Grandma said nothing about the pee. She just guided Cait to step out once it looked like the water leak turned off.   Grandma took the little ten year old to the bedroom to look out the window naked for a minute, hand in hand.   “They’ll find your friend, sweetheart. They have to. And her mom called as soon as she knew, so there is a better chance they will find her, hon.”   “Okay.”   Daddy picked up the phone almost as soon as it rang. He was the only one down there, so he must have done. Cait looked up at Grandma. “What that mean, someone called us?”   Cait rain to hall and looked down over the fenced off balcony. “Daddy?”   Daddy came into the hall part from the kitchen, and he smiled up giving Cait a thumbs up.   Cait ran down the stairs not caring she was butt naked head to toe. She had to know. “Can I talk to Grace. Can I talk? Can I talk?”   She wasn’t hearing Daddy’s answers, just whining for the phone until it was given to her.   “Grace?”   “I’m here.”   “Why you don’t run our house? Why where you at?”   “I didn’t plan to go anywhere anyone knew. Mom would check. Kate’s mom found me outside a Seven-eleven. She went jogging or something with Kate, and they found me.”   “Do you need clean clothes?”   “Kate put some of her clothes on me.”   “The church found you, then?”   “The church?”   “Your mom called, and Daddy called the church.”   “No, I think Kate’s mom found me before that. She found me like ninety min… I mean… about one little hand move and six numbers of the big hand move around the clock.”   “How told you how I tell time?”   “I WAS at your house all weekend. You didn’t think I heard Uncle tell you what we meant when we talked about how much time passed or will pass when we do something?”   “Oh. Okay. You didn’t put waits on your hands and feets, did you?”   “No. I did have a knife, but Kate being there, I dropped it.”   Actions, time, clothes, everything was slow but confusing just there without Cait knowing. It was like she was in some slow moving but instant action after action effect until the car was moving. Cait was dressed. She was peeing her pants again… already.   “Cait?” Grandma whispered.   “Yeah?”   “You friend, Grace is in real trouble. We are going to the hospital. They said an ambulance was going to take her to Mercy. I don’t know if we’ll get to see her, but if we do, she can’t be alone for a while, ever.”   “What you mean, ever?”   “I mean…, she goes in the bathroom for anything no matter how private, someone must come with her. Today a knife, tomorrow medicine, we won’t know if she finds access because the wrong trigger pushed her.”   “She can just pee her pants.”   “She could, but I don’t think that’s going to help enough, baby. She’s gonna want to use the toilet when she can, and denying her that basic decency might lead to further harm. She just needs to be watched, no matter what she’s doing. No one can really take their eyes off of her.”   “Okay.”   “The reason I’m telling you? If she goes to church with us again or gets to visit us again, you will be the one that will be with her. You can’t let her say, I’ll be a minute. You have to go with her, and tell her with your heart, why, baby. It’s a lot, but I don’t see anyway where you don’t end up being a lifeline at some point for her.”   “Okay.”   “Daddy and I will clean out the medicine cabinet and move all the poisonous and drug stuff along with razors out of it when we get home. Not that we are taking her with us today, but it’s something that we can’t forget to do.”   “Okay.”   The strange action freeze but already done passing events in the car… a stop light, the talk about Cait helping Grace, Cait pottying her pants-wetting them all over, and finally the view of hospital was just as confusing and out of whack as getting into the car.   Cait first realized she was at the hospital when she was there. Everything else, somehow a sharp memory in her head, but a blur in action had her wondering how they were already at the hospital, and Daddy picking her wet little butt out of the car. He kissed her face as he did so.   Cait carried by daddy, they walked through the double doors into the main hospital floor, and Daddy went to the ladies that do the front stuff.   “We are here for Grace Billings? Sixteen years old, a girl that tried to commit suicide?” Sean told the lady.   “Are you family?”   “We should be,” Sean frowned. “No. We are concerned friends though.”   “You can wait in the waiting room. You’ll need family clearance to see her.”   Sean shook his head. “What does that mean when her dad isn’t in the picture and her mother and aunt… well, let’s say turtles take better care of their young?”   “What do you know of this?”   “I know on Friday, she ran away and that created a situation where she spent the weekend with us, but her mom took her home last night, and then she ran away again.”   “You’ll have to wait, sir. I’m sorry.”   Cait saw Patricia in the waiting room with her own parents. She squirmed to get down and ran over to her. “Do you know anything about Gracie?”   “I’m sorry,” Patricia frowned. “I was hoping Kate would have said something by now, but I think she’s still with Gracie.”   “So you didn’t can see her, yet?” Cait asked.   “I don’t think they would have let Kate had she and her mom not been the ones that found her.”   Cait sighed.   “Did Grace’s mom come in?”   “No. Not yet.”   “Grace mom called us. I think she said Grace in trouble to stay our house last night, but she doesn’t. And then that’s all I know. Then we knowed Grace not home. Daddy called for church to find her.”   “Yeah. We got called by the Hendersons when Ruth said that Kate and me were Gracie’s best friends. But if I was, really her friend, well, I wonder if she would have done this.”   “She would,” Cait frowned. “It not just having friends. It about not being inbisible and she inbisible her mom. Daddy forced her told hold her, but I saw last night. She didn’t hold Grace right… not like Daddy Kinsella holds me, even when I got a big old disgusting stupid Cait mess in my panties, he still hold me like I love, and Gracie mom, even Gracie not peed her pants, doesn’t even get but maybe a little touch her back when she sit on mommy’s lap. That doesn’t see Gracie, Patrish. That only sees you told to hold something you don’t really know.”   “Yeah. We watched her poop her pants last year in class. She was sent to the office, but she was in the office all day, probably in poopy panties. That’s when Kate and I started talking about maybe we had some clothes we wouldn’t mind if she had accidents in. So she didn’t have to wait all day for a mom that didn’t seem to ever get to the school while Gracie was sitting in filthy clothes.”   “You love her, do you?” Cait asked.   “Well, I don’t know,” Patricia frowned. “I mean, yeah, but you know, Jesus says love everyone. I don’t know if we really loved her. If we did, it feels like she wouldn’t have been wanting to do something like this.”   “I do. I have Daddy Sean, but sometimes, I still feel… over not good welmded. I scared Grainne everyday. I don’t know if I go back December and if Daddy says I still poop my pants, so I bad and then Grainne worse. It not me. But even I have Daddy Sean, who she got who really take care her clothes, and her food, and her heart by big person who have words to help? You get good words your mom if you get upset? If you pooped your pants right now, your mom probably yell, but then if you start cry and you only poop in em… what your mom do, you think?”   “I never thought about what my mom would do. I mean, I don’t poop my pants, do I?”   “No. But if you did…. Would she make you wear all day at school while kids look at you? Would she call you to get your pissy pants to go home when she pick you up a friends, even you didn’t pee your pants that morning? Would she make you feel dirty every minute?”   “I mean… I would hope not. I trust she won’t.”   “Grace not have that trust, doesn’t she not? Her mom doing those things. And she can’t help it. She pooping her pants… maybe more than me now my handi-yah is not assept where it goes, in my stomach.”   “I don’t know her mom,” Patricia frowned.   “But you said she go school a week with dirty clothes. Why she do that if her mom good? She sixteen. She not poop her pants on want to so eberyone only see bad dirty girl. Don’tn’t she not?”   Patricia frowned. “Yeah.”   “And mom not go school all for the one day so she stay office dirty until you get her clothes?”   “Yeah. That’s a good point for sure, Cait.”   “Grace needs you, Patricia. Please promise you don’t make her inbisible and not see anymore? She need friends because she has no big people, and just because she big… I shouldn’t but I think Grandma forgiveses me. Grandma knows trauma… the wetting her pants kind. She understanded it. I don’t say how or when I knowed it. But you don’t ask. Not nice to make people see trauma that makes pee in pants of big age people. Not even you age.”   “I think I understand. I know what you are talking about. The people my mom and dad talk to were talking about it lately since you came to stay with them. Some people gossip and a few people wondered if Mrs. Kinsella peed her pants in front of you at all?”   “Why they say that?”   “Her son. She has a really big responsibility to take care of you, and they say she neglected her kid and that got him killed. And for a long time after that, she peed her pants all the time.”   “They wrong. She didn’t be inbisible their son. They maybe too strict him not to go place because they said farm danger and he kid. He want to play. It was all accident why I said to my play friends on Saturday, no one move even someone pee pants of snake! Snake did, and would do no matter how close watch because snake animal doesn’t know kid, and Ron forgot to look. It only one forget to look. So you always look my house. You even pee your pants, if I tell you or I don’t want you die.”   Patricia frowned. “A snake killed him? They say a bull did.”   “The bull tried to kill snake. It got excited to hit snake and head ask a dent tally hit boy in chest and he fall. Bull and boy like. The snake scared bull, and bull tried to do what animal do for animal it not like, but Ron there by ask a dent.”   “You want me to pee my pants if I see a snake?”   “Yes. Not just do it, do it. But no move. If you feel wetting in your panties, you do wetting not moving. Wet panties better than dead body.”   “Oh, okay. I get it.”   Chapter 109 My Queen Side Castle   Kate walked quiet towards Cait and Patricia just as the Hendersons came in. Cait saw both Ruth and Kate, and she was torn, so she sat. Who is better right now? Cait had peed again while waiting in the waiting room, but she didn’t even feel it happen. She only knew she must have because there was a puddle in her chair and on the floor, and her pants felt wet when she saw Ruth.   Kate stood in front of them first.   “Gracie wanted to know if Cait was here. I didn’t know. She says…. She says that she needs to talk to Cait if Cait comes. I think she knew you’d come though. She doesn’t know she knew it.”   Kate’s words were a whisper. Her hair was dirty and strangle strings down her face. It proved she never went home since finding Gracie. She had even peed her pants. Cait saw it.   “How she is?” Cait asked as Ruth came up.   “She’s shook. She had the knife on her stomach. She pushed it enough to make a cut, but it wasn’t bad. It was fixed with a band aid, but the deeper hurt is what is hard.”   “I know,” Cait whispered. “She didn’t have nobody. If you don’t finded her, she would….” Cait eyes as realization suddenly hit her, caused her to shake and then burning tears slide out of her eyes and down her face.   “Did she peed her pants?”   “She had poop in her pants before I got to the Seven-Eleven and saw her.”   “Did she…. Did she say she’s sorry?”   Kate shook her head. “She just showed the knife, and she started to push it on her stomach with a grin that was scary. I don’t know why. It could have killed her now I think about it. My body just moved, and before I knew it, I had the knife that I threw at the ground breaking the handle. Then I held her. She peed on me while we waited for the ambulance.”   “That’s being inbisible,” Cait whispered. “That what Mr. Vance said in playgroup. If no one is bisibling her, or some of us, then we get like his daughter, and he made the group to stop this. But it not the group that stopped her. It was Kate!”   Grandma sighed. “Cait? I see how important your community is. I didn’t realize… until I heard Kate. Gracie is looking for you. Do you need Billy and Shane… and Gracie for our trip in two weeks?”   Cait looked down. She didn’t know how to answer that generous offer. Grandma had said one. Now… was she going back on her word. Was she going to let her take more help with her?   “I don’t know. I wanted Billy and Ruth. Billy protect and Ruth is my best friend in case I get scared and pee my pants and she will sit with me even I did. I think Grainne need Shane. Shane her age, and Shane has troubles. And he maybe gets why she do it because he does it not both of them because of something the doctor thinks got from sick, but with Grainne, I don’t know. That doctor not checked me good. But if she is or not sick, Shane still help her know, you don’t have to be stomach sick to pee your pants. You can be head sick and do it, and it not your fault even that.”   Grandma sighed. “I’ll talk to the families, Cait. No promises. This is a big ask that most parents wouldn’t just agree. But I’ll ask, and of course, if we can wing it, Grace will come along, too.”   Cait looked down. “Grandma? Shane is for Grainne. Ruth for me. Billy for Clo. Grace, if she comes, for the little sisters so they see that other kids pee and poop their pants too, so they not scared something wrong Grainne’s head. Everyone has reason. It’s not just want. I won’t ask you so much trouble… if it was just me or just Grainne.”   “I know, baby. You need your pants changed?”   “I peed, yeah, like two times.”   “It’s okay. It happens when people get overwhelmed, sweetheart. You know.”   “I know, Grandma. Don’t tell nobody nothing here. They don’t need to know my loving Grandma hurts, too. Only if you want it to know.”   Cait walked over to a table they had in there, and sat in a chair. There were these pieces on a black and white board. One side had black shiny pieces, and the other side had white.   “What this game?” Cait asked Daddy.   “That’s called Chess.”   “Chest?”   “Sure, hon. Chess, though no T on the end.”   “Okay.”   “Here, let me show you a little bit now.”   While Daddy was showing me, Shane walked in, and then to my surprise, Mia Wei and her family walked in with a little sister with her.   “Where’s big sis she asked as she approached our table.”   “No one can see her,” I whispered with tears in my eyes. “The doctor is waiting for her mom to give us permission, but I don’t think her mom is even here.”   “How long you been here?” Mia Asked.   “We been here since about six thirty.”   “Wow! We just got the news,” Mia said looking up at the clock.   I looked up and saw it was ten with the small hand and like near the three the big hand.   “And you just been waiting here even though you can’t see her?”   “I’m not leaving before I see her, and my Grandma and my Daddy know it.”   “You peed.” Mia looked down at my pants.   “So? I not leaving in case the doctor calls, so I didn’t tell Daddy I peed yet.”   “You got really close with my big sister.”   “She’s nice, Mia. She has trouble, but she’s really really nice. Her mom is mean though. She pees because her aunt is too hard for her, and her mom lets her aunt be that way. Do you know it?”   “I never met her aunt.”   “Me, too. I never met her aunt. I just listen her. I trust as she says it because that what friend does. You trust until someone saying do no sense. Then you ask, did she lie purpose, or did she lie because she not knowed the true.”   “Yeah, I guess so,” Mia looked at the ground.   “Look, I learning how to play ches...t. Daddy teaching me.”   “Cool. Can I watch?”   “Okay.”   These really important people came in next. I know because they had suits, and they went to the window. They not that quiet, and I heard them say Grace’s name.”   I felt so nervous, the rest of the pee that was leaking a little at time suddenly flooded into my pants and went all over the floor. I looked up at Daddy. “Those not hospital people, do they?”   “No, Cait. I think their from government agencies. They might be from DHS.”   “You said that word before to the Daddy in Mysery. You said Deashis might want to know what Daddy doing to Grainne and Clo and all of us.”   “You remember that?”   “Yeah. That when Daddy breaked into the bathroom on Grainne and was mad that her pants were wet, and I sitting her, made him think I peed her so she didn’t get trouble for doing what she told that we get bath before she even get to sit toilet because she always us first and then peed her pants.”   “I didn’t even know about that part, hon. I just saw that he broke in on you girls and saw that you had not taken a bath yet, though the little kids and Clo had been in the bath.”   “Yeah, I be membered. That Grainne hear Clo and ask her to go away because Grainne scared she peed and not that Clo knows, but if Grainne goes to Daddy in Mysery as she did, he mad. So I said she naked, but I knew Daddy out because he did two things you don’t do me. Clo said you want me, and to get there now. And two things you never do. If you want me and I don’t can finish something you said I can, then you always come get me, you don’t send someone if you can come, and you never rush my bath. So I know it doesn’t true and Clo lie, so I know only one thing maked her to lie. Daddy in Mysery told her that to say that.”   Daddy smiled. “You are so smart, Cait. So smart.”   “Your Dad causes your big sister to pee her pants?” Mia asked.   “Not on purpose. He hates it when I pee my pants. That why I got sented to live with my cousins of my mom if they are mom’s cousins, but I told call Uncle and Aunt, but they love me too much to think just Uncle and Aunt, so I called Daddy and Grandma now.”   “Does your Dad make you pee your pants, I mean, besides you doing it because of your head?”   I frowned. “I had a Handiya in my guts pushed out and got in my chest and they pushed into where the pee holding batter is. And it maked the guts have harder something that caused poop trap and then only watery poops can come and it maked my batter not enough room, so it comes out faster. I had something but doctor of Mysery said I didn’t have nothing. So Daddy thoughted I doing pee in my pants at school because I want for get attention or maybe so I don’t read because I bad reading and maffts.”   Mia frowned.   “Daddy doesn’t like pee all over house. If I get pee start on the floor, don’t move. Pee ebery on it on the floor where I be so I don’t make mess bigger. And if I in bed, I always peed bed, so don’t allowed to get to bathroom at night because Daddy said I pee the floor and I maked mess, so keep mess my bed, so I peed the bed even I am waked.”   “Gross,” Mia whispered. “I pee the bed, but I don’t just pee because I want, and I don’t sit there even if I am not making it to the toilet, I get out of bed and pee on the floor.”   “I know. My Daddy here let me even walk the bathroom even if I peeing floor. He says my choice and if I get froze my scared or something, then it okay. He not mad it, but he said if I want… my feeling is more than just salts water.”   “Salt water?”   “That what Daddy says pee is.”   Mia nodded. “My mom gets mad sometimes, but she’s not mad at me. She’s just upset because it makes us late if I pee the bed or wet my pants at breakfast. She gets upset if she just cleaned the floor or the kitchen, and I peed. But she’s not mad at me. She always says she’s sorry when I pee and she yells because I know she’s not mad at me. She’s just tired and frustrated that I am peeing where it was clean a minute ago.”   “It could be easy Daddy if that the only thing. But this summer, he made it harder for my big sister not to wet her pants outside, assept it both big sisters, even the one that never peed her pants before. They workeding more than all day in the farm field with no bathroom, rule no take off panties or pull up skirt outside, and so they try to hold it all day… until I told Daddy last time we bisit that they right to pee on the field in pants because he wants them work and not go house and wasted time to use toilet and no one can waited ten hours. Even Grandma that I love so much doesn’t can wait ten hours. That not possible.”   “That isn’t,” Mia nodded.   “Grace is the same problems when she babysit. She doesn’t can leave her cousins by alone, but two are boys. And she gets in trouble when they have enough time for alone, so she doesn’t can go bathroom while she babysit them. And then she peed her pants. And last time they did that her, her aunt didn’t even paid her for babysit, and her mom agreed her aunt. That why she like Daddy on the farm, her aunt, and her mom like my mom on the farm. They acting the same! Plus she already has a cause to pee her pants, even the doctors don’t find it, and they don’t love her enough to find out it because she has bad hurt heart. Not the physical one, but the one that loves.”   “I didn’t really know all that.”   “That’s why she talks me, Mia. She said you never meaned to her, but she doesn’t asspect you can get it because you still too can’t assept that high school girl might poop her pants ebery day.”   “I guess… yeah. It’s hard to believe. I kept wishing I had someone that at least doesn’t poop her pants when she’s telling me something she thinks I need to learn.”   “You judging. Maybe you don’t can help it. But people can be hurt bad and pee pants even really big people like your mom age.”   “I don’t….”   “I know. That why you don’t get Grace. You don’t believe that. I know what you said it.”   Mia frowned. “My mom can’t pee her pants.”   “You never seen her not get to take break after six hours doing stuff and someone hurting her so bad she scared to taked the break to make it happen. You didn’t see her heart hurted so bad that something that happened cause it to maked her body do lost controlled.”   “No.”   “But our group, eberybody has broked heart. That why you there, too. Your mom might okay you peed, but you there because someone hurts your heart.”   Mia looked down. “Yeah. Someone does.”   “And you get scared of that someone, and it causes you to do it more than you do if not you get said something them.”   “Yeah.”   “Grace that all the time by her aunt and mom that trap her and no one on her side, and Group only one a week, and even church, yesterday her first time church and she finded out she friends at church that didn’t hurt her heart, but try to make her heart happy eben she peed pants or not.”   “Okay,” Mia sighed. “I’m sorry I’m bad.”   “Not bad,” I frowned and then stood up and hugged her.   “You’re wet.”   “I don’t have to hug you all the way. But that why you don’t friends. You scared to be messy if someone has trouble, and you don’t put whole heart for friends. Why?”   “I don’t know.”   “Maybe that why you at our group plus you pee your pants?”   “I don’t know. Harmony just says the group will help me. I just don’t really hug, and I… maybe I don’t like to talk about hurting and heart stuff.”   “And maybe you should?”   “Why? It just hurts more.”   “Because after it hurts more… when you find someone that listen, it feels better after you get over the hardest hurt.”   “Really?”   “I promise.”   Mia reached out, and still didn’t exactly hug me, but she did touch my shoulder in something like the best hug I’ve ever seen her give anyone.   Cait sighed. “Do you be member that Vance’s daughter tried to do things first before she killed in the pool?”   “Yeah?”   “Grace is trying, Mia. She is trying so hard, that she’s pooping her pants, and still no one that she needs is seeing. She being inbisiblized. And that why she tried to die tonight. She still loves her mom, but her mom doesn’t… see. Her mom maybe loves her, but she doesn’t see her. She’s giving up. And you don’t see her. No one that apposed to see her, and then she too scared to go my house because her mom call us first to not ask her worry, but to try to yell uncle put her phone and… and she has no one to help her no more. So she has no help to stay alived.”   “Yeah?”   “And if you don’t start to open your mom or someone, too? I don’t know your hurts, but I see it, in you can’t hug, you can’t talk, and you can’t get friends…. You going to hurt like Grace later. You need to get a friend you trust, Mia. You need to hurt real bad first and tell someone, before you get over the hardest thing and it start to make you feel you are okay.”   Mia looked down at Cait’s lap. “You peed again.”   “I don’t care. I just peed when the people over there came in. They here for Grace.”