Trading Post

We made burgers on the grill. 

My first Tinimals tonight.  Getting home really late from work so I already know it'll be very tough to put it to a proper test. 

On the subject. I don't know what happened to me. But I use to get crazy excited with diapers and thinking about cute females. Then covid hit. I know the shot was bad and that it was for profit, but I listened to the wrong people and got in the moment. I only too the first two and but never went back for more.  I feel like I was never really the same after that and I felt like I was dying in some ways. Although it could have been a pinched nerve from before my surgery causing it. Strange things happed to me for a few years after. It might not be anything to do with the shot. But all I know is, I went from masturbating's like 2 to 3 times a day to maybe once a month. But then again, I don't see as many girls in my state because half the people are leaving because of the nuts that run it.

If you enjoy seeing girls in pullups or your a content creator yourself come check us out on reddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/girlsinpullupss/s/tCW88t32Yk

Chapter 61 Billy Likes Me   Cait was taken to a private room with Pastor Patterson, Another church man she didn’t know, Uncle Sean, and Auntie-grandma Eiboline.   “You said that Cait is sick or something?”   “Yes. She didn’t pee her pants the way you think on purpose means.”   “Well, I’d like to think not. That’s not a normal thing for a child to do.”   “Well, she’s had some very harsh experiences when it comes to a lack of money and how they talk to her about her toileting issues. Last week… Wednesday, I think it was, the doctor realized she has a hernia….”   Uncle was talking about the hernia.   “Billy might like you,” Kookaberry told her.   “I know he likes me. He said I’m his sister.”   “No…. I mean like seventh grade boy likes girl… like.”   “He’s not in seventh grade,” Cait frowned. “Besides, I know what that kind of love is. Daddy does that kind of love. It’s you see a girl once a week or maybe two weeks, and you do something, and then your real girlfriend or wife hates the other girl for it and gets mad at you. That’s what happens at home.”   “No…. Seventh grade like isn’t the same as that love. It’s different.”   “Well, he held me with pee pee pants. He doesn’t like-like me. I’m just like his sister. That’s all.”   “He loves you, Cait.”   “I know. He loves me like a sister. There’s no stronger love than the way my sister protected me at the whole time Daddy was saying I’m just a fail. They love me. Ruth loves me. She sat in my pee on the floor in Sunday School just because I’m sick and it makes me pee my pants, but she sat with me because she can’t do only that, but it is bigger than she knows. And Billy? He puts me in his lap and tells his friend to call on the next reader to not blame me for not reading good. Billy is my brother and I love him, too.”   “Cait?” Pastor Patterson seemed to need to say her name a couple of times. “Cait? Your guardians have given permission, but in this holy temple of God, we also ask a soul for permission.”   “Soul?”   “You, Cait…. You are the one that they are asking for a blessing on the behalf of. You understand? They asked for you, that Brother McMichaels and I ask God to watch your surgery. To help you find peace, and to not allow the hurtful words of the devil to get in the way of your healing. Would it be okay if we touch your head?”   “Daddy says that Head annointedings is the devil work. He says only Priests who want power do those, but they don’t even real.”   “Well,” the Pastor frowned. “I can appreciate that your Daddy has probably seen a lot of television Priests and maybe has had some experiences that he doesn’t trust for one reason or another. If you say don’t touch my head, we won’t. But if we can’t, can we say a prayer for you?”   “You can say a prayer-er-er? If you want?” Cait’s hand went to her mouth on the first ‘er’ of the phrase, and she looked up into his face on the second ‘er’ of it.   “May we hold hands?”   “Okay.”   Cait’s thumb was in her mouth on the ride home. Kookaberry was pinned to her shirt, but he was crooked in her arms, looking up at the heavens through the roof of the car. The people that loved Cait most, were in the front, sitting in quiet. One was driving, the other was patting an arm and looking back at the sleeping child, who was peeing her pants gain. And they stayed silent.   Chapter 62 Summerstone Is In A Safer World The bumping of the rocks and uneven dirt path-roads jolted Cait and she knew they were out in the country where the farm was. She didn’t mind the waking. She was just in zero land, not a dream, and not awake.   She did feel wetness on her dress.   “Uncle-Daddy?”   “Yes, Cait,” Sean answered looking at her from the passenger side, not the driver side of the car. Not like it would be if Mama and Daddy were coming home from church. The father’s place is in charge, in charge of the car and of the family at church, but not with Aunt and Uncle.   “I wet my pants at church.”   “We know that, little one. But do you remember what Billy said?”   “What?”   “About it meaning nothing to do with who you are?”   “I be membered he said not to say his friend name is Miss Pissy Pants, and he said he’d tell on me if I say it one more time about his friend, but he talking about me.”   “Well, he’s a true friend, Cait. Friends don’t let friends talk bad about themselves. They teach them why they are important.”   “I think Billy lied at church. That makes Daddy’s God mad.”   “Well, a lot of things makes Daddy’s God mad,” Sean frowned. “It’s not right. It’s just what he knows.”   “But Daddy always right at home. Whatever he says, it happens.”   Sean frowned. “Now.”   The car stopped on the gravel drive, and Cait felt the car slide even though Cait thought Uncle-Daddy turned it off.   Cait’s door was open, and she looked up at Sean, knowing if it were Daddy…. There was a lake on the seat. The dress had too many pee stains to hide. Cait smelled… more like Cait than ever.   Sean picked her up, just like always. He kissed her forehead, and then he carried her in to the living room where he started to undress her while Auntie went to make lunch.   “I’m just helping you get your dress off. It can be tricky to get a dress of when you’re all wet, hon.”   “Yeah?” Cait’s thumb went into her mouth.   “You want to talk to Summerstone after lunch, Cait-a-kins?”   “Yeah,” Cait bounced as Uncle got her dress over her head.   “Good, because I have to check the other animals, too. I also need to do some milking.”   “How come you gotta milk everyday?”   “Well…, that’s just how it’s done, Pet. If you don’t take care of the cows, they dry up on you.”   “Can Summerstone come to my pen?”   “I think we should give him two more days to get stronger first, Cait. But you can brush his coat. Horses love that.”   “Horses wear coats?”   Sean chuckled. “Not exactly. I’ll show you after lunch.”   Cait ran in just wet panties from the living room to the kitchen, and then she saw Auntie about to throw out a box. “Can I have that?” Cait asked Auntie.   “Hon, this is garbage. Why do you want a box?”   “It’s paper. I can write on it, and Daddy won’t think I’m wasting your good paper, and he’ll let Grainne read it because kids just playing letters. If I wasted your paper, and he saw my writing, he wouldn’t let Grainne read it.”   “How do you know that,” Auntie Eiboline frowned.   “It’s just… Daddy says don’t draw using your good crayons. You wasting them. Don’t use good paper. Find scraps if you draw. He won’t see my letters, only kid can’t spell pic-ch-eers.”   Eiboline frowned. “Sean? You need to tell Dan that Cait is writing to Grainne, and that we expect Grainne to get to see the letters.”   “I don’t know, Eiboline. I don’t want to poke the bear. We’ve demanded a lot this last week.”   “Look what she’s going to use for paper.”   “What harm is that. You’re just throwing it out, and to Cait, that’s perfectly usable paper. Let’s let her.”   “I mean, I’d like to think we could give her real paper,” Auntie said. “There’s no reason she should feel like she has to use scraps.”   “Well, we could ask her why she asked for scraps rather than a notebook, though. But I sort of think I understand. You didn’t see them in the field, Eiboline. And upstairs in the bathroom. I don’t think Cait’s asking us to treat her with scraps. I think she’s trying not to seem better than her sisters.”   Eiboline looked from Sean to Cait.   Cait whispered. “Grainne probably can’t write to me at all. No paper at home, you see, unless she uses the back of something that’s not important. I was going to send some of the box for her to write on, but I don’t know if can get the post office to take it.”   Auntie frowned. “Well, you can use the box if you want. If Grainne wants, though, I could send her some paper, envelopes, and stamps.”   “You can’t. Daddy will think Grainne did something wrong and she’ll get in trouble.”   “Well, family has a right to stay in touch, Cait. You let your mom and Auntie work it out, okay?”   “But don’t get Grainne hit or nothing?”   “No, hon. We’ll figure it out so Grainne doesn’t get in trouble for writing to you.”   Cait at the table in just her wet underwears, and she started to eat.   “Auntie knows how to talk to Mama,” Kookaberry told Cait.   “But it’s not Mama she has to tell to let Grainne write to me.”   “Isn’t it?” Kookaberry asked. “Daddy of the Crops doesn’t have to know that Grainne puts letters in Mama’s envelopes, does he?”   Cait scooted back after drinking her juice, and she looked up at Uncle Dairy-Daddy. “Daddy? Can I go see Summerstone now?”   “Cait, we talked about this, this morning. You’re wet, hon. Your baby will notice and get scared. You change your underwears first, and then you can go. Besides, I want you to wear jeans and boots outside.”   “Why?”   “Snakes, hon. While I’ve done what I can, Snakes can still slip in, and they can’t bite through boots and jeans are somewhat more protective than shorts.”   “Okay.”   Cait ran off to the bedroom to get her clothes changed. She wanted to go to her room anyway and so she could take the box outside to Summerstone with her crayons, and while she talks to her baby, she can start writing to Grainne.   Chapter 63 Kookaberry Writes   Cait laid her back against the fence after Uncle Sean had helped her brush Summerstone down. He showed her how to fix his hay so he was clean, and he showed her how to make sure he had water. Cait was learning to take care of her own baby horse. Uncle didn’t just say, well, take care of it. He was step by step teaching her to care for him, like Summerstone was real to Uncle Sean, and that Cait managing to take care of him was as important for Cait as it was for Uncle Sean.   Kookaberry was in her lap.   Summerstone sniffed at and tasted Cait’s hair. She giggled.   “Let’s see…,” Cait chose a red D blue E Pink E and Purple R. DEER in many colors. Grainne was all in green, Grainne’s favorite color.   “What do we tell Grainne about first?” Cait asked Kookaberry.   “How about getting the paper for the letter. Daddy at home, what would he do if you asked for something already going to be put in the trash?’   Cait shivered. She didn’t want to think about that. The thought caused a little pre-pee in her underwears.   “Okay. So….” And Cait drew a box and she made feet on it, and a trash can on it’s side where it was going. She put a hand down in front of the garbage can. She smiled. She wrote under the first little line of pictures all drawn in yellow crayon. “Kan I hab iss?”   Kookaberry smiled at her. “Perfect. Grainne can read that perfectly.”   “Before church,” Kookaberry tells Cait. You made friends that happen to go there. You should talk about Ruth before church. She’s… she’s been there, even when you pooped, remember?”   Cait nodded. “Do I gotta tell Grainne I pooped on my friend’s hand?”   “It’s your letter, Cait. Auntie said it’s not lying to just say what you need and not say what isn’t. Pooping on Ruth isn’t important. Her choosing to sit in your pee, is. She sat down in your pee because you were crying. Isn’t that a friend?”   “Okay.”   Cait drew a picture of herself in a swing. She drew a puddle on the ground under her. She drew Ruth looking right at the puddle, but under Ruth, she wrote: “Wat to pla?”   Cait drew the other kids in a circle. Under Ruth, she wrote: “No Cat. You say it wrong, you meo at my frnd, you ot!” Under a boy she put Bly, she wrote. “You hrt my sis frnd, you hrt my sis, and you fite me.”   She sighed. She drew Billy again with her in Billy’s lap. She drew a cross nearby. She drew water on the floor under the chair. “OK?” is all she wrote under the picture.   “Perfect,” Kookaberry smiled. “That what he did.”   Cait wrote on the bottom. “Mor hapen- I don’t draw becuz papare. You reed it? Tel- me if you Kan?”   She looked at Kookaberry.   “You have to draw on the back.”   Cait looked at Kookaberry. “Be member when Ruth was trying to help, but Billy told her not to make you feel bad by aksadent? Be member? Now you wanted Grainne to know you know she did for you?”   “Oh, about I told her to pee her pants?”   “Yeah.”   Cait turned the paper over and drew a big frown and wrote. “sawy” on it. Then she wrote Grainne outside doing the cuts with the curvy knife with Clo, and both of them puddles under them, and Cait’s head in the air. “You need do that.”   Cait sighed.   She drew her little sisters watching. She put a yellow X on them.   “Sawy I said by them wating. It hrt. I sawy.”   She looked at Kookaberry. “She’ll get it. It’s good.”   Cait signed it. Luv Cait. Not Cat.   She looked it over.   “It’s good. I promise, Grainne will get it,” Kookaberry told Cait.   Chapter 64 I Got Myself Up   Pee suddenly flooded into my pants. I looked up and the sky was getting dark. I don’t know how long I was at peace with Summerstone tasting my hair and gently pushing his nose on me. I just knew I was pre-peeing, but I didn’t care. And then I had peed my pants.   With a sigh, the little girl got herself up. “Sorry boy. Daddy Sean says when it getting dark, I go in the house. I back out tomorrow, okay?”   She hugged her baby horse; she patted the mommy horse. “Thank you not taking your baby away when I peed. I didn’t mean to.”   Then she carefully closed the fence to protect her baby and its mother.   Cait looked over at the water on the mudroom floor, and she knew. She had forgotten something! “Auntie!” she gasped. She ran out into the kitchen her boots still on. “I’m so sorry. I forgot to help with the water!”   “Cait!” Auntie bent down and put an arm around her shoulder. “Cait. You’re just ten years old. You were just zoned into writing a letter and wanting to talk to your new pet. There’s no harm. Uncle Sean helped me this time. It’s okay.”   “But…, I love our time together to get the water.”   “Well…, then you’ll remember tomorrow, hon. You don’t have to say you are sorry though for being ten years old. Kids forget things when they are in a moment.”   Cait looked up at her. “So I can still get water with you?”   “Of course, Cait.”   Cait hugged her Auntie-grandma. The more she stayed with her, the more like grandma than Auntie she was to Cait. Always forgiving. Always trying to cheer her. Always telling her not to worry when she makes trouble, and teaching her how to clean up what she can. It really should be Grandma Eiboline. But Cait promised to show respect, and respect means that she calls her Aunt. So she told herself, that’s what she says to Eiboline. She says Auntie or Aunt Eiboline, but in her heart, it will always be Auntie-grandma.   “Can I tell you a secret?” Cait asked Auntie-grandma.   Auntie bent down.   “I peed my pants in the horses place, and no one cared.”   Auntie smiled and whispered. “That’s as it should be, sweetheart. Pee is no one’s business but the one doing it. You make it our business when you need help, but it’s not our business until you make it ours by either being too scared to do something about it, or just wanting help because you’re a little girl with a body that’s been hurt too much.”   Cait embraced her Grandma-Auntie. Yeah. That feels more right. Grandma-Auntie, only Auntie spoken out loud so she doesn’t disrespect her loving Auntie-cousin. She loves her so much! Auntie has a right to check on Cait, and so does Daddy Sean. Daddy Dan? He might have to earn that back. He scares Cait more than ever, now. More because she knows now. Daddy Dan’s way isn’t the only way. She’s allowed to be checked for pooping her pants without everyone seeing it done. “I’m allowed to not have the neighbors watch me get checked when I know I pooped in my panties.”   Sean walked in and he saw Cait standing there her boots still on, pee dripping down her legs to the floor from her jeans, and Auntie Eiboline not telling her to remove her boots, but hugging her and patting her wet bottom. “That’s as it should be. Peeing is private, Cait.”   Uncle Sean walked over and bent down to Cait. “Looks like I missed something.”   “No you didn’t, Daddy! You’re here just on time. I peed my pants outside, but I’m okay. And for now, you are Daddy. I tell Dan Daddy only cause I have to, but you… you are Daddy. You and Gra… sorry… Auntie, you are my real love.”   “Can I change my pants by myself?” Cait asked Auntie.   “Yes, sweetheart. That’s as it should be. When you’re not scared or needing to be held because the world is too big sometimes, then healthy ten year old girls who sometimes pee their pants, change their pants on their terms, hon. That’s healthy and that’s normal.”   Daddy smiled. “Exactly. You get Daddy when you NEED Daddy. Daddy doesn’t just go in the bathroom with you just because. He has to be needed. That’s a daddy and that extends to changing your clothes if you pee, hon. Although, I’d like a favor from you?”   “Yeah?”   “Pooping is hard for a little girl to clean up. You can choose who to go to and how it happens, but you really should get help until you are a little older when poopy goes into your Undies. Can Daddy have you promise that? Not that Daddy cleans you, but you choose, but you don’t do it by yourself, not until you are ready, hon.”   “Okay. I don’t like trying to do it alone anyway. I did before, you know. To try to hide pooping my pants from the other Daddy. But he always knew because I can’t do it right.”   “Well, you come and get someone safe, right Cait? From now on, don’t do it yourself. You want to know why Uncle Sean…?”   “DADDY!” Cait stomped her foot.   “Yes, okay. You want to know why Daddy says you get help and you don’t do it yourself?”   “I already know,” Cait reached up and hugged him. “Daddy loves me. Daddy agrees me, that it’s too hard, not because I Cait, but because kids don’t can get poop off their back easy.”   “Yes, that is a part of it, sweetheart. But it’s also a concern for your health. If we think you need it, we can suggest you take a bath without taking you, if you just pee. You’re a big girl and pee is just water. It comes off easily. But poopy….”   “It sticky and gets everywhere.”   “It does, doesn’t it?” Sean doesn’t even look like he’s trying to hold back a sigh at her interruptions, but rather, seems to pat her wet backside and keeps talking to her like she was invited to add to the conversation. “But the real reason, Cait, is that when you don’t get it clean, bacteria can get into your little girl areas… places that will get really uncomfortable. It will cause you to get sick. That’s why girls wipe poopies front to back, where as boys, don’t care. Our bodies are made different, but even a boy should get help if he poops his pants at ten years old.”   “Oh. So poop causes sickness?”   “It can, sweetheart. Pee can too, if you don’t clean up. But you’re ten. You are smart. And pee is water, so it comes off easier if you take a bath.”   “Okay.”   “Go take a bath like a normal ten year old,” Daddy told her.   Cait smiled. “Okay.” She stomped her foot for emphasis. “DADDY.”   The adults looked at each other, and they smiled.   “Dan’s going to say we’re spoiling her,” Grandma-Auntie whispered, but Cait heard.   “Well… it’s not spoiling to teach a ten year old to take care of herself. She might have some challenges that makes expecting her not to wet her pants difficult right now, but she’s still a normal ten year old girl that should have the right to bathe herself,” Daddy nodded. “Her daddy left her in our care. If he didn’t want us to teach her to be healthy, maybe he should have been her Daddy and kept her on his own farm and taught all the girls right!”   Cait woke up early on Monday morning, and she laid in the wet bed for a minute. She felt her bladder slowly leaking. She pulled her little Kookaberry to her stomach and it sitting on her, she asked. “What do you think Daddy will do if I cry if I pee my pants?”   Kookaberry sat there a moment, as if he had his thumb in his mouth, too. “Well, which daddy?”   “The one here. The one that’s in my heart my daddy.”   “Well, he said he can still take you to the bathroom, if you want him to. He said the only thing that changed, is you get to not give him permission. He said he doesn’t just come in. You can go in by yourself. But I think he means when you feel okay. I think if you crying, he’d pick you up and think he has permission unless you said no.”   “Yeah?”   “I mean, you can ask him. He’s not like the other one. He doesn’t hit you for not getting it, and for asking for help to get it. He the one that let you take that paper from the trash without asking you why. He the one that let you sit in a boy lap and knows you peed on the boy. He doesn’t yell for you doing something everything. Right?”   “Yeah.”   Cait’s body started to push. “I’m pooping my pants.”   “I know. Daddy won’t care though. He’ll make you take someone with you though. He said getting clean is more important than your privacy, but he said, too, you can choose someone safe to go with you. It doesn’t him if you choose Auntie instead.”   “Grandma-Auntie,” Cait whispered. “You know the real word. You say Grandma-Auntie, not just Auntie… when it just you and me. It doesn’t disrespect to think truth, as long as we say respect by them.”   “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry.”   Sean walked down the hall and knocked at her door though it was open, he didn’t look in around the corner at her in bed. He knocked at the door and waited.   “Yeah?” Cait asked pulling the blanket up over her bedding accident as he looked up at him.   “Do you want to spend time with Summerstone?” Daddy asked.   “Um… I pooped my pants.”   “Well, you know that’s not your fault, right?”   “I still did it. I not scared you know. That’s why I telling you. But it kind of feels funny you looking at it.”   Sean smiled. “You’re just becoming aware, hon. How about we clean you up? If you want, I can get Auntie to help.”   Cait shook her head and reached her arms up at Daddy. “You.”   Sean smiled, pulled the blankets back, and lifted his little girl out of the brown puddle she was in. “As long as you need me, Cait-a-kins. Daddy will be here for you. You have a bad day and need to cry, you have a shoulder. You have a wet skirt and need encouragement, in Daddy’s lap you can come. You need a bath and want Daddy? Daddy will clean you as much as is appropriate. But Daddy knows you are growing up. That means Daddy only needs to clean off the poopy places or the places that can make you sick it it doesn’t get clean enough.”   Cait hugged him as he told her how he was going to be going things from here, forward, and it made her feel even more… that he was the Daddy she’d always wanted. She sighed. Why didn’t Dan want to be that Daddy? But she didn’t ask. She had her Daddy, for now.   As the happy little ten year old held her Daddy’s hand and walked towards the pen for the horses, she and Daddy talked.   “I wrote my letter to Grainne last night. You can mail it today?”   “When we go to the park.”   “You didn’t say we going to the park,” Cait looked up at him.   “Well, I think routines are good for kids. Chores help with that, but so does scheduled playtime that lets you know, this is your time to unwind and be a child. I don’t think kids really know when the time is theirs, and when they might get called to do something. This sort of sets the expectation that Monday afternoons are Cait’s time. And Tuesdays, we are going to the library.”   “Really?”   “Your Auntie is the one that actually suggested we do this. She said the library was important, so I told her that you need playtime. She agreed, so we decided Mondays are play days and Tuesdays are Library days unless something important comes up.”   “Okay.”   “Is your letter to Grainne private?”   “Yeah.”   “That’s all I’ll ask then. You have a right to have privacy with your sisters, Cait. You are a soul, not just a little kid that gets controlled like a toy.”   Cait fed Summerstone in clean clothes just like the day before. She is different today though. She knows that she knows how to feed not just her baby horse, but also the pigs, the chickens, and even the cows. Cait can come into breakfast and smile at Auntie that she is able to do stuff. She’s not stupid no more.   “Auntie? Daddy says we can mail my letter at the park today.”   Eiboline nods and smiles. “After breakfast, I need to get water.”   “Daddy? Can I help on the farm after I get water with Auntie? Getting water with Auntie is our time.”   “Sweetheart, you never have to ask to spend time with either of us. Just let us know, and if there’s a problem, we’ll let you know.”   Cait was bouncing in her seat.   “I pooped my pants this morning,” Cait told Auntie.   “You can say that after breakfast, love. Some things are not conversations for meals, okay?”   “Okay. I just wanted you to know I not scared to tell you.”   “That does mean a lot to me, love. But remember what I said about some things need to be said. You know I have to clean your bedding, so I’d know even if you didn’t say so.”   “I know. But now you know it’s got poop water in it, so you can be prepared.”   “Okay. We’re eating now, hon. No more talk about poop water until we finish eating, okay?”   “Okay.”   Chapter 65 Ron’s Disaster   We walked along the trail with the signs at the cross roads. The Cait space, the well, the house and the X. These are Sean’s directions. They say he loves me enough to put the sign in my language, with pictures.   As Cait and Auntie walked towards the hill, Cait noticed Auntie stopped walking. Her bucket stopped swinging. She looked into the field again. The wild field, far off, but Auntie looked at it like it was right in front of Cait and Auntie.   “Auntie?”   “His name was Ronald,” Auntie sighed. “Our dead boy. It’s been twelve years to the day. It was today when the snake and the bull and it all happened. It was so fast. I had no idea there was even a snake out there….” Auntie’s voice sounded like sandpaper was scratching words as they came out of her mouth.   “The boy…,” Auntie frowned as her tears spilled down her face. “Ron…. He was so concerned he had pooped his pants. He asked if it was okay he pooped his pants, his chest with a hole it in!”   Auntie sat down on the ground. “I don’t even know why he’d think I’d even noticed his pants until he said it. There was this gapping hole in his chest. He was barely breathing. He ask me. Is it okay, Mommy? I pooped.” She sat there on the ground, her hands holding her face. She cried. I rubbed her back.   “He loved you.”   “Auntie? Is the field safe?” Cait asked.   Auntie looked up at her. “Why?”   “Because if it’s safe, I’ll get the water today. I watch you all the time. I’m strong. I won’t fill your bucket all the way. I’ll fill mine and bring it back and pour it in yours, a little at a time. I’ll make three trips. Then… you’ll know I’m safe. I won’t get too close. I watch you. Do you trust me?”   Auntie frowned. “Do I trust you? What kind of question is that, girl? Of course I trust you.”   “Then I can get the water. You see Ron’s field. You need this. It’s like the pre-pees in your panties. If you don’t go over there, it’s going to get worse and worse all day until you fully poop your panties, somehow. It might meet you yell at me. Even I do nothing. It might meet you make dinner run. It might meet anything… but if you don’t control your pre-pee, you will poop your pants in the grownup way.”   “Shadow!” Cait called. “See Auntie? I have shadow. He doesn’t let you walk into snakes. I can’t walk into a snake. It’s because Shadow. She is watching. Or you can take him. Your grass is taller.”   “No, Cait. I’ll feel better if Shadow is with you. I’ll be okay. I know what I’m doing.”   “Then you go and pray your be spects to Ron and tell Ron thank you for Kookaberry and for his clothes and his bedroom. Tell him I’m careful with his dresser shrine, too. And you tell him your hurts. Yeah?”   Auntie stood up. Cait looked up at the sky like she didn’t see it. The ground was mysteriously wet, but Cait pretended the sky was more important until she skipped off not looking back at Auntie. She was learned that Grainne was upset that Roisin knew she’d pee her pants, so Auntie would be upset if Cait knew… so Cait would pretend she didn’t see. Besides, these were water pails they had. Maybe somehow, some water that was still in them got on Auntie. Cait didn’t know for sure… except her Auntie’s dress was kind of wet… even for the little bit of water that might be on the buckets. But she skipped off. Auntie is big. Daddy said Cait can clean herself if she pees.   Cait played around with Shadow by the buckets while she watched Auntie in the field. She couldn’t see clearly, but she could see her moving. She pulled some grass away. There was a very visible little t in the field now. Cait could see it.   Shadow growled.   “What is it, girl?”   She whined and looked towards Auntie.   “Get it!”   Shadow didn’t have to be told twice, she ran towards it and then Cait sat it. A great diamond patterned snake with browns and greens all over it’s body, it was sliding and twisting into something like rope.   “Shadow! Leave it!” Cait called worried. “Shadow!”   The dog look back. The snake was still coiling. “Shadow!”   Shadow ran back to Cait. The snake was now visible in the grass, it’s head swaying and its tail shaking and making this strange noise.   “Cait!” Daddy called from the direction of the Cait pen on the sigh. He ran taking with him, a large bull. “Where’s your Auntie?”   “Ron’s field.”   Daddy frowned. “Shadow, heel, Cait, you stay behind me. Old Buckertooth here is going to lead us over. The snake won’t bother him if we don’t get too close to it. We’re just taking him to warn us of others. You stay behind me. The animal can turn in an instant, and being behind it isn’t safe either.”   And Daddy started to lead Cait towards Auntie and the field where they pray.   As Cait and Daddy walked through the field, Cait found her story. Was it a lie? It made sense to her. The snake was there. Shadow was there all along. Someone told her when an animal can kill another, the animal senses it. It pees to get ready to run. Shadow peed on the ground. She was remembering Ron. Shadow peed. Grandma didn’t watch it. Shadow didn’t know where the snake was. She was listening for it. Then she growled and I see it.   Auntie was watching as Daddy and Sean walked into the gate and let Shadow in with them. Daddy tied Buckertooth to the fence outside of the sanctuary. They didn’t need the bull inside there.   “Cait’s so smart,” Auntie praised. “I saw her do as she said. She didn’t got to the well three times, she went five times, four to fill my bucket. She knows I was hurting. I trusted, and I was proven right. She knew when to ask Shadow to find the snake and when to call Shadow back from it. She waited for you to help her. She’s so smart, Sean!”   “Cait… I was proven right by trusting you,” Grandma-Auntie told her. “You let Shadow find and show the snake, and you knew to call her before she was close enough to get a bite. That’s a skill many adults never get right, Cait.”   Cait looked down. “It wasn’t. I didn’t know. I just saw the snake and I didn’t want Shadow to die. I just called her. Daddy says to watch the animals. Animals warn. They can’t always stop or kill the danger. They warn. I saw the snake. That’s all I needed, right? So I knew if it was okay to pee my pants… I did.”   “Well, you earned the right to pee your pants this time,” Uncle told her. “You peed at the right time. The snake didn’t notice. And you might not know it yet, but that is still a skill. You loved Shadow, but good instincts tell you the difference between when you send a dog to find danger, and when to call it back before it’s put in harm’s way. You got it perfectly right, Cait-a-kins. And I’d take your little pissy panties any day over someone that would have left the dog to deal with the snake; killing the dog!”   “Come,” Auntie put a hand out towards to Cait. “You earned this. You can see where we put an outdoor shrine to our boy. We weren’t allowed to bury him here, so we got him cremated.”   “Like made into cream?”   “No Cait. It’s a ritual that’s not exactly Christian, but our Pastor says that God can make bodies whole out of just a speck of dust, so he saw nothing wrong with this. With Ron Cremated, and with some of the ash mixed in with the soil, the government couldn’t do something they can’t prove. We scattered the ash around this field. That’s why we let it grow wild. This is Ron’s field. Ron loved high grassy fields and spirits can’t be bitten by snakes, so there was no reason to take Ron’s high grassy field away from him.”   “I peed. It’s a Sacreted place. I stay out,” Cait frowned.   “I wet my pants, too, Cait,” Auntie suddenly admitted. “I don’t know why I did it. It was before we knew anything about the snake. I guess… I was just way overwhelmed by seeing the field this morning. I mean, any other morning, what was I thinking leaving you to get the water by yourself? But you proved something to me, Cait. I was right to trust you. And you are welcome in this field in pee pee or even poopy panties anytime as long as Uncle or I am with you. We need to know, Cait.”   Cait nodded. “I know. You just protecting me. Not cause I stupid. But cause I a kid, and it is the grownups job to protect kids.”   “Let’s take Buckertooth back to his field so he can rest. He’s earned it, and Shadow’s earned some extra treats, too, Cait, if you want to get it for her when we get back. Then we can get ready to go to the park. You’ll have a lot to tell Ruth.”   “Daddy? Ruth is coming?”   “Her parents and your Aunt and I set it up. Every Monday, the children will play at the park from two in the afternoon until around four thirty. I know that’s hard to understand, but it means the little hand is on the two when we start, and the big hand is on the twelve. And we finish when the little hand is….”   “… I know!” Cait got excited. “And the little hand is the four and the big hand is the six, and that’s finish time!”   Daddy patted her head. “You did tell me once that you could read the big hand on the twelve and the Six, didn’t you?”   Cait smiled.   As they walked into the house, Cait started to stripping her pants off in the kitchen down to her boy underwears. She was soaked but Daddy and Auntie knew. Auntie told her she peed her pants, but Cait didn’t care about that. Auntie just needed to see her died son, then she can be okay for a while.   Cait checked on Summerstone again and brushed him, she got her letter ready in Auntie’s envelope, and she took a quick shower to be clean. Ruth is her friend. She doesn’t want Ruth to worry. Then she and the Kinsellas went out to buy her some bread at a convenience store for lunch and to mail the letter on the way.   Ruth smiled when Cait caught up. “I told she was coming,” Ruth told the group of kids.   “Am I late?” Cait asked.   “No. They just didn’t want to believe me. But I knew you were coming. We’re best friends.”   “I tell you about my morning before we play? It was scary, but then… then… then Daddy and Auntie said I was smart.”   “Okay,” Ruth looked at the others. “You don’t have to listen. We’ll join you in a minute if you want to start.”   “Daddy gave me a bath this morning, but then he told me something. He said I can choose. he doesn’t do it to bath for me if I pee my pants. He said I don’t have to get checked like a baby just because my body pees sometimes.”   “That’s… um… normal,” Ruth said. “I peed my pants at church last year, like a lot, and my dad always asked. Do I want help?”   “Oh.”   “Well, then after breakfast, we were going to get water. Auntie had to visit her kid.”   Ruth frowned. “I didn’t know the Kinsellas had a kid.”   “Well, he died like twelve years ago,” Cait frowned.   “That’s a long time ago. I don’t think we lived here yet.”   “We didn’t Ruth,” Billy came over to see what they were saying. “We moved here almost six years ago, and we met the Kinsellas about five years ago.”   “Oh.”   “Anyway, they have this shrine in their fields to the boy. So Auntie went to visit…. Then, this snake? It was maybe that long!” Cait tried to guess how long with her hands spread apart from one another. It was really big. It made Shadow growl. Shadow is Ron’s dog.”   “Whose Ron?” Ruth asked.   “Daddy and Grandma’s kid?” Cait whispered.   The two looked at each other. “I thought it was Uncle-Daddy and Auntie,” Ruth frowned.   “Well, it changed,” Cait said. It’s Daddy. Daddy does what you said is normal Ruth, but the Daddy at my other home… he says I just a stupid baby. He mad every pee on the floor, and tells me to just pee where I at, Stop moving. Don’t go bathroom if my pants are even a little wet.”   “That’s mean!” Ruth put her thumb in her mouth.     “You know you’re not stupid though,” Billy asked Cait.   “I know. I not saying it. Daddy at the other farm says it.”   “That’s not a Daddy,” Billy says. “He might be your old man. You can say he’s your father. But not all fathers are Daddies. Daddy is something that you do to love your kid. Like Ruth and me. We have a Daddy. And like Sean. He acts like your Daddy even though he’s not even your father. That’s a Daddy.”   Cait sighed. “Okay.”   “I don’t understand something,” Billy frowned. “If Sean is Daddy, why isn’t Mrs. Kinsella Mommy?”   Cait shrugged. “She’s nice like a Grandma. You can pee on the floor, and she thinks it’s cute. She makes you sweets. She shows you how to make things better, like clean up pee off a rug and doesn’t let you sleep in a bed you pooped in in the morning.”   Billy and Ruth looked at one another. “Mommies are like that.”   Cait shook her head. “Not my Mommy. She can’t do nothing if…,” she put a finger on her lip. “...if father says she don’t do it. She can’t smile and say cute. She can’t make sweets. She can’t let me go toilet. I pee at table while I do homework. Father is not allow it. Last week, we went to the library, and Daddy talked to me about Kookaburras from the books, and Grandma showed me picture books and then said I can read, but there no letters on the page.”   Brother and sister, they looked at each other, and then they looked down. Cait was tired of talking. It just made her friends think too much and look sad.   “Let’s go play,” Cait said holding her hand out to Ruth. “I can be it. I am strong now. I can see a snake and do it right. Daddy even says so.”   “Three new people to start,” one of the other kids frowned. “Only one it, though. How we going to decide who’s it?”   “Already did,” Ruth called. “Cait said she can be it. She’s strong.”   The kids ran off in all directions.   Cait glanced playfully evil at Ruth. Ruth saw it and gasped in a giggle as she ran from Cait.   They ran around swings, through the monkey bars, and up steps and down slides. Cait didn’t even notice any pre-pees. She was on the top of the slide when she felt warmth flowing down her legs. No one said anything, and they continued like Cait hadn’t done anything at all.   Ruth was it, and she was running behind things, so Cait lost track of where she was. She looked to the slides, and Ruth wasn’t there. She looked to the swings… no. The little girl was….   “You’re it,” she came out from behind a crowd of people and tapped her elbow.   In the car, Cait yawned. Though it was four-thirty, it felt to Cait like the day had already lasted well beyond normal. She had an exciting morning that would last a life time, and then she played at the park, and now, it just felt like it should be time to sleep.   “How did it go today?” Auntie asked as though she hadn’t been there watching.   “We played,” Cait said. “Ruthie said we playing next week, too. It was fun.”   “No problems with other kids at all?” Sean asked.   “Na-uh, not even when I peed. We just kept playing and it was... the water puddle was always there. No one acted it is bad.”   Cait was yawning.   Her eyes were closing.   She was safe.   Chapter 66 Kookaberry Reads   Cait woke up on Tuesday morning, and she blinked. Something wasn’t right. She felt her hands between her legs. Her Underwears were dry. She pushed on the bed. It was dry. She pulled the blanket back. A very light yellow stain from not being able to get the stain out was in the sheet, but it was dry.   Her legs squeezed together.   “Are you gonna pee your pants?” she heard a quiet whisper.   “Is that you, Kookaberry?”   “No,” there was something almost like a laugh in the voice of the cautious voice.   “Everyone expects you to pee. If you don’t pee at least some in the bed or in the hallway, are you sure they won’t ask you where you hid your underwears?”   “Is that you, ghost?”   A faint visage of a little girl maybe a couple of years younger than Cait was appearing. “Maybe?”   Cait sat up in the bed and put her hands on her underpants again. They were dry.   There was a pressure in her tummy. “I didn’t see you all day yesterday,” Cait frowned at the ghost.   “Did you miss me?”   “Maybe.”   “Well, I saw the snake. You peed your pants. That was me. I’m the one that wet you.”   “Oh.”   “I couldn’t say you peed though.”   “Why?”   “Well… um….” Cait saw a memory of her aunt, raising to her feet to cross the distance to Ron’s field, the back of her dress soaked.   “Why’s that matter?” Cait asked.   “If a grownup is allowed to pee her pants, what would you even listen to? Cait, you’re peeing,” but a woman already did it. It’s just not scary, is it?”   Cait shrugged. “The snake was already more scary. You can’t be more scary than that.”   Cait put her feet over the bed.   “You’re trying to go the bathroom. But Cait? Your Auntie peed her pants.”   Cait frowned. “Yeah?”   “If she pees her pants in the day. You don’t pee at night….”   Kookaberry whispered. “Cait? The ghost….”   “BOO!”   Kookaberry was quiet.   “Is it okay for you to pee in the toilet while Auntie pees her bed?”   Cait felt a little bit squirt in her undies.   “That’s not going to let Auntie off. She fully peed herself, Cait.”   The pee fully flooded her underwears as she stood up and then she saw Daddy at the door looking in at her.   “Sweetheart? Almost make it?” Daddy asked.   “I… um… guess?” Cait whispered shaking.   “Cait? You look a little upset,” Daddy whispered. “I don’t want to stop you being a big girl, but I don’t want you to be scared. How are you feeling?”   Cait stared at Uncle Daddy for a long moment. She sighed. “Did Auntie pee the bed?”   “Cait, no! Why would you think that?”   “Auntie peed yesterday. That’s all.”   “Cait, she doesn’t do that. Yesterday, she was overwhelmed at the loss of our son. Don’t hold one moment of weakness against her. She’s human. We all have a moment of weakness now and again.”   “Did you ever pee?”   “Yes.”   Cait looked down. “Okay.”   “It’s okay to know, Cait. It’s not okay to judge without knowing why.”   “Yeah. I saw Gr...Auntie. She was pre-peeing. Not like pee pee, but like, her hands were white. Her body was shaking. She was looking at the field.”   “Then you understand it was a body response, not a failure to understand what she needed to do, right?”   “Yeah. I sorry. I peed on purpose.”   “We’ve been over and over this Cait.”   “Not this, Daddy. This was. The ghost. The ghost told me I’d make Auntie feel like Grainne.”   “What do you mean?”   “On Friday, when I told Grainne to pee in front of the little sisters. Grainne looked red and a little like she didn’t want me to say that. But I told her wrong.”   “Cait?” Daddy said and waited like he was trying to make me hear him. “I’m going to not tell your Auntie what you said. That will upset her a lot more than that you made it to the potty once when she didn’t.”   “Why?”   “She knows you are having a lot of self doubt and issues, Cait. She loves you. She wants to teach you right, and if you believe that peeing your pants will help her… remember what I said about horses sensing you if you go to them in wet pants?”   “Yeah?”   “Well, women have this thing that is like instinct. Some people call it a woman’s intuition, and some call it a mother’s intuition. But it means, women understand things sometimes, things that are not said. If she catches you peeing your pants on purpose, she’ll know that for some reason, you believe this protects her, and that will make her doubt if she’s your grandma.”   “I did’t say Grandma.”   “Cait, you were going to say it at least twice. People around you do hear you, a lot more than Dan and maybe even your mom did, Cait. We heard you call Auntie grandma, and we don’t mind. I heard you staying Uncle-daddy, Dairy-Daddy, and other meanings. You are a clever child, but we can see you and hear you, Cait. We catch you when you are at your most needy, and we hear you say… I need a real Daddy. I need a grandma. We smile and we fill those roles the best we can.”   “The best you can? Daddy, you and Auntie are so good to me. I just don’t understand. If you are not mad me all the time, why is Daddy? Am I really bad?”   Sean frowned and looked back towards the bedroom where Eiboline was still sleeping. “Honey, I think they love you. They just…. It’s not always easy for people, Cait.”   “Why?”   “I sure wish I had those answers, sweetheart. But how about your show them how it’s done? How about you get your panties changed and you go take care of Summerstone like you wish your parents would hold you, child?”   “Okay.”   Sean bent down and he picked her up patting her soggy pajamas. “You just remember one thing. Whatever you call Eiboline and me, we do care, sweetheart.”   “I know.”   Cait frowned. “Daddy?”   “Yes, hon?” Sean was still holding her in his hands.   “I want Summerstone to know that I am just a girl. I pee my pants, and I don’t lie to him. I don’t think it’s nice he thinks I am different. I want to feed him in just wet panties and a shirt. Is that bad?”   “Not if you are not scared, Cait. As long as the horse senses the love more than the hurt and the fear, then it’ll be okay.”   Cait arrived at the stable with the mommy horse and her little Summerstone. Summerstone walked slowly over and then nudged Cait. He pushed at Cait’s shoulder, and he tasted her hair again.   “It’s me, boy. This is how I smell sometimes.”   Summerstone rubbed its head against her again. A snort of warm air blew into her chest through her flimsy pajama top. Cait giggled.   Shadow walked over by the gate and watched from the outside. I smiled and nodded at Shadow. “Soon. I’ll feed you, too, girl.”   Daddy helped Cait with the feed for the horses, and then helped her make the Mama Mere comfortable so the baby could eat. Then Cait fed Shadow before going with Auntie to the well again. There was no sadness this time. They got the water, and the morning continued.   Hours later, they were at the library parking lot….   They returned the books that they checked out the week before, the two on a Kookaburra, the three picture books upon Auntie’s insistence, and now, Eiboline guided her little niecie-grand-cousin to a table while while Sean seemed to be looking through some shelves by himself.   “You peed your pants at that table right over there,” A small voice in her head that was maybe four years older than Cait. “Last time, the kids that saw were too old to care. I wonder if any fifth graders will be here today. Maybe Angela from Church?”   “Angela?” Cait asked a little worried.   “Why not? Angela is staying the summer. She could be here. Or how about other fifth graders who don’t know you yet?”   “I’m gonna pee my pants?” Cait looked up at Auntie.   “Right now? Do you want to try to go to the bathroom?”   “No. It’s the ghost. It’s the girl that keeps telling me when bad is coming, and then it happens when Kookaberry gets quiet. I’m gonna wet my pants. Is it okay?”   “Pet, you tell that ghost that you are ALLOWED to pee your pants, and that just because it says you will, doesn’t mean you will.”   “Okay.”   “You’re gonna poop ‘em… and then your Auntie won’t save you. Your Uncle Daddy will be too embarrassed to save you. You will be alone because the adults will be shaming your bigs for taking you out of the safety of the farm and putting you in public.”   “I been in here, and church, and in movie before. I peed in this library last week. You said so.”   “And that turned out just fine, did it? You didn’t cry?”   Cait frowned.   “BOO!”   Kookaberry seemed to be invisible. For a minute, Cait couldn’t even find his outer shell.   “Grandma! I can’t find him!”   “Find who?” Auntie asked.   “Kookaberry! He’s not here!”   “You just had him, Cait. Take a breath, okay? Now, let’s look where he could have fallen.”   Cait looked under the table, and he wasn’t there. Then she saw his foot sticking out from under the chair she was on. She reached down. “Kookaberry!”   “Here,” Auntie smiled and pinned its leash to my shirt. “That’ll keep Kookaberry safely with you.”   Cait sighed. “That’s not funny, Ghost! Kookaberry doesn’t make you just appeared.”   “Just because he’s too stupid to play fair….”   Cait put her tongue out at the ghost.   “Put your tongue out…. But you’ll poop your pants here. You watch!”   “Maybe…,” a whisper came not from a fourteen year old teen ghost girl, but from a ghost two years younger than Cait again. “Maybe… it will be better if Roisin poops her pants?” the Ghost threatened. “I wonder if Daddy will be happy if she poops in the sheets in bed tonight. You doubt me? You wrote a letter. Grainne will answer. Let’s see if Roisin poops her pants tonight before morning… yeah?”   Cait frowned. Her face failed. “Or how about Grainne… right in front of Roisin and even Aoibhe? Yeah… right in front the baby, a big giant pooping in her panties….   “No,” Cait said out loud. She felt her face heat up. “I’ll do it.”   “Your choiiice?” the ghost seemed to shrug and disappear.   Cait looked up at Auntie and she took two deep breaths. “You gotta yell at me.”   “Yell at you?”   “Yeah. When you want, but you gotta.”   “Cait. Dan can’t do anything over here.”   “I… I… I’ll break your good sugar bowl at home if you don’t yell at me.”   Eiboline frowned. “Wait here, Cait.”   She went off somewhere and Cait saw neither Sean nor Eiboline.   Cait’s eyes looked this way and that. She got up from her seat even though she was told to stay, and she walked to edge of that reading area. She looked left. There was no Daddy. She looked Right. There was no grandma. She went back to the table, but didn’t sit.   “Kookaberry?”   The doll was silent.   She walked back to the edge of the reading area. She looked right. No Auntie. She looked left. No Uncle. She stood there. “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”   She walked back to the table and stood there again, by her seat, finger rubbing along the hard plastic seat back. It was orange. The seat was black.   “Kookaberry?” she whispered. Her voice came out into the real world, but only just.   The Stuffed bear was still silent.   “Poop your pants,” echoed in her head, but she didn’t see the ghost.   “I can’t right now. It’s not coming out,” she whispered, her voice just softly touching the stale air of the real world, but not carrying.   She pulled her fingers through her hair. She stepped one foot in front of the other where she stood and bent at her waist. What to do?     Cait walked not straight back from her table as she had been doing, but this time, to the left of facing her table and came to an aisle where she looked left. The exit hall was that way, and she could sort of see a toilet sign down that way.   “If you want it in my pants, then I can just go over there?” she asked the ghost.   “You tried that at church, don’t you remember? Besides, if your Aunt and Uncle wrote home that you sat on the toilet and did it on purpose, how would that look? I wonder if he’d blame Grainne for teaching you to do it in your panties on the toilet?”   “But he wouldn’t?”   “He wouldn’t? This is Daddy Weimer. He forgets things, and you know you can’t deny he didn’t teach you that trick, so who would he blame it on? The Kinsellas?”   No, Daddy just blames kids. Cait knew that much. Adults never make mistakes.   “Please… I’m trying to poop. I promise,” Cait’s lips moved but the air didn’t move the sound past her lips. “I will, I promise. Just give me time….” She looked the other direction. She didn’t see Uncle or Auntie.   “Your big people will come back if you just pre-pee a little bit in your panties… enough that you know you’re wet, but it has to feel wet without having to show up. If you do that much, I’ll let you poop in the car on the way home.”   Cait nodded.   “Go pee sitting at the table then.”   Cait walked towards the table.   “Of course, since you are changing the deal, I am too. One of your sisters will wet her pants today.”   “What? No!”   “Do you want your dad to find out?”   “No?”   “Then don’t change the deal any more.”   “I can pee all the way in my pants at the table,” Cait said. “And then poop my pants in the car?”   “Good,” the face of Grainne faced her.   “So my sisters?”   “Did I promise to negotiate? You already made it so one of them pees. If you change what you just said, Grainne poops and another sister pees… in front of Daddy.”   “But! That’s not even! You said just poop in the car and a little bit wet at the table!”   “Hey. You are the one that said you could pee all the way. Now, you do so, or your oldest sister poops right in front of Daddy and Aoibhe pees her pants!”   “No! Not her! She hasn’t done it, yet.”   “Then you pee at the table, and you poop your pants in the car… when you leave the library. No matter where else you go, you poop in the car as soon as you leave the library. No take backs.”   Cait folded her arms. “Fine!”   “Good. Now look! See? You do what you say, and I can bring your big people back! Look! Grandma is coming from there, and Daddy is coming from over there.”   Cait frowned. They were.   Eiboline and Sean both sat at the table on either side of Cait. Sean held her hand. “Cait. You don’t deserve to be yelled at.”   “But I don’t deserve a baby horse, and I don’t deserve a pen in the farm, and I don’t deserve a nice bed to sleep in and these thick boy panties that make it easy for me, too.”   “Cait, little lady, you don’t get to have a baby horse, a safe place to play, a nice place to sleep or comfortable clothes because you do something to earn it. These are things your big people give you because they love you. They are not payments for things you do. Being yelled at or being corrected sharply are things that happen because you need to learn that something is not a good thing.”   “Pee my pants is not a good thing?”   “Pee in your pants is not something that hurts other people,” Auntie softly stated while a hand slid up and down her thigh. “When we say that something should be corrected for, it should be something that actually affects other people or really hurts yourself. The problem with this situation, Cait, is you are having trouble controlling yourself both because of a medically physical problem and also because of things that have been done wrong to you, mentally.”   “If I break your sugar bowl, it will affect you,” Cait frowned at Auntie.   “Yes, it will,” Eiboline looked at Sean.   “We should get a new set anyway,” Sean winked at Eiboline. “If she wants to break it so badly, we can just show her how to do it safely.”   “Are you serious?” Eiboline asked Sean.   “I mean, if she hates it that much. I’ve been telling you for years that it’s the ugliest thing in the world.”   The two looked at each other. Cait looked down at her lap trying to pee.   Cait shook a little and she whispered. “Even if it is ugly, old grand-lady likes it. You should still yell.”   “What was that, Cait?” Daddy asked.   Cait sighed. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I was trying to just-be-spect Auntie, but I can’t. I… I just can’t.”   “I… I tried to call Auntie something as mean as I could think of… but I can’t,” Cait started to cry. I can’t. I just… Grainne and Clo and Roisin and Aoibhe… what happens to them if I don’t get it?”   “Cait…,” Daddy got up and lifted her into his lap as he sat in her seat. “Hurting yourself won’t stop whatever is going to happen at the farm over hundreds of miles away. If your daddy thinks they have to learn something, he’s going to do it whether we yell at you or not.”   “But Grainne doesn’t have to poop her pants in front of Daddy or in front of Aoibhe,” Cait whispered.   “Hon? Do you think if we yell at you, Grainne won’t go potty in her pants at home?”   Cait looked down. It sounded weird when they said it out loud, but still, the ghost could do it, right? She shivered. “I don’t know.”   Eiboline frowned at Sean. “How soon can we get Cait on that insurance?”   “I have a meeting tomorrow, Eiboh.”   “She needs help right now.”   “I know. Look. Let’s just try to get her interested in this book. It’s a fun story about a guy with his own troubles. Maybe it will help her.”   “You don’t think that’s a bit advanced to start with?”   “Nah. She’s smart. She just needs some patience and someone to explain things as we go along.”   “That’s got a monster on the book front,” Cait said as she looked at the giant lion with wings, a wicked ball of spikes on its tail, and something like a human shape inside of the mane of hair, but its teeth are all pointed and sharp, and not eve close to like an animal’s teeth.   “Let’s read the title,” Sean whispered to Cait.   Cait looked at the words. “A. Spell. For. Cha. Champaign. Cham… Cha-melon.”   “Chameleon,” Sewn whispered. “It’s not from English, so it has a different rule for how it’s said. It’s one of the tricky words that English uses from another language. Do you know what a chameleon is?”   “No?”   “It’s a little lizard that can change it’s color to hide from creatures that eat them.”   “So the book is about a lizard?”   “Well, we’ll have to read it to find out, won’t we?”   “Okay.”   Daddy held her in his lap and he had her use her finger to point at the words for several sentences.   “Sean, wait,” Eiboline frowned. “She’s doing something with her eyes.”   “What?”   “I think some of her problems with reading is her vision.”   “Vision?”   “Cait?”   “Yeah?”   Auntie got out a piece of paper and pen. She wrote a C, but made it backwards. “Can you read that?”   “Um… It’s a C, but it not right?”   “Okay. How about this?” She made five Cs, two were facing right and three were facing backwards.   Cait looked at the line of things, but they started to blend and get fuzzy. She couldn’t tell how many Cs there were, or where the open parts were. “Um… O… O… O… the last one is maybe a C?”   “Her eyes ARE seeing cross-eyed when she reads,” Auntie says. “You can’t tell a kid to read a book with typical print if her eyes are not working. Also, my teacher taught me something when I was in high school….”   Cait frowned. “I can see.”   “Yes. I’ve seen you interact normally. That’s why this wasn’t something anyone found yet. Your vision problems are more to do with reading things than seeing things overall. Your vision is probably not the normal problem where the further things are, the harder to see.”   “Huh?”   “Sean, here, have her use this ruler to hold under the line she is on instead of pointing at each word.”   “How does that help?”   “Both her eyes focus on the same point when she looks at her finger. Her eyes cross, and it blurs and blends the letter. She’s basically crossing her eyes. With the line under the words and revealing one line, she still has to search the line for where she was at, but her eyes are not crossing to the same point as much. She can see the letters better. She has the same problem I had when I was in high school.”   “Alright. Let’s try that, then?”   Auntie was right. The line of Cs and backwards Cs was easier to see. The words in the book were better separated though sometimes they still blurred into each other sometimes.   “Sean? This will take money to find out all the tools they have today, but if she’s going to school with us this fall? We talk to her school. We teach them to have her put a paper or something over book lines she’s not reading yet, and we teach them not to have her use her finger. This will help a lot. We also get her a bigger bible for church, one that has the big print like old people sometimes use when their vision is going.”   “And that will help with her reading?”   “A lot. Actually, let me see….” Eiboline pulled out a magnifying glass from her purse because she sometimes needed it herself when she was reading small print. She was one of those people that tried to read the small print for ingredients because she tried not to buy foods with certain sugars in it. In the nineteen eighties, people didn’t know as much about fat, but they did understand that unnatural sugars, too much of it, wasn’t good for you.   “Words are huge!” Cait said.   “Yes. This tool is going to be really tricky at first, Cait. You will need that paper under the line you are on, and you will have to be careful not to move the magnifying class too much when you are reading. It can be hard to find your place again when this thing can only see a few letters at a time. But when you get good with it, your reading will be a lot better.”   Sean frowned. “So, now what do I do?”   “You hold the rule for her. Keep it on the line for her. Don’t rush her. The magnifier will move around a lot because she’s a ten year old kid holding a toy. Be patient with her. Let her settle in her own time. She knows she’s supposed to read. Trust her, that she’s going to try, and she will do what is expected, just like she uses to stay in bed and pee in it because that was expected of her.”   Sean nodded.   “Can I start over?” Cait asked Sean.   “Of course, Pet. Since you now know how some of the words are supposed to be read, the new tool will help you see it more clearly, eh? And if you forgot how to say something, ask, pet. We are not here to be in a hurry. We are here to enjoy reading and building a world where a young child can learn to use her mind to make her own little world.”   “Okay.”   Cait started to pee in his lap. She looked up at him, but he kept the rule in place, so with a sigh, just continued to pee her pants while trying to read.   “This is so much easier,” though she meant it was easier for two reasons. She wasn’t scared of peeing. She was peeing while she read. She wasn’t afraid. And the words were easier to see, and the easier some of the words were because of it, the easier it was for her body to relax and pee her pants.   Then she started to poop. But she just sat there, reading and pooping her pants. She didn’t care about it. Uncle Sean—Daddy didn’t mind. He held her, and he knew by now she was pooping. He had to know. But he just patted her lap and held the rule steady for her.   Sean looked up at the clock. “Well, we do have to go somewhere, Cait. So, is this book too hard? Shall we find an easier one?”   “No!” Cait whimpered. “I like this one. I want to read it. Please?”   Sean nodded and winked at Eiboline. He doesn’t know about reading disabilities, but he knew his little baby girl could challenge herself if she was expected to.   Cait proudly put the book on the counter, her poopy butt sagging and thumb in her mouth. “I want this one,” and put her library card on the counter. No fifth graders showed up, she noticed. Angela wasn’t there. No one cared she had poop in her panties and her boy panties were sagging a little bit under her skirt. No one cared. And she walked out to the car carrying her book, her bear hanging from it’s line on her chest, and she was smiling in her poopy panties!   Chapter 67 The Monster on the Cover   Brown pee pee all over Sean’s pants, Cait in a messy pair of panties, kept running her fingers over the cover page of the Spell for Chameleon.   “There’s no lizard in the first page,” she told the book. “Are you hiding somewhere in the next surprise?”   She opened the book again and she called to the front. “Grandma? Is it okay if I say Grandma? I don’t want to be rude, but Auntie… it’s okay… but it’s not really you, cousin. You… your better than an Auntie. Please don’t be rude if I want you to be grandma?”   Eiboline smiled and looked back. “I see nothing wrong with you calling me whatever feels right, Cait. I trust you not to be mean.”   “Can… Can I have the magafieder? I want to read the first page again.”   The car was not going to the farm, but Cait didn’t care. The book was her focus at the moment, and the bear on her shirt there by a safety line.   “Justin Tree…” Cait considered. “Someone called Trent made him a tree? He was wise. The village liked him. He can’t move. Everyone talks to him.” Her thoughts were filling the space in the back seat with her. “Bink is really lucky. He escape-t three times of danger and the book says it like it was hard. I like Bink. He doesn’t have magic, but he doesn’t lose just because he can’t magic things.”   She was rereading not the first page, but ten pages. She kept looking back and forth. It was so fun seeing the way Bink escaped bullies and the bullies didn’t know why they couldn’t get him. Cait didn’t either, but that’s okay. The bullies are confused, and that’s funny.   “Are we taking Cait in like this?” Auntie asked when they arrived at an office building.   “Eiboline, I was on the phone with them on Monday, and they are trying to delay things. I’m not going to let them do this to our girl. Now, if she the little one in messy panties in their own office, maybe they’ll realize that this isn’t normal. I don’t know, but I’m going to bother them in anyway I can until they let her be seen on the insurance.”   “You don’t think this is going to hurt her?”   “I’ll be holding her. She’ll stay in Daddy’s lap the whole time we are talking until they are forced to realize… maybe if Cait ends up peeing on their floor again, and the realize she’s not just doing it… I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this. You said it at the library. She needs help now. I don’t know any other way to make the insurance understand that.”   Eiboline frowned. “Okay. Just be careful. You have a little child there, not a prop.”   “I know.”   Sean got out of the car, and he picked Cait up with her little messy butt, and he whispered. “Do you want the book? We might be a while.”   “Yeah. I like Bink, Daddy. He doesn’t let people bully him. Or at least something doesn’t. They can’t magic him!”   Sean patted the little one’s bottom. “We have to talk to some important people to help get you help so you can start choosing when you’ll pee whether in your pants or the toilet instead of waiting for it to cause trouble for you.”   “I pooped, Daddy.”   “I know, hon. Now, this isn’t a good thing to do, but these people don’t understand. We need them to see how important this is. So, I don’t like doing this, but you’ll have to wear poopy panties in there. Is that okay?”   “I love my Daddy!” she hugged him as if that answered it.   The three of them walked into the lobby, and Sean hovered by the front desk until the secretary woman looked up at him.   “I’m here to see Mr. Brady, and we’re not leaving until he sees us.”   “Your child has made a mess in her pants.”   “And that’s your business because…?”   The lady frowned. “Have a seat. I’ll see if he will see you. Don’t let that child….” But Sean turned away from her while she was talking and he put Cait on her feet until he sat, and then he put her back in his lap. His chin was held out in a jut, like… Don’t tell me what to do with my kid!   Cait was still looking at the book. She settled in Sean’s lap, but it sort of made the poopy shift in her panties. She looked up at him, but he patted her lower back like he didn’t think about what her potties did. She was important, not what was in her panties.   The lady walked over, and hovering there, this after Cait had read through page 2 and 3 again.   “Mr. Brady said he’s busy right now. You will not be seen for a while.”   “Then we’ll wait,” Sean looked up into her eyes. “You tell him, if he makes us wait three or four hours, then he’ll get to clean up Cait’s messes himself because I’m not letting my child clean up any of the messes that an insurance company is causing her body. We are here to fix it, and if they want to make her wait, then she’ll wet her pants again, and we are not going to clean the floor if they do that to her.”   “At least put her in clean clothes?”   “As soon as Mr. Brady sees her. He just doesn’t want to meet her because he knows the insurance company is wrong. I have the power of attorney, I have the doctor’s assessments, and this is the next step before we can get the hospital to look at her, and he wants her to wait until March? He needs to see what he’s doing to her by making her wait until March, so… if she has a peeing on your floor later, that’s up to him.”   The lady frowned and walked back to her desk and picked up the phone.   “Daddy’s here, Cait.”   “If I pee, will it make them mad?”   “You don’t worry about your body, Cait. You can ask to go potty if you think you can make it, but if it goes in your pants again, you don’t worry about anything. We are playing chess with the insurance company, and he needs to see how important this is by talking to you, whether you are wet or not, hon.”   “Okay.”   A fat looking man in a dark suit walked over while Cait was looking at page six again.   “Mr. Kinsella?”   “Yes sir.”   “Bring your family back so we can talk about your concerns.”   Sean lifted Cait immediately as soon as he was standing, right back up.   “How old is that child?”   “Ten,” Eiboline frowned. “What does that have to do with it? Would it be more an emergency if she were twelve or eight?”   “Well, isn’t she too old for….”   “Stop it right here,” Sean’s normally calm voice got loud. “If you say one more word, I drop this insurance company for my whole family and we look for someone more compassionate. You are already telling her she has to wait until March—our reason for being here. Now, if you shame her for anything without knowing anything, that’s stepping one too many steps over the line than I’m going to allow.”   “What stepping over the line?” Cait asked her thumb in her mouth.   “It means he’s testing my patience, Cait. It means this company isn’t doing what it is supposed to do by law, and I’m not going to let it go that far and pick on a child who is having a hard time.”   “Did you just let her inter….”   “She didn’t interrupt anything. She’s the reason we are here, and that means, she talks. We don’t talk about her, we talk to her and with her! You got it?”   “You’re being pushy for wanting us to make a compromise.”   “If that’s the way you see it, then consider us a lost customer. Come on Eiboline. We go find another insurance company tomorrow.”   The man’s face was red.   “I caused trouble,” Cait whispered.   “No, Cait. He spoke out of line. You hear me? That man did something wrong. You were brought in to talk with him about why you need care. He tried to shame you and he tried to shut you off from talking. That’s not on you, sweetheart.”   Sean took Cait to a gas station where he took her into the bathroom, and he helped her clean up.   “I’m sorry we didn’t get it resolved, Cait. I thought if the just realized a child was suffering they might listen, but I was wrong.”   Cait hugged him. “You didn’t even move my skirt,” Cait whispered.   “Cait, there was no reason to do that. Everyone could tell what happened without exposing your mess more. My goal was to get ears to hear you, not to cause you shame, sweetheart.”   “At the other home, Daddy pulls my skirt up and checks my panties in the parking lots and in shopping places, especially if it smells like I just went poop.”   “Well, that was the other place, hon. We don’t shame you for having a hard time here. We only tell people what we need to get you help.”   “What if you can’t get insurance for me?”   “Then we’ll have to go through the stupid government, but the government won’t be thorough enough, Cait. That’s why it’s important we fight for good insurance first.”   “What means thru-oh?”   “It means they won’t fix the problem, hon. They’ll fix the infection and say you’re done and won’t do anything for the hernia.”   “That’s the thing that making me poop my pants?”   “That’s right, hon.”   Cait was upstairs in her bedroom town, playing the scene in her head as she drove a toy car from building to building.   “See? You read,” Cait told the invisible child in the car. “You just do it different. If you eat red licorice, you can read. If you eat black licorice, you can’t read. That’s the trouble. School only serving black licorice.”   “No,” Cait told the invisible child. “Reading and pooping are different things. You can have trouble with both, but they are not the same thing. And look what you can do! You rode a bike. You changed and washed your own hands. You were a friend. You are not someone who can’t. You just need help with some things.”   Turning to the door feeling like someone was watching, Cait saw Grandma at the door.   Eiboline smiled. “Dinner is ready, hon. Do you need a minute in the bathroom?”   Cait looked at the floor. She looked up at the pretty tall grandma. “It rained. It rained in my underwears.”   Eiboline smiled. “So it did. You can change rain, though, can’t you?”   Cait smiled.   “Go clean up in the bathroom real quick. Daddy and Grandma will be downstairs waiting for our big girl to come and show us how big she is and how good she can clean herself up.”   “Okay.”   Cait came down in just underwears and an undershirt, and she dropped Kookaberry off at his chair before she sat down next to Grandma where she always eats. She looked over at Grandma.   “I cleaned up put on clean underwears and a clean undershirt. Some rain on my shirt.”   “That’s fine, Pet. Do you want to say the prayer tonight?”   “Okay.”   “I broke the rule for the ghost at the library,” Cait said while she was eating.   “What do you mean, you broke the rule for the ghost?”   “The ghost said to poop my pants before you find me, but I don’t. I tried to make a deal so it leaves Grainne alone, but it said if I pee at the table and poop later, then only Grainne wets her pants, but I messed up. I pooped at the table. So now, the ghost will make Grainne poop her pants and make probably Aoibhe wet her pants. Aoibhe has never wet her pants before, and Grainne…. I told her to wet in the field because I scared she going to hurt, but the ghost said it’s gonna make her poop right in front of Daddy,” Cait looked down.   “How do I make the Ghost leave Grainna be? Grainne didn’t stop the deal. I didn’t do the stuff right.”   Sean frowned and looked at Eiboline. “Hon, this is not something you or the Ghost can do anything about. Grainne is in the field all day. Your two big sisters probably will poop their pants, eventually, if they aren’t allowed to stop long enough to get to the toilet. If Aoibhe doesn’t pee herself, then she probably won’t, Cait.”   “What if she does? It might fault for not doing what the Ghost wants, and if Grainne does it at the house in front of Daddy, then it is my fault.” Tears rolled down her face.   “Oh, Cait.” Daddy opened his arms, and I went over and sat in Daddy’s lap and he started feeding me. I would be in trouble if Grainne fed me at the other farm. Mama wouldn’t do it. It would be against Daddy’s rules. Grainne is the only one that might, but she’d get in trouble if she did.     Chapter 68 Sean’s Ghost   After dinner, Daddy put me on the floor. He looked at the back door. “I’m going to go check on my babies for the night. Do you want to check your baby?”   Cait smiled. “Yeah.”   “Put some jeans on. It’s getting dark, so it’s harder to see snakes. Jeans and boots, Cait. You have five minutes, and then I’m going out, okay?”   “Okay.”   Cait sat in the stable while her baby, Summerstone was getting stronger by the day. He wasn’t so wobbly and it looked like he could run the field now. He walked over and tasted Cait’s hair. He seemed to like her taste or something.   “Grainne didn’t write back yet,” She told Summerstone. “Grandma says letters take a little while, and then Grainne has to write and then that letter takes a while. She says I might get a letter next week if Grainne gets to write. What if the Ghost punished me by not letting her write.”   Kookaberry, always pinned to my shirt when I go out, looked up at him. “The ghost doesn’t know how to punish if it just stops Grainne writing to you. It said nothing about that. So, if it claimed that as punishment, I’ll chomp it. That’s not punishment, Cait, that’s just being mean.”   “Never stopped the teachers from doing what they said is punished even when they didn’t say they do something because I poop in my seat in class.”   Kookaberry stayed quiet. What could he say to that?   Summerstone’s brown and white nose pushed on Kookaberry making him dance sideways on my shirt.   “What do you want me to say?” Kookaberry asked Summerstone. “I wasn’t there. We all know it was mean. I can’t stop people from being mean. I can just chomp at lies, not what really happens.”   “Kooks? Did I make Daddy lose his nisure-ace?”   Kooks stared at Summerstone for a minute.   Summerstone’s voice… you can’t miss it. It’s like he says an h-h-h all together before he talks, and sometimes the sound is even in the middle of his words. “H-ye-ye-ye alhe-he-he ready mad at those-eze.”   Cait looked up at the baby horse. How could a baby know?”   “Uncle says,” Kookaberry started but Cait cut him off.   “He’s not Uncle no more and the lady’s not Auntie no more. It’s Daddy and Grandma.”   “Sorry. But I was just telling you how Summerstone knows.”   “Okay.”   “Daddy says that the animals share what they hear. Daddy talks to the cows. You’ve heard him. Well, whatever the cows know, eventually the horses know. And Summerstone’s Mama still has horse friends even if she is not by them now. She will be when your baby is strong.”   “Daddy does say that,” Cait frowned. “Did you tell the others animals I poop my pants?”   “Wh-ha-hat’s pants?” Summerstone asked.   “What’s on my legs now. Be member in the morning? I came only in underwears to show you I peed the bed?”   “Wh-ha-hat’s bed?”   The Mama horse walked over and nosed Summerstone.   “Pants and Bed meets nothing for us,” Summerstone frowned. “It’s no-ho-hot news for u-uh-uhs.”   Cait smiled.   “Did you eat enough today?”   Summerstone’s head went up and down as he went to lie by his Mama.   “Okay. You sleep, Summerstone. I love you!”   Cait felt herself lifted up and she was sat on Daddy’s shoulders. “Whee!”   They walked into the mud room, Daddy bending his legs funny so my head fit under the door. He finally put me down and he smiled at me. I smiled while I took my shoes off.   “Summerstone starting to talk,” I told Daddy.   “He is?”   “Yeah. He has this cute thing he does where his words sound like… well, I can’t do it right. My voice doesn’t make the horse thing right, but it almost like I-ye-yef I-ye-ye say this.”   Daddy laughed. “That sounds horse me.”   Daddy took off my shoes and then he pulled off my pants so I was in my panties and undershirt. “There are no snakes in here, Pet. You don’t have to wear jeans inside if you don’t want.”   Cait ran to the living room to play with Front City, a mess of blocks and other toys Daddy has let stay there since last weekend. No one has touched anything.   Uncle tells me if the city went out from the line, but he doesn’t kick it back. He just asks me to fix it. And if he still hits a block or house, he says sorry. And he still doesn’t touch. He says it my city, and he sorry he messed it up, but he doesn’t want to touch it to fix it because it’s mine.   Daddy doesn’t touch my stuff, even when he lets me put my stuff all over the house! I have my bedroom town. I have Front City. I have my pen outside. I have a chair for Kooks. He never moves Kooks unless he shows me he’s doing it. It’s like silent permission, and if I feel upset if he touches, he stops and nods leaving Kooks as I left him.   Uncle went to the phone.   “Arnold,” I heard Uncle sigh. “I’m going to need help tomorrow on the farm.”   I turned to listen in.   “Yeah, I’d dropping the other insurance. They are not right for us. They won’t even let a child speak up for herself when she’s the one that needs them. I don’t honor a place like that, Arnold.”   “He didn’t just threaten to drop them,” Kooks whispered.   “Quiet. I listening.”   “I really appreciate it. Look, we’ll probably need help for about two weeks if I can get you to take a little payment for keeping the cows milked and checking in on the farm before noon each day?”   “I like his family,” Kooks whispered.   “Me, too,” I agreed with Kooks. “Liam is really nice. He didn’t say I stink when I peed my pants last time I saw him.”   Grandma took Cait up to the room after Daddy hugged her goodnight and then she tucked her into bed.   “Daddy’s going to town tomorrow then?”   “We all are, pet.”   “Me, too?”   “Your Daddy isn’t going to take any insurance agent that doesn’t let you talk. And if they say they need proof or expects any kind of thing that hurts your feeling, he won’t take them, either. He left a good system because the people were hurting you, Cait. He’s not going to let anyone hurt you.”   “Do you think I’ll have to sit in poopy panties in front of the nisure-ace guy again?”   “I don’t think so,” Eiboline frowned. “Your daddy did that as a last resort trying to get you seen earlier. Now we have to hunt for insurance, that’s going to take time, Cait. But he’s not going to be directed that they shame his little girl just to get on their insurance.”   Cait hugged Grandma and then rolled over.   “Cait?”   “Yeah?”   “If you wake up in the night, you go potty,” Grandma whispered. “Don’t you think about what happens to me has anything to do with what happens to you. And if you wet your pajamas, take them off if you are awake, and then put on dry underwears. It’s not bad to wear dry clothes if you pee your pants, okay?”   “Okay.”   She left the room quietly.   “Kooks? What if Daddy doesn’t find any good nisure-ace because of me?”   “He won’t, you know,” a girl was sitting on the end of my bed again, her own panties with poop in them. “No one wants to nisure a stinky kid that can’t be fixed.”   Kookaberry frowned. “You know about nisure-ace people now?”   “I know that until now, Daddy and Grandma are the only ones to ever listen to Cait and even walk away from a good thing for her.”   No chomp.   “Did you make Grainne poop her pants?”   “Yes.”   “In front of Daddy?”   “I’ll let her tell you that.”   “What about Aoibhe? Did you make her pee her pants?”   “I let Roisin pee her pants instead. At dinner. She cried with her finger in her mouth. You know how she does. They made her sit there until she finished her dinner. She pooped ‘em. I didn’t tell her to poop ‘em. I only made her pee, but I guess when she started to pee, she couldn’t stop the poop.”   “You made her pee her pants at the table?” Cait frowned a finger in her mouth.   “It wouldn’t be punishment if I made her wet the bed. Your dad is already making her follow your rules. She already pees her pants sometimes. I mean, I could have picked on Aoibhe….”   “No?”   “Well, it had to be punishment. So I made her pee at the table.”   “What did Daddy do?”   “Grainne will tell you in her letter, won’t she?”   “Why come you can’t tell me now?”   “Because maybe Daddy is right. Maybe Grainne pooped her pants… if she did, because of Daddy’s work and has nothing to do with the ghost. And maybe the ghost is just trying to scare you about where Roisin peed, but we both know she pees her pants sometimes.”   Cait narrowed her eyes at the ghost.   The ghost popped out.   Cait closed her eyes and started to fall asleep.   It was dark everywhere. Cait couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything. She felt her chest. There was something there. The leash. The Bear. Kooks was there, dangling, but it was too dark to see him.   “Why don’t we put Cait front and center,” some invisible voice said. It wasn’t Kooks, and it wasn’t Grandpa. Really, Cait didn’t even know if it was human. She didn’t see the speaker.   A spot light suddenly flashed down on the body, and Cait seemed to see herself in full dressed up farmer-boy’s clothes, looking from outside, as if she was someone else looking at the child with tangled and dirty hair. Her shirt was stained. Flies buzzed around her. A green tint of smoke like stuff was around her.   A voice out of the dark asked. “Did you pee your pants the first day you Saw the Kinsellas?”   “Yeah?”   “Why?”   “I… um….”   “Did anyone prevent you going up to the toilet that day?”   “No?”   “Why did you piss your pants?”   “I don’t know.”   “We are here to see if you get Nisure Ace. Do you know what that is?”   “It’s so I can see a doctor?”   “No. Anyone can see a doctor. It’s so the doctor doesn’t rip your cousin’s arms and legs off to pay for your health. You will rip his arms and legs off if you get help without the nisure ace he wants.”   Pee started to form in the chair.   “You are pissing the bed, Cait…. Do you feel the wetness? Touch the Goddamned pee before I have your cousin’s left arm torn off!”   Cait felt like there was a veil of some kind. A girl in a bed her feet tucked up to her chest. Pee sliding into the bedding. She was peeing.   The ant in a far wall of the dim room saw a small alarm clock on the night table. Cait didn’t know when it was put there. It as reading small hand 1 and big hand 5. A kid was kicking slightly at the blankets, though she was nearly fetal in them. Her hair was matted and tangled in the pillow. She was shivering.   “Do you see that you are pissing the bed?” the voice asked.   “Yeah?”   “You are pissing the bed. You choose to do this, right now instead of get out of bed. You see yourself doing it but you keep your eyes closed pretending you are a sleep, don’t you?”   “Yeah?”   “Why?”   “Do you remember at recess in December?”   Cait’s little figure in the spotlight shook her head.   “Sure, you do. You were inside the school. That bathroom was right there, just feet from you. You could have went. You turned around, remember?”   “Um… recess. It was time to go in.”   “So… it was….” The judge chuckled, but that wasn’t a happy chuckle. “You knew that when you turned around and went back to your seat… that you could poop your pants. You knew that the recess rule would protect you.”   “The rule didn’t help me….”   “It didn’t? Then tell me why you pooped your pants on purpose when the toilet was feet from you.”   “Recess was over.”   “The teacher didn’t tell you to go take a break?”   “She did…,”   “EXACTLY. You choose to go back to your seat and shit your pants!”   Cait’s thumb went to her mouth. The ant on her bedroom wall saw the kicking, small girl, curled up like a cat, now putting a thumb in her mouth. Kookaberry was being pushed against her chest as hard as it could.   “Tell us what happened at church this week….” the judge went on.   Cait was shaking.   “Before we get into that. Another not so happy chuckle. How about we see what you choose for underwear. You can tell us about that. Do I pull Grandma’s hair out, or do you pull your pants down?”   Cait’s figure in the spot light started to undress.   The blankets were nearly off the bed on the floor. Cait’s hands were pushing her pajama pants down. The ant ran into a crevice in the wall to hide from it.   “Are those girl panties?” the voice asked.   Cait’s thumb was fully in her mouth.   Pee was flooding the chair she was in, and she felt it soaking around her somehow crawling up her shirt and wetting her back.   “Cait, wake up….” the sounds were faint in the background.   “They boy panties,” Cait shook in the chair.   “Are you a boy?”   “No?”   “Do you want to be a boy?”   “No.”   “Why do you wear boy clothes?”   “Cait, baby, wake up…” a voice so faint and somewhat familiar….   “I don’t on purpose. But it farm. Jeans is protect from snakes.”   “And what do the underpants protect, Cait?”   “They let me pre-pee a little more so I can get into the bathroom.”   The ghost let the silence settle.   “Cait?”   Cait’s eyes opened. She was crying. Her body was shaking. She was still peeing all over. Her hands were shaking with Kooks in her hands. Daddy had her in his lap and she was peeing all over him. Grandma was holding a wet cool rag at her head.   The so called clock was never in her room on the nightstand, but the crack in the far wall, Cait sees it. The ant could have been there, maybe.   Cait was still crying.   “Let’s put her in dry stuff and put her in our bed tonight,” Sean said.   Eiboline nodded, already moving to the dresser to get Cait some panties.   “I don’t got girl ones,” Cait whispered.   The adults looked at each other. They don’t have girl ones. She didn’t want them at the time they went last.   Eiboline frowned. “Sean, go get her some sweat pants. We’ll just let her sleep in sweatpants, no undies the rest of the night. She can decide if she wants the undies in the morning, but for now, let’s make her comfortable.”   Sean nodded. “Okay. That sounds like the smart thing.”   They took the little girl back to their room, tucked her between them, helped her thumb find her mouth, and whispered. “You are perfect as you are Cait. You are a good little girl, and we will help you get your body back under control. Trust us. It will take time, but we will fight for you until you have control, hon. We don’t mind you peeing, even if you do it for attention. What we hate, is you feeling like you have no control over it at all.”   Safely between her big people, she slept into the morning too long and peed the bed again. No one yelled at her when Grandma checked on her.   “Cait, hon? You awake?”   “I peed.”   “That’s alright. You’re a big girl. Do you want help in the bath, or can you do it, hon? You had a very bad night last night, and I’m not talking about pee, baby. You had a nightmare, and it’s okay to be scared after a nightmare.”   “I… it wasn’t a nightmare exactly.”   “Well, do you want to take a bath by yourself?”   “Yeah. I want to. I can do it.”   When Cait came down to the kitchen for breakfast, Sean came through the door. “We fed your horse for you and got the water today, hon.”   “I’m sorry.”   “No, Cait. You didn’t do anything wrong. We all get upset at nightmares. You were running a fever last night, too. You needed the rest.”   “I peed your bed.”   “It’s okay,” Sean went over and picked her up and put her in his lap. “I told you last night. You are allowed to pee, even if you are doing it for attention. I just don’t like you not being able to control it, hon. That’s what we are fixing, is your ability to choose if you pee your pants or not, not if you will do it when you need to know you matter or if you get scared or have a nightmare and it happens.”   “It felt so real, and somehow, I was awake in my room at the same time I was in the dream,” Cait was chewing on a piece of jam and toast. “It was…, I was awake and peeing my pants on purpose, but I wasn’t awake and I had this like police light on me. You know the old shows, where they show someone being in question by the police?”   “The nightmare?” Sean asked.   “Yeah. There was a ant watching me sleep. And there was a clock, but the clock not there when I waked up. And the people in a dark place… I couldn’t understand what they sounded, but it doesn’t like people. It’s like. Something. Not people. And it said. I did everything. I pooped my pants on purpose at school.”   “Did you poop your pants on purpose at school?” Daddy asked.   Cait looked down. “I think so.”   Sean and Eiboline looked at one another. “I don’t care how much this costs us or if we have insurance. Can you explain this to her?” Sean asked. “I can’t. But I know that no ten year old purposefully poops her pants where she’s going to get shamed… especially by an entire room of her peers. This is… this is out of my skill set, Eiboline. Unless you have some magical understanding like with the reading thing….”   “I don’t,” Eiboline frowned. “I’ve never seen anyone so guilt-filled over just peeing the bed. This is… you’re right. We need to sacrifice for this, Sean. You and I… we love her, but that’s not enough this time. She needs real help.”   Chapter 69 Mr. Brady’s Mistake   “Okay, this is what we do. Cait, you need to see your baby first, so you eat breakfast and you go put on some farm clothes. You may choose not to wear panties if you wish.” Sean has her standing facing him like everything he is telling her is serious. “If you choose not to wear panties put sweats on under the jeans. Can you do that?”   “Okay.”   “Your choice, hon. Sweats will be hot, but still has an inner layer to feel like you have panties on. But you’re right, we don’t have girl ones, so it’s up to you. Second, after you are dressed, you go out to the stable while I call Arnold over for an hour, and you spend time with Summerstone, but when I say, not whining, we go then, okay?”   “Okay,” and she reached up and hugged him.   “I don’t know what I said,” Cait was telling Summerstone a while later. “Suddenly, Daddy got real serious. He wants me to go to town in an hour. I’m sorry I wasn’t out here to feed you before.”   Summerstone was tasting her hair again.   “Why do you like my hair so much? Hair is yucky.”   “I’m worried though.”   She led Summerstone from the stable to her own field. It was still very low cut, and difficult for snakes to hide in not to mention the chicken fence stuff that went up to the first board of the fence to keep snakes out.   “The Ghost said that Grainne pooped her pants yesterday, and I’m afraid she did it in front of the My sur y Daddy. If she did, she’s gonna be in real trouble. And if she didn’t and had to go, and went off the field, she’ll be in trouble for not doing her chores.”   Summerstone nudged her hand.   Cait patted his neck.   “And if Aoibhe peed her pants… she’s going to be really… there’s a word for it. It means more sad than sad. I can’t be member the word. But she will… she will need Grainne and if Grainne pooped…. What if everything is messed up?”   Cait sighed. “I need to write Grainne and ask. She won’t know I need to know unless I ask. It’s impertent. I hope Daddy lets me use another stamp thing and enbellop.”   “Oh, I gotta see this,” that girl stood feet from my baby. How can she? I’d hit her if my hand could. “So, you’ll write to Grainne…. Big sis. I got you in trouble. Did you poop your pants? It’s my fault!”   Cait’s hands shook at her sides and her eyes narrowed at the spot the ghost stood.   She was pushed gently in the back and she fell on her butt. Summerstone pushed her down. She laughed. She looked around and the ghost was gone. “Thanks. I need did for that.”   When Sean brought Cait in, Cait looked over at the kitchen drawer.   Sean and Eiboline were talking until somehow, Eiboline noticed something, maybe. “Cait? Did you want something?”   “I just thinking. How many enbolops I can use, and if I can use those stamp things? I… I have a really hard question to Grainne that more impertent, and I scared I don’t ask… Grainne doesn’t know I scared she hurted.”   “Are you talking about the nightmare last night?” Grandma asked.   “It before the night dream. It doesn’t nightmare. It not monsters. It just… It bad dreams.”   “Well, how about we go talk to someone first, Cait. Then, if you still need to ask Grainne your question when we get home, we’ll let you write a letter then.”   “Okay.”   We approached this smaller building with a parking lot around it. I think it had a waiting room, maybe toilets, and then a hall with only four rooms in it.   “Cait Kinsella?” a shorter than adult girl but taller than kid girl called us. She had a green dress on, and it had all these colored ribbons on her dress. Her hair was light brown and she wore it like pigtails. She was shorter than Grandma and shorter than Mama. She was taller than Grainne, though, I think.   We went into a room, and Daddy held me in his lap while Grandma told her what made them bring me.   “Children have nightmares,” Grandma said. “But even the next morning, the nightmare was eating through her. She thinks she poops her pants on purpose, at ten years old, even though we know it’s a hernia and have tried to explain it. This is just the start. She does things that… well, I’m sure it’s because she’s suffering from guilt or something and Sean and I… we’ve done what we can… but his guilt she carries. It’s not normal and we are worried that we don’t know how to really help her.”   Cait looked down. “I was bad.”   The woman frowned. “I see what you mean.”   She stood up while Daddy and Grandma sat with Cait in Daddy’s lap, and she walked over to a shelf. It had this floppy black bear and this brown dog. She walked back to her desk, but she shook the bear, and it looked like the bear was walking on his back feet and the brown dog, she scooted it along, but not on nothing. And she sat there with them.   She had the dog say it name to the Bear. “My name is Zing Shawn.”   “I am Gentle Ben,” the black bear said. “But Ben works.”   “You know Harmony, don’t you Ben?”   “I sure do, but who is that girl?”   The dog doll was made to look up, down, left and then at me. “Oh. There is a girl here.”   Cait giggled.   “What’s her name?” Ben asked and the head was made to turn in cartoony movements… even almost turning the bear upside down to make it look at Cait upside down.   “I don’t know,” Zing Shawn, actually Xin Xaou, but Cait didn’t know Chinese.   “You could ask her.”   “No, you ask her.”   “No! What if she hates me?”   “I’m scary,” Ben said. “Little girls are used to dogs. You ask her.”   “No….” and both of them ran behind the far edge of the desk and hid peeking only their heads up, their eyes just over the surface looking at Cait.   “You not scary,” Cait told the bear. “Why your name is Zing and Shawn?”   “No. it’s more like zhin zhou,” the dog said. “I Chi-a-nese if you please!”   “Oh.”   “Can you help us?” Ben asked Cait.   “Help you?”   “Well, it’s just we don’t know what is the right thing. See, sometimes, it’s cold outside. Xin Xiou doesn’t like going outside to the dog’s toilet. He likes the cat’s toilet. He never used it yet, but he thinks it would be warmer in winter.”   “Do you ever go in a boy’s bathroom?” Xin Xiou asked.   Cait frowned. “If you go in the Cat toilet, will another dog call you a cat?”   “That’s what I tried to tell him,” Ben waved it’s paw.   “But…. Sometimes…. The people don’t understand that what reasons are. I pee my pants.”   “Are humans supposed to?” Ben asked.   “No,” said the dog. “But the girl looks big enough to know that. The question is why she does it.”   “Does it matter?” Asked the Bear?   “I don’t know,” Xin Xiou somehow had its shoulders go higher than it’s head.   “Well, it matters,” Cait frowned. “You don’t have friends… well, you can have friends, maybe… Ruth is my friend. But at school, no one likes you if you go in your pants.”     “If no one likes you at school…,” the dog began.   “I can’t make trouble. If I make trouble, someone gets hurt. And it’s my fault! If I bad, Grainne gets hit. If I bad, Daddy bad mood. Grainne get in the way, not just me. She get in the way for other sisters. She gets hit when he… when there’s too much drink and too many troubles for the other Daddy.”   “Other Daddy?”   “Yeah. These my cousins. But Sean is like…. How can I say? It’s not one thing. He just…. I wish Daddy is like him. And Eiboline…. Eiboline is Irish, Xin Xiou. That means you and my Grandma… or really my cousin… you are the same. You come America, but your family in another place.”   “But you wish your Daddy is like your cousin?” Xin Xiou asked. “What about why you call your other cousin Grandma?”   “I was apposed to call her Aunt or Auntie, but she… she’s too… she’s what I wish I have. I don’t have any grandmas. But if I had one, she’s just like one. She bakes stuff. She doesn’t get mad when you put too much sugar on your cereal. She lets my have a Front City right in the living room, and she lets….” Cait looked around for Kookaberry.   Sean handed her the toy.   “This is Kookaberry, or Kook or Kooks for short.”   “Why Kookaberry?” asked Ben it’s head all over again almost upside down making Cait giggle.   Cait shrugged. “Why not? I like it.”   “Well, his name sounds like something someone can make fun of?” Ben twisted it’s every which way again.   “Do you mean like Coo Coo?” Cait asked. “Because Coo Coo is not his name, and my Name is Cait, but my best friend and her big brother doesn’t let no one meow at me no more.”   “Well, yeah, I guess that is what I was thinking,” Ben put its front hand paws out.   “No one gets to play with him that calls him names,” Cait frowned. “I am in charge of who plays with him even though he really was the cousins’ son’s bear.”   “How did that happen?” Xin Xious asked.   “Nope. That’s not my story. I don’t tell no one that story. If you want to know, Daddy and Grandma are right there. They will tell you if they want. I not saying it.”   “Have you ever done something you wish you didn’t do?” Xin Xiou asked Ben.   “Well…, I did a lot of things that I wish I didn’t do.”   “Like?”   “I climbed a tree once and stole honey from the bees. My nose paid for that one.”   “I buried a bone in someone’s yard once. They put this barrier I can’t get into now and lost my favorite bone.”   “You two!” Kookaberry frowned. “You don’t know nothing! That’s just… stuff you do. That’s not like what Cait understands at all!” Except Kookaberry had Cait’s voice this time. It wasn’t in her head.   “Oh, we don’t?” Xin Xiou asked. “Well, what do you know, then?”   “Cait has to not get Grainne in trouble. She has to not get in trouble at school. Not move if she starts peeing because pee going into more than one room makes trouble for her mom. She has to pee the bed… on purpose… and not because she wants to. She doesn’t know when she should pee her pants and should try to get to the bathroom sometimes. But if someone tells her to stay, she stays… and she poops her pants if she isn’t told to move, but the poop is there.”   “That’s a lot of rules.”   “Yeah. And it’s different for school, for church, for home, for the car, for everything. Cait can’t even read the same school as at home. And she can’t even ask permission. Other kids raise their hand to get water. Cait sits there and pees her pants in the quiet and hopes no one is watching her.”   “What happens if she wets the bed?” Xin Xiou asked.   “Nothing. She’s supposed to pee the bed. It’s if she gets up. If she wets and it gets more than her panties hold and gets the floor going to the toilet, she gets it. She stays in bed and pees…. She is told good girl. Don’t cause trouble.”   Cait’s eyes felt hot, stingy, watery and blurred. She felt her legs shaking. She felt hiccups in her chest, but they weren’t coming out in the air. They were just pressure moving making her chest hurt. She started to pee her pants.   Cait though the professional lady was frowning, and that her hands shook as she picked up Ben. Shaking. Ben asked. “What’s different where you are now, and how home is?”   Kooks got quiet. “Cait still pees the bed, sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes, she gets up. No one yells at her. She peed in the hall. She stayed in her pee in the hall. That’s where it wet past her panties. She sleeping there. He was just Uncle Sean then. He got her up. He said. “Don’t sleep in pee.” Now, they change her when she’s trying to stay in her peed underwears.”   Cait dropped Kooks and looked the woman in the face. “That Daddy,” she pointed at Sean. “He doesn’t lift my skirt with poop all over my underwears. He holds me and he takes me home and changes my underwears, and he told me don’t sit in pee pee.”   She looked down.   “At school. I don’t read. I don’t like books. Yesterday, Grandma made me like books. I Reading ‘A Spell for Cameron’ or whatever it is. And I love Bink. Grandma and Daddy let me really read. Really read. Really read! I need help. But the words are big and separate when I read with Daddy and Grandma. Not at school and not at home.”   “Tell me about the thing that scares you most,” Harmony asked.   Cait looked down. “Later.”   More pee went into her pants and all over the chair.   “I think that’s all we can do today, but Cait shared more than I expected. This is not a failed session. I just don’t have the full picture yet. I’ll need to have some sessions with her alone to fully understand her, but we have a starting place for next time.”   “We don’t have insurance yet,” Daddy frowned. “I can pay today’s with cash. But I don’t know how long I can pay in cash. I told my insurance company off yesterday. They tried to shut the child up, when the whole reason we were there was so they could hear from her to understand why we need her on insurance today and not next March!”   We were in the car on the way home. Daddy had changed me before we left. He always takes care of me, assept when Grandma does it.   A cat watched from across the street as a young girl climbed into a car. The tall woman had opened the door and let herself in the passenger seat. The man had put the girl down on her feet from carrying her, and then ducked into the car to fuss over the child. The car pulled out.   A butterfly flew over the top of the car as it pulled onto the main road.   “You told the lady, Mrs. Harmony, about everything,” Kookaberry said.   “Not everything,” the pee pee pantied ghost sat at the other door. “She didn’t tell how she got you.”   “That’s not really true.”   “Yes, it is. She told them that you were given to her, but she didn’t tell them what you were before they gave you to her.”   “That’s not working,” Kookaberry whispered. “Grandma doesn’t hear you.”   “Grandma? Is Cait talking or is Kooks talking?”   There was silence.   Three dogs sat a corner across the way, just watching cars. The head dog probably decided they would chase the blue one. But before they did, they glanced at Cait in the window. They had to have seen the ghost. They didn’t move until the ghost was gone. Then they chased the blue car.   “Auntie said not to tell everything,” Cait whispered.   “What did Grandma say?” the Ghost asked.   “Grandma didn’t say nothing.”   “You see? Because the Grandma in the old lady is smarter than the Aunt. The truth will come out, and you will be sorry you didn’t tell on yourself before your helper finds out.”   Chomp. Fizzle. The ghost slowly just-appeared into nothing.   “Cait? Why didn’t you tell the helper person about where I was before you got me?”   “Because. You weren’t mine until they gave you to me, Kookaberry. That past. It’s not mine to tell. It’s Grandma and Daddy and you. Auntie said that days ago. It not lying to not say that something you know. It’s what Auntie meets. You can know something but not say. I didn’t lie. I told the truth. I said I not saying that. I didn’t say I don’t know. How that lying?”   “It’s not lying. Do you think that Grandma wanted to keep me from you?”   “No. I just don’t think I tell that story. That’s Grandma and Daddy who must share if anyone shares it. You… you won’t make me tell them with you, promise? Promise, if you tell them, you do it with using Auntie’s voice. Not Grandma. Auntie. Auntie needs to be okay sharing.”   “You are a kinder and more smart person than some,” Kooks said.   “No. I’m just careful. I’m not better.”   Chapter 70 A sure Ace! Arnold was in the kitchen when Daddy and Grandma got us in. It was after dark.   “How was the kid’s Therapist?” Arnold asked.   “I don’t know,” Sean frowned opening the fridge and pulling out two beers. He tossed one at Arnold. “She did get Cait to talk a little bit though by sort of playing with her.”   “So? Can she help her sort her problems?”   “She says Cait just barely broke the surface today. She said it will take time to understand Cait enough to start working out her issues. She said it’s going to be expensive. She took a cash payment today, but she said what Cait needs… is insurance, so that the sessions are not interrupted once she gets comfortable enough to start sharing.”   “Stupid bureaucrats!”   The men took a breath. Cait sat in Kookaberry’s seat so the men could sit closer to each other, but Cait was curious.   “I heard you ended it with that Brady guy.”   “Well…. I don’t know if I did the right thing, but he wanted to talk at Cait or about her, but not to her. He wanted to make her wait until March. And he wanted to act like a child sitting in a messy pair of pants is normal. I won’t expose Cait to people like that. She’s had too many people like that deciding things over her head.”   “I can read,” Cait said though her voice was a little quiet, just in case she wasn’t supposed to be there.   “You’re ten,” Arnold told her. “I hope you can.”   “Well, I can’t read like a ten year old. But I can read. I just learned to read.”   “What?”   “It’s her eyes,” Sean frowned. “These people are supposed to be watching children and knowing how to find out when they need help, and what professionals for the last four or five years of her life couldn’t find out, my under-educated and wonderful wife found out within three seconds of seeing Cait trying to read!”   “It’s my finger,” Cait frowned. “Everyone says to follow your finger. I do it and every time, my eyes hurt, the words get sometimes three words is one, and then I lose where I was. But Grandma…. She tells him to use a ruler. Then she pulls out this biggafied glass, and then I can read more.”   “A what kind of glass?” Arnold asked scratching his white and black beard.   “She means a magnifying glass. She called it something else earlier.”   “You’re not telling her what it’s called?”   “She’ll work it out for herself. She’s smart. But I like to think that her inventing the words for herself first is helping her. She can predict words better if she has an idea of what she feels when she sees them. So… I see no harm in her calling it a biggafier or whatever she wants to call it.”   “You’re not a typical parent.”   “No. I suppose I’m not. I guess that’s what Mr. Brady found out.”   “Can I go bathroom and come back and talk, again, too? Or… I can just pee my pants,” Cait reconsidered.   “You go potty, little lady. If I didn’t intend on you talking, I would have told you to leave the table before now. This is your table, and if I didn’t run you off from an adult talking, then I won’t run you off just because you went potty.”   “Okay. I be back… unless… pre-pees make too much before I get there.”   “I’ll take her,” Eiboline smiled. “She’ll be back whether she has an accident or not.”   “You didn’t tell them where Kookaberry came from,” Grandma said as she led Cait into the bathroom. “Why is that, hon?”   “Because. Auntie would be sad. When Auntie is too over sad welmed she pees her pants. I don’t want Auntie to be over sad welmed where people pick on her because her pre-pee can’t hold back from the sad of Ron. That why I told Kooks in the car, he not allowed to make me tell that. And Grandma can’t tell, too. It has to be Auntie.”   “You really do protect people you love, don’t you?”   “No? I don’t know how. I not strong. I just doing what Auntie said one day in field when I found Ron name on Shadow dog tag. She said it not lying to not say something sometimes.”   “Well…, someday, some of those kids that thought you were not worth their time, they’re going realize they made the wrong friends, Cait. It would have been so easy to tell the therapist what you decided you didn’t want to tell. You were having fun, playing, and talking to her. Then, you set Kookaberry down, and you said you wouldn’t share that. That takes a lot for a kid to not forget to protect something that she was keeping. We didn’t even say it was private between us. You just decided on your own, and you went with that promise even through play.”   “Daddy, Uncle, cousin, whatever… Sean…. He doesn’t lift my skirt in parking lots when he knows I got poop in my panties. He doesn’t tell I wearing boy ones. And you don’t do it, too. I learning that somethings not lying. It just private for that person because you don’t prove everyone I peed my panties.”   Pee started pushing out of my body and into the toilet. Darriiitleitleitle….   It stopped. I looked up at Grandma. “I can’t get up yet. There’s still pee in there.”   “Grandma has as long as need, Cait. Don’t be scared.”   It started again.   The red headed and heavily freckled child was smiling as she walked into the kitchen again. She picked up Kookaberry and held him against her chest, and she listened to Daddy and Mr. Arnold again.   “I talked to my brother-in-law about you having trouble getting Cait insurance.”   “Is he the one that works for an insurance group?”   “He is.”   The phone rang.   “Kinsellas speaking,” Grandma answered the phone because Daddy was talking. “You don’t say? Look, I don’t know. Yeah. I’ll ask him, but you people shamed a little girl that was trying to tell you what was wrong with her, and she was being brave…. No, I understand it was one man. One man or not, it is not…. Yes, fine.”   Grandma came back to the table. “That insurance group wants to talk to you, Sean.”   “Did you tell them that they had a chance?”   “Look, I’m sorry, but he’s talking over me like my voice doesn’t matter. He wants to talk to you like you make all the decisions.”   “Oh? Do they think this will make me want to deal with them?”   Grandma shrugged.   Daddy got up, but as he did so, he almost made the chair fall backwards. He stomped to the phone. He had that stomp stomp in his step that if he were going after one of us kids, Grainne would try to get in the way, and four other girls would be running in all directions to get away from him. Only… Grainne would get it.   Hot tears blurred my eyes.   “…. Stop. Stop right there. Your Mr. Brady talked over my little girl, and now you acted like my wife isn’t an equal. I’m hanging…. What? Look, I don’t care what you’re…. What? No, I don’t…. Yes, I know how hard it will be to get Cait on new insurance. No? Even if you …. No. You don’t get to dismiss my wife like that. You want me back? You talk to my wife. I’m busy. If you don’t convince her, don’t expect to even have a chance with me. Here’s Eiboline…. No. I’m busy. And you either talk to her, or I’m finding someone else. End of it.”   “Eiboh? There’s a man on the phone here for you with a large helping of humble pie in his mouth!”   When Daddy sat down at the table again, I looked up at both of them.   “Cait, hon? Daddy sees the question on your face. You’re allowed to talk.”   “What did you meet, humble pie?”   “Well, you remember how that Mr. Brady was and how I stopped listening to him when he shut you down?”   “Yeah? What shut you down?”   “He didn’t let you talk, hon. That man on the phone is from the same company and tried to act like your Grandma was a kid or something. He wanted to go over her head and talk to me. That’s the stuff I’m not putting up with. That Brady dismissed you just because you are a child, and the one on the phone tried to go over Grandma’s head just because she wasn’t a man. I told him that none of his apologies or his deals will have us going back there, unless he talks to your Grandma right.”   “He wants us back?”   “Well…. When you are a good customer with a large company like that, I suspect Brady got a slap in the face for losing one of their good clients. They are offering things that made it hard to pass up. The thing is…. I’m not going to take them back as long as they disrespect either of my ladies.”   Cait slowly crawled out of her chair, looking up at Daddy, holding Kookaberry.   “I see you, honey. Yes, you can come over here and hug Daddy if you want.”   Cait ran over and put her arms around Daddy.   “Back the other farm? He wouldn’t have cared. He would talk the man and we’d have insurance no matter they even called Mama the Bah plus itch word.”     “I’m not perfect, pet. Grandma and Daddy get in lots of fights over stuff. But we try to not hurt each other’s feelings. Fights is supposed to be about looking for a way that we can both live with something where we don’t get it all our way. They aren’t about attacking the other adult into fully giving up. When you do that, well, what is the point of being together? You’re not even friends if you fight tooth and nail for every compromise.”   Cait looked up at him. Her eyes were wide.   Daddy said he not perfect. That’s a surprise, but it’s not as confusing as his other words. He said fighting isn’t about attacking the other adult, and fights are about looking for a way to do something fair? That’s like fighting with Grainne. Grainne fights until Cait doesn’t bother her by what what she wants. He said coprise? What is coprise?   “Is Daddy talking over your head again? I’m sorry, Cait. What I mean is, I can be stubborn, and I sometimes do carry a fight a little too far sometimes trying to get what I want from Grandma, and that’s wrong. When people are married, they should try to be fair. Why marry someone if you don’t love them. If you love them, why wouldn’t you want to be fair and want the other person to be happy, too?”   Cait smiled. “Oh, okay. I get that. That’s like Grainne does me. I fight too hard though, but she just says fine and walks away even when I get more what I want, but only after she gets something her way.”   “You are children. You are still learning what’s fair and what fighting with someone you love should be like. But adults that do that marriage partners…. Well, let’s say we should know the goal, and sometimes, we forget.”   “Okay. You said coprise?”   “Coprise?”   “Yeah, um… how did it go? You not friends if you fight tooth and nail for every coprise?”   “Oh, com-pro-mise, sweetheart. That’s when you both agree on a term that’s fair or that you are willing to do in exchange for something the other person will do. Wars against countries fight tooth and nail for compromise, but loving friends and partners shouldn’t need to fight so hard for it. They should want it.”   “Clodagh sometimes does dishes for Grainne when Grainne helps her a long time with her homework.”   “Yes, Cait, that’s what I mean. And how hard does Grainne have to fight for it?”   “Depends on Clo’s feeling. Sometimes, Clo offers it. Sometimes, Grainne says she won’t have time unless she is willing to trade it. But that’s usually the end of the fight.”   “Well, you saw what I did with the insurance company?”   “Yeah. You didn’t even let them talk you when they said sorry.”   “Why didn’t I, Cait?”   “B’cuz they tried to talk you and skipping Grandma?”   “I don’t compromise my family’s respect, Pet. Grandma is important to me. You are important to me. I don’t have to care if it’s fair for the insurance company. I’ve been more than fair with them. They got paid first two years ago when I almost lost the farm. I already paid my dues for fair treatment, and my family’s respect is not even going to be something I talk to them about. They respect you and Grandma, or I don’t need them.”   Cait hugged him. She didn’t know exactly what he said. But what she did hear was… Grandma was too important for him to accept trading her be-spect. And Cait was too important for him to trade her be-spect. That’s all she needed to hear.   Arnold frowned. “I wish my boys were as attentive as your ten year old kid,” he frowned. “They’re a lot older, but sometimes, I wonder if they know the meaning of fair and how to get it with family. Maybe I can pay you to teach my kids?”   Sean shook his head. “No, you know you don’t mean that, Arnold.”   “I actually, do, sometimes. But I suspect being boys has a little bit to do with it, or maybe not having a sister to be gentle with?”   “They’re still kids, Arnold. Give them time. Liam was really gentle with Cait the other day.”   “I even peed my pants,” Cait looked up at him. “Liam said he not changing no ten year old butt, but he still stayed with me until I go in the house and he didn’t call me bad stuff.”   “Oh, Mr. Arnold, sir? Oh, sorry. I been dis-be-spectful. I… um… Daddy? Can I talk to Mr. Arnold? What his last name?”   The two men looked at one another, Sean more sad and Arnold more with his eyes scrunched like he was trying to understand something.   “Cait…, he’s at your table, and you were invited to talk,” Daddy said again like the third time. “You already got permission to talk to him. You were not disrespectful, Pet. It’s okay to talk.”   “Oh. Okay. Can… Can you wait a minute, Mr. Liam’s Daddy?”   “Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”   Cait ran upstairs and dug under her bed. She ran back down. She saw a little yellowy on the blue paper. “Um… I not allowed to say it. I showed why Daddy at Mysery always says it though. I got it. It go pee on it. Tell Liam I sorry.”   Arnold took the paper from her anyway. It was folded like a card. It has pretty colors all over it. On the outside front, in big rainbow colors, one word. “F A N K S” was printed. Inside, there was a horse and a little girl by the horse and a tall boy outside the gate talking. Under the boy. “I am not tanjin no 10 yeah od but.”   Arnold smiled and chuckled. “He’ll like this, Cait. Even with the pee on it.”   Cait smile and looked down. “He my best big friend but I have another big friend. But he bigger friend than my other big friend, and he stay with me dark so Snake can’t bite me but I trouble for him. So he get a Thanks Card.”   Eiboline called to Sean. “Sean? Do you want to give them another shot? They said they won’t even make Cait go through the pre-screening. I told them she has the hernia, something that will get her thrown off the insurance before they start, but they said they’ll work around it.”   “Eiboh? Did the man talk with you with dignity, or did he talk at you?” Sean asked.   “I wasn’t offended.”   “Tell him we’ll talk to him tomorrow then at a time he determines. But if I don’t like his manner to either you or Cait, they had their chance, so tell him to come knowing who he’s talking to. I can be stubborn, and you know I can.”   “Mr. Michael James asked if we can come in first thing. He says they open at nine, but he knows we are at the farm, so he’ll leave his day open for us until eleven.”   “Eleven, eh?” Sean smiled. “I think he’s getting it. Yeah, we’ll be there at open, if Arnold is okay bringing his boys by tomorrow morning to help out on the farm.”   “We’ll be here before seven.”   “Daddy and Grandma trying to fix my body so I can choose if I pee my pants or not. I don’t get to choose a lot of times. It just doing it. Daddy says if I choose it, he not stopping that. He said he getting it fix so I CAN choose.”   Arnold looked up at Sean. “You’re letting a ten year old decide if she pees her pants?”   “She’s a person, Arnold. Why not? It only bothers her, and I don’t know many ten year olds that choose that unless it’s because of feeling safe or feeling like they are being heard. I see no reason not to let her wet her pants, if something scares her or she feels something is more important. We can still talk about it, and talk her through if it was the best thing for her. But a child that has been controlled like she has… they need to know that they have the choice. It’s not hurting anyone else. It’s not like she asks to sit on people and do it. That…, I would correct.”   “What about social consequences and rashes and other problems that come with a kid peeing her pants?” Arnold asked.   “Well, like I said, she’s ten. She’s not dumb. Ten year old kids are not going to pee in front of their peers unless something happens that scares them, makes them forget, or they are made to feel is more important. I’m not worried about her putting herself in social trouble all the time, and if becomes a problem, that’s what communication is about.”   Arnold nodded. “Yeah, I suppose that’s right. But what about rashes?”   “Rashes are not a problem if she changes her pants often enough. Grandma and I have already been working on teaching her to change her pants as soon as she can when she makes a mess even when it’s not her choice to potty her pants, she can still choose to put on clean clothes. She’s still learning she’s allowed to do it without permission, but we are working on it.”   “She doesn’t know she should change her pants?”   “Oh, I have no doubt she knows she should. That doesn’t mean she feels safe doing it yet. You have to understand. This child has not been living in a house where kids are assumed to be smart. They have to prove it. And if you have one little problem like your eyes don’t see the page right, or you can’t read big enough words, they didn’t look at her as being smart. That’s half the trouble. She knows she shouldn’t be wet, but she doesn’t feel empowered to do anything about it, yet. She’s learning though.”   “What kind of crappy parents…?”   “Don’t go spreading this around or saying stuff,” Sean leaned on the table. “I’m working with Cait, her Grandma, my wife… yeah, I know it sounds funny, but it’s Cait’s world. We are there for her as she needs us to be, but the both of us and eventually her therapists and doctors will teach her about choice and her responsibility to take care of herself.”   When Arnold left, Cait was glad he still had her card for Liam. He even showed it up at Cait as he walked out so Cait could see.   “Old Arnold means well,” Daddy said. “He just does things different and doesn’t understand. That’s okay. Being friends doesn’t mean you have to understand and do the same things. You just have to respect that your friend can make their own choices.”   Cait held Daddy’s hand. Even if she didn’t understand his reasons for saying some things, she liked that he talked to her like she mattered. Like she was smart enough to talk to.   “Daddy?” Cait looked up into his eyes and she felt his strong hands as she held one of them in both of hers. “What if I am sixteen, and I still pee my pants?”   “Well…, I don’t know, Cait. What are you worried about with that scenario? Are you afraid you are doing it on purpose? Are you afraid your classmates won’t understand?”   “Will you still like me?”   He squeezed her hand. “I will always love you, Cait, even if you are old and gray and still pee while you’re talking at the table. Love is not conditional, Cait.”   “What if Arnold says he won’t be your friend no more because I teaching his kids to pee their pants?”   Sean frowned. “Where would you get that idea?”   Cait looked down.   Somewhere outside, an ant scampered to its nest. It ran down into the tunnels until it found the telephone room. It clicked and ticked at the phone….   Six ants with headbands and feathers popped out of their hole somewhere in a back yard. They saw their target, a large giant structure with little entrance places their size here and there. The clicked and ticked at each other.   Three ants went up the wall. Two ants went to the large plank that was different from the wall. One ant crawled up to this giant see-in thingy. It tested and pushed until it found a way under the see-in thing and got into the empty room.   “Cait?” Sean broke into her thinking. “Does anyone accuse you of teaching other kids to pee their pants?”   Cait’s finger was resting on her bottom teeth in her mouth. “No.” Drool pools on her finger.   The single ant moved across the large foreign surface. There was no dirt, no grass, no rock anywhere on the flat surface. It touched the front of the surface with its forward hands that were on its head.   Tick tick click click It signaled though it couldn’t see the other five.   Ticking and clicking came back to hit.   The ant moved forward.   “Well, where would you get the idea that you are teaching someone to wet their pants?” Daddy asked Cait.   “It’s Grainne.”   The ant broke into a room with white ground, shiny walls, white big things that had water smell to them. Once of the things had dirty water in it. A large creature with a snake like arm swayed back and forth, it’s body striking another large creature with their back turned to the creature with the snake arm.   “Roisin Pisses her pants because you teach her to do it,” was yelled and echoed around the room.   Cait looked up at Sean. “What if Grainne gets hit because I pee my pants? What if she gets hit because Roisin pees her pants? What if Daddy blames her for both of us? What if Grainne doesn’t know, but I caught her changing her panties one day last year?”   Sean frowned and looked over at Eiboline.   Eiboline frowned. “What if…? Or are you afraid to say it is?”   Cait shrugged.   “Grainne peed her pants on the bus home, one day. I didn’t think about it when I was sitting next to her, but then when we got home, I was outside the bathroom. I wanted to go pee. Grainne was taking a minute and so I tried to go in. She said get out really mad, so I went out, but she had her panties off and her skirt was really wet on the butt. I think she was hiding her panties.”   “Well, Cait, you are here, right now. There is nothing you can do right now that would affect Grainne getting in trouble. I cannot tell you if another sister is being used the wrong way or not, but I can tell you, that it’s not right,” Eiboline responded. “I don’t think it’s healthy to think so much about what you can’t do anything about, Pet.”   Cait sighed. The ghost said that Cait had power. All she had to have to do, is just potty her pants how the ghost wanted, and Grainne wouldn’t be in trouble, and then Roisin wouldn’t see her pee, and so Daddy wouldn’t accuse Grainne of teaching Roisin wrong. It was Cait’s fault.   As Cait got ready to sleep that night, she thought about the ant scout and what the ant saw in her old home. To her, it was very real, but it was cartoon ant after all that went down it’s mound in an elevator, and it had a telephone room where it called up her uncle’s ants, and they sent these cartoon like ‘Indian scout ants’ into the house to find out that Grainne was being yelled at by her other Daddy again, and he had a new snake belt that was hitting Grainne.   “Kooks? Which Jesus feels more real to you?” Cait asked the bear. “Everywhere in the world, I see people have some trouble, and a lot of lost people. The Bible isn’t magic. It doesn’t always save people. Does Daddy’s Jesus get stronger than Father’s Jesus?”   “It’s the same person, it’s it?” Kooks smoothed down some fur on his right front paw-arm.   “I don’t know,” Cait frowned. “Father’s Jesus is powerful, but he can be angry and he demands you to be powerful and he demands you obey. Daddy’s Jesus is kind and tells little girls that he’ll hold you even if you peed.”   “You humans are too mixed up for me.”   “It the grownups that are mixed up,” Cait told Kookaberry. “Grownups have so many rules, I don’t know how they know them all. I just have rules that mean it’s safe. Don’t hit another person. You won’t want it done to you, and so you know if you hit someone, you expect them to hit back. Don’t take and not ask. If someone takes your stuff and you don’t even know they want it, you get mad. So you don’t take stuff. You ask for stuff.”   “Those rules are easy.”   “The Kinsellas are lying to you,” the ghost appeared on her bed. “The Jesus that Father taught us about is shown in the Bible. He gets mad when the people forget him. He punishes them when they do bad things and don’t trust him to protect them. Don’t you remember the stories?”   Cait frowned.   When Moses told the people that He, Moses told the people how to get out of the desert, and how he saved them, and how he gave the food and water, God said because you have done this, you will not leave the desert.   When Samson forgot his purpose and he let the woman take him from God, his only way to make happy God, was to die with the bad people.   When Lot was leaving the bad city, and he told the people not to look back, his wife got punished for wanting to go back.   The Ghost was right.   Cait sighed. “Do you think the Kinsella’s are doing what Jesus wants?”   The Ghost shrugged. “How would we know? What matters is you do what God wants. Does God want a dirty poopy ten year old follower?”   “No?”   “But that is what you are. Before you can stop pooping your pants, you have to ask God to forgive you for everything.”   “What is forgive?”   “How should I know? I’m just a ghost. You should have listened to Father.”   “Father? He says I stay there and finish it, and not say lie I don’t do it. Let it go, and the tell I am sorry. And prove I sorry.”   “How do you prove you sorry?”   “I… I do recess rule. I don’t tell loud what I do. I sit and wait for say I can move. I wait and then they say I allowed to change and then try again. And I don’t go until I allowed.”   “And you been shameful since you got here. God isn’t happy with you.”   The next morning, Cait was sitting wrapped in the blankets waiting for father to get her out of bed. She was rocking. Her thumb was in her mouth. Her little boy panties were soggy, but she refused to believe she peed. She was still drizzling when it hurt too much to wait. Her tummy hurt. Air pushed at her bottom, but she tried harder to push it back in, not let it out, in case it was shame.   Kookaberry was quiet. Cait was rocking. Her thumb was getting wrinkled. She felt another little bit of water push from her into her boy panties. She was in the wrong panties. God not happy that, too….   Unexpectedly, a tap on the wall and a sound that thundered through her ears told her that they were about to catch her being bad. The bedding was pre-peed… or was it wet? The air puffs were coming out. Was that failure? There was no poop yet. But it was started. She was puffing.   Cait rocked harder, staring at the window, shaking. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” Her butt was sore. She was trying not to let it out. She didn’t pee. She didn’t. But there was dampness in the sheets and the wrapped blanket around her. But she didn’t. It was just pre-pee. It was.   “Cait? Are you ready to come out and help with Summerstone this morning?” this distant, dreamy, unreal voice of a dream of what she wished Daddy and God were like called through the open doorway.   “The Devil calls, sounding sweet like an angel. He was one, once,” the Ghost told her.   Cait nodded. She stayed quiet. She wasn’t going to answer the devil.   “You’re pooping your pants,” the Ghost told her.   Suddenly, a slimy sick sludge started to push into her boy panties and stick on her butt and legs. She sighed with a small whine and her thumb paused in her mouth as she pushed and loaded her panties now, knowing it was too late. The flood of pee flooded the bed. She had dis-mad-pointed God again.   She felt shaking, not her own, someone was using their hands. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want see the demon faces. She screamed. “Leave me alone!” She kicked and slugged the air with her hands.   “Get the therapist!” she heard each word slow and echoing in the fight. “Get the Ther o pest!”   She kicked, screamed, and swung and cried until she fell asleep, wetness pouring out of her again and soaking her back and bottom before she was too tired, and she saw only black.