Ishigreensa

"I wish I could adopt you, baby. There have been a lot of girls I wished I could, but the system does what it does for the sake of the multitude of kids that are in bad situations. I just wouldn't have the resources to help everyone that I wanted without the programs in place." She started to remove her diaper. "Well, they'd likely not put you in diapers at all and expect you to change yourself, and probably even punish you for peeing on the floor... depending on who is running the place. It is possible to get someone more reasonable like me, but it is not as likely as in a children's home, where you are now." Cheryl frowned. "But you can try to give the guy a chance, right? He doesn't look like he'd be very mean. He's trying to get a ten year old, but he did ask to talk to you, so I think he might be worried about you going to a halfway home." Cheryl started to pull down her soggy diaper from her and shook her head. "How long you been wet, sweetie?"

There will be another Chapter. Still just trying to find the time to put it together and have it read the way I want. Sorry about the delays.

"I haven't mentioned it yet, to be honest," Cheryl smiled at her. "I think it might be best to wait until you need changed on the way home, honestly." She directed her back to the changing area where she usually changed toddlers, Ruby, and Liz. "But you could actually try to make yourself a little more loveable too. I'm not saying by doing anything just for him, but more, of just how you do things in general. You know? Think maybe before you yell, for example?" She started to take the diaper off. "And the group home, if you end up going to a halfway house or something like that, they are not going to be as nice about your wetting your pants if they can't find a medical reason for it. They don't pay for anything they don't have to, sweetheart, and if other teens find out you wear diapers, anyway, that will be its own problem. I'm sure you already know that, don't you?"

(Sometimes, by smelling someone's hair, you can tell if they smell dirty like if she wet herself. She's trying to be discreet about checking her). "Well, sweetheart, I understand how hard it is. You're not the only one to go through this, baby. But you know? Sometimes, when you go through a difficulty like this, when you find someone that actually cares, it might mean even more to you? I mean, honestly, at this point, you're making up your mind and not even giving him a chance, sweetheart." She walked over and put an arm around her. "Still, don't think I don't understand. You've had a lot of disappointment in your life. Far more than anyone your age should have ever had. I can't promise that he will keep you, but you know, for your own happiness, you really should give him the benefit of doubt and try to make it work." She took her hand. "Would you like me to change your diaper before we go meet him?"

Cheryl approached Thirteen year old Liz. "Sweetheart, there is a man might be willing to give you a home. I'd like you to meet him if you will...." Cheryl didn't tell her anything more than she had to. She didn't want to get her hopes up too high, but she really hoped that James would take her in. She really needed someone because life had been hard on her, and Cheryl could see that the poor girl was losing faith in humanity. She smelled the girl's hair. She didn't want her to meet him having on a wet diaper. It was going to be hard enough to explain to him that she has to be put in diapers. Maybe it would even be better that he just find out on the way home or at his house rather than there, where it would be easy to leave her to the system. "You're not wet or messy, are you?" Cheryl asked her giving her a stern eye, not that she wasn't allowed to wet, but more that she was expected to tell the truth about it.

James Walton was a man going on forty-five years of age living in a small apartment with two bedrooms though at the moment, he only needed one. He had lived through a tour of duty in the Airforce, had lived through a pandemic, and had lived through a toxic marriage so brutal that by the time his wife decided to leave him about two years ago, she had turned both of his kids against him. He thought he had done everything right by her, and because he showered her with everything giving her full control of the money, he had barely anything but this sparsely furnished apartment. He had not fought any of the divorce terms. She wanted the kids, and honestly, the kids didn't want anything to do with him since at least three years ago anyway because of how she had turned them so thoroughly against him. It saddened him every time they agreed with their mother that he had no business picking them up from school when they were ten and fourteen years old, that it was strange he would want to take the whole family out to eat, and how he wanted to buy them gifts on their birthdays. She made all of his acts towards them sound strange. He was supposed to just give her the money to treat them, but he was not to be included. He tried to help them with homework on occasion, but she had told her daughters that real men didn't do that. That he was controlling them when he did that, and he most certainly could not check on them at night when they were supposed to be asleep, and if they had a nightmare, and he asked about it, he was being weird. They wouldn't come to him for anything by the time she had parted with him two years ago. So, for his children's well-being knowing that living with him could be scary since they had been brainwashed that a father can't do those things, and he knew they would need help from time to time, he let them stay with their mom. He didn't do it for his X but for his children. Over the last two years, however, he had gotten more and more depressed. Even at work, people noticed that he didn't seem to into is work anymore. "James," Ralph a trusted friend addressed him nearly six months ago. "It's time you moved on. You weren't treated right by that woman, and you know it." "I know," James sighed. "I'm not really even missing her. I don't know...." "Look. You better figure things out, James. If you don't, you're going to get yourself fired. You've been slacking too much around here, and the bosses are starting to notice. You've told them you've been depressed, haven't you?" "No," James sighed. "It's not their problem, you know." "It is affecting your performance, so I think it is their problem now. It's everyone's problem because you are important around here." He shook his head. "I'm sure if they fired me, they'd find a good replacement." "James, stop. You can't just give up on life. If it's not her, then what is causing the slump? I wouldn't meddle, but it's getting worse and I'm worried about you." "I... I don't know." However, Ralph saw me staring off into the distance. I was thinking back a long time ago, past about five years ago, when I was happier and my kids willingly came up to me and talked to me. "James," he shook at me as though he'd been trying to get my attention for a minute. "Look. I've seen that look before. You have it anytime you mention your kids. You're thinking about them, aren't you?" "I can't," James frowned. "My kids have been turned against me, and the last thing I want is to make them unhappy by taking them away from a place they feel safe. I can't do it." "I wasn't suggesting anything with them, James. I was thinking though.... You've always been good to your kids. I think there are people that would recognize a good father. You still pay child support, don't you?" "I'm all caught up on it, yeah." "Have you ever considered adopting?" "How would that help with my kids?" "It wouldn't help with your kids. Like you said, you think they are already in the best place for them. But it would help some other kids who need someone like you, and it would help you. You'd have kids around you again that you can take care of." "I don't know...." But now, here I am, somehow almost as if in a dream, having gone through with the suggestion, and now was entering some kind of group home. I had a file that showed my process being approved, and I was supposed to meet this woman about getting a child. "I have a match," a woman said over the phone the night before. "If you would come in and talk to me about it in the morning...." I had called in to work, and the boss was more than happy to give me the day off. He said that though I had been slacking a bit, he thought I still deserved it given I'd been trying to muscle through and he could tell I needed the time off, but never took it. I walked into the place in my best white shirt and suit pants. My brown turning gray hair was slicked down and shiny, and I knocked at the door. "May I help you?" This woman, Cheryl answered. She had red hair and green eyes. "I'm James Walton," I said my voice a little more quiet than she had seemed to have expected. "Can you repeat that?" "James Walton?" I barely raised my voice. "I spoke with a Cheryl on the phone last night?" "Yes, that was me! Oh, James! Yes, please come right in." I smiled and walked into the house. There were nine or ten children watching television, playing with games, talking, and chasing each other around as I walked through their living area. They had all seemed to pause for a moment to consider me before going back to their world of play. I just followed the somewhat tall slender woman to an office. "Please have a seat," she smiled. "We have something to discuss." "You found someone else better for the child?" I asked calling out my fear on myself before she could tell me. "No, that's not it. Please, don't be so negative. But I as hoping...." I settled down and waited for her to tell me the problem. "I have a thirteen year old girl that just came to our home from another group home. She's not been placed with anyone for nearly three years. No one wants her, and if she isn't taken in by someone soon, she'll go to a teen home where she will never find a home again." I frowned. "I... I'm really sorry. I thought I was getting a ten year old, though." "We still have the ten year old available. The ten year old doesn't speak any English as far as we know, though." I frowned. "I don't care. I'll take her anyway." "So, I guess the teenager is out of luck then," the woman suddenly looked sad. She didn't have to pull the face though. I was already starting to second guess sending any child into a situation where they would never be loved, especially when she said the thirteen year old had not been in a home at all for over three years. "Can I meet both of the children?" I asked her. "Well..., you usually just meet the one that you might be taking with you...." "Please," I insisted. "I want to see them both. The teenager is desperate, right? And the ten year old, she will have a hard time too since no one knows how to talk to her?" The woman nodded. She laid out files on both of the girls on the desk, of what information she had on them, and while she went to fetch them, I looked over the files. The woman was gone for a while, little did I know, looking to find the teenager first....

You are not wrong, that it was far more blamed on gay than being black, but it was also something that someone in the medical field pointed out saying it was more prevalent in the black population, and then I think racists ran with that turning it into a "Black" disease. Honestly though, I think the fact it came from Africa was more of a reason for it than just what doctors had said. Still was a lot of misinformation because the disease hit white people as much as it did black people, but they seemed to keep it quiet when it hit white people. And it actually affects... according to what I learned in high school in 1990, gay and non gays the same, more based on the number of partners you have rather than on who you have sex with.... Even then, they were still learning more about it. My point though, Is I think they tried to blame all marginal communities for this disease because they still didn't know much about it, even in 1990. It was sad all the myths and blame that happened around it. But yeah, I think the discussion... I'm going to put a halt to it because this is supposed to be about a story and not about the myths told about the disease. I just was maybe defending why I'm writing it from where I am because this is my own experiences in how I heard of it. Not that everything I heard was factual.

While Magic Johnson might have caused some awareness of this, there were rumors of other people that people in the 80s wanted to find fault with, as it making since they might have had it, though I don't think it as ever proven if they had it or not. I don't even remember the people they were talking about too much because there was no actual proof they had it. It as believed to be a black disease in America though, which is sad. Even if it was a black disease, as they called it, it just showed the percentage of black people that had poorer health options for hospitals than white people had. My childhood family was poor between 1982 and 1990, so we didn't have the best options for us open too, but I think that was only the cause of our social-economical situation where as some black people, even from maybe a tier above us, might have been forced to go to the same hospitals though I don't remember why. Discrimination was supposed to be against the law especially in the northern and midwestern states, but still, I think it was done a lot more than the news showed it to be true. So yeah, Magic Johnson might have brought more awareness of it, actually, others before him could have brought awareness if the prejudiced systems of culture had not been involved. It is actually a little surprising to me that Magic Johnson is the one that caused people to look twice because while he was a popular sports star... he was black.

Yeah, the year was supposed to be 1980, but it seems I might have misremembered when they started to learn about it, so my memory, and what they say when we started to learn about HIV and so on, wasn't until 1984, so you'll have to suspend belief for the year since my experiences... I felt like the hospitals knew more in 1980, though the regular people and some medical people that didn't specialize in it believed in very wild myths... like even sitting on the toilet after someone with it, could give it to you. LOL. That's the crazy thing. It was believed, and I believed it too... though I was 9 at the time. I do remember that was the myth in 1980, because I remember that it was a scare around all VD... which they classified HIV as at first, and I remember them saying sitting on toilets could get you crabs, too. And my nine year old mind, not understanding what VD meant at the time, wondered how those huge red sea creatures would even be able to get in your pants to attach themselves to you to make you sick without you seeing them coming! LOL. It's funny how simplistic kids can think at times. But yeah, AIDS was basically considered to be something that came from having not only out of wedlock sex, but sex in the most sinful ways according to the Bible, and yeah, same sex sex was definitely a targeted sin that they blamed AIDS on. Of course, by the late 1980s, we would find out some AIDS came from hospitals not knowing and testing for HIV in the blood before transfusions. Some would come from drug use and swapping blood that way. Some supposedly came from sex and other bodily fluids. But none of that was learned until a lot later, at least not by the common people. I still feel like there was a lie about when the medical community knew some about the AIDS virus, but they don't want it reported because it makes medical procedures in the USA look incompetent. Of course, I could be wrong, but It feels like the Internet is not telling the truth about how much the common people thought about AIDS before 1984 which is why I think there is some lying out there. Interesting enough, Hep A or B was not as much in the news in the early 1980s as AIDS was. People were aware of it, but only just, and kids that were not in high school had never heard of Hepetitis, but we had Heard of AIDS by the time I was ten. So.... That's how much the news media and common people understood the dangers -- not, of the two diseases! Aids was also considered a death sentence until at least the early 90s, from what I remember. I graduated high school in 1990. I was in the Air Force December 90 to Feb 94. I think it was considered a death sentence until around 92, and then we stopped hearing so much about it.

I remember a lot of myths associated with AIDS being spread about and I was going on 10 in 1980... December Birthday. So, it is possible I didn't understand how much the medical community knew, I did know that AIDS was thrown around even in the Late 70s, and by 1980, we were told and taught that we should be clean... which meant being careful with how we even used the toilet in public since we didn't know who sat on the toilet last. The Idea of "hovering" over the toilet for women was actually introduced as a way to not only keep from getting AIDS, but also supposedly effective against "Crabs" and other sexual diseases. I remember this because at ten, I remember thinking... how do you get crabs on your privates? Aren't they big red things that live in the sea? I remember that AIDS was supposed to be a disease caused by sin according to some Churches. We were Jehovah's Witnesses at the time, and that religion was definitely on board with the idea that diseases like AIDS were caused by not living according to the Bible. In the 1980s, there were fewer atheists and more Christians reported in the population. Of course, those numbers could have been skewed, but it seemed that most people you talked to at least paid lip service to professing of God and even if they didn't want to believe in God, dissenters kept their mouths shut probably because of being afraid of ridicule. Back to the point, there was a little understanding around AIDS in 1980, but most of the understanding was based in Myth and incomplete knowledge for the common people. I thought Hospitals knew more because I remember some talk shows later in the 80s talking about it and getting push back by the church when they tried to humanize the victims, and when they tried to say that not everyone that had AIDS were doing anything wrong even according to the Bible. I also remember in High School, I started High School in 1987, that we talked a lot about AIDS and HIV. AT that time, they did debunk the idea of sitting on toilets that others sat didn't give it to you, even touching someone with it didn't give it to you, but that you needed to be careful with even kissing, still. That's my experience with what I know of it. I did appreciate your education on the matter, but what is written is written, so I guess a little suspension of belief then? Because it seems that what I thought hospitals would know, would not actually be known for about 3 or 4 years according to what you presented. Yeah, I did talk about it a lot here. Of course, a lot of it is because of her not liking this at all, and about her having to learn to be a good girl. Of course, the diapers in of themselves would not have calmed her down from being hypersensitive to being forced to do this, and make it hard for her not to think about, but the idea that she could get someone else sick... will be something that makes her think she has to do it so people don't hate her for making them sick.

Chapter Ten Why I Should Run I was finally in the car and on the way home after spending nearly five hours at the hospital, and only two of those were with mommy. Part of the reason is, they had to get me to pee again, so I had to wait until I had to go again, and speak up before I started to wet this time, and still had to some how wet my pants. I didn’t think Auntie would understand if I made it to the toilet at all. That’s why she packed me extra things. But at least that time, I only peed maybe half in my pants and before I finished, I went in the cup, and they decided it was enough. When we got in the car, Mrs. Peterson went ahead and just changed my clothes for me, and …. While she was taking my wet panties off of me… “Sweetheart, I think it might be a good idea to buy you diapers.” I looked down. “I… um… I don’t want to,” felt hurt in my chest, but not really physical pain, just hurt. “Sweetheart, you’re always wet,” Mrs. Peterson said. “You had to wear the same wet clothes, and still you peed them twice more. I mean. That can’t be comfortable, honey. At least if I had diapers with me to change you, not only would others not have to see you pee your pants, but it wouldn’t get all over you when you pee.” “But…. I don’t want to,” I whined. “Alright, sweetie. We can drop it for now. I don’t mind if you wet your pants on the way back. But I am worried about the bullying at school.” I shrugged. “Kids always bully me even if I don’t wet my pants at school.” “How would you even know that, baby? You’re always wet.” “Because… like you said. I can’t control it since mommy been in the hospital,” I lied. “Didn’t you wet your pants all day at school before you even knew your mommy was in the hospital that first day?” “Yeah,” I sighed. “That was partly cause the kids didn’t let me go because they bullied me and threaten to cause some kids to cry if I didn’t do what they want, and I couldn’t get away at recess, so I peed myself.” She frowned and stared at me for long enough, that I sighed. “Well, I started to leak a little bit,” I said giving her an inch. I started to leak and I told them I’m going to the bathroom, but they said if I didn’t at least give someone a turn on the jump rope before I went….” and I looked down. I felt like she was staring at me, trying to make me say I was already peeing my pants. I got really hurting and started to cry. “It’s the truth. Kids at school didn’t let me go at recess sometimes, and the teacher made me sit there and I peed at my desk sometimes because he said no!” She put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you give me this teacher’s name?” “Why?” “Because if he honestly caused any kid to sit there and wet themselves on purpose, he doesn’t belong anywhere near kids, honey. Maybe he should even get in trouble for doing that to you.” I nodded. “But if he doesn’t get in trouble, then Marina might get more trouble from him. He’d think she told on him.” “Is that another classmate that he does that to?” “Yeah. He only does it to a few of us. He almost always lets all the boys go if they say so except one, and he lets most of the girls go, but there are like five girls he always tells to wait, but Marina just wets her pants at her desk without even asking, and half the time, he makes me wait until I’m wet, and the other half of the time, he lets me go, but I’m always really scared I’ll pee before he lets me.” “Does Marina have a last name?” I looked up at her. “Don’t tell her mom that she pees her pants at school!” Mrs. Peterson frowned at me. “She doesn’t get hit at home?” “No? I mean, she might get spanked sometimes, but not like hit—hit.” Mrs. Peterson frowned. By the time she had gone quiet about it, I had clean panties and shorts on and my top was changed, too. “How about we stop off for something to eat?” she smiled at me a few minutes later. You’ve had very little to eat, and we were there forever.” “Okay,” I looked up at her hopefully. “It’s okay to wet your pants even at the restaurant,” she whispered to me. “We both know you are having problems. I won’t be mad, okay?” I nodded. Wait. Was she telling me to pee my pants, too? Maybe? I didn’t have to go though. I just peed before we went to the car and she changed me. She had to know I didn’t have to go right now, surely? Or should I try to do it on purpose? But… I don’t feel anything. We went and stopped at a restaurant, a burger place, and she took me in and let me sit down while she went to get our food. I wondered if she would tell Auntie Jenny on me if I didn’t obey her and pee on purpose. Or did she tell me to do it? I couldn’t remember exactly how she told me. Was it a tricky way that Auntie always does, or did she actually ask me, “Why don’t you just pee your pants before we get done at the restaurant?” I couldn’t think straight, and I was scared of being kicked out or getting in trouble. I probably had to do it. But how? I just peed. Mrs. Peterson came back with the food sooner than I would have liked. I hadn’t even decided to try yet, and there she already was. They must not have been that busy. I put my finger in my mouth while I waited for her to sit and sort the food. She smiled at me. “Take your finger out of your mouth, and eat,” she whispered. “I know you have a lot on your plate right now, and I won’t tell Auntie Jenny you had your hand in your mouth, okay?” I shrugged. “She already knows.” I mean, I did it for the first time in front of her just before Mrs. Peterson picked me up, I did it on purpose, so that she would think I was a baby. Mrs. Peterson smiled. “You are going through a lot. I’m sure it’s okay.” I nodded with a heavy sigh. It looked more and more to me, that Mrs. Peterson was on Auntie Jenny’s side, and wanted me to be a baby, too. She kept making references that things were hard, and they were hard. I’m not gonna lie. They were really hard. But I didn’t see how peeing my pants and putting my hand in my mouth was helping with it. Still, I had to obey them, right? I ate my burger and fries quietly. If I was supposed to be more and more like a baby to be kept safe, and to be kept somewhere I knew I could see my mom until the end, then I guess I had to. I guess I’d just try not to use the toilet at all the rest of the weekend. Maybe that will help. “You’re kind of quiet, honey.” “Sorry,” I frowned looking up at her. “I just thought…,” but I trailed off not really knowing what I thought of her or Auntie. I knew Mr. Wilson at school didn’t like me to talk or even raise my hand to talk. I knew the principal at my old school didn’t like to hear my side of things either. But even if Mrs. Peterson didn’t believe me, and even if Auntie didn’t act like I was telling her the truth about not being a baby, they let me talk. They seemed to want to hear me a lot. “It’s okay,” Mrs. Peterson whispered after a little while. “I know it’s hard. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I know there were a lot of scary things that happened today.” “They don’t really think I have that disease that they said mama has, do they?” “I don’t know, honey. They said they’ll get the results next week, so I’m sure they’ll let you know when you visit your mama.” “Are they sure my mama has that thing? She could have something else and they made a mistake.” “Honey…,” Mrs. Peterson got up and walked around and helped me up, sat down, and put me in her lap. “Doctors make mistakes sometimes, but I’m pretty sure this disease is you… um… different enough from other ones, that they know it when they see it.” “I saw your mouth,” I frowned. “You were going to say unique, but you think I’m stupid.” “No, honey, I don’t think you are stupid.” “But I saw your mouth. You closed it after starting to say you, and then you said different. I know what unique means.” She rubbed my legs as I sat on her. “Well, maybe I underestimated what kind of words you’ve been exposed to. But that doesn’t mean I think you are stupid, honey. Unique is not a third grade word, is it?” I frowned up at her. “I’m in fourth grade.” “Still, not really a fourth grade word either.” “Well, I’ve known that word a long time, so…. I think it actually is. I can’t spell it, but I know it when I hear it.” She smiled. “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I took a deep breath. “So, it’s really okay if I go potty on myself sometimes?” “Sweetheart, it doesn’t matter if it’s okay or not. You can’t help it, can you?” I lowered my head. Van-van’s words were clear. “If you are not baby enough, you will be sent away.” I saw the images of Carl being told he can live somewhere else, and then Jason putting me in his lap and telling me to pee my pants. I think he did it too. “No…, I can’t.” Mrs. Peterson hugged me. “Did you just do it, honey?” “No. I already went at the hospital, remember?” She rubbed my legs and whispered “yes” in my ear. I finished eating sitting on her lap. She just rubbed my legs and cooed in my ear at me like I was a baby. But I had to be a baby. This was so I could see my mom. I’ll pee my pants so they don’t take me away from seeing her… at least until the end. We drove from the restaurant after we had eaten, over to my old house, and we picked up some of the stuff. The rent was paid until the end of the month, so they couldn’t keep me from getting my stuff. I didn’t have a lot anyway. “Don’t make a mess,” Mrs. Peterson told me. “Just get your things you want, and then you can play with them in the car. You won’t be coming back here, and the landlord will have to clean up whatever state the house is already in.” I opened the car door and walked slowly up to the front door. “Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t really want to be in the house right now anyway. My mommy wasn't in there. Mrs. Peterson walked in and frowned. “This is really small.” “It’s what we could afford,” I said looking up at her. “Anyway, I liked it. It was home.” “I see….” “Oh, come on,” I said a little defensively. “I’m in a room sharing it with someone not even my sister where I am now. They have three boys in one room! If that can be allowed, then there is no way this is bad for a single mom and one child! I have my own room!” Mrs. Peterson frowned at me. “There are other concerns other than the size of your bedroom.” “Like…?” “You’re too little to get it right now, honey. Just get your things.” “My mama got me everything I needed,” I pouted at Mrs. Peterson. “And she’s just got a new job when this happened. She was going to move us anyway because she doesn’t like the neighborhood.” I lied about the last part, but I was reaching for straws to convince Mrs. Peterson that mama was really a good mama. I mean, she was. She had struggles with getting things done, but she didn’t have a job. Now, she does. She was going to do more. I know she was. “Honey, don’t worry about it. What is done is done, and your mom can’t come back home anyway. So, it wouldn’t matter what the state said at this point, would it?” She smiled at me. I looked down and shrugged. “Well, she’s a good mom.” “You know what?” I suddenly felt a second steam of defensiveness come to light in my heart. “How about instead of judging my mom, who actually took care of me..., how about you use your time to investigate those places that hit Van-van and Jay-jay and made them so scared as they are! How about you do that, huh?” Mrs. Peterson gave me such a stern look, I fell silent for a moment. I did quietly add. “It was just a thought” after several moments. “Just get your things,” Mrs. Peterson said now not as friendly, but still not scary or yelling. “We have to go, little girl.” “Fine,” and I walked away from her to get stuff from my room. Mrs. Peterson was cleaning up here and there and she was taking pictures. I didn’t like that she took pictures. She even got two of my bed, one with the blankets on the bed, and one with only the stained up sheet on the bed. It’s like there was clear proof that I always wet the bed. “Why are you doing that?” I asked her when she took a picture of the closet. “We need proof of how we left your house, that way if the landlord tries to make false claims, we have proof on how we left the house. That’s why I told you not to make a mess.” “You took pictures of my bed…?” “Yeah, I did, honey. Go get that bag of stuff to the car.” I didn’t like how she suddenly sent me off when I was trying to ask her about the pictures of my bed, the embarrassing one, especially, that if the other kids saw… they would definitely think I was a baby, knowing I peed the bed even before I met Auntie Jenny. We were on the road, finally, and I stared out the window not wanting to talk to Mrs. Peterson. She took pictures of how horrible my mom was to me, supposedly, though she claimed something stupid about showing the landlord proof of how we left the house. I never heard of that before, and it was an apartment, not a house. And thought my mama didn’t do enough. And she thought our apartment was too small, but she said nothing of me sharing a room with a girl I only met not even a week ago, and three boys sharing one room, too. At least I had a room to myself with mama. Yeah, I was mad at her, and I wasn’t going to talk to her anymore on this day. We got home, and Mrs. Peterson walked me into the house and handed over the clothes that were packed for me. “Did she use them all?” Auntie Jenny asked. “I was afraid I didn’t pack enough when I thought about it, especially since you were gone longer than I thought you were going to be.” “Oh, yeah, well, I had to leave her bag in the car when we visited her mom, so she had to wear wet clothes for a bit in the hospital. She did pee herself like three times though.” “So three sets was enough?” “I didn’t check her recently. She might be wet now, but yeah, I think she had plenty of clothes for the day.” “Well, next time, I’ll pack one more set just in case. You never know. Kids do play and mess up their clothes in more than one way, sometimes.” Mrs. Peterson laughed. “Yeah, they do. Look, I stopped by her house. Her mama isn’t going to be coming home. So I have some more stuff from her last home in the car.” “Oh, okay. Yeah, just a moment.” Auntie Jenny rang the bell and all the kids came running down, but before they could line up like they were supposed to, Auntie was sending them, Jason and Van-van to the car to help me get my clothes, Theodore to the living room to watch television, and Carl go get his stuff. I walked out with Van-van. “Carl is leaving tonight,” she told me. “He messed up again at the movies, and Auntie Jenny has decided it was the last time she was putting up with him. She said when you got home, she was sending him out with the social worker.” “Oh,” I looked down. “So, you saw your mom?” “I don’t want to talk about it,” I suddenly felt the hurt of my mom dying rise into my throat. “Please. Just leave me alone,” and I ran away leaving my stuff. “Corinna!” Jason called after me, chasing me. I just ran though, and jumped the wooden fence, and was into the farmland area. I ran through the fields, Jason hot on my heels. “Corinna!” I finally ran out of breath and tumbled to the ground, crying, and pounding myself on my thighs. “It’s not fair!” Jason came up, and he pulled me into his lap and rubbed my hair. “Shush,” he whispered to me. “Just shush, honey. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.” I started to pee on his lap, but he kept rocking me and swaying with me. He was starting to calm me, and I was sleepy from all the stuff that happened. It was supposed to be a happy day for me, but it turned out to be worse than the day mommy went to the hospital, and on top of it all, the social worker that was supposed to help, and who might have put me in a crazy house by mistake, thought bad of my mama. I couldn’t help it. I cried and cried and peed. I wasn’t sure how long Jason shushed me, but eventually, Auntie Jenny and Van-van came walking my way, and little Theo-the was trailing behind them. “I’ve got her now, Jason,” Auntie Jenny said helping me up. “Oh, Jason, did you wet your pants, dear?” “No,” he looked down. “Corinna had an accident. She was so upset, I don’t even think she knew she had to go.” “That’s understandable. Mrs. Peterson explained everything to me.” Auntie picked me up and started to carry me. “You need a bath, baby. You kept wetting the same pants today because you didn’t get to change them. And of course, you lost your home and you are losing your mama. And…,” she looked to Van-van and to Jason. “Van-van, Carl went with Mrs. Peterson, and I don’t think it’s safe for you to sleep with Corinna until her results come back.” “Results?” Jason asked looking from Auntie to me. “She might have AIDS, kids.” Jason looked down. I wasn’t sure if he knew what that meant. “The doctor says I can’t give it to anyone,” I whispered. “The doctor was just trying not to scare you, honey. We don’t want to take any chances in this house. AIDS is a very unfair disease. You will sleep by yourself and use different dishes than the rest of us for awhile until we find out if you need to go to the hospital, or if you are safe to stay here.” I frowned. “But the doctor explained it.” “Sweetheart, I have other children to worry about. Whatever the doctor said to you to keep you from getting scared, I can’t take chances. And Van-van, that means you don’t change her or bathe her until we find out for sure.” Van-van nodded. “Jason, don’t let her pee on you anymore. Actually, don’t even hold her anymore. She could pass the disease to you that way.” Jason frowned. “Is it that scary?” “I’m afraid so. I’ll explain what it is when we all get back inside. I am sure you all have questions, especially Corinna since the doctor seemed to think down playing it might scare her less. But she needs to know the truth.” (Author note: AIDS was misunderstood and scary by most common people in the 1980s even though the medical community knew exactly how it was spread. We have already talked about how cray-cray Jennifer Loveland is and of course, I see her as just believing the hype rather than knowing to trust the doctor. There was also a myth that doctors didn’t tell you everything or that they even lied to you to give you hope, but the doctors have always had an ethic to tell the truth regardless of how hard the truth was). We all went into the house, and sat on the floor around in a circle where Auntie Jenny was sitting in a chair facing us. “AIDS is a bad disease. It first appeared in Africa, it is believed, and it comes from the devil.” I looked down. “How did it get to the United States?” Jason asked. “Well, missionaries do the Lord’s work in the least advanced places. They bring food, medicine, and God’s word there.” “But Missionaries are good people, right?” Van-van asked. “Yes. But they were in a place where the Devil had a hold of the people. They were very unclean, and they spread it to some of the missionaries who were trying to be helpful and doing God’s work, they forgot to listen to God, so they got it.” We all sat listening to what Cray-cray Auntie Jenny thought happened. “So, if you eat from the same stuff, sleep in the same bed, even sit on the same toilet after someone who has it does so, you get it?” Theodore asked. “That’s right,” Auntie told us. “That’s why until we know for sure, poor Corinna will have to sleep by herself, have dishes to herself, and since she wets herself all the time anyway, she can’t be on the toilet. Oh, and we’ll have to get her diapers because even stepping in a pee puddle made by her could get you sick.” “So, how is she going to get cleaned up when she goes potty?” Theodore asked. “I’ll have to do it. I need to get some plastic gloves and some special disinfectant to make sure the area is cleaned up I use afterwards. So from now on, no one puts her in their laps. She will have a diaper on, but it could still leak.” I felt a tear run down my face. “Look, Corinna,” Auntie Jenny hugged me from the side. “Like I said, AIDS is a cruel disease. It’s not fair. But the other kids need to be kept safe. Understand?” I sighed as I answered “Yes ma’am.” “If she’s that dangerous, why didn’t the hospital keep her?” Van-van asked. “You do realize that there are a lot of people with HIV now, don’t you? They wouldn’t have enough beds. They are probably just going to see if she is active and if she can give it to us. There is no question that she has the HIV part. Her mother has it, so she definitely has it. You used the same toilet and bath until the accident, right?” I sighed and nodded. “She changed you all the time when you peed and pooped your pants?” “I…,” I looked down. If I denied pooping, would she send me away? “Yeah, she changed me.” “There is no doubt you have the HIV thing, honey. But not everyone with HIV has active AIDS, and so you can’t have kids, ever. It wouldn’t be fair to your kids, or to a man that had them with you. You’d make the man sick and all your kids sick.” I felt a tear run down my cheek. I didn’t think about having kids at nine years old, but I understood that it meant that there was something I was supposed to do that I could never do without causing hurt. “I… I accidentally peed on Jason,” I looked over at him. “He’s not sick, is he?” “I’ll probably have to have both him and Van-van checked later in the week, honey. You’ve peed the bed and peed on Van-van since you got here, and you’ve peed on Jason several times. I should actually get Theo checked too, because you have sat on the toilet a couple of times, and he took a bath after you a couple of times. So from now on, you get a bath after everyone else.” “Okay.” “I’ll have to report this to the school, too. Actually, I think it might be best to keep you home for a week and pretend you are sick. And if the tests come back good, then you can go to school the following week. The school will still need to know to take precautions and not change you anymore.” “Oh. Yeah. I understand,” I mumbled. “I mean…, honestly,” Jason frowned. “She should probably be changed, though. If she’s peed on me and has it, then honestly, like you said, I have the HIV anyway, right?” “Maybe not, Jason. We have to get you tested to see.” “Okay. But if I have it, I could change her. It won’t change me getting it or not if I have it.” Auntie Jenny sighed and nodded. “We’ll see. We’ll all get tested first.” “But what about the HIV thing?” “Jason, just trust Auntie. We will all get tested and talk to the doctors about it.” “Yes ma’am.” Great. So I maybe gave everyone HIV, and there’s a chance since I peed on Jason again, that I gave him the worst thing called AIDS. All of this on top of my mom dying, the social worker acting like mommy is bad, I have to now… even if I wanted to fight back… I can’t use the toilet or I might give someone else the sickness, and I… I am going to lose my mommy and I couldn’t help but start crying again. Van-van moved to get closer to me, but Auntie stopped her. “No, Van-van. She’s dangerous right now. You take Theo and Jason and go play. I’ll take care of her.” “Won’t she give you HIV though?” Jason asked. “I sighed up for this, though. Someone has to take care of her, so I guess I’ll have no choice. Actually, Jason, I’d like you to watch the girls for about twenty minutes. Corinna and I are going to the drug store.” “Yes ma’am.” I was in the car, in the backseat while Auntie drove to the drugstore. I felt a heaviness in my heart and in my head. It was like they had taken all of Antarctica, that whole land of ice, and strapped it on my shoulders with the cold being fed directly to my brain. Major brain freeze and a huge headache at the same time made it impossible to think. My heart was heavy with my mom’s situation and with the idea I’ll never have a friend ever again. This AIDS and HIV thing seemed like it was going to rip every last bit of being human away from me and leave me as nothing but a shell of something. It was like that old nineteen eighties black knight thing from Star Wars. I had never actually seen the movie, but someone told me that the black knight thing actually had nothing underneath it, like a ghost. I didn’t understand, but I felt as empty as I could imagine that armored thing to feel. “Corinna,” Auntie Jenny called at me as though she had said my name a few times. I must have missed it. The Ice storm and the heaviness of the world seemed to have robbed me of my senses for a bit. “Yes, ma’am?” I tried to be as soft and respectful as I could. “Until we know what is going on, it’s going to be hard to look after you for a while. You’re going to have to be extra careful and listen to my directions very carefully,” Auntie told me from the driver seat. “Okay.” We were at a red light. We were in the town where the school was, a very small town where they only had one food and drug store in the whole place. “I don’t want you trying to use the toilet until the tests come back. You might make someone sick.” “I… I heard you earlier,” I whispered. “Okay. It’s just, it’s really important, child. Honestly, knowing you have something like this, I should have sent you away and to the hospital right away, but there is no guarantee the hospital would even take you, and I know that no one else would willingly take such a sick child.” “I… I understand.” I also worried that the new people, if I were sent away, wouldn’t let me see mama anymore. “I think it might be best if you stay in the car while I get the stuff for you.” “Why?” “What if you pee all over the floor?” Auntie Jenny frowned at me. The light turned green. “You’d get your sickness all over the floor, and then the person that cleaned it up might get sick and then spread it to his family.” “Oh,” I shivered. How could I have something so troublesome? Why? I didn’t do anything that bad, did I? I looked up through the roof of the car, and tried to imagine the heavens. It was getting dark. “I really hope you don’t pee in the car, either. If another kid sits in your pee, you could make them sick.” “I… I’ll try not to,” I whimpered. “Okay, baby. I’m not trying to scare you or make you feel bad. But this is a very serious matter. I wouldn’t even bother you with it, except you are the one that has the problem. If you are not careful, you will hurt others.” “I don’t want that,” I looked down. “I know, honey.” She went into the store by herself, and I sat in the car for a bit. I thought a little bit. Van-van didn’t deserve to get sick. She and Jason kept trying to tell me how not to get in a bad place. I wish I was at the hospital right now, then I could just run away, and I’d know where the hospital was to sneak in and see mom. But here, I was so far from it. I had no idea of where to even start to run to get there. I sighed as I looked out the window at the setting orange and red sky. The Sun had already hidden itself, but the lights as only just there. Auntie Jenny was in the store for a while. I had heard that people hitch-hiked in the seventies. It was only nineteen eighty. I could probably get back where my mama was, if I hitched to the right town, and then found someone that knew the hospital. Maybe I should run away. Auntie was taking a while….

I'm not going to go any further in the tests for HIV positive or determining if Corinna suffers from AIDS, partly because I don't even know what all the procedures they had available to them in 1980. But I was sure about the blood test, and they almost always did urine tests for everything. The machine was to look for trouble in her digestion track... just to make sure if she had AIDS, it wasn't causing problems there... But that is all I would know to think about it. No. Corinna doesn't have AIDS though. I mean, losing a mom and being put in the system is enough for one person to have to deal with. She doesn't need AIDS on top of it. I know no one asked, but figured I'd go ahead answer that question for the readers since the story is already pretty depressing. So yeah... spoiler alert, but I think it's an important one since some people might have a hard enough time reading this story as it proceeds forward. I don't really plan to say much about Carl once he is gone, to be honest. Though he could resurface later on... if I run out of material and need a filler chapter later on. Yeah. And Corinna is not out of the woods here. She has her mommy still... for now.... She just can't see her very often. That part is sad. But yes, it will get harder before it gets better.

Chapter Nine The Real Reason Mommy Isn’t Coming Home I felt myself starting to stir awake. I felt my stomach tight and the bedding around me completely soaked. My eyes were still closed, looking at the darkness that was starting to lighten behind my eyelids. I could smell the stink of pee. I rolled into the larger body of the girl I shared a bed with, and instinctively, it felt, her arm reached around me and pulled me closer to her. There was a huge puddle I was pulled into further wetting my undershirt and panties. The girl was breathing heavily. I knew she was still sleeping even before I opened my eyes and saw the messy hair over her face. I felt my body squirt a little bit. I knew I was about to do it. I didn’t want to pee on her on purpose. I tried to scoot away, but her grasp seemed to tighten on me. I shivered. Her eyes were still closed, and her breathing was still heavy. How could she cling to me so strongly while she was asleep? I felt a little more pee from me, but then, the bed started to get more wet. It wasn’t just me. She was peeing fully… not holding back at all. I opened my eyes again, and saw she was still breathing heavily and her eyes were closed, but all the time, I was getting wetter and wetter, until my own body couldn’t take it anymore, and I started to pee for real, too. I’m not sure how long I lay there, being held in the puddle we both just made. I think she peed herself twice counting just now, and I know I did… if not maybe I might have peed three times. Finally, as I lay there, the girl’s breathing starting to shift and shake a little bit, her eyes slowly opened. “I think I wet in my sleep,” she whispered shaking a little bit. “Yeah…,” I whispered back. “But you are at Auntie Jenny’s house, remember? You are supposed to pee the bed sometimes, right?” She visibly relaxed, and when she did, I felt more pee escape her body. She fully peed herself, and then sat up. I sat up, and pulled the blankets back to reveal a huge lake all over us, and badly stained sheet. I looked up at her. I felt a little bit scared, but she pulled me over and into her soaked lap. “It’s okay,” Van-van told me. “We are supposed to pee our pants. You all the time, and me sometimes. That’s how we stay in this safer home. You trust me, don’t you?” I nodded at her. I knew that she honestly believed she was in a safe place, and from what I could tell, probably the safest place she’d ever been in. I was glad I didn’t get hit for wetting the bed. I couldn’t help it. It looked like Van-van couldn’t help it last night. She said she’d do it on purpose, but I caught her just before she was awake, peeing in her sleep. “What do we do now?” I asked her. “We can go see if Auntie is awake,” she whispered to me. “Auntie won’t be mad. You are uncomfortable, right? You peed and I peed on you.” I nodded. “You didn’t pee on me.” Van-van looked at me a little bit of a question reaching her raised eyebrows. “I mean, you accidentally peed the bed,” I whispered. “But I’m the one that rolled into you before I was fully awake, and then you hugged me, and then I started to pee a little and then you peed, and then I finished, and then I thought you finished, but when you woke up, you peed the rest.” Van-van nodded. “I almost forgot where I was. You told me I was at Auntie’s house, and then I realized I was safe, but I shouldn’t have relaxed. It made the rest of the pee come out.” “But you are supposed to pee on purpose, too,” I reminded her. “It’s okay you peed. I’m not grossed out. I keep wetting the bed, and I peed on you a bunch of times.” “Yeah,” she rubbed my back because I still hadn’t gotten off of her yet. We were both soaked, so it didn’t matter to me. “Morning, girls,” Auntie was standing at the door, and we hadn’t noticed. “You both wet your pants?” she asked us. “Um… Van-van was sleeping,” I said quietly. “I know, baby,” Auntie walked over to us. “I heard everything, baby. I know you peed yourselves a couple of times last night. So I think maybe you both should get a bath.” “You really aren’t mad, right?” I asked a little nervous she knew I peed more than once. “Of course not, sweetheart. You are a baby. I expect you to be wet in the mornings. And Van-van is little, too. Sometimes, she still has accidents, honey. It’s okay. You are not in any trouble, babies.” Auntie pulled me out of Van-van’s wet lap, and held me, and then she reached her hand down to get Van-van. It looked like she was carrying a two year old and holding a three year old’s hand, the way she took us to the bathroom. Jason walked past us as he came out of the bathroom, and he smiled. “Theo-the wet the bed, too Auntie.” “Tell Theo that he can take a bath after I get these two cleaned up,” she smiled at Jason. “And you?” “Theo-the accidentally wet on me.” “Then you can use a bath, too. Don’t worry about it, okay?” “Yes, Auntie Jenn.” Auntie walked us on to the bathroom, and set me down by the tub, then she turned and started to help Van-van get her clothes off of her. “Honey, stop struggling,” Auntie told Van-van. “You are soaked, baby. You’re going to get frustrated. Let Auntie do it.” Van-van looked at the floor but stopped trying. Auntie was pretty practiced at getting the clothes that clung to her off of her. It was so easy, that even if you didn’t know how Auntie was, you could tell she had changed even kids our age plenty of times with how easily she got Van-van’s sleeping shirt and panties off of her. I didn’t even try. I just stayed still and let her take my clothes off. If she undressed Van-van, then I figured she was going to undress me, too. She stayed in the bathroom with us this time, and even decided to get the rag and start soaping it up--sitting on the side of the tub only a moment after Van-van and I were settled in the tub. Van-van didn’t even reach for a cloth to wash, but I started to…. “No, sweetie,” Auntie Jenny smiled at me. “Not this morning, baby. This morning, Auntie is going to clean you. You were soaked this morning, and it even got in your hair, so I’m going to bathe you both.” I looked down. “Okay.” “Don’t be sad, sweetheart. No one is mad. I just don’t want you to have to be dirty and smelly all day, baby.” She hugged me lightly pulling me towards her and getting her shirt wet since I was in the bath. Then she started to wash Van-van again. Carl came into the bathroom on us. “You don’t expect me to wait out there until you are done and poop my pants, do you?” he frowned in our direction. I think the frown was at Auntie. “No, Carl. You can use the toilet. The girls don’t know any better anyway, they are babies. You just look at the door and not over here, since you are a big boy. Big boys shouldn’t see girls’ bodies.” He looked away. “Okay, well, I wasn’t trying to. It’s just I had to go….” He sat on the toilet and started to go. I didn’t really care what he was doing. I was glad I was in the bath though. Somehow…. It was kind of weird him seeing me even with just my top showing over the tub. I think he saw me before, but today, it felt a little weird. “What are we doing today?” I asked Auntie. “Well, Van-van, Carl, Theodore, and Jason are going to probably go to the park and play and maybe see a movie.” I smiled. “That seems nice.” “But if the social worker worked her magic, then you, little one, are going to get to go visit your mother. You’d like that…?” I got really excited. “Really? Is she better?” “I don’t know any details,” Auntie settled me. “I think you are still staying with me. They just think maybe you can see your mom. I told her how hard it’s been for you to adjust, so bad, that you’re wetting your pants at school because of it.” I looked down. “I always pee my pants at school.” Auntie hugged me again. “No one is upset at you, baby. Even if you peed your pants at school before this, I know a part of your acting out and having issues like I see your thumb in your mouth all the time, is that you miss your mama. It’s natural, sweetie. Remember, you are allowed to be a baby here, and do whatever it takes to cope with being separated from your mama, okay?” I nodded. “Even if you poop your pants on accident, baby.” I haven’t even done that yet. Why is she…? Oh…. I get it. She says what she wants me to do to be a baby. That’s what Van-van has kept saying since I got here. When she suggests something, she doesn’t say it like she’s telling me to do it, but I’m supposed to understand, that’s what she wants. Okay. I don’t know if I can poop my pants or not, but I can put my fingers in my mouth… I guess. I put my first finger on my left hand in my mouth. I guess it wasn’t that bad. I don’t know, really, why babies do it. It doesn’t really have a taste. Still, she wanted me to be a baby, so I kept my finger there until she was done getting us out of the tub. The morning seemed to go by in a haze, or at least until about ten. We had had breakfast, were watching television and playing with toys, and yeah, I decided if Auntie wanted me to be a baby so much, I played with all the toys… the big girl toys and the baby ones, too. I mean… it wasn’t really that bad playing with the toys. Then, the social worker came to the house and knocked on the door. “Good morning, Mrs. Peterson,” I heard Auntie at the door while we were forced to wait in the living room watching Saturday morning cartoons, which were almost over by then. “I have Corinna ready to go. She’ll be wet at least two or three times today, so I have packed a bag for her for you. She really does pee herself all the time.” “Oh, yeah, about her. I might have found a place for her….” “Don’t you dare take her out of my home,” Auntie said. “She’s fragile and scared enough as it is. We spoke last night about Carl though. He could go there, if they’ll take a boy.” “They said they’ll take either a boy or a girl, and honestly, a boy that has less peeing problems will be a lot less trouble for them.” “Then they can take Carl. The sooner the better. He isn’t a good fit here. He is always making fun of Corinna, and though Corinna is a short term stay, he makes fun of Theodore and Vanessa, too. He’s just too much trouble.” “Alright. I’ll try to get them to take him by tomorrow if that works for you.” “Yes, that’s wonderful.” They were walking into the living room as they spoke, Auntie had handed her a bag with clothes in it for me, and then we were on the road to see my mom at the hospital. “Mrs. Peterson?” I addressed her while we were driving in the car. “Um… I… I think I have to pee my pants on purpose at that crazy lady’s house.” “What do you mean, child?” “Well…. It’s just…. I don’t know. It’s like I’m supposed to wet my pants. Vanessa even tells me if I don’t do it on purpose at least sometimes, I might get in trouble.” The lady frowned and looked at me for a moment, as though she was considering what I said. She looked back at the road, and then she sighed. “You pee the bed, naturally, don’t you?” “Yeah?” “You wet your pants at your old school quite often?” “Yeah?” “And when I took you to her house a few days ago, you had admitted to peeing your pants all day and even peed in my car?” “Um…,” I sniffled thinking I understood what she was getting at. “Look, baby, I know that you are going through a hard time. Lying about how you are treated at someone’s house is not going to make your mom well enough to take you in sooner. She’s one of the nicest people in the system, and the only one, I know of at the moment that won’t spank you for wetting the bed.” “I… I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know, sweetheart. You miss your mama, and you can’t help thinking anything to get back to your mama. But lying won’t help and causing trouble with someone nice like her could end you up in a worse place. You understand?” I gulped. Vanessa was right, then. There are worse places. Jason didn’t just tell me to pee myself to be mean, then. He really did mean it when he said he’d wet his pants if it meant he got to stay there. I nodded. “I’m sorry. I just got embarrassed because I peed my pants yesterday and thought she told you.” I probably didn’t have to say all that, but I felt compelled to give her a reason for my “lies.” “Sweetheart, she’s told me you haven’t had a dry day, and that’s okay,” Mrs. Peterson smiled at me. “It’s not your fault. You probably need to see a doctor or something, but for now, let’s focus on one problem at a time, okay?” I nodded. “Don’t worry about wetting your pants today…, especially if you get scared. I’ll be in the room with you as much as I can, so just tell me if you have an accident, okay?” I nodded. “Okay. I will.” “Now, be careful around your mommy, too. Don’t climb all over her. She’s not in good condition at all.” “Oh,” I looked down at the floor. “So she’s not coming home soon?” “I’m afraid not. I’ll let the doctors explain it when we get there though. I don’t know all the details yet.” I heaved a deep sigh. Was mama going to be in the hospital for a month or longer? When we got to the hospital, I was already undoing the seat belt even before we stopped, and I swung the door open as soon as the car was off. I was already at Mrs. Peterson’s side when she was shutting her door pulling at her hand to get inside. “Hey,” she whispered. “Honey, slow down. You’ll see your mama, honey. Remember though, this is a hospital, and we can't run everywhere.” “Yes, ma’am.” I was glad when we finally got to mama’s room, and I ran to her bedside. Then, I froze and I started to actually realize that something was wrong. She didn’t have this many machines hooked up to her when I last saw her. Her eyes were open, but she had a funny tube in her throat. It was like they put a new hole in there. My eyes watered. “Mama?” My mama’s talking was raspy and hard to hear over the breathing. “Baby?” I leaned in and hugged her and she hugged me back. “Are they treating you alright?” I started to shake my head, but seeing the machines in the room and the tube in her throat, the line from the dripping machine to her arm, and other wires from two other machines going to her body, I took a breath. “I’m fine,” I lied. “I just miss my mama.” “I know, baby. I miss you too,” mama seemed to need to breath between every word or two. “You have more stuff hooked to your body,” I commented. “Yeah,” mama wheezed at me. “There were other things that they found after the surgery.” “Other things?” She smiled. “Yeah, just some things that make it harder. Don’t worry, sweetheart.” I frowned and looked at the floor. I felt something come over me, though. I couldn’t explain the feeling. It was a sadness but also a comfort at the same time. I knew that mama wasn’t ever coming home ever again. But I also knew that this wasn’t the last time I’d see her. It wasn’t the last, but I also knew her end was soon. I don’t really know how I knew it. I just did. Still, I felt a sadness but also a peacefulness. I sighed deeply and kept hold of mama’s hand. Mrs. Peterson came into the room and sat quietly in a chair. “Your child needs a supervising adult with her,” she told my mama. “You are in no condition to mind your child, so I’m here. You can ignore me, though.” Mama nodded. “I’m sorry they had to let you stay with a stranger,” mama wheezed at me. “It’s okay,” I smiled trying to be as cheerful as I could… for mama. “There are kids there, at least. I have someone to play with.” “That’s good, then,” mama smiled at me. “And the girl I share a room with doesn’t even call me names when I pee the bed,” I whispered. “That makes me happy, sweetheart.” Mama listened to me ramble for a bit until the doctor came in, and the social worker stood up making me go quiet. I wanted to know. “The injury itself has been repaired,” the doctor told the social worker. “However, while we were operating, we noticed that things were not going well. It led us to doing other tests. Unfortunately, this lady has HIV, and it’s one of the reasons her body is having a hard time recovering.” “What’s that?” I asked having never heard of HIV before that. “It means your mama is really sick,” the doctor frowned at me. “It’s okay. She can’t give it to you or we wouldn’t have let you visit. But it’s a very difficult sickness.” I shivered. “We probably have to test you, too.” “Test me?” “Honey, we’ll explain everything in a bit. Of course, we need your mama’s consent to test you and possibly treat you though. That’s one of the reasons we reached out to social services to ask them to bring you in.” My mama looked over at the doctor. “How likely is she to have it?” “We can’t answer that, ma’am,” he told her. “She hasn’t been sick a lot, though, has she?” “No. No more than any other child as far as I know.” Mama’s breathing was still wheezy. “Well, sometimes, people are just carriers, and sometimes depending on when you got it, you get lucky and your baby might not have it.” Mama got tears in her eyes. “What is HIV?” I asked Mrs. Peterson. “It’s what causes AIDS,” she whispered. It being the 1980s, when a lot of things like that were either hyper protected from children or the worst myths possible were stated, I found that I was the over protected type and didn’t even know what that is. “AIDS?” I asked. “It’s a sickness that makes your body unable to recover when you are sick or hurt,” the doctor told us all. “It can cause a simple cold that one person might get and recover from in two days, to become so bad that you are hospitalized for it.” I looked from the doctor, to Mrs. Peterson, and then to mama. “She’s not going to die, though?” “Not right away,” the doctor told me. “We are doing what we can for her. But yes, this disease can cause other diseases to kill you. Her days are numbered.” I looked down. I knew she had limited time left. I felt it. Still, hearing the words like that…. I guess hearing it was worse, and I didn’t want it to be true, even if I had known it when I walked in. I started to feel my eyes tear up. “Hey,” Mrs. Peterson hugged me. “It’s okay. Your mama is still here, isn’t she? You can talk to her. You have time. Make the best of it, honey. Once it’s gone, you will have plenty of time to cry.” I walked back slowly to mama. “Does it hurt?” “No,” she wheezed. “Why come you got a tube in your throat, though? Is that part of the sickness?” “No, baby,” Mama took her time to explain. “The tube is helping me breathe. The doctors are still looking into what caused my throat to close up on me, but they have a lot of stuff to look at. They fear that it could have been caused by several things.” “You can’t move, can you?” I asked her seeing how she was laid there, tied to all these machines to help her. Then I notice a bag on the side of the bed that had yellow stuff in it. I shivered. I didn’t want to think about what was in the bag. It wasn’t blood. Then I saw the red stuff in the dripping machine and I understood. She was getting blood! “No, sweetheart. Mama can’t move too much. I can sit up, though, and I can hug you. You could sit in my lap.” The doctor heard this for he was still right there, and he started to step forwards, then he frowned and decided not to stop it. He whispered. “Someone needs to lift you carefully and put her gently on the bed next to her. Do not sit on her, honey. It’s not safe.” I nodded. I looked at Mrs. Peterson, and then at the doctor. He was big and strong. “Can you do it?” He rubbed his arm sort of like he was thinking about it. In the end though, he came and as he picked me up, he whispered. “Only for a moment. I have to get back to others in a minute, and I don’t want you moving off of your mama on your own, okay?” I nodded. I sat on mama’s bad, and she hugged me as I told a little bit about the house, but left out the stuff that might make mama sad. “There’s this bell in the middle of the house, a kind like a triangle thing, that has a string on it that causes us to hear it from upstairs. We get called down at once using the bell like when it’s time to eat.” Mama smiled at me as I started to tell her things like that. “And there is a farm. They have chickens, cows, and horses. I tried to milk a cow….” Mama smiled and whispered. “My little girl, I am so proud of you. You are learning so many things. You will continue to grow up and be a big girl and become a wonderful woman.” The doctor had to take me off of mama’s bed though, and we had to continue visiting with me just standing by mama’s bed. I peed my pants, but I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t want to leave mama’s side, and I figured they could just change me when we left the hospital. I didn’t care if I wore wet pants all day. I think I was there for about two hours, when the doctor came back in. “Say your goodbyes, sweetheart,” he smiled at me. I think he looked right at the puddle on the floor from me peeing my pants, but he didn’t say anything about it. “But… I want more time,” I whispered. “Your mama isn’t going to die tomorrow,” he promised me. “We’ll set up some more time next weekend, sweetie.” I started to cry and Mrs. Peterson had to pick me up and carry me out of the room. She could tell I peed by then because she was holding me, but she didn’t say anything at the moment. She just took me to a waiting room, and then sat down and pulled me into her lap and shushed me until I stopped crying. “You can see your mama next weekend,” she whispered to me. “Don’t worry, we are keeping tabs on your mama. If anything happens, we’ll pull you out of school if we have to, so you can see your mama before anything serious happens.” I knew she really meant, before he dies, when she said that, though. I wasn’t stupid. “But I still want my mama,” I whined. “I know, baby. I know. It’s hard when you have a parent in the hospital, especially if they can’t come home soon.” “You mean, when you know they aren’t coming home ever again,” I whispered. “Oh, baby!” she hugged me again and pulled me all the way over and gave me a very full hug, my stomach on hers, her arms around my little body, and her face on my cheek. I think she even kissed me. “It is hard,” she whispered. “But you’ll find the strength to get through it, honey.” “So, I thought the hospital had to test me?” “That’s why we didn’t go the car yet, sweetheart. We’re waiting for your number to be called now.” “Oh. But I peed my pants,” I looked down at my wet clothes. “I know, honey. The doctor is used to it though. Lots of kids pee their pants at the hospital.” I looked up at her sideways wondering about that. Even if they did, didn’t their parents change them? “I have clean clothes with us, don’t I?” “Sweetheart, your clothes are in the car, and if we go out to get them, we might miss when they say your name. Just wait. It shouldn’t take that long. Besides, with as long as it might take, you could end up peeing again in your pants.” I frowned. I didn’t like peeing my pants, and I normally didn’t do it. But then I remembered. “If you don’t pee enough,” both Van-van and Jay-jay’s faces were just invisible in my inner eye. “You might not be kept. You might go somewhere worse. You need to be a baby if you don’t want to end up somewhere worse….” I sighed and nodded up at her. I probably do have to pee my pants again, sometime. I just really hope it won’t be at the hospital again. I hate people seeing me as a little kid that can barely control herself, like… like a two year old or maybe worse, even. “Ms. Phillips. Corinna Phillips?” my name was finally called and a nice young woman walked over our way as Mrs. Peterson signaled that we were about to get up. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the nurse. “Sorry?” she asked looking at me a little confused… I think. “Well, because,” I put my hands on my pants by the wetness area. She smiled and winked at me. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s not a big deal.” I nodded and Mrs. Peterson took me by the hand and led me down the hall to see a doctor. “I’m going to do a few different tests,” the doctor told me in front of Mrs. Peterson. “First of all, we have to do a blood test to see if you even have the stuff in your blood.” “That’s where you poke a needle in my arm, right?” I looked up at him trying to prove I was brave and wasn’t scared of no little needle prick. “Yes, sweetie. You will have to give us a small amount of your blood, and then we’ll do some other tests.” “Yeah, okay. My mommy signed the papers, right?” “Of course,” the doctor smiled. “We couldn’t go forward without that. You seem really quick for a child of your years.” I frowned and looked down. “I might look small to you, but I’m almost ten years old.” “Okay…,” the doctor smiled at me. “So can you sit still and hold your arm out like this?” He took my blood and then they took some other measurements. They weighed me and took my height, and they took my temperature. I was probably a little small for a lot of kids my age, but I felt like a big girl anyway. He then asked for me to wait in the waiting area again. Once again, Mrs. Peterson put me in her lap. She rubbed my back and spoke with me. “You are a brave girl,” she told me. “When I was your age, I hated needles. I still do.” “But you don’t cry no more.” “No. But I don’t watch them put it in, either like you did.” I shrugged. “If it hurts, it hurts. Watching them put it in isn’t going to make it hurt less.” Mrs. Peterson frowned. I wasn’t so sure I said anything wrong though. They put me on a bed thing and ran a thing on my stomach like a plastic flat toy thing that connected by wire to a TV screen, and I think they looked around inside me. I couldn’t really tell what they were looking for. Then they made me wait until I could pee. I had to pee my pants, though, at least some, or I might get put in a bad place, so I… I didn’t get the cup until I had peed enough to wet my pants, and then I looked up at Mrs. Peterson. “I’m peeing my pants,” I told her. “Honey!” She took me to the front and asked for a cup. “I’m sorry it might be too late. She’s already started to pee her pants, but she’s acting like she still has to go.” The nurse gave us the cup, and we walked to the bathroom. I kept letting some out though on the way because I had to pee my pants and it had to look like I couldn’t control it… or I wouldn’t be a baby. And then, I don’t know if I’d ever see my mommy again. We got into the bathroom and Mrs. Peterson pulled my pants down, but I had already peed and it did get harder to stop it when I got it going the last time, so I didn’t have any left. “I’m… I’m sorry,” I told Mrs. Peterson. “I peed my pants. I couldn’t hold it.” She hugged me, and brought me back to the front. “I’m sorry. She’s been having bladder issues since at least the other day when she was placed in foster care. I’m not sure if it’s because of mental problems from her missing her mom, or if she’s had these problems before.” “Well, we’ll have to talk to the doctor. You can take her and wait in the waiting area for a bit longer.” Mrs. Peterson picked me up even though I’d completely just peed my pants, partly on purpose, but then lost control as it got going and went all the way. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispered to me as she carried me to the chairs and sat me down in her lap again. “I know you’ve been having wetting issues, and your mom did tell me to find someone that wouldn’t punish you, so you’ve been wetting yourself for a while, right?” “I’ve always wet the bed,” I offered. That part was true. “You peed your pants at school, too,” she prodded. I nodded, though I didn’t tell her why. “It’s okay. We’ll do what we can to get you checked later on for that, too, sweetheart.” I just looked down. They would eventually find out I’m peeing my pants on purpose, but for now… that was a problem for another time.

Chapter 8 I’m Safer Doing This? I was watching television with Van-van in the living room, Van-van also playing around with this ring toy with a peg on a base. You know, the baby ring stacking game thing, that had five rings of different sizes, and was meant for babies to order them from largest ring on the bottom to the smallest on the top. This show with cute little bear-like beings with decals on their tummies, and when shown to the cartoon kids, seemed to be half the kids’ heights, was going around helping people with feelings. “I’m gonna do it,” Van-van suddenly announced at the room though only I was around to hear her. Carl…, I don’t know where he went off to, and Jason had Theo upstairs supposedly giving him a bath, still. Auntie, I think, went outside to check on something on the farm. “Do it?” I asked looking over at Van-van who had shifted to being on her knees, and was hovering her butt a bit. She looked up at me with sort of a naughty glint in her eye. “Yeah. I’m gonna do it.” I frowned. I guessed she meant she was going to pee her pants. Jason said she was going to do that sometime tonight earlier. “You don’t have to say it, do you?” “What?” she smiled up at me and put a finger in her mouth. I shrugged. “Well, if you’re gonna do it, then do it, I guess.” She nodded and I saw her face starting to get a little bit red. At first, I thought it was due to embarrassment, but then I started to smell something. “You’re not…?” She looked at me, and then lowered her reddened face and seemed to concentrate a little more before I heard some popping and rumbling from her bottom before the waters started to squirt through her clothes—she was wearing a skirt, and as the waters squirted off and on, I heard more loud popping as she seemed to readjust, scrunch her face up, it getting a deeper red, and then the smell got worse. I watched, wondering how on earth she could do that. Just like that. On purpose…, she was pooping her pants? The water that squirted started to take on a brown hue rather than a clear one, and that’s when I was sure she had started to poop her pants! She was doing it, and she wasn’t even finished. I turned away to the television trying to ignore what she was doing. I felt really hot in my own face, and a bit of sadness tugged at my insides as I realized she wasn’t even going to stand up and try to go potty after starting. She just squatted there like that, adjusting from time to time, but forcing herself to fully do it. I don’t know how long I stared at the television trying to ignore her before she sniffled as though about to cry. I didn’t know what to do. She chose to do it. She even acted like she was being naughty and doing it on purpose, but now… she was acting sad and about to cry? I got up and looked around but Jason seemed to still be upstairs and Auntie was probably still outside in the yard. I sighed and walked over reaching for her hand. “Van-van? Come on. We need to go outside and find Auntie.” Van-van looked up at me with sparkling teary eyes and reached her hand up at me to help her up. Her hand felt wet. She must have had her hands in her crotch while she peed. I mean, I guess it’s natural if it’s an accident and you try to hold it…, only she didn’t try to hold it, did she? I tried to ignore that her hand had pee on it, but the back of my mind was screaming at me that it was gross. Her hand had pee on it, and I was holding it because she was acting a lot more like a baby right now than I ever thought needed, and she needed to get Auntie’s help. I wasn’t going to change her! We walked around outside, Van-van still sniffling, and trying to find Auntie. I don’t think we were out there more than five minutes, but in that time, her sniffling when from trying to hold back, to a small little whiny sound, to starting to actually cry. “Oh, babies!” Auntie seemed to come out of nowhere. “What’s wrong?” “Um…. Van-van went potty,” I whispered and looked down at her skirt. “In the potty?” Auntie seemed to feign like she didn’t know. “No?” I looked up at her wondering how she could not know why Van-van was crying, how she could miss that her butt of her skirt was soaked, and that she smelled really bad. “She went potty in her panties—in… in the living room.” Auntie got down to our level, and she smiled. “It’s okay, babies. That’s what babies do, isn’t it, sweetie. Auntie’s not mad.” I shivered. Auntie felt around at the back of my pants which were still damp from earlier peeing on Jason, and then felt the back of Van-van’s skirt, and then smiled nodding as though she was just understanding. “Did you have a little poopy accident?” she asked Van-van. Van-van just looked down at the ground. “It’s okay, baby. That happens to babies sometimes. It’s not your fault, sweetheart. Besides Jason was supposed to be in the bathroom with Theo.” Carl came out of nowhere at that moment, and he pulled a face as Auntie actually picked Van-van up to carry her. I thought she was old. How was she carrying Van-van so easily? “The baby pooped her pants?” he said though I thought I heard something a bit like a mean tone… sort of mocking behind the words. “Of course, she did,” Auntie Jenny frowned down at him. “Babies sometimes do that. Of course, you know better than to do that, so don’t worry about it. You’ll get your wish and be out of here on Monday.” I looked up at Auntie. “I thought that they couldn’t just move people suddenly.” “It’s hard, sometimes, but they do move kids if they know there is not a good match because they don’t want anyone to be mistreated. They know that naughty kids that are not happy in a place can make a lot of stress, and while that’s no excuse for abuse, they do like to prevent anything that can cause it just the same.” I frowned up at her. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, to be honest. I mean…, I doubted she’d ever actually hit Carl because after all, he mouthed off to her a bit earlier, and she just told him that he wins, and he can leave. She went to make the arrangements. She didn’t yell. She didn’t even say anything mean. She just said he won. But then again… the others warned me that Carl might go somewhere worse, and I wasn’t sure if Auntie understood that or not. “Does Carl really have to leave?” I finally asked as we got to the door of the house. “Honey, Carl doesn’t like it here,” she told me. She looked back at Carl to get his input. Carl shook his head. “Auntie’s rules are stupid and weird.” Auntie frowned at him. “Don’t tell the babies that the rules are stupid and weird just because you think you are too old to have them.” “But they aren’t babies,” Carl looked up at her. “Carl, sweetie, do me a favor….” “What?” “Feel between Corinna’s legs.” “Why?” “You say she’s not a baby. So if she’s not a baby, she should feel completely dry.” “I don’t have to feel her. She peed her pants earlier, remember?” “No, you don’t understand. Either feel her pants, or I’ll have to spank you for scaring her. You don’t seem to understand that the baby wet herself because she doesn’t know any better.” “I….” “I mean it, Carl. Feel her pants, or I’ll have to spank you for being mean. Corinna, let him check.” “I didn’t wet since Jason was holding me,” I whispered up. “It’s okay, honey. You’ll still be a little bit wet.” I sighed and stood there, waiting for Carl to check. His shaking hand paused near me, and he looked up at her again. “You don’t really want me to check her, do you?” “Do you want a spanking for being mean to the babies?” “No?” “Then you need to see if she is a baby. Check her pants. While you are at it, you will check Van-van, too.” I shivered. His hand reached my thigh, on the outside. It was shaking. “I… I don’t want to,” he whispered. “Okay. Spanking it is, then,” Auntie frowned. “I’m sorry that you feel like you have to be mean to the babies all the time. Look at Jason, Carl. He’s not a baby, but he doesn’t make fun of them, and he understands that they need to be taken care of. That’s why he stays around. He helps me with them.” “Okay, but didn’t he pee his pants at the table, too?” “He had an accident, Carl. He was watching the baby, and could see that I was upset and told him to go eat, so he didn’t feel comfortable stressing me out because he could see you were already giving me a hard time.” “And if he had went to the bathroom instead of peeing his pants?” Carl snarled. “Of course, I’d not say anything as long as he took the baby with him that I put him in charge of.” “But that would mean that Corinna would be forced to watch him in the bathroom.” Auntie sighed. “Carl, Corinna is a baby. She doesn’t care about him going to the toilet. She’d probably just start playing with her fingers or something until he was done.” Carl blew air through his cheeks in exasperation. I looked down, feeling a little bit like Carl. I didn’t want to watch Jason use the toilet on purpose. I wasn’t even sure Jason had peed. I think he made me pee on him so that it would look like he wet his pants because he didn’t want to do it for real. “Either way, Carl. This is your last chance. Either check Corinna’s pants or you will be spanked.” Carl sighed and he reached around and felt my bottom. “Her butt is wet.” “...And baby Van-van,” she squatted down so he could touch her on the butt. “No, Carl, under the skirt. The skirt is barely noticeable. You can’t tell she did it by touching her skirt.” “But…, didn’t she poop her pants?” Carl frowned up narrowing his eyes at both Auntie and Van-van. “You won’t know that unless you check, will you?” He sighed. He lifted her skirt completely up, so I saw her panties sagging on her, and the mess was very hard to miss. “Feel her butt. I mean it,” Auntie told him. He put his shaking hand on her butt. “Ew! She’s gross.” “She’s not gross,” Auntie said sharply at him. “She’s just had an accident. Now, tell her it’s okay, and that you are sorry right now.” “I… I’m sorry, Van-van. I know you can’t keep from doing that,” though I thought he said something else under his breath after that. If I had to guess, it was probably something like “...at least while you are stuck here with this crazy lady.” I shivered. “Well, I’m going to take the babies upstairs and see if Jason is done so I can get them clean. Carl, I want you to find the mess Van-van made in the living room and clean it up. You are supposed to be a big boy after all, right?” “Right.” And Auntie took us in the house and directly up the stairs, where we saw Jason taking Theodore to their room. “I didn’t even pee my pants,” I thought I heard Theodore telling Jason. “Buddy, yes you did,” he gave Theo a look that made him look down. “You just forgot about it. It’s okay. Babies don’t always remember that they wet, that’s why they sometimes wear wet pants and play like nothing happened.” Theodore was looking down when I actually saw him. Auntie squatted down and put Van-van on her feet, and then she motioned at Theodore. “Honey, don’t be scared that you pee your pants, okay?” Theodore walked over to her, looked up at her, and frowned. “Okay.” “Even little Jay-Jay has trouble sometimes if he’s flustered or scared. It’s fine, children. You are not going to get in trouble for having little potty accidents, okay?” Theodore nodded as he looked down sadly. I walked over and hugged him. “I wet my pants and the bed, and did it even before coming here,” I whispered to him. “You don’t have to worry. At least she doesn’t get mad at you for thinking you wet, right?” He looked at me seriously. “Did your mom hit you for wetting?” “No. But my old old school…,” but I looked down not wanting to go into how they were the ones that first didn’t let me use the bathroom, then blamed me, and then humiliated me for it. “My old school forced me to wet my pants sometimes, and then yelled at me and made fun of me for it.” He hugged me back. “But… they can’t do that.” “That because you not black,” I frowned at him. “What does that have to do with it?” “Everything,” I looked down. Auntie reached over and picked me up. “Well, that doesn’t happen at my house, baby,” she whispered to me. “You are a baby, and that’s sort of why you can’t control it very well, but it’s not right to force you to pee your pants on purpose and then yell at you for it. You will never be shamed in my house, and if the school hurts your feelings even if you do it on accident at school, one very upset Auntie will have people fired.” I shivered in her arms. “You can’t really do that, can you?” “Sweetheart, did any adult at school make fun of you or humiliate you in front of the whole class?” I shook my head no. “You better not be lying, sweetheart. You are not the one that will be in trouble if they humiliated my little baby Corinna.” “They didn’t. I promise. The teacher even comes by and checks that I didn’t pee before she calls on me to stand up for anything now. She said so yesterday, and she did it all day today.” “Alright, honey. You just tell me if any adults allow you to be bullied on purpose or worse, start the bullying. You are allowed to potty your pants, okay?” I nodded and looked at the floor blushing. “Okay, Jay-Jay, take Theo to the living room with some toys and you two play for a little bit while watching TV, okay?” “Yes, ma’am.” Auntie let me down out of her arms, and she took us into the bathroom. “No, Van-van, baby. Don’t do it on your own. You have messy panties that might spill on the floor. Wait for Auntie, okay?” Van-van nodded. “Corinna, if you are getting a little uncomfortable, you can go ahead and take off your pants if you want… unless you pooped in them.” “I didn’t,” I whispered my face a little red with heat. Maybe I was supposed to poop myself, too. Van-van did it. I saw her do it on purpose. I shivered as I pulled my pants down. Auntie ran the water, and she nodded at me to get in the tub. She watched me carefully, as though afraid that something might happen to me until I was in the water. “Alright, Van-van. Auntie is ready for you. Come here.” Auntie took her top off of her first, and her undershirt, and then she pulled her skirt down and off and carefully put it to the side. I could see some of the stuff on poor Van-van’s legs. She really did fully do it. Auntie cleaned off Van-van outside the tub with a wet towel, getting her in her butt and between her legs until she had no more poop on her, and all the while, reassuring her. “You know I’m not mad at all, don’t you sweetie?” she whispered to Van-van though I could still hear them. “You’re allowed to poop your pants, honey.” She nodded. “Especially because of the nightmare you had the other night. I don’t ever want you to be scared of that here. You had a nightmare about pooping your pants at the other place you were at, didn’t you?” Van-van looked at the floor and nodded. “Well, you are a baby, and I don’t even hit kids that are mature like Carl for pooping their pants. It’s wrong to hit like that, honey.” I felt a little something tug at me from inside when she said that. It was sort of reassuring that she thought even if I was a big girl, she wouldn’t be mad at me peeing my pants. “And that goes for you, Corinna. You can poop your pants, baby. And even if you get mature like Jay-jay, you are allowed to have accidents and wet or poop in your pants sometimes.” I nodded. I started to wonder if Jason really did wet his pants at the table. I didn’t feel him go on me. I was in his lap… but then I was already wet from him making me sit there and pee on him. Maybe he did wet? His pants butt was pretty wet…. After we had had a bath, Auntie took us to our room, nearly naked with only a towel covering us, and she dressed us both into pajamas, and then she called the other three kids up, even Carl, and she read to us. Theo fell asleep on our bed while she was reading, but she picked him up to take him to bed, and then she whispered to Carl. “Meet me in the living room. I’ll make a space for you to sleep in there so you don’t have to sleep with the little kids this weekend. I understand you are not a little kid, anymore.” Carl smiled and nodded when he got up and left the room. Jay-jay, Jason, got up and held Auntie’s arm. “Auntie? I… I’m still a little kid?” “Yes, Jay-Jay, you are. You aren’t going anywhere.” “Even though I… I’m not exactly a baby?” “Sweetheart…,” she hugged him. “Carl doesn’t understand how to treat babies, and I can’t have someone being mean to the babies in the house. You are a big boy, honey. And you just proved you pee your pants sometimes, still, which is okay. But I’m not sending you to anyone else until you at least stop peeing your pants. I wouldn’t want someone to hit you like has happened before, okay?” Jason nodded. “Yes ma’am.” She hugged him with one hand because the other hand was balancing Theo in her arms. She was really strong for a supposed older woman. Van-van and I were alone. “Do you see why you have to pee your pants at least twice a day?” Van-van asked me. I frowned at her. “Carl is going to be sent away, not because he didn’t wet, but because he was mean to me about doing it at school today, and about telling the whole class that you do it. He wouldn’t apologize, and he wouldn’t even pee his pants when I told him to, to prove that he was a baby and maybe didn’t understand how his actions were wrong.” “But I don’t usually wet my pants… I mean… unless someone makes me. I only wet the bed… on accident.” “I don’t know why, Corinna, that Auntie Jenny has decided you are more a baby than any of us, but if you stop peeing your pants in the day, she’ll feel lied to. You know, worse than Carl talking back at her earlier, she hates lying. You’ve got to keep peeing your pants. I’m sorry.” “I guess….” “You probably think it was gross what I did earlier?” I wrinkled my nose and looked down. Of course I did. There’s no way she could think I didn’t. “Well, it was gross,” Van-van admitted. “But you saw how much she cooed over us since then. Auntie is triggered by those kinds of things, and honestly, if you don’t start doing other baby things, she might feel lied to….” “You not saying I have to poop my pants on purpose, are you?” I asked a little bit scared. “No…? I mean, it would help your case if you pooped your pants, maybe by accident, from just holding it and holding it just before it comes out, asking and then it coming out before you get to the toilet…. But that’s not all there is to being a baby. Didn’t you see me messing around earlier before I pooped?” “You mean with the baby toy?” “Yeah. You should at least play with toys and your fingers, and maybe try to talk a little cuter and a little more… babyish, too.” “And if I do, I won’t go to a bad place that hits me?” “Well, there is no guarantee you will go to a place like that anyway, but it will be guaranteed that you won’t if you stay with Auntie.” “Oh.” “Look, even Jay-jay sometimes pees his pants. Not that often, but just often enough that Auntie still looks at him like a little boy. And Theo wets the bed all the time, and he listens to Jay-jay if he tells him to pee his pants sometimes.” I frowned. “Carl did listen to Jason for before this, and sometimes peed, but he’s been getting a bit against it now, for the last couple of weeks.” “He doesn’t like doing it,” I whispered. “Well, Jason doesn’t like doing it either, and I don’t think Theo likes doing it on purpose either. I don’t enjoy doing it myself, but I have to wet once in a while even if I don’t have a bad dream. You might not have caught on, but Auntie always protected me a little more than even Theodore, and she thinks of me as being more immature, so I have to haven an accident sometimes.” “So… do you poop your pants?” I asked my face red and hot. “Sometimes,” she looked down. “I don’t really enjoy it, and it’s kind of hard to do on purpose, sometimes, but I’d rather do that then go back to a place like before.” I smiled though my face was really hot. “Yeah. I think I get it. Jason told me about some of the places he was at. It’s really bad at some places, isn’t it?” “Yeah. So don’t worry if you pee the bed tonight. Oh, and fair warning, I’m going to wet the bed even if I have to do it on purpose tonight, so you might not want to sleep too close if you think being in someone else’s pee is gross.” “You don’t?” I asked frowning. “Well, I’ve shared a bed here with others, and you know Auntie. I got used to being peed on.” I frowned. “Jason made me pee my pants on his lap.” “Yeah. He’s done that with me before. I think it’s a way to look wet without lying to Auntie, who doesn’t really question it.” “But he said we wet,” I told her looking at my hands. “Then… he probably peed his pants, too. He does it only when he feel like he needs to… to make Auntie remember he’s a little boy. I mean, Carl is younger than him and was acting all big and stuff… so it makes sense that Jay-jay peed.” I sighed. “And you don’t think Auntie is wrong about making us do this?” “It’s not about what is right or wrong, for me,” Vanessa sat up in bed and explained it to me like I had no idea of what was going on. “It’s about what is safe. I know what Auntie wants, and as long as I pee my pants often enough, I won’t go somewhere where… they really hurt you. I actually like that I sometimes don’t have to worry, if like I’m at school and feel nervous leaving my seat, that if I wet, Auntie will be mad if the teachers make a big deal about it.” “You pee your pants at school?” “Sometimes. And when I have nightmares, I pee the bed.” “Well, I mean…. I guess it’s good to know I’ll never get yelled at or be hurt for having accidents at school,” I frowned. “And I do wet the bed, like all the time.” “It’s okay. You are a baby here, so you are supposed to do that anyway. So, you should actually try to be wet at least twice a day, and honestly, it would help your case, with Auntie, if you did poop sometimes in your panties, but that’s up to you.” I sighed and lie down to sleep. Wetting my pants and wetting the bed kept me in a safe place though, so I guess I should be glad that I already pee the bed all the time. I just had to get comfortable with letting myself pee my pants more often. But at least Auntie doesn’t hit.

Chapter Seven Why Do You Do It? I felt some kicking and moving next to me in the bed I shared with Vanessa. The kicking got so strong, I opened my eyes, and heard panic in her whispering mutters. Her hands were holding the sheets tightly, and as I tried to sit up, with her hands clenching the blankets so, it made it hard to do. I had to roll over a little bit and get out of the top two blankets in order to get free enough that I could finally sit up. She was shaking badly and her face was red, and obvious even in the dimly-lit room that otherwise, seemed to only have silhouettes of things. I touched her forehead, and it was hot. I hugged her as she continued to squirm, only my hug seemed to do what I wanted, and she didn’t kick as much. “No,” her whispered mutters were more understandable now, though not in any real sense. Just a word here or there. “Don’t!” she squirmed a bit. I whispered in her ear as I lay on her, practically. “I’m here, Van-van. You’re safe.” She whimpered. I whispered some more. “You’re at Auntie Jenny’s place,” I reminded her though I wasn’t sure why I chose to say that. “You’re safe. I’m here.” The whimpering got a little lighter. I pulled one her hands over my back as I lie on her, and I nestled her with my nose into her neck, and I relaxed on her. She started to relax. I woke up the next morning, as the sunlight hit the barricade made by the pink heavy curtain lightening the room a little more than the night before so that I could actually see objects, but still felt like it was dark. I was still nearly on top of Van-van, and I must have peed on her because my panties were soaked. I rolled over off of her, and that caused her to stir. She gasped as her eyes started to open, and then suddenly shot wide as she felt her hands under her. She shivered for a moment and looked around. She saw me, and she shook. “Don’t tell?” she whispered. “Tell?” I asked. “He said anyone else would… would…,” but before she got the words out, Auntie Jenny was at the door. She could see my clearly soaked panty-butt on display, and she saw Van-van shaking there, looking nervously as she bit her lip. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she walked over and sat on the edge of the bed on her side. Van-van’s eyes were wide and confused looking. “I peed on her,” I offered to try to calm things. Van-van said not to tell, so she was scared of something. Auntie knows I pee the bed, and she doesn’t do anything mean to me for it, so I thought maybe no one will get yelled out this way. “Honey,” Auntie looked at me directly for a second or two. “I’m talking to Van-van. Please hush, sweetie.” I looked down and hoped that Van-van had an out. “Auntie Jenn?” she whispered. “Are you going to send me back to… to that other place now?” “Send you back?” Auntie’s eyes knitted together. “You don’t mean to the people that beat you, do you?” Van-van nodded. “Because… because… I…. I did it.” “You did what, sweetheart?” she pulled Van-van into a sitting position and reached around her back as she did so. I saw now, that Van-van’s back was soaked, and that’s… well, more than I peed on her. I think she must have wet the bed. Still, Auntie was pulling her into her own lap, as if she was oblivious to Van-van having peed or even that I peed on her. “Tell Auntie Jenny what you did, sweetie.” “I… I peed on the bed,” Van-van whimpered. “...And you think that deserves a big punishment?” Van-van nodded sniffling. “Even if I agreed with you, I’d never send you back to that place, baby. You are my little girl, now. Understand? Even if you break a rule, or do something bad, or worse, even if you lie to me, you are my baby. I might punish you for something really bad, and you’d be in real trouble for lying, I’d never send you to a place like that. You are here, now, sweetie.” Van-van started crying. “You’re not in trouble for wetting the bed, baby. You are not even a teenager, yet, and I wouldn’t even spank a teenager for an accident in her sleep. I mean… honestly, even if you were awake, I’d have to hear the whole story, honey. Children you age don’t pee just to pee.” “Cor...corinna does,” she whimpered. “Yes. And Corinna’s mother knows why she does, or she wouldn’t have forbidden her getting punished for it. I don’t know the whole story, but honestly, Corinna is a baby, too. She might look nine years old, but she is a baby, honey.” “And me?” “You are a little girl, that had a nightmare, by the looks of it.” Auntie looked at me. I nodded. “She started kicking and squirming and whimpering in her sleep last night. That’s why I slept on her and accidentally peed on her. I think maybe I peed on her and caused her to wet.” Auntie Jenny smiled at me. “You might have peed on her, baby. But she’s a big girl. Your peeing had a lot less to do with it than the nightmare she had had.” I looked down. “Please don’t spank her?” “Sweetheart, no one is going to get spanked. She had gotten scared and was sleeping. You are a baby. So, no one is going to get in trouble for wetting the bed this morning. Now, be a good baby and get up so I can help Van-van to the bathroom. You both need a bath.” “Yes, ma’am.” When we had had a bath, Van-van was quiet the whole time we were in there, except to tell me how to move so she could clean me up. It was still her job to clean me up when I peed my pants or wet the bed. We finally came down the stairs, in nice clean clothes, me wearing a pink skirt and a purple top. “I know you boys heard Van-van crying this morning,” Auntie Jenny looked seriously at us all as we ate breakfast. “If I hear of anyone talking about what she was crying about, or that she had peed in her sleep, that person will not have snacks for the next two days, and will lose all toilet privileges here in the house for those same two days. Understand?” She looked around and thought she had seen Carl shrug, I think. At least I saw him shrug. “And if you think I won’t find out who did it, then all five of you will just piss your pants for the next two weeks. I’m sure that the others would give up the troublemaker if they know they’d have to wet their pants for the next two weeks to keep quiet for you.” Then Carl gulped. I saw it clearly. Auntie had dissuaded him by threatening everyone with even worse if it was kept quiet. I also saw Jason staring at Carl with evil in his eyes and mouthing something at him. Theodore was looking down red-faced. Van-van was looking down, red in her face, her eyes not seeming to dare to look up even at me. “Good. Now that’s out of the way,” Auntie went to her usual cheerful self. “Jason, Corinna is going to need your help a lot today. Van-van is in no condition to help her right now. She’s upset, and understandably so. She will not be helping out in the farmyard this morning or this afternoon because she needs me to talk to her about some private matters.” The other kids nodded. “However, now is a good time for Corinna to start to learn the chores on the farm. Jason, you can take her around with you this morning, and keep an eye on her. Let her just pee her pants because the farm work needs to get done, but when you are done, let me know if she needs changed for school.” Jason nodded. “I could just let her pull her skirt up and pee just in her panties….” “As long as she doesn’t show you her body.” He nodded. “Then go get the chores done.” Jason grabbed my hand and he patted me on the back. “It’s kind of hard work,” he told me. “The food is kind of heavy, but hard work is good for you. It makes you confident and capable.” I smiled up at him. “I’m not scared of hard work.” We first went to some kind of barrel with lots of garbage in it. “This is our left overs,” Jason told me. “We feed this to the pigs because they can eat nearly anything, and it makes less waste.” “That’s a lot though. We didn’t waste that much, did we?” “Well, we wasted some,” he smiled and patted my arm. “But we also ask the neighbors to put stuff in there, too.” “What neighbors?” I asked looking around at the large expanse of the farm. “Well, we do have a few neighbors, but they are a good hike away,” he told me. “The reason the bus comes out this far, is that there are like ten other children that live out this way. Not all of them have farms with pigs on them, so they are happy to have a place to dispose of uneaten garbage.” “So, we really have other kids around here we could play with?” “Well, I mean, the nearest house is like a twenty minute hike,” he smiled down at me. “But I do sometimes go to my friend’s house with permission. They sometimes take me home though when it gets dark so I don’t have to walk in the dark.” “Aren’t there snakes and stuff out here?” I saw some grass and wondered how they could keep wild animals out. “There are some…,” he nodded. “But as long as we are near the animals, the animals will alert us to danger before we even see the snake.” “Have you ever seen a snake?” He was carrying a heavy pail and I had a lighter wooden bucket in my hand both with pig slop in them. “Sure,” he said. “A lot of the snakes I’ve seen though aren’t venomous.” “Aren’t what?” I asked at hearing that long word for the first time in my life. “Venomous,” he smiled. “It means poisonous. On the farm, it’s important to understand the difference of poison and venom because when they send rescue this far out, we are not getting to a hospital in less than half an hour, so they need to make sure to bring the right thing with them.” “Oh. But if you just say you were bit then they’d know, right?” “Yes, they would. But venom is still an important word for you to know out here. Eventually, you’ll learn about taking care of the animals, too, and you will need to know the difference so you can help keep an animal alive until the vet comes.” “Okay.” “Do you know why Van-van had a nightmare?” I suddenly asked him. I mean, he might not have even known, but I felt like if any of the kids did know, it would be him. “She… she came from a terrible place,” he sighed. “Actually, I think only you and Theodore, of the five of us, had a better place before this.” I looked down. “She begged them not to do something.” “Yeah, that’s a pretty standard theme for her nightmares,” he sighed. “She actually wets the bed nearly every time she has a nightmare about those people.” I felt my face get red. “Why?” He shrugged. “I don’t know why on the wetting the bed, but I know that those were probably the cruelest people I’d ever heard of. I don’t really think I should talk to you about them. It’s just scare you to be honest.” “Oh.” “Just be glad that we have Crazy Jenn taking care of us. She’s no picnic, but compared to what homes you could get into, her rules and stuff aren’t even that bad. You should even be glad she encourages you to pee your pants.” “What?” I asked my voice soft like a whisper and my mouth hanging as though it didn’t know how to close. “Well, the last home Van-van was in… I think…. Well, it was a nightmare to make a mistake at all. Even if she spilled water on herself, they’d get really mean about it.” I shivered. “Yeah, like I said, it would scare you if I talked too much about her. But like at my old place, I didn’t have even a moment to myself unless I was sleeping, but even then…. I wasn’t guaranteed to get to sleep the whole night.” “Really?” “Yeah. Sometimes, even if it was someone else’s turn, if even one fork was missed, they woke all the kids up, we all got spanked, and then we all had to wash the entire silverware drawer. Of course, what we washed depended on what we missed, but we’d have to clean them all.” “That’s nuts!” “Yeah. See, I missed a spoon one time here at Auntie Jenn’s, and she must have seen the surprise and fear on my face when she found it in the morning, or at least told us about it in the morning after we were awake. She smiled and asked us to be more careful, and then washed it up and put it away as though nothing happened.” “Oh.” “You don’t understand. I was so scared she was going to take me any moment before school to whip me, and when she didn’t, I worried at school what was going to happen, and then when I got home, I worried until she took me by the hand, and just when I thought this was it, she talked to me about why I seemed so scared. Auntie Jenn is crazy, and I don’t want to lie to her because she does punish you for it, but she… she’s not as mean as some of the other places are.” I shivered. “Just never lie to her, Corinna. She expects you to potty your pants, so just do it, okay? It makes it so you can tell her you did it, and it be the truth, so you don’t have to be scared.” I nodded. “And if you make any other mistakes, just tell her you had an accident or you didn’t mean to, but you did something. If you did mean it, though, don’t lie. Tell her why you did it. She’s a lot nicer if you are honest to her.” “Okay.” We fed the pigs, and then he took my hand and we walked over to the cows. “Have you ever milked a cow before?” he smiled. He knew I hadn’t! How could I have? He knew this was my first time on a farm! “It’s actually a little tricky at first, but it’s fun once you get to knowing how it works.” I looked up at him wondering if he was saying it was fun so I’d want to do it so he could get out of it, but still, I just stood there and let him start to show me. Once I saw how he was doing it, I did sit down and try. It was tricky like he said, and I guess I wasn’t strong enough or something because I couldn’t get it to work. “That’s okay,” he patted my shoulder. “You’ll get it in time. I’ll just finish this time. But open your mouth.” “Why?” “Just do.” I did, and he squirted milk into it. I swallowed it, and wondered why it tasted so differently. We were soon on our way to school. Jason put me next to Theodore and put Van-van next to him on the bus. I think it was because Van-van was still a little upset and nervous. I could see how she wouldn’t talk to anyone, and how she didn’t seem as talkative as usual. Mrs. Thompson was nearing to finishing the first hour of class with us, math, and she walked by me, and looked down at my work. “Honey, I’m not sure, but I think maybe you could use some help.” “Help?” I asked. “Well, I know you’ve only been in class with me a couple of days, but be honest. Is it hard to read the directions on the sheet?” I looked down. “I noticed that most of the math you had gotten wrong until now, had to do with you solving the wrong problems. When the problem asked for area, you solved the perimeter, and you also seem to have a hard time pronouncing some words when you read, but when you talk normally, you are fine with it.” I looked down. “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay, honey. I’m just wondering if maybe you might need some reading help.” “So….” “Well, I want you to go down to the circular main building, and in the office, ask for Mr. Whitehead. He will see you if he is free.” “What if he’s not?” “Then come back to class.” I walked across the empty recess yard, feeling a little jittery. I had known I had always had a little difficulty sounding words out, and often if I thought I knew what we were supposed to do already, I’d not read the directions on purpose because it took too long to read. Besides, it was a waste of time if the teacher already told us what to do. “Excuse me,” I showed the office person the yellow pass that Mrs. Thompson had given me. “I was sent to talk to Mr. Whitehead?” The office worker smiled at me, and gestured me to sit in a chair to wait while she went to knock on one of the closed doors that was spaced around the little office area. A man came out, a little shorter than most men I’ve seen. He had a smile that reached his eyes, almost as if he was actually pleased to see me there. His blond hair was neat and shiny, his blue eyes sparkled, and his pale skin seemed warmer rather than cold like a lot of white people that have to help people… in their words, ‘like me.’ “Can you come with me, miss?” the man asked as he reached for my hand. We went into his little office space, that was really tiny. There were some books near him and a little table that could probably fit two other kids maybe and then him across from me, but for now, it was just me. “So, can you tell me why you are here?” he asked me though I handed him a short letter that Mrs. Thompson had given me to hand him. “I don’t read good,” I frowned. “Well, that’s not a serious problem, is it?” he looked so kind as he continued to smile at me. “It’s something that can be fixed, if we work on it. Do you mind working on it?” I shook my head. “No?” “Okay, so how about you try to read some things for me to start, so I know where you are at, okay?” “I can do that.” My legs were starting to bounce a little bit because I was really nervous. I didn’t want to be a problem, so I went willingly to do what Mrs. Thompson asked. She was nice to me, and didn’t let anyone make fun of me. And this guy, well, he wasn’t exactly being mean to me, either, so I was willing to do what he wanted. I was nervous though. What if the rest of the class was doing something I was supposed to, and I wouldn’t get to do it, then get in trouble for it? “Hey, sweetie,” the man paused me reading. “Do you want to go potty?” I shook my head. “No sir?” “Well, you are acting like you should probably go.” “No. My legs just do that sometimes.” “Are you sure, honey?” “Honest. I’ll go potty if you want, but I don’t think anything will come out.” “Alright. Just make sure you tell me if you need to take a break.” “Yes, sir.” Then he went on letting me try to read. He didn’t tell me to stop my legs or stay still. I was a little bit scared, when we paused he was going to hit me for not being able to stay still. I knew I was moving, but every time I caught myself and tried to stop, it would start up again. I used to get yelled at all the time by the teacher in Cheyenne, the one that is the same place my mommy is in the hospital in. I suddenly got tears in my eyes, and looked down wiping them, trying not to show Mr. Whitehead my sadness. It didn’t work. “Honey? It’s okay,” he patted my shoulder. “You are doing well, and honestly, I expect you not to get half of the words right. You wouldn’t be here for help if you could read perfectly, sweetheart.” “It’s… it’s not that,” I admitted. “What is it, then, sweetie? Did you make a mistake about needing to go potty and wet yourself?” “No sir.” “Well, I’m pulling at straws, sweetie. I’m not a mind reader. How about you tell me what’s wrong?” I took a deep breath and then another, and another. I opened my mouth, but tears started rolling down my face. I couldn’t speak. He sighed and took me by the hand and led me back to the office and had me sit in the chair while he went and talked to someone in a different office. The office worker came over and handed me a Kleenex before she said softly. “It’s okay, honey. A lot of people have personal issues that sometimes makes school hard for them. You’re not in trouble, okay?” I nodded. Why did she know why I was sitting there crying? A woman came side by side with Mr. Whitehead. “This is Ms. Garcia,” he introduced her. She looked a lot whiter than most Mexicans, but as her name was mentioned, I immediately saw some of the tell-tale signs of her heritage. “She’s going to help you sort your feelings out, and then you can come and try to read for me again, okay?” The lady took my hand and walked me into a small area, much like Mr. Whitehead’s, expect she had a round table and small stack of toys not far away along with a shelf with some stuffed animals on it. She had me sit in a yellow plastic chair while she sat in a green one at the small round table. “Mr. Whitehead said that you seemed a bit upset,” Mrs. Garcia started. “Of course, he is used to kids crying because they couldn’t read an easy word or two, but he said that your sadness seemed to have nothing to do with what you were asked to do.” I frowned looking down. “Are you okay at your home?” she asked. I could only nod. I was kind of scared, and my right leg started pumping up and down and my left leg started swaying in and out towards my right. “No one is going to hurt you, honey. We just want to understand your feelings. You look like you are about to start crying again, and we do understand, sweetheart.” I frowned up at her. I felt my mouth open but it just quivered at her as my brain had no words for her. She sighed and looked in a file that I could see had my name on it. “You are in foster care?” she whispered to me. I nodded. “Is Mrs. Jenny Loveland treating you okay?” I shrugged. “She’s okay.” “Well, maybe you miss your mommy?” “Yeah,” I barely whispered. “She in the hospital. I don’t mean to be trouble.” All of my words were so soft, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t have the courage to say them strongly. I felt so weak without my mama. I hadn’t seen her in three days, now, and only briefly the day I met Auntie Jenny. I said none of that, though. “You’re no trouble, sweetheart,” she smiled. “We just don’t want school to be bad place for you. And it is our concern that your home life is good because if you are scared at home or you are not eating well, then you can’t really learn.” “Mrs. Loveland is good to me,” I whispered. “I eat, play, and sleep like normal… kind of.” “What do you mean, kind of?” “Well, she kind of expects me to wet the bed and to wet my pants,” I blushed. “Aw, sweetheart!” Mrs. Garcia looked in my file. “I see….” I guess she saw the thing about me needing to be taken care of at school, and allowed to see the nurse for peeing my pants. I blushed. “Look, if Mrs. Thompson told anyone that you….” “No, Mrs. Thompson is great,” I whispered trying to cut her off. “It’s not her or anyone. Really. I just miss my mama.” She sighed and nodded. “How about you spend a little time coloring?” she asked me. “I have a coloring sheet you can do, and when you are done, maybe you’ll feel more like studying?” “Okay. But Auntie Jenny won’t think I was being bad, will she?” “No, Corinna. I will make sure she knows that this was the adult’s decision based on you crying and you seemingly needing help with reading. No one should punish you for that kind of thing. Auntie won’t punish you for crying, will she?” “I don’t think so.” By the time I made it back to class, they were lining up for lunch. “Where were you?” Cindy asked me. “I was getting worried because the teacher sent you out, but I didn’t see what you did wrong.” “I’m not in trouble,” I whispered. “I was just being kind of babied again.” “Again?” “Well, Auntie Jenny babies me like way too much, and I guess I started to get sad because my mama…, it’s been about three days since I had seen her, and I started to cry.” “I’m sorry,” Cindy hugged me in line. “Girls,” Mrs. Thompson smiled at us. “We’d like to go to lunch, but we can’t move until you are quiet, okay?” We smiled up at her, and she took us to lunch without another word about it. “So they said you were having trouble reading?” Cindy was getting the story straight as I had told her what happened while we were eating lunch. “And then while you were reading, the reading guy decided you were too sad, so made you see the school counselor, who had you calm down by coloring a picture?” “Yeah, that’s basically it.” “Well, I mean… at least the bully didn’t see you crying. Believe me, she’d have made it a big deal and everything, and honestly, I don’t see how even she wouldn’t cry if she was not seeing her mom for three days. It’s normal, Corinna.” I loved how she was trying to encourage me and telling me that my feelings were right. “Did you… I mean… because sometimes you do…. Did you um… you know?” “Yeah…,” I looked down. “My panties are wet under my skirt, but I’d been careful not to sit on my skirt so no one really knows yet.” “You should get changed.” “I will. The nurse is supposed to change me everyday even if I don’t pee my pants after I eat. She said so yesterday at lunch time.” “Oh, okay. Do you want me to come with?” “Nah. It’s embarrassing enough that I peed. I’d rather just come and find you outside after I’m changed.” “Oh, okay. But you know I’m okay with it, right?” “I know you said it,” I looked down. “But no one really wants to babysit a babysit a baby all the time.” “Don’t call yourself that,” Cindy frowned at me. “You have a problem. Fine. But that doesn’t make you a baby. I’m not the one changing you, so it’s not a problem for me, okay? I mean. I do want to be friends, but please stop calling yourself a baby.” “Okay.” Well, maybe Van-van was right. Maybe Cindy didn’t care that I peed myself sometimes. I didn’t mean to, to be honest, and no one caused it, really. I was just…. Well, things have been really strange since staying with Auntie Jenny, and even the school is like… well, we need to check and change you. So. I don’t know. I guess I just pee myself. I just… I mean. I don’t want to…. It was hard. Even at the other school though, I peed myself. I thought it was because Mr. Wilson never let me go in class, or because bullies kept me from going at break times. But here I was, and no one stopped me, and I peed my pants. I sighed. At recess, Cindy didn’t bring up me getting changed into a pair of jeans at all. We just played until the bell, and then finished our afternoon together working on some projects together, and eventually, it was time to catch the bus home. Van-van walked with Jason nearly holding her to his side from the school to the bus and I saw how he carefully comforted her into a seat next to me. “She’s feeling better,” Jason told me. “But don’t bring up this morning to her, okay?” I nodded. “You smell. Did you pee your pants?” “No? I mean, I did before lunch time, but the nurse changed me. I still smell?” “Kind of, Corinna. It’s okay though. You two talk. I want to sit Carl next to me so he doesn’t bother you two.” I looked to Van-van. “So, did you have a good day at school?” “Yeah,” she frowned. “But this morning…. Do you think I’m a baby now?” I shook my head. “Jason says we aren’t supposed to talk about this morning, but no, I don’t think you a baby. He told me you had a very bad home before, and your nightmare was probably that, and he said that would scare me, so he stopped there.” “Oh, so he told you about my last home?” “Only that they were mean and what they did would scare me,” I frowned. “But we not supposed to talk about it, so let’s talk about school, okay?” She smiled. “Okay.” “I peed in the counselor’s office,” I told her. “In your pants?” she whispered back. “Yeah. But the counselor didn’t seem to notice or care. She just let me color until I was done and then sent me to class in time for lunch.” “Did Cindy know?” “Yeah. She asked so I told her.” “What’d she do?” “She just told me to stop calling myself a baby, and that she doesn’t care if I have a problem. I guess you right. You said a good friend doesn’t care if I have a problem, and Cindy said that, too.” Van-van hugged me. “I’m glad. I was kind of nervous. I thought Cindy was nice, but there is no way to know for sure until something happens, right?” I frowned. “Yeah.” “Well, I was crying in class in first period,” Van-van told me. “No one made fun of you, did they?” “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking, really. I just was crying. The teacher sent me to the counselor after I ate lunch.” “I’m sorry,” I hugged her again. “It’s hard, sometimes,” Van-van said. “I don’t think anyone will ever really care about me or love me, you know, like really love me?” “Jason?” I asked. “He is very nice,” she nodded. “I think he cares, a little bit. But I meant… like a real mommy or daddy, kind of thing?” “So you were in fosters for awhile?” asked. “Since all my life,” she sighed. “I mean, since I can remember. I have a picture of my mom and me, when I was like two or something. But something happened, and I’d been in fosters since then.” “Jason said that Auntie Jenny was one of the nicest ones.” “He’s not wrong,” Van-van whispered. “Some beat you just for opening your eyes too early on Saturday, like you have control of when your body wakes up, even if you stay in bed.” “Really?” “And and others don’t let you eat until your homework, your chores, and anything else they told you to do is done first, even making it like two hours after dinner time before you can eat, and even then, sometimes blaming you, so you don’t eat dinner at all because you dawdled and didn’t do what they told you.” “That can’t be!” my mouth dropped. “It is,” she whispered. “That’s why I tell you not to disobey Auntie. She won’t send you away if you aren’t difficult on her, and if she wants you to be a baby, if you are just one, she won’t send you away, and trust me… being allowed to wet your pants is a lot less difficult than what other people can do to you.” “So…. That’s why you tell me to do it? But you don’t!” “Yes, I do,” she whispered. “I promised Auntie I’d just pee my pants today at school.” “You? You didn’t?” She opened her legs and I saw a slight wet spot on her legs. “I peed at recess in hiding away from everyone.” “On purpose?” Van-van nodded and tightened her mouth into a grimace. “I had to. I want Auntie Jenn to keep me, and she said…. “It’s okay to pee your pants at school, today, honey. I know you are upset, so you have permission not to go potty today at all. That means, she wants me to pee my pants, so I’ll be doing that at home, later, too.” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it. “I’d rather do that than get put with someone like last time. You never know who will get you next, so when you find someone that you can live with, you do what they want. Trust me. You don’t want to find this out the hard way.” I nodded. “How many times you peed your pants today?” “Just once?” “That’s not baby-like. Auntie Jenny expects a baby. Understand?” I frowned. “I’ll wet my pants again, I promise.” When we were getting off of the bus, we had turned to happier topics, and were actually laughing about something a boy said in her class so Jason didn’t know what we talked about, or maybe he did. He didn’t say he did though, and we weren’t near him. Still, somehow, I think he knew. We walked into the house, and Auntie Jenn smiled at us. “I hope you all had a good day. Jason, take the others to the farm for afternoon chores. I want to talk to Van-van right now.” He nodded and took my hand, and we headed right out the door into the cool evening air. “She’s probably changing Van-van,” Jason told me once we were alone, Carl and Theodore doing something else somewhere I couldn’t see them. “Van-van was told to pee her pants at school today, and to pee at home today, so no making fun of her.” “I won’t. She already told me.” “I thought I told you not to talk about the morning.” “Well…, it was hard not to, but actually, it came up anyway because she told me about living with others.” “Oh,” Jason frowned. “I should have talked to her more about that, and told her not to scare you. Auntie hasn’t decided yet if she’s actually going to keep you.” “How do you know? I thought she kept all the kids that came her way?” “She usually does,” he frowned. “But you…. You aren’t exactly homeless. You’ll go back to your mother, eventually. And you aren’t a full on baby, you know.” “What do you mean? I thought she didn’t even want babies because she’s too old for them?” “She… can say that all she wants. But look at how she treats you. Look what she told Van-van she can do? She made Theodore pee his pants last week. Why do you think that is?” I frowned. “Because she’s crazy?” “She is…, a little,” he looked down. “But honestly, she’s never had a real baby, I don’t think. I think she really wishes she could have a child that would just be a full on baby for her, but that’s never really going to happen. So, the only thing she can do, is find excuses for us to do babyish things.” “She makes you pee your pants, too?” “She hasn’t yet, but she’s put toddler toys in our room. She smiles when Theodore and sometimes Carl mixes them in with whatever they are playing with, and she frowns when she sees that I don’t touch them.” “If you don’t do what she wants, she might send you away?” “Yeah, that is a concern. But I’ve noticed that she does tell me to watch the rest of you, though. It’s almost like she’s treating me like the big brother.” “She threatened to make you pee your pants with the rest of us if someone made fun of Van-van at school, and she didn’t find out who told.” “I know. But somehow, I think she would have found a loophole in it, as long as I was taking care of you like I always do.” “So, you act like the older brother all the time so you don’t have to be a baby, and you still get to be kept?” He nodded and blushed. “What if I did that?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t if I were you. You already pee the bed naturally, and you have problems. If you act too big to be a baby, but have troublesome issues… well, the last girl we had was sent away for peeing her pants for the first time after she’d been here for three weeks because she never did baby things, but she treated her like she was responsible, like me. It never was said it was because she peed her pants, or because she wasn’t a baby enough, but all of us here, now, know that’s why.” I looked down. “And you’ll be next if you don’t start playing with baby toys and sometimes… doing more babyish things.” “Like what?” “Use your imagination. If Auntie finds out we talked, and I told you exactly what to do, she’ll think you are faking it, and she won’t trust me, anymore, and send me away, too. You have to think of those things on your own, and I can’t give you any hints because I can’t lie to her. I’ll have to tell her I spoke to you about you acting too big for your pants, but I can’t lie to her, and I can’t tell her I told you what to do to be a baby other than what you’ve already done on your own… like you pee your pants on your own.” I frowned. “Trust me, you don’t want to go anywhere else, but if you don’t trust me… well, I wish you the best if Auntie doesn’t keep you.” “I… I’ll try to pee my pants.” “That’s only the tip, honey, if you want her to keep you. Think about it, sweetheart. It’s going to be hard to be a baby, but it will help you to be kept out of very bad places, if you do it.” He led me to the horses. “Now, as a baby, I don’t want you to come too close just yet. I will show you what I’m doing for a few days first. It will let the horses get used to you, and it will make you seem more like a baby, being scared of getting too close.” “Okay. But I was supposed to help.” “You will, baby. Just wait for me to tell you to come in.” “Okay.” I watched as Jason brushed down the horse’s beautiful hair. There were actually six horses in the barn space, and though they did look alarmingly large, and kind of powerful, I saw their eyes. They were not really tame, as you might think that tame would mean they had no fight in them, but they liked the way that Jason treated them. “When I get done brushing this one out, I’ll lead it out of the stall, and then we can clean it up a bit for him, and then put down fresh straw.” “What’s his name?” “Phillip,” Jason responded as I saw him pulling a brush along its back. I watched for a while, finding that it seemed to take a long time for the coat to all look neat and sleek. “I… I want to be a baby,” I whispered to Jason. I didn’t really want that, but somehow, I couldn’t get the images out of my head that were put there after hearing both Van-van and Jason talk about how other places can be. If all I had to do, to stay safe, was wet myself on purpose twice a day, I could do that. “I know,” Jason sighed. “But there’s a lot more to being a baby than peeing your pants. You know that, right?” I frowned. “I haven’t been a baby since like maybe seven years or even six years. I’m not sure what a baby does other than pees herself?” “I told you about the toys?” “Yeah. I don’t mind playing with baby toys, though. I mean, honestly, that’s more toys that I have at my house right now.” He looked at me with a glance before going back to brushing the horse. “That means actually playing with them though, and you know… exploring. You might have to do things with your hands, that seem… um… dirty or yucky… maybe even scary?” “You’re talking about putting my thumb in my mouth?” I asked with an eyebrow raised. “I’m not going to tell you any definitely answers. I told you, I can’t give you hints. You have to figure it all out on your own, so you don’t look like you are faking, and so I don’t seem to be coaching you on faking it. We will both lose this gen of a place to stay if she figures out I’m trying to coach you.” “How did Van-van and the others figure it out if they weren’t coached?” “Well, they didn’t need to be coached, did they?” Jason looked down. “When Auntie Jenny gave Van-van real toys for the first time, she didn’t ask what age they were for, did she? Theodore didn’t ask either, did he? They accepted them with gratitude.” “Oh,” I looked down. I didn’t have that many toys at home, but I… I didn’t think I’d ever play with a baby thing just because it was given to me. “I guess they really wanted toys, then?” “It’s not about the toy,” Jason frowned at me seeming to not understand what he was saying. “It was about permission!” “Permission?” He was now leading Phillip to another stall and preparing pitch forks and stuff for us to clean the stall he had been in. “Yes, permission,” he sounded like he was trying to bite his tongue at how stupid I was. I mean, I wasn’t stupid, I just didn’t understand what they were asking to do. “You see, when she gave us toys, it was a shift in attitude. It meant, that we were actually children in her eyes. It meant, we were supposed to play around and be kids.” I gulped. “What were you before this, then?” He frowned. “Personally? I was a whipping boy, a servant, and other than that, someone that just took up space and who had to be quiet all the time.” I frowned, now. “A whipping boy?” “Yeah. I had been in two places where they had kids already. When something was broken, something didn’t get done, and any other mistakes were made, I was the first one blamed.” “That sucks,” I whispered sadly. “Yeah. You never been a whipping boy before, were you?” “No. Well, at my last school, I got blamed a lot….” “But did no one ever come to your defense?” “They didn’t. Not at school. But my mom comforted me, and though she tried to tell the school they were wrong, it was hard. I… I think I was the only colored in my class at my last school.” “Colored?” he frowned and looked at me like I spoke a foreign language. “I thought that stuff had been stopped like twenty years ago.” I looked down. It hadn’t. I didn’t want him to think I was calling him a liar though. “I guess I was wrong then. You do know what it’s like to be whipped for something you didn’t do, and blamed all the time.” “Yeah,” I whispered. “Only, you didn’t even have anyone on your side to let you know that they understood you?” “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m really sorry. No one deserves that,” I told him. “That didn’t only happen to me, Corinna. There’s a reason the others here keep the rules. Those that didn’t, were sent away in the end, and it’s because they either got adopted or they didn’t believe how bad it could be, and rejected the rules.” “You didn’t respond to the bell right away,” I told him. “Yes. I got in trouble for that, but in the end, she gives her kids a chance to learn the rules before she starts being difficult about them.” I looked down. “So… when is my trial period up?” “I don’t know. It’s different for everyone. Only Auntie Jenn knows when your time is up. But when it is, if you haven’t gotten used to the rules, you will go.” “And I’ll probably be a whipping girl or worse?” “Especially you,” Jason looked thoughtfully at me. “I thought the schools were supposed to treat you fair, but honestly, I’ve seen worse happen to black kids in places I stayed than happened to me. You are safe here.” I nodded as I picked up a pitchfork. We finally finished with the horses at around seven, and we came into the house to see dinner waiting for us. The other kids were already eating. “You and Jason were out there for a while,” Auntie said to us. “Yeah, she’s learning,” he told her. “But she really is a baby and got scared of the cow and the horses, so I had to do a lot by myself. It’s not her fault, though.” “Of course, not,” Auntie said with a smile as she looked down at my soaked with pee jeans. “She is a baby. Maybe I should be giving her easier chores to begin with.” “She’s faking,” Carl said with a frown. “She’s not faking,” Van-van came to my defense. “You know yourself that she pees herself all the time. She can’t help it. And she….” “You peed the bed last night, Van-van,” Carl cut her off. “Does that make you a baby?” Van-van hung her head. “Van-van had a dream,” I shouted at him. “… And if you are so perfect, why don’t you show us how to be?” “That’s enough,” Auntie Jenny said immediately reaching to pick me up and hold me. I didn’t think she was that strong! “You are upsetting the baby,” she frowned at Carl until he looked down. “And Little Van-van can’t help it. You know she sometimes wets the bed! Now, you apologize to her this minute, I’m warning you.” “Carl…,” Jason gave him a look. “What?” Carl looked both at Auntie Jenny and then at Jason. “I’m not playing these stupid games with you anymore. Your stories are bull. And you… you are crazy,” he had spoken way out of turn, and I could tell because the silence was like an air of thick gas in the room trying to suffocate us all. “That’s how you feel?” Auntie Jenny asked quietly to Carl rather than raise her voice. “Yeah, that’s how I feel. So?” “You’ll get your way then,” she said a sadness in her voice. “Be packed on Monday.” “Packed?” Carl looked into her sincere face. “Are you throwing out on the street?” “Not the street,” she whispered. “But somewhere where you will not be protected like the baby I thought you were, either. You don’t want to be a baby, right?” “I’m not.” “Then, you will move to a house that doesn’t treat you like one.” “Carl,” Jason went to speak at him again softly. “Carl…,” even Van-van tried to say something. “Don’t. Apologize to Auntie.” “I will not. She is crazy, and so are you all for doing whatever she tells you. It’s like you are brainwashed, and I’m tired of it.” Auntie Jenn took Carl by the hand. “You are no longer a baby. You will do the dishes when you are done.” “By myself?” “No. Jason will help you. He is a good big boy that helps me out with the babies. But you… you are more mature than even Jason. You don’t want to sleep with the little kids, do you?” “No,” Carl’s mouth sneered at Jason who was clearly older than he was. Jason looked down sadly, and his sadness, was not that Carl mocked him for being less mature than him. No, his sadness came from a place so sincerely alien, that even if they were wrong about Auntie and the people they spoke about, he believed that Carl was going to a much worse place. I don’t know why I knew, except from what Jason and Van-van had told me. I just knew that… Carl was going to wish he was back here, and somehow, I felt a little sad for him, even if he was kind of a bully. “You will sleep in the living room this weekend, and then Monday, they will come and get you and bring you to a home more of your maturity level,” Auntie Jenn told him. “I’m not upset or mad,” she told him. “You are welcome to come back and say hi if you ever wish to, but this home is for babies and not for someone who thinks they are so grown up, they can talk back to their care giving adults.” “You think you take care of us?” Carl snarled at her. “That’s enough, Carl. You got what you want, now I suggest you put the rest of your attitude away before you learn how it might be at your new place, first hand by me.” I heard the others visibly gulp. I felt myself shake, and Auntie, having me in her arms, whispered. “I’m sorry, Baby Corinna. You aren’t in trouble. Auntie doesn’t mean to scare you, sweetheart.” She gently put me on the floor. “Go eat your food, sweetheart.” She walked away from Carl and went directly to the phone. I saw Van-van approach Carl and whisper to him. “You need to pee your pants right now.” “No.” “Do you really want to be sent away? There are a lot of places a lot worse!” “Says you,” he frowned at Van-van before Jason took me away to protect me from hearing anything else she had to say. “You don’t need to hear the kinds of things they do out there,” Jason whispered to me. “You are being a good baby. You just remember, Auntie wants a baby, and you’ll never be sent into any harder homes.” “I want my real mama,” I whispered up at him. “I know,” he picked me up, well, more helped me up into his lap. “Just go ahead and eat, and go ahead and pee again, if you can. Make sure Auntie knows you aren’t trying to get potty trained.” I nodded. “I peed in the horse cleaning place.” “I know,” he rubbed my sides by my ribs. “But you still need to pee again, sweetheart. Especially because Carl has put her on high alert for non-babies, you need to try now, harder than before Carl started talking back.” “Why me?” “Not just you, honey. Van-van is definitely going to pee herself on purpose soon. You watch, and Theodore is probably going to put his thumb in his mouth and wet the bed tonight.” “Isn’t Theo younger than Van-van?” Jason shook his head. “Number wise, yes, Van-van is older. Maturity? Auntie sees Van-van as younger than Theodore.” “But she lets Van-van bathe and change me,” I looked down. “That’s because Van-van is a girl. She couldn’t very well have a boy changing you. That would get all her kids taken away from her.” “Oh.” “Wasn’t Carl in the fosters before Auntie Jenn had him?” I asked. “He was. He had his parents taken away from him because they did something. I don’t know exactly what they did. Then he went to one foster home before this, but he doesn’t talk about them that much. Then he got put here because that foster home did something wrong.” “Do you know what the other foster home did?” “No. I just know that Carl complained that they did something to him, but he doesn’t tell anyone what it was. Whatever it was, it was enough to have him moved.” I looked down. “So, maybe the other foster home was not as bad?” “Maybe…,” Jason frowned. “I mean, if it was, I somehow don’t think he’d be trying to get sent somewhere else.” I started to pee on Jason’s lap. I did try to get down at first, but Jason reposition-ed me and smiled at me. “Just sit here and do it. If you move, it makes you look too mature. Just do it.” “Aren’t you grossed out?” “A little bit, but if I let on, then I’ll seem too mature, too.” “Oh…,” and I pushed it to continue to pee on him. “So, it’s what you want, me peeing my pants in your lap?” “Yes. Please.” “Okay…,” and I pushed harder to get it over with. I hated peeing myself, especially with someone else holding me in their lap. “Good girl,” he cooed at me as I peed on him. When I was finished, he smiled and started to feed me my food with a spoon, and when I reached for it, he shook his head and cooed at me. “Be a good baby girl.” I frowned, but eventually let him feed me since he wasn’t giving me back my spoon. Auntie Jenny finally came over to us as I finished the last bite. “We peed our pants on accident,” Jason told her with a straight face. “Oh, not you too, Jason?” He looked down at the floor and blushed. “We couldn’t hold it. Carl scared us.” “Oh, you poor little kids. It’s okay,” Auntie went and pulled me out of his lap to see how wet he was. “Are you okay? You’re usually a big boy, Jay-Jay.” “I… I’m okay. I just was scared and didn’t want to make you mad because Carl did that, so I went to the table like you said, and didn’t move, and then we both peed our pants.” “Oh, honey. Well, you can clean yourself up, can’t you?” Jason nodded. “You go ahead and talk Theo for a bath. I’ll give Corinna one in a little bit.” Jason walked away from me, not giving me a wink or anything else, and his butt did look pretty wet, so I wasn’t sure if I peed on him, or if he really did do some on his own. I mean, I did wet on him… a lot….

To answer a thought from before... yes, my stories do have a dark tone. There is a reason for that... but I don't want to get into that. Yes, and when you find out why some of them are scared to break the rules, it might be heartbreaking. I have just finished the main part of Chapter Seven, but I'm still debating if the chapter is finished, or if I can add a little bit more to it to calm it down a little bit from what was learned... this chapter. Edit: Well, rather than calming it down, I probably put it more on edge with what happened in the last part... but while this doesn't explain everything, there is a little bit of the reason they are more willing to play this game with Auntie Jenny than other kids might be.

Yeah, Auntie Jenny is confusing even for those kids. The kids are certain of certain rules, that will become evident, but other times... we'll see in the story.

Chapter Six: How Am I Supposed to Feel? An hour later, I was sitting at the table with my math book open and my legs swinging under the table, looking at the shapes in the book and the numbers on the diagram, trying to remember the precise term that goes with what kind of calculations for these, and trying to remember the complex ones like the triangle and the circle. My left leg stopped swinging and touched the floor, my leg starting to pump up and down. “What do you have there?” Van-van asked as she looked from her own work over at my work. “Math,” I sighed. “Oh, right. But it looks like you got the second problem wrong.” “Really?” “Yeah, it’s asking for the perimeter of the triangle and you seem to have figured out the area.” “Well, it’s just given the bottom of the triangle and the dotted line for the height.” “Corinna, that’s a trick. You don’t need the height for the perimeter, and the base is the same size as the sides because it’s one of those even triangles—an equilateral….” My head kind of spun at her explanation. “Corinna,” Jason took a sudden interest across the table from us. “Why are you shaking your leg?” “I… I don’t know,” I looked down. “Look, if you need to pee, just do it in your pants. You are the baby after all.” “I… I don’t have to do that,” I blushed. “Corinna, you are wiggling around in your seat, and slapping your knees. You need to pee your pants.” “Jason, I know when I have to pee, and I don’t. It’s … it’s just something my legs do.” “Well, if you don’t stop, and if Auntie Jenn catches you, she’s going to think you are playing around, so I suggest you try to pee your pants or something. You won’t get in trouble for it like the rest of us will, but you will get in trouble if she thinks you are playing around.” “I can’t pee, Jason. I don’t have to go.” “Corinna,” Van-van ganged up on me. “Jason’s right. Stop moving around so much if you aren’t going to wet your pants. Trust us! You don’t want Auntie Jenny to catch you playing around when you are supposed to be doing homework.” I sighed, my face burning in embarrassment that they thought I had to do something I didn’t, and at knowing that they were expecting me to do it, but I knew I couldn’t. Tears ran down my cheeks. “Van?” Theodore came to my rescue. “Don’t tell her to just do it. I mean, you know how hard it is to do it, when you are forced, don’t you?” “I’ve never been told to do it,” she said. “But you know I’m just trying to keep Auntie Jenn happy.” “Well, Auntie Jenn isn’t standing over us right now, is she? And I will tell you that doing something like that is not natural, and hard as heck to just be forced and then watched to do it.” “Auntie Jenn hasn’t told you to do that, though, either, so how do you know?” “I’ve… I…,” and he went quiet. “Well, either way, Corinna needs to realize that she can’t just play around under the table, even with just her legs when she’s studying. You know how strict she is.” “Yeah, alright, I know,” Theodore lowered his head. “And… she did tell me to go ahead and do it once, last week, when she thought I was playing around.” His face suddenly went down to his own paper, burning bright red, and a sniffle could be heard. “It’s okay,” I whispered to Theodore. “I mean, I’m not going to think anything about it, and anyone that does, and knows how strict Auntie can be, well, they're just mean, Theo.” He looked up at me through the top of his head, his face still so red, I could probably fry eggs on it. “Honest, Theo. Don’t be scared to tell me something that Auntie made you do, because…. Well, she’s scary, kind of.” He nodded. Jason sighed. “I didn’t know Aunt Jenn told you to wet your pants, Theo.” “Me Neither,” Van-van whispered. “Because…. That’s when you two finished earlier than Carl and me, and you two had to go out and get milk from Lou.” Lou was the cow on the farm. “Well, for once, Corinna is right, Theo. Even if you are told to wet your pants because Aunt Jenn thinks you are playing around, it’s no reason to laugh at you.” I corrected my triangle problem. “But, Theo? Corinna needs to understand, that as the baby, if she’s going to wiggle around at the table during homework, it’s safer she wets her pants. Then she can play it off as either wetting herself or being uncomfortable because she’s peed. Auntie won’t punish her for being wet.” He nodded. “It’s still embarrassing and hard, though.” “I know,” Jason whispered. “Did you get it for peeing your pants?” “No? She just said if I stopped wiggling and peed the rest of the way, she’d let it go that once since I was doing something important. But if I kept playing around…,” trailing off. I reached out and touched his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” He smiled shyly and pulled his hand back and started writing again. Jason sighed and looked over at me. “But see, Corinna? Even he almost got in trouble for his legs moving, and only doing what Auntie told him saved him.” I nodded. I tried to still my legs. It was a lucky thing my legs went still at that moment, because Auntie’s face appeared at that time, she started circling the table looking at our papers. Carl was being held by the hand as she walked around the table looking at each person’s work. “I think Carl has something to say,” she cleared her throat when she was behind me. “I… I didn’t mean to make them bully you,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry I told on you for wetting the bed to the class.” I turned and looked up at Auntie Jenny and then at Carl. “Thanks,” I said. “I mean it was embarrassing, but honestly, I am not sure….” “Not sure of what?” Carl frowned looking down. “If she was going to be able to keep the class from knowing she pees her pants,” Auntie whispered. “She has troubles, and does pee herself, don’t you sweetheart?” I looked up at Auntie who was smiling down at me. “But that’s no reason to tell strangers that she has problems that they haven’t seen yet.” Carl nodded. “Anyway… I’m sorry.” I frowned though, because didn’t Auntie tell the school office that I do it, and even left clothes for me when she was registering me, and ….? I thought there was more to it, but my head was spinning at all of this. He got in trouble for telling the class that I wet the bed, but then Auntie Jenny told the office, and even told the nurse to just up and change me everyday at lunch, because… well, she must have made it sound like I wet myself all the time or something, right? Even at my old school, when I got forced to wait until I peed in class, and went to the nurse, the nurse frowned at me every time, and she told me I was too old. “Go ahead and sit at the table and start your homework, Carl,” Auntie told him putting him in an empty seat. Then she walked over and looked at my paper. “There’s a lot of erasing on this page,” she said causing me to look up. “I hope no one is giving you the answers.” “I’m not,” Van-van said. “I just told her she had a couple wrong, and told her that she should redo it.” “You did? And did you tell her what she did wrong?” “Kind of…, but isn’t that how you are supposed to do? I explained why it was wrong, and I didn’t tell her the answer, right Jason?” “She only told her what she did wrong, Aunt Jenn. I promise. I was listening, and she didn’t say anything about the numbers she should get.” “Well, as long as she didn’t give any answers,” and Aunt Jenn smiled at Van-van. I shifted a little in my seat, and tried to put my foot flat on the floor. I knew it was about to try to move around again. “Well, you’ve been in here for about thirty minutes,” Auntie told us. “How about you kids stand up and stretch for a moment.” We all stood up, though I was thinking about just continuing, but Van-van put a hand on my shoulder, and looking up, I could see her silently warning me to do what is told of me. So, I stood up. Auntie led us through a few stretches, and even seemed to play with us a bit with it, for maybe a couple of minutes before telling us to sit down and finish our homework. “And Jason, Carl, and Van-van, I need you to go milk the cow and gather the eggs after you are done with your homework.” “Yes, ma’am,” they sang in chorus. She then went into the kitchen to start dinner. I don’t know why, but after the stretches, my legs didn’t feel like moving anymore, and I finished the homework, somehow, without getting in trouble for playing or wetting myself. I noticed Van-van was stuck getting eggs and stuff, and Auntie was making dinner though, and I wasn’t allowed upstairs without Van-van, so I had to go watch cartoons until Van-van came back in. “Do you have to pee?” Theo asked me. He must have noticed that I had my hand trying to hold it. I nodded. “You look kind of bad,” he whispered. “You are the baby. You could just wet. Auntie is the one that calls you the baby, and there’s no one to take you….” “I know, but I don’t want to,” I looked at the floor. “Okay,” he frowned looking down. “But sit on the floor just in case. You don’t want Auntie to think you peed on the sofa on purpose.” “She already thinks I can’t help it, though,” I said, though I did move because I didn’t want to make the sofa wet for the others if it happened. “I know,” Theo whispered. “But she’s not always the same. She probably still thinks you have time to not pee on the couch.” “I… I guess that makes sense,” I whispered. “But I’m not going to if Van-van gets in here soon.” “Okay. Maybe you could go ask Auntie to take you. Then at least she will know you are trying to get to the bathroom?” I nodded and stood up from the floor now. I shook a little bit though, because what if she said to hold it, and I peed? Would she get mad because I peed when she told me not to? … Or would she just tell me to wet my pants on purpose? He took me by the hand, and walked with me to the kitchen. “Aunt Jenn?” Theo started. “Yes, young man?” she said without turning around. “Corinna wants to go to the bathroom.” “Well, if that were true, then she’d tell me she wanted to go. If she’s dancing around, then just let her wet her pants. She doesn’t know any better, Theo.” “Um…?” I whispered. I don’t think she heard. “Auntie?” Theo spoke up again. “Theo, what did I tell you?” “But she’s right here, Auntie. She’s trying to tell you.” Auntie turned, and my face burned a little bit, and I moved my mouth, but I couldn’t get the sounds to come up through what felt like a thick constricted air passage. The words were caught in my throat. “Honey,” Auntie Jenn walked over and put her arms around me. “It’s okay to wet your pants. Just go watch cartoons, baby.” I frowned. I wanted to tell her to take me to the bathroom. But as I looked up into her sincere, but seemingly kind face, I realized I had no choice. I had to pee my pants. I sighed and nodded and started to walk back to the living room. “She told me she didn’t want to wet,” I heard Theo trying to plead for me even as I turned around. “Of course she doesn’t want to…,” Aunt Jenn told him. “But she’s already going a little bit, and she’s scared. That’s why she didn’t tell me she had to go.” “Oh,” Theo frowned and then came to join me. “Don’t be scared that I know you’re peeing in your pants. I’m not going to tell anyone that doesn’t need to know or make fun.” “I’m not,” I looked down. “Well, Auntie says you were already peeing your pants, and that’s why you didn’t tell her you had to go?” “I… I’m not wet, yet. But she wants me to pee my pants.” “Well, I mean, she’s not exactly hiding that she expects you to do it, but I don’t think she wants….” “She does,” I whispered. “When I looked up at her to tell her just now, that I wanted to go, the way she was looking at me, and the way she was holding me, I… I could tell that I shouldn’t say anything because I could just tell.” He sighed. “I don’t think she really wants…. She doesn’t like it when any one pees their pants because it makes messes even if she asks us to clean it up.” I sighed. I didn’t really know how to tell him that I knew it was different with me. I mean, I could almost feel her comforting me into peeing my pants when we were doing homework earlier, even. I know she didn’t say to do it, but I could feel it. That’s what she wants me to do. I felt a little bit start as the front door opened. Van-van looked at me for a moment, and Jason frowned at the floor. They both saw me squirming, and then I realized that Carl was looking at the floor and sort of smirking as he watched me dance around, too. “You… you’re gonna pee your pants,” Van-van said in a hush whispered as she suddenly darted towards me reaching for my hand. “I… I already am…,” I whimpered. “Well, you don’t look wet,” she rubbed my back. “Let’s go up and see if you can get on the toilet, and if you wet, it’s okay. I’m supposed to change you anyway.” I nodded. We were just pushing the bathroom door open, when a little more pushed out into my panties, and wet them good getting my pants a little wet, this time, too. Vanessa didn’t even register it was happening though as she drug me in and pushed me towards the toilet. It pushed again and sprayed enough into my pants that Vanessa suddenly realized it as she started to unbutton my jeans and sat me on the toilet forgetting to pull off my panties. I immediately started going full on when I sat. “It’s okay,” she whispered to me. “You tried, sweetheart, and that’s all that matters. Besides, even if you didn’t try, you know that Auntie won’t be mad as long as you don’t lie, and you told me you’d already started to wet, honey.” I frowned and nodded. I didn’t like that this meant I still had not gone twenty-four hours without peeing in my pants, but I followed Van-van to our room after I peed, and she sat on the bed while she helped pull my pants the rest of the way off of my legs, and then peeled my soggy panties off of my butt and slid them down my legs. Didn’t she think it was disgusting touching my peed in panties? “Corinna,” she cooed in my direction with a small smile. “I know you don’t like being wet and stuff, and having people take care of it. But you are having troubles, and it’s okay to get help when you have trouble. I don’t mind.” “It’s gross, though,” I said nervously. “Yeah, a little bit,” she agreed with a small little giggle as she dropped my wet panties on the floor. “But it’s probably more gross to have to wear them than for me to have to change you once a day.” I sighed and shrugged. “I’m used to peeing my pants, though.” “I know. And it’s a shame that you are used to it, because it… it makes you feel bad just the same, right?” I nodded. “Plus no one wants to be friends with a stinky kid.” “Well, Cindy seemed to be pretty friendly with you, even after she told me what Carl said about you.” “Yeah. But I haven’t peed in front of her, yet. She doesn’t know how disgusting it is, yet.” “Well, don’t count her off before you know,” Van-van rubbed my bare knee for she had just slipped on a clean pair of panties on me. “Not everyone is mean about it, right? At least Auntie Jenn lets you pee your pants without being too mean about it?” I sighed and nodded. “Yeah.” Honestly, I didn’t see how Van-van didn’t realize that if it weren’t for Auntie Jenny, I wouldn’t even be peeing my pants in the daytime, or at least at home. She had rules like I couldn’t go upstairs where the toilet was by myself, and they had to hold my hands all the way up and slowly, and she acted like, if I made it or said I made it, it was a lie, and that I had to pee my pants… or… well, I mean, I was wet when she met me. I looked down. I did keep peeing my pants the day before school…. I did just pee my pants again. Maybe it wasn’t her fault? I wasn’t sure. Tears welled up inside me as I realized, slowly, that I was actually the one doing it. I had a chance to tell her in the kitchen, but I was too scared. I must have started to pee my pants on the trip to Rawlins, that’s why we drove on to Rawlins. She said she was going to stop, but then I was wet, and then we didn’t. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Van-van asked as she noticed I was crying right after she had slipped my pajama pants on my legs. “I… I really am a baby, huh?” “Yes, sweetheart. But that’s okay. You’re not in trouble for being a baby.” “But… no one at school is going to want to be real friends with a baby!” “Oh, honey. I’m sure you’ll find a real friend at school, even if Cindy decides that she wants someone else to hang around with. But she did stand up for you today. It’s okay…,” and she pulled me into her lap and hugged me. “I’m here for you. You can always hang out with me, sweetheart.” I nodded, but I still didn’t feel any better. I have to go now, but just wanted to upload this chapter. I'll be back as soon as I can to check it for mistakes. It seems there are a lot of typos and left out words when I upload, so please bare with me. I'll change the title to show chapter six, after I check for mistakes later.

It's definitely true. And I don't know all there is about it. I just write what I know, so I'm sorry if it feels dis-ingenuine because of it. I don't know a lot about the group homes, and sometimes the homes that are for delinquency youth, but I have heard a lot of bad things about those, too. No, the idea is that Aunt Jenn is not the typical abusive parent that like I had Lauren have before she found the home that wanted to adopt her. Aunt Jenn is... well, as was already stated a few times... crazy. She thinks she's doing the right thing, and is not actually trying to hurt anyone, but she's not mentally right, either. I mean, if you look at how she's been... she hasn't exactly hurt the main character, and we don't even know what she did to Carl for bullying the main character yet. But he was doing something rather than being hit for it.

I mean, it's more like a lottery. You are right, they sometimes find wonderful people to place kids with, but sometimes, they place them with people worse than Aunt Jenny, too. The problem, like I had briefly addressed earlier when Aunt Jenn explained it... they don't have enough people that care to help out, so they often have less than desirables to choose from. And they have to put a kid somewhere they can actually eat and be somewhat taken care of. At Least Aunt Jenn hasn't been shown to do anything extremely physical... yet.... And I'm sure it is the same everywhere, because it's hard to take in stranger's kids, especially if you are already growing your own family. It's not that all people are cruel, but rather, just a lottery because people... can be strange sometimes, especially to kids, and that IS sad.

What? Aunt Jenn? No! She can't be crazy! The system is letting her watch children who have nowhere else to go. The state would never! Glad to see people are reacting to the story!

Chapter Five Mrs. Thompson’s Class We were in the bathroom, and I had my panties and undershirt off, while Van-van was on the toilet when the door handle jingled, and before I could say something, Jason opened it. “Oh, you two are going to take a bath?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, Vanessa, before you do that, I need to get in there, unless you want me to just pee in front of you both and see you both naked.” Vanessa shook her head no. But it wasn’t fair because he already saw me naked. Still I didn’t say anything, and his eyes didn’t linger at me, but more at Vanessa who was on the toilet. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Van-van said to me. “I thought I’d gotten up earlier than the boys, and hoped to be done. If he’s awake, so are the others.” I frowned at her not having caught onto what she was saying yet. “We can’t really get a real bath, now, because we don’t know when the other boys will have to pee and stuff. You’ll just have to get a quick wipe down. Luckily, you didn’t pee on me last night, so I’ll be okay.” I shivered. “I want to have a bath.” “You can…, but all the boys will see you in the tub. We can’t deny them going to the bathroom, sweetheart.” “Well…, I’m a baby, right?” I used the baby card to my advantage for once. Besides, Jason already saw me naked, and if what Van-van was saying was true, then I’d need a bath every morning, and I couldn’t really go to school without taking baths, so the others were going to see me in the tub anyway, eventually. “You’re right,” Van-van smiled. “Okay, you go ahead and get in the tub, and start the water. I’ll let Jason in while you do that.” Before I was done with my bath, all of the boys had seen me in the tub, but at least they only saw my chest, which was nothing to really hide at my age, or at least I didn’t think it mattered. My bottom was covered by the bathwater, so even if they wanted to look in the bath, they couldn’t see, not that any of them did. They just peed and left with barely a good morning to me and to Vanessa who was cleaning me up. As we started to gather at the door to leave after having gotten breakfast, our bags together, and our morning routines done with hair, teeth, and everything, Auntie Jenny stopped us. “Now, Jason, there are no stairs at school, and no toilets on the way, so you are still the number one in charge. Corinna doesn’t know where she’s going yet, so you are to hold her hand and make sure she doesn’t wander too close to the highway.” “Yes, Aunt Jenn,” Jason said immediately grabbing my hand. “Van-van, at school, your priority is in keeping yourself out of trouble and getting your work done. You can’t really take Van-van to the potty every time she might have to go there. Jason is the eldest, he’s in charge of her as well as the rest of you when you are not at home, or when someone cannot reasonably get baby Corinna to the toilet.” Vanessa looked down and nodded. “Corinna, you just try to go when it’s best for the teacher in case you have an accident. You don’t want the whole class to notice, and if you have an accident, the teacher should know to have you see the nurse when no one is paying attention to what the teacher or you are doing.” “Yes, ma’am.” “If you really want to go though, you can raise your hand and ask. If the teacher says to wait though, then you wait, okay? You did prove that you can get to the bathroom sometimes yesterday, so I’ll let you go. Just remember, if you make a big deal out of it, and you accidentally wet, your classmates will see you peeing your pants. If you just quietly wet yourself in your seat, not as many will notice what you are doing.” “Okay,” I gulped with a sigh. Jason took my hand, walked me to the bus, sat in the seat I was in, took me by the hand to get off of the bus, and walked me to the office to find out who my teacher would be, and then walked me to class, the whole time, holding my hand. “Mrs. Thompson?” Jason opened the door to the class. “This is my new sister, Corinna. She’s going to be with us for a while because her mom is in the hospital.” “Ms. Corinna…?” the teacher looked at both Jason and me to complete the sentence. “Um… Phillips,” I whispered. “Sorry," Jason said more loudly. "She’s kind of a shy little girl. She said her last name is Phillips.” Some of the class laughed while others looked at us curiously. “Oh, that’s the girl I told you all about,” Carl spoke up. “She’s the one that needs help up and down the stairs, and that sometimes wets the bed.” I looked down when I heard his voice. A couple of girls gave him a dirty look, but a few of the girls made an “ew” face, and one girl outright laughed. “Wets the bed?” “Hey!” Carl yelled at the girl that laughed. “She can’t help it, and if you pick on her, you’ll be sorry!” The teacher walked over and put her hands on the girl that laughed shoulders. “Boys and girls, what she does at home is not any of our business. Please get back to your work.” I took a step in with Jason having pushed me gently. “I need to get to class.” Then to Carl, he gave a grave look that made Carl gulp. The teacher brought me to her desk, and she made sure my name was spelled right in her grading book, and then she gave me a textbook for what everyone was working on at the moment, math, and pointed out an empty seat, that happened to be near the girl that had laughed at me earlier. “I’m sorry, but that’s the only spot open for now. I’ll work on getting the class moved around later, honey, but with it being already Thursday, I don’t see doing that until Monday, okay?” I nodded and walked over to my seat. Just as I got there, the speaker started and we all stopped and looked up at it. “For lunch… we are having ham and cheese and tomato soup. This day in History…, and now, stand for the pledge.” We all stood up, and everyone put their hands over their hearts like at my old school. The only thing different in this school from the old one, is that they seemed to start the class before the announcements started. When the announcements ended, the teacher walked to the board that had five problems written on it, and we got started for real. The day was going okay. Even if Carl had told everyone that I peed the bed, after awhile, it seemed a few people had decided it wasn’t that big of a deal, and were talking to me kind of normally. Only a couple of friends that hung with Carl and the girl that laughed at me, and her three friends, seemed to be distant with me. “Hey,” this girl named Cindy hung with me at morning recess. “Don’t worry about the bed wetting thing. I mean, I’m sure a lot of kids have done it before, right?” I frowned at her. She wasn’t exactly saying she understood how if felt. “Anyway, I was just saying, because you seemed to be scared after he had said that about you. You don’t have to worry about that. If people are going to make fun of you, they are going to make fun of you. People will always find a reason, right? But like, I don’t even care, okay?” I shrugged. “Okay.” She dropped the awkward conversation luckily though, when four other girls came over, and we all started to play tag together. Vanessa came over after a bit, and she took me by the hands. “You made friends!” I looked down, “yeah.” “Well, I should take you to the potty so that Auntie Jenn doesn’t think you can't go at school. You don’t look wet right now.” I blushed and nodded, when I suddenly realized that the five girls I’d been playing tag with, was standing near me and heard some of what had been said. “She could go by herself,” Cindy defended me. “It’s my chore to make sure she goes potty,” Van-van said defiantly to her. “She knows I have to take her potty when I can. I was even told to watch you, remember, Corinna?” I nodded. Auntie Jenny had told her to watch to make sure others were not keeping me from the bathroom, but I didn’t think my friends were doing that. Still, I was too nervous to talk right now. If I pushed things too much, Cindy might know that my babying at home is worse than just me peeing in my sleep. “See those kids over by the bathroom?” Van-van pointed our attention. “Oh, yeah, Angela and her girls,” Cindy rolled her eyes. Angela was the girl that laughed at me. “So, you can see why I have to take her to the bathroom,” Van-van told Cindy. “If we can’t get in, then I have to go talk to an adult to make them move.” “Wait, so you thought Corinna didn’t go near the toilets because she was hanging out there?” Cindy asked Van-van. “Exactly. Corinna isn’t exactly outspoken for herself. She is kind a scared little shy thing.” Cindy frowned. “Well, are we going to let Angela bully our new friend?” She looked around at her friends who had been playing tag with me. “Well, but that’s Angela,” one girl stepped back. “I’m sorry, but I can’t get into another fight. I really will get it this time if I’m caught.” “Ye...yeah,” another girl backed up. “I… I don’t want her targeting me. We all have seen what she does to people that get in her way.” “Um… we don’t have enough people,” a third girl saw their numbers dwindling. “Look, Angela has four others with her. We are now down to just us three plus Corinna, but she’s kind of scared, too.” “I… um… I just pee my pants at school,” I mumbled. “Corinna, you do not,” Van-van shook her head. “You told Aunt Jenn that it was because teachers didn’t let you go or kids bullied, you. If you lied about that….” “I didn’t, but those girls are bullying me, so it’s…,” I trailed off. “And Aunt Jenn told us to help you out with bullies, remember? I'll go get a couple of our brothers.” “Don’t bother getting Carl,” Cindy told Van-van. “He’s one of your brothers right?” “Yeah? But why?” “Because he already told the whole class yesterday, that Corinna wets the bed.” “I… I’ll kill him,” Van-van frowned. “Well, good to know.” Vanessa took my hand and we looked for Jason. “The Fourth graders will move if a group of fifth graders walked towards the bathroom.” “But Jason said that we didn’t have recess at the same time,” I reminded her. “We all have morning recess together,” Van-van told me. “He was talking about lunch because they send us by classes to eat in the lunchroom.” “Oh, okay.” We found Jason playing basketball, and while the other girls had broken off to go play, Cindy stayed with Van-van and me. “Jason!” Van-van called at him. It took a moment for Jason to realize we were calling him, and then a short explanation for him to tell his friends that he had to do something, but he eventually came over. “Carl told her whole class that she wets the bed,” Van-van told Jason. “And to make things worse, the fourth grade bully knows this and she’s hanging out around the bathroom, making Corinna too scared to go. I figured if you got some fifth graders together, they’d move.” “Yeah, hold on, Corinna,” he smiled and patted my head. “Hey, guys? My sister needs some help with a fourth grade bully. Can you come with me to just, you know, let them see some fifth graders hanging near the bathroom and if we see them trying to stop Corinna going in, then I will just go and see what the problem is?” “Sure, dude. You know we are here for each other.” Well, they were not only fifth graders, but there were eight of them walking towards the bathrooms, and Angela’s group only had five in it. The fourth graders saw the fifth grade boys coming, but didn’t move at first, or not until they saw I was with them along with Cindy. “Um…, come on,” I heard Angela say to the others as we got close enough. They scattered, and then Cindy and Van-van took me into the bathroom. “You can go ahead and do what you want, Cindy,” Van-van told her. “But I have to make sure my little sister is okay and help her.” “You’re kind of treating her like a baby.” “I know. I have to. It’s not because of Corinna, but because of the house rules. Since she does wet the bed, like Carl told your class, Aunt Jenn just has us treat her like a baby instead of yelling at her for it. So, she actually has permission to wet her pants in the day, too, only she really doesn’t want to.” “Oh. Why is your aunt like that?” “I’m not sure, but every time we ask her about a rule, she does have a good reason for it. So, I don’t know. Maybe Corinna actually has a bigger problem that I don’t know about or something. I just know I have to help her.” While they were talking, Van-van had been taking me into a stall, and had been pulling down my pants. “Sit, Corinna.” I did. “She did wet her pants a lot on Tuesday, the night we got her, and she peed herself yesterday a few times, didn’t you, sweetheart?” I nodded in shame. “She can’t help it. She gets scared to speak up or to even go without permission, but she does try to wait until she can go. That’s why I have to take her at recess. She might not tell the teacher when she has to go, and that means, if I don’t take her now, she’ll wet her pants during class.” “Oh, wow! Something bad must have happened to make her that scared,” Cindy whispered and looked at me for a moment, while I actually felt pee going into the toilet. “See? I told you she had to pee. She was just scared of the bullies.” “Corinna, if you need help during class, you can ask me. I can ask the teacher for you to go to the bathroom or see the nurse if you… got too scared and peed your pants.” “No, please don’t ask the teacher to let her go to the bathroom, or especially to see the nurse,” Van-van said with a sour frown. “If you did that, everyone would know she was peeing her pants, or was about to.” “You don’t think I’d just blurt it out, do you?” “No, but if you talk to the teacher, and then Corinna got permission, no doubt not only would the class figure it out, but Carl would go home and tell our Aunt that Corinna had to go so obviously, that you figured it out, and make Aunt worried that Corinna was having troubles more than just being scared and confused.” “Oh. So, I should just let her pee her pants?” “Yeah. Let her wet her pants. The teacher knows to check on her. Our Aunt told them to check on her and to let her go see the nurse when everyone else is distracted. So if you see her pee, try not to make it noticed.” “Oh, okay.” I finished peeing, and I looked up at them. “Recess is probably almost over. We’ll get in trouble if we go back late.” “No, we won’t,” Cindy told me. “We just truthfully tell the teacher that we were in the bathroom and didn’t see everyone going in.” I frowned. “But… it’s different for me, than for you.” “Well,” Van-van told me. “You are in the bathroom with us, right? And you would have peed your pants, right?” I frowned and looked down. “So, I’ll go to your class first and whisper to your teacher why you and Cindy were late, and then I’ll tell my teacher that I had to help our new sister because when you are in foster care, things are scary.” I nodded. They were right though. The teacher listened to Cindy tell her that we were late because we didn’t see the class since I was scared to go to the bathroom because some bullies were hanging around the toilets. Then Van-van told her how foster kids get scared to say anything and how I might have peed my pants if she hadn’t helped me to the bathroom because of the bullies, so the teacher let us sit down. Luckily, the teacher had also let Van-van talk to her in the hallway and we spoke so low, I don’t think the class heard any of it. At lunch time, the teacher bent down at my desk just before we were dismissed to go to lunch, and she whispered to me. “Come and see me after you eat. I’ll be in the classroom, sweetheart.” I nodded. “Corinna, your aunt talked to the school, and the principal told me about your difficulties, sweetheart. I wanted to talk to you in private, and this is really the only private moment we can arrange.” I looked down in shame. “Your Aunt thinks you might pee your pants sometimes at school, and she told us. She told me that if you do ask to go, to send you immediately because you get scared and don’t ask until you are about to wet yourself even at home.” I shivered. It looked like that last night, when Van-van took me to the bathroom when I didn’t know I had to go. “She also said she’s going to have you see a doctor because she thinks it’s more than you just being scared, but she’s waiting for the paperwork for that. And… apparently, you told her that sometimes teachers at your old school made you wait too long even in the first grade? And they would yell at you, which might be why you are scared to speak up about needing to pee?” I just kept my head down and let her talk. I didn’t tell her about first grade, though, I don’t think. I told her that I thought it started in third grade, last year! Still, I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry that teachers are sometimes like that. I mean, there are times when I have to be strict, but when I can, I will always let a student use the toilet. That’s a right, honey.” “Even for a person… um… like me?” I asked speaking the language of the whites. “A person like you?” “You know… um… black? Colored? Not white?” “Baby, they made laws in the sixties to secure that Black, Brown, Yellow, or whatever, People are People, and have the same basic needs and rights. You have a right to go to the bathroom in my class, and if you get scared and pee your pants, it’s okay. I’ve been warned that it will hurt you to make you go see the nurse right away if everyone will see you wet, so I will check on you when I think I can do so without everyone seeing you’ve wet. I will be walking by your desk from now on, before I ask you to stand up for the class, and if I see any water on the floor, a wet lap, or you smell, then I will call on someone else, okay?” I looked up at her. “Really?” “Really, Corinna. The most important thing you need to know, is you are safe in my classroom. I will do everything I can to keep you from getting scared, embarrassed, or upset for no reason. If you do something wrong, like say something inappropriate or don’t turn in your homework, then I’m embarrassing you for an action you chose to do. That’s different. Understand?” I nodded. “That sounds fair,” but my voice was very quiet. “Okay. Can I send you to the nurse to get your pants checked and changed, sweetheart?” “Well, I went at morning recess.” “I know, but you came to me right after you ate, didn’t you?” “Yes, ma’am.” “So you haven’t had a chance to go since then, have you?” “No?” “So please humor me and go see the nurse, and if you want, you can slip into the bathroom on your way there.” “Okay.” I did get into the bathroom, but I went to the nurse like I was told…. “Hey, sweetheart,” the nurse smiled at me as I came in. “Do you want to wait for me back by the bed behind the curtain?” I walked by several kids that were in her office for different reasons. One kid was crying with a bruised eye, one kid was standing there, looking bored, and the last kid was drinking something from a little medicine cup. Obviously, the nurse can’t give you medicine on her own, so it must have been something the kid had to have all the time. Behind the curtain, I saw a bed and a change of clothes on it. She was apparently prepared for me. The nurse came in, smiling, and she waved me over to her. Putting a tender hand on my shoulder, she started to talk. “We are going to go ahead and change your pants,” she told me. “Even if you don’t think you’re wet, it’s a good idea to make sure.” “I didn’t though,” I looked up at her. “I went at recess.” “I’m glad of that, honey.” “And I went before I saw you. Mrs. Thompson said I could.” “That’s good, sweetheart. But I still have to check. We promised your Auntie that we’d change you at least once a day at lunch time, just in case you leaked and forgot about it. Your Aunt said that you might try really hard to get to the bathroom, but sometimes you might leak or you might even fully wet yourself sometimes, so she wants us to change your pants at least at lunch time, okay?” I nodded. “I do sometimes leak a little bit,” I whispered. “...And… I’ve wet my pants at school before, I guess… so….” and I trailed off a hurt coming from inside my chest as I admitted these things, but I was afraid not to say so because Auntie Jenny said I’d get spanked for lying about it, but not for peeing my pants. “That’s okay, sweetheart. That’s why your aunt told us about these problems. If we can make you comfortable while you are at school, then that’s what we are going to try to do. Of course, you can come to me anytime you are wet, but I’m going to change your pants, at least during lunch time everyday. If you don’t come to me at lunch, I’ll have to call you to the office over the loud speaker, and you don’t want that, do you?” I shook my head no and shuddered at the thought that she’d call my name, and then everyone see me wearing clean pants, and then they’d think I got caught peeing myself and went to class and had to be tracked down to get clean. That’s… that’s not going to happen! Overall, I liked Mrs. Thompson, and thought she was probably the most fair teacher I’d had ever at school. She laid out the plan, and told me she knows I have accidents, but she wasn’t going to make it a big deal if I didn’t. She set up with the nurse to take care of me, and she even let me use the bathroom on the way to see the nurse. She did what she said she’d do, and after lunch, and walked by me before calling me for anything. The class didn’t seem to catch on though because she didn’t call me as soon as she passed me, but called me maybe one or two students later. She also walked around the room anyway as she taught, so it looked more like she was walking by me to see if I was fidgeting in my chair like a lot of fourth graders sometimes do. We finally got on the bus, and Jason was sitting next to me. “You peed your pants anyway, at school?” he whispered to me. I shook my head no. He stared at my clean pants. “Oh, the nurse told me she going to change me at lunch everyday even if I didn’t pee, just to make sure because Aunt told her I sometimes leak, and might not know I went a little bit.” He smiled. “Oh. I guess that’s because of when Van-van took you potty and found out you had a little bit in your panties when you went.” “You know about that?” I whispered. “Honey, Aunt Jenn has to tell me everything about that because I am the one that is in charge of even Van-van. Because I’m a boy, Aunt Jenn wants Van-Van to help you in the toilet, but if she’s not able, and Aunt is busy, guess who is going to have to help you or change your pants?” I shivered. “You?” “I mean… most of the time, I think Van-van can do it. But you do need to know, that you will get changed no matter what, because there will always be either an adult around like at school, or Aunt, and then she’s put Van-van and me in charge of you, so one of us will do it, when you need.” I gulped. “But Aunt and Van-van will be around most of the time. You probably never have to do it, right?” “Probably,” he smiled. “But if I see you’d peed your pants, and they are not able to take care of you, I will do it.” “Okay,” I shivered again. “I… I’ll try not to pee my pants.” “I thought you already were trying not to, honey. That’s why Aunt Jenn relaxed the rules on you getting to the toilet at home. That also why, though, she said I’m to take you if Van-van or she is busy, so you don’t have to wet your pants.” “Oh.” We came into the house, and then Jason grabbed Carl by the shoulder before he could run off. “Aunt Jenn?” he immediately got her attention. “This one has been spreading rumors about the baby of the family at school. Because of his rumors, the fourth grade bully had her targets set on keeping her out of the bathroom during morning recess.” “What?” Aunt Jenn frowned at both Jason and Carl. “Van-van, take Corinna upstairs and check her and let her use the toilet. Theodore, go with the girls.” “But, he’s a boy,” I protested. “Honey, you are the family baby, you’re probably wet. He’s just an older brother that is there to help you. He won’t do anything that Van-van doesn’t let him do, and Van-van knows that only she wipes you or changes your pants directly if you’re wet.” I frowned. “But he’s going to see me naked.” “Honey, he’s just going to make sure you get to the toilet in time, and if you don’t, he might help Van-van by getting her some clean clothes for you depending on what you need.” Van-van pushed at me holding my shoulders. “No, Corinna. Auntie Jenn has made up her mind. Come on. She’s going to deal with Carl for being mean and spreading rumors about you.” Van-van helped me up the stairs like she was supposed to, and Theodore walked behind us. “Her butt looks kind of wet,” he said to Vanessa. “I didn’t!” tears welled up in my eyes. “I promise, I didn’t. I didn’t pee at all today except in the potty!” “Your pants are wet, though,” Theodore said insistently making me second guess myself and put my hand on my butt. He was right. I felt the wetness. “I… I promise!” I shook in fear that they’d tell Auntie Jenny that I lied. “She didn’t wet her pants,” Van-van said turning me to face him. “Give me your hand.” “Why?” “Because. I’ll prove she didn’t wet her pants.” “But… how?” “Look, I don’t know why her butt is wet, but you need to know. I don’t want you telling Auntie that Corinna lied when she didn’t.” Van-van forced him to touch my thighs nearer the knees, and then said. “If she had peed her pants, she’d be wet around here, too, and it would be more wet than her butt.” I wasn’t sure if Van-van was right about it being more wet there, if I peed sitting down, but I didn’t say anything. Anyway, I wasn’t sitting except on the bus, and if I peed on the bus, then surely Jason would have noticed, right? “Oh, okay. But her butt is wet.” “Yeah, I know. I can see that now. But that doesn’t mean she peed, okay?” “Okay.” Van-van took me into the bathroom, and she pulled down my pants and put me on the toilet. “Since you did notice her pants were wet, and it looks like it went through to her panties… here, feel these.” “I’m not touching a girls…?” “Look, you are the one that looked at her to see if she peed, so you will feel them, or you’ll get in trouble for trying to be mean.” He shook as Van-van passed them to her. “Now, how wet do those feel?” He shivered and didn’t respond. “Are they as wet as the butt of her pants?” “No?” “Which means….” “She sat in something?” “Good. Now go get her some clean panties and a clean pair of pants. You know. Her dresser is the one under the window.” “Okay.” He came back, and Van-van redressed me in front of him. “I know it was embarrassing,” Van-van kissed my cheek. “But at least he knows you didn’t wet your pants, so he won’t tell Auntie something that might make you look like you are lying.” We walked down to the dining room, and I noticed that Carl was missing while we were having snack. “Carl will be busy for a bit,” Aunt told us. “He can have his snack after he finishes with something I’ve told him to do. And after you lot are done with your snacks, it is homework time. Van-van, you need to help Corinna. She’s new to your school, so we need to make sure she gets the homework done right.”

Chapter Four I was in the car, about an hour later, headed for the school. I shivered as we drove down the interstate into town. We were definitely more than ten minutes outside of town, and about thirty minutes from the school. “Corinna?” Auntie Jenny called at me from where she was driving. I was in the backseat, crisscross from her. “Yes, Auntie?” “We’ll get you registered for school today,” she was talking to me while we were still on or way. “...And then, afterwards, you can get some new stuff for school. You’d like that, right? And I do have to get you some clothes that fit you better.” “Um… yeah, okay,” I looked down. “I mean, I do have stuff at home, and I have my book bag because I had it when they picked me up at school to see my mom?” “Well, that bag is kind of old, isn’t it? It’s got holes in it, and it’s badly stained. I’d even say it has a few stains from you peeing on it by accident.” “I… um… okay,” I didn’t really know what to say to that. I didn’t think I ever peed on my bag, but it did have stains, and it did have holes. I didn’t want to make Auntie Jenny mad at me right now. The circular building came into view way too soon, though, and I sighed as I was the Words splashed across the Front of the school. Hanna-Elk Mountain Elementary School Carbon County No. 2 We are way out of the area of where my mom was at the hospital. If I had to guess, I didn’t think this town even had a hospital, it seemed so small. I saw us entering the town, and not even a couple of minutes later, we were in the school parking lot. Auntie Jenny turned around when she parked the car, her hand across the seat as she looked back at me. “Now, I don’t want you causing any trouble in there when we go in. You stay quiet unless you are asked questions, and you stay next to my side, understand?” I nodded and then looked down at my lap. I could tell that she meant business, and anyway, the last thing I wanted was trouble at a new school where my mommy wasn’t even in town to help me. “Good. Now, get out of the car and wait for me next to your door.” I opened the door and climbed out of the car, and then after shutting it, I turned and leaned my back against the door. I watched while Auntie Jenny got her purse, a folder with papers in it, and a bag that I didn’t notice at first, from the front of the car. “Auntie Jenny?” I asked when she was settled and nodded for me to follow her in. “I don’t wet my pants all the time.” “You don’t? But didn’t you wet yourself all day yesterday, and in your bed last night, and even at breakfast this morning?” “Yeah?” “But you say you don’t do it all the time? Well, we should discuss this in private, child. For now, don’t say anything. You aren’t going to school today anyway. I’m just registering you for now, and then we’ll have to get some things for you. You have the day out to prove to me you can get to the toilet at least twice.” “Twice?” I asked looking up at her as we continued walking forward. “Sweetheart, if you can’t even get to the toilet twice, then you are just denying that you can’t help it, and if you continue like that, you are never going to be able to do anything to control the problem.” “I… I just had a bad day yesterday, I promise.” “So, you should be able to get to the bathroom at least twice today. Show me, and we can drop it, okay?” “Okay….” We walked into the front door. The building was round and made of a plain brown brick. There were windows around the one-story building. There was another smaller rectangular building a little ways off to one side. I could see lights on in that building just before we went in. We walked down a short hall, and then around a circular hall that had windows facing out to the playground. The playground seemed pretty big. And a moment later, we were at the office. “Good morning, Mrs. Loveland.” A lady had addressed Auntie Jenny from the front desk the moment we came in. The lady had on glasses that hung by chains, and she had silver and gray hair. Her eyes were wide and happy, and her scent was of a faint roses. “Morning, Mrs. Thompson. The other kids are behaving themselves, I trust?” “Yes, they haven’t had any problems at all today. So, is this a new family member then?” “She is. This is Corinna Phillips. She’s going to be with me probably until her mom gets out of the hospital.” “Aw, poor child. Well, we’ll do whatever we can to make things easy for you while you are going through this.” “Thank you, ma’am,” I looked down. “So, do you have her papers, then?” the woman asked Auntie. “Yes, right here,” Auntie showed her the folder. “The social worker said it was all here.” “Good, well, it seems you have everything in order here. So, when do you think she’ll start with us?” “I was thinking that the sooner the better, so maybe tomorrow?” “Tomorrow will be great.” “Wonderful. Now she’s had a hard time with her mom being sick and everything, and I believe she might have some struggles, so I’ve packed these in case she needs them tomorrow.” The office lady took the bag, and nodded. On our way back out of the office, still in the school, but headed to the car, Auntie turned to me. “Why don’t we try to take you to the potty right now?” I looked up at her wondering why she seemed to be all over the place on this. I guessed that’s just what crazy was. I let her lead me by the hand into the girl’s toilets, and went into a stall. She didn’t let me close it though. She kept it open and looked at me, looked somewhere else, and then at me, again, as though she was saying that she didn’t want to watch me, but she had to…. I looked down at my exposed lap, my skirt down at my ankles with Auntie’s insistence, and my panties down my legs far enough that I felt really exposed. I kept feeling like another girl was going to come in any time, and see me being watched like a toddler that can’t be trusted. I squeezed my muscles trying to get something to come out. I thought maybe it was starting to get in there, but no matter how much I pushed, not even a drop spilled. I was sat there for so long, I thought an hour must have passed, but eventually Auntie sighed and came to get me. “Well, get up and pull your skirt up,” she took me by the hands. “We can try again in a while, I guess.” I looked down at my feet. “I’ll try.” We got me fixed up and walked out to the car where we then dove not only from the school, but actually out of town. “There aren’t really any places to shop around in town,” she told me. “So we need to go to Rawlins to a nice shopping center.” “Is that far away?” “It’s going to take about an hour,” she told me. “Okay,” I breathed out. “But you told me to go to the bathroom, soon. I’m just saying, I might have to go sooner than that.” “Honey, I did give you a chance to go before we left.” “I know. But I couldn’t go then.” “And you want to go now?” “I… I don’t know.” “Well, we’ll stop up here in a bit for gas. You can go then, okay?” “Okay.” We drove for a little while, and as we drove, I could feel it getting more and more ready to go. I started to feel it now wanting to go out. I hoped she wasn’t going to make me wait too long. Van-van’s words still haunted me a bit. “You’ll get in trouble…, It’s expected of you…, you are the baby of the family, now…, and we’ll all get in trouble if you don’t do what is expected of you, so you are on your own if you try to disobey….” “I don’t want to pee my pants,” I whispered in the back not really talking to Auntie Jenny, but still just loud enough that if she might be paying attention, she might hear me. I as scared to say it directly to her. I didn’t want her to punish anyone because I was being stubborn, but I didn’t want to be bad on purpose, either. Wetting your pants on purpose is bad, isn’t it? “I know, sweetheart,” Auntie Jenny whispered back at me. “I’m trying to get to the gas station. Just wait a little longer. Remember, you need to make it to the potty at least twice today, okay?” “I know. I’m trying.” The minutes were continuing to tick away though, and the pressure in my tummy was getting stronger. I felt tears in the corner of my eyes, and the heat and hurt in my chest caught in my throat. I didn’t know how long I was going to be able to wait, and I didn’t want Auntie Jenny to think I was stupid or unable to control myself. I am a big girl! I looked out the window, and all I could see, were mountains in the distance, cacti all around the area that wasn’t the road, and the buildings had already sparse-d out so much, that we were definitely not even in the little town that we had visited the school in. We were out of the town in less than five minutes. “I thought you weren’t going to keep me,” I said again low enough she could ignore me, but this time, a little more direct at Auntie Jenny. “Sweetheart, even if I tell social services that I have a full house, and they know I do, they rarely ever move that fast. I don’t know how long I’ll have you, but you can trust I won’t turn a child out into the cold, but you already saw how many kids are in the house, and I’m really only supposed to have two kids at once.” “So…, Van-van said you usually keep us anyway, if you can…,” I whispered. “Honey, she doesn’t really understand what happens there. Like I said, I’d never put you out in the cold, and social services is so backed up with people, that it just is the way of it, that I normally end up keeping kids as long as three months minimum.” “Oh,” I looked down at my lap, my legs struggling to stay still, the top of my skirt bouncing about because of the constant pumping of one of my legs. I wished I had a clock or something to tell me what the time was. I didn’t look up at the front window because I was kind of scared. What if she got mad at me for standing up, even if I wasn’t going to, but just wanted to scoot up to see the clock? I didn’t know why I didn’t think to ask her. Maybe I was scared of sounding like that annoying kid that always asks if we are there yet, and scared she might yell at me for that…. I just sat there, shaking my legs, staring at my lap, hoping the gas station wasn’t too far away. I was wiggling a lot, and getting kind of scared that I wasn’t going to make it, and prove the crazy lady right. I put my hand in my lap trying to add to the pressure to keep dry. It was getting really hard. I felt a sniffling catch up on me, a tell-tale sign that I was about to cry. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Auntie Jenny asked looking at me in the mirror. “Um… nothing,” I sniffled. “It’s just…,” sniffle. “...I… I can’t hold it much longer.” Sniffle sniffle. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. I did tell you that you only had to get to the toilet twice if you want to prove that you are not always wet, and even if you are, you are not going to be scolded or hit for peeing your pants. Only for lying about it, sweetheart.” She sighed. “It’s okay to just wet your pants. That will actually save us a little time because we have plenty of gas, and we need to get to Rawlings, get your stuff, and get back before the other kids get home.” “But…,” I sniffled again. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m giving you permission, as a big kid, you can just wet your pants this time. You only have to pee in the toilet twice today, and so that shouldn’t be that hard to do.” “I… I don’t want to pee my pants,” I whimpered. “I’m sure you don’t,” Auntie Jenny sighed. “But we just missed the exit for the gas station, and it doesn’t look like you’re making it anyway, with how you are acting right now. Just finish in your pants, honey. You can try again next time you have to go.” I started crying. I was sitting in damp smelly clothes when we arrived in Rawlings city limits, and my seat under me was soggy and an earlier puddle stain outlined where the fluid ran off of the seat to the floor around my seat. I still had sniffles and watery eyes. “Sweetheart, are you hungry?” Auntie Jenny asked as she looked back at me. It as then that I noticed that I did feel hungry. I wasn’t even sure of what time it was. “Yeah? But I wet my pants.” “Again, sweetheart? Or are you talking about because we didn’t stop the first time?” “Because we didn’t stop?” “Well, I already know about that, honey. I didn’t stop because be honest. You were already peeing your pants, baby.” I looked down. “Sweetheart? Tell the truth so Auntie doesn’t have to punish you. Tell Auntie about you already wetting in your pants before the exit even came up.” “I was peeing a little bit,” I blushed and shook a little bit scared to tell her any differently. “Good girl. Now, don’t worry about being wet. We’ll get you some new clothes after we get you some lunch. You’re not the first little girl to go into a restaurant after having peed your pants, sweetheart.” I sighed, my head lowered, and I whispered. “Okay.” “Just remember,” Auntie Jenny went on trying to help me understand something that I really couldn’t wrap my head around. “It’s okay to wet yourself a little bit today, but you do need to make it to the toilet at least twice, if you want me to think you are at least potty trained enough to make it to the potty sometimes.” “Okay.” She pulled into a burger place called Peaches. Turning the car off, she looked back at me, and she whispered. “You’re a good little girl, aren’t you?” I nodded hoping I was being a good little girl. “So you’re not going to embarrass yourself or me by drawing attention to what you did inside. We’ll find a table as soon as we get in, and you can sit at the table while I am getting the good.” “Yes, ma’am.” She then got out and went around to my door, fixing her own skirt and straitening her shirt as she did so. She opened my door, and he reached for my hand. “Wipe your tears, sweetheart. If people see you crying, they are definitely going to know that the little nine year old had just peed her pants… unless you want everyone in public to know that you had an accident?” I shook my head. “No?” “So, wipe your tears, baby. That’s it. Be a big girl and come and sit down as soon as you can so no one will notice.” I sighed, but eventually got into the restaurant and sat at the nearest table I could find, and waited for Auntie Jenny to bring me back a burger, fries, and a strawberry shake. She had her own burger, fries, and a dark drink in her cup that wasn’t labeled, but I didn’t ask. I just knew it was a cold drink because of the ice in it. “After we eat,” Auntie Jenny laid out the plan. “We’ll go to Target and look for some school things for you first. We can’t forget to get you those things because you’ll need them for tomorrow.” “Okay,” I answered, my hand over my mouth to cover a nearly full mouth. “And then we’ll go to a nicer clothing store and get you some clothes, and let you change your pants, and after that, we’ll have to try to beat your foster brothers and sister home.” “Yes, Auntie.” About an hour and a half later, we were on our way again, on the highway, headed home. Auntie wasn’t stingy about what she got me at all though. She had gotten me the good kind of trapper Keeper, and even let me pick the style, which I chose three cute little kittens on it. She had gotten me the larger sixty-four count crayons for school instead of the suggested forty-eight pack, and even my bag was cute with a pink bear on a lavender plain field. I was sitting in a pair of nicer new blue jeans and a pink top with a puppy face on it. The caption under the puppy read: Do you want to play? And the puppy had those eyes, you know the ones, when a dog is begging for something. It was awesome. My wet seat was drying out and I was put in the dry seat on the other side of the back. She even got me a few toys while we were at target, and I was allowed to play around with this little electronic game where a you controlled a cat at four different places around the table, and it chased and hit mice into the air, eating them only at the one end of the table. The game was really simple, but kind of addictive. “Remember,” Auntie reminded me again for the hundredth time. “You’ve already peed your pants twice today, and you have no pee in the potty yet. You need to pee in the potty at least twice if you want me to not tell the teacher that you just wet your pants at school.” “Okay,” I whispered though in my head, I was screaming… “I KNOW! STOP IT!” I clenched my fists as she reminded me about peeing at breakfast, even though that was kind of her fault, and she reminded me I peed on the way to Rawlins, and I didn’t know if that was her fault or not, but I know I didn’t do it on purpose! It just happened because I had to go so bad, and maybe… she was right and I had started to pee my pants before we even passed the stop? I don’t remember now, and I did sometimes pee my pants at school, so… maybe I couldn’t hold it, and it was coming out, maybe? I know I tried to go at the school though a bit before, and nothing would come out then. I sighed. We arrived at home, and Auntie seemed to sigh in relief as we pulled into the drive. “Well, I think we beat the others home. I want you to go in and watch television while I am getting snacks ready for you and the others.” “Okay.” “And if you feel it ready to come out, come and get me to take you potty so I can see you make it for once… that is, if you want me to see you make it twice.” “I will.” The door opened a bit later, and the others came walking into the house. Vanessa came right over to where I was sitting watching Tom and Jerry. “Did you have a good day today?” she asked me in a sweet voice that made it sound like she was talking down at a baby. “I… um… yeah, I did,” I responded. I felt my ears heat up. It was embarrassing to be talked to like that. “I’m sorry, but it’s my new chore,” she whispered as she slid her hand under my bottom. “Just checking, sweetheart.” “I’m dry,” I whispered, the burning feeling starting to redden my neck. “Okay, but I do have to check.” I sighed. “Well?” “Yeah, you’re dry,” she smiled at me. “You should come with me to the toilet though just in case.” “Um… Auntie has to come, too,” I frowned. “She wants to see if I get any in the potty today.” “I thought she just wanted you to wet your pants, honey? I was going to take you up so I could go, and then change your pants afterwards.” “But you checked me…, I was dry, remember?” “I know you’re dry right now….” “Well, Auntie says I can go potty. She wants to see though. If I make it twice…,” I blushed trailing off. “Okay, we can go get Aunt Jenn then and see if she will come with us to see you pee in the potty then.” I nodded and let Van-van take my hand and lead me to the kitchen area where Auntie Jenny had snacks laid out on the table. “I was just about to take the baby up and use the toilet and then change her,” Van-van told Aunt Jenny. “Is she wet?” “No. She was dry when I checked, but I figure she’ll be wet soon?” “Well, she says she only does this sometimes, so I need to see if she gets any pee pee in the toilet before bedtime. She has to make it to the toilet twice.” “Oh, that’s what she was telling me, but I was afraid she was lying, so I didn’t tell you she said it because she doesn’t know the rules that well, and I didn’t want to get her in trouble.” “You are a sweet girl,” Auntie Jenny told Vanessa. “But you have to remember that I’m doing what is best for all of you kids. If she gets in trouble, that’s between her, and me.” “Yes, Aunt Jenn, sorry.” “Well, let’s take the baby up the stairs and see if she can pee, then.” Auntie Jenny still held my hands like I was a toddler as I was led up the stairs, and Van-van led the way into the toilet. “Do you mind if I go first?” Van-van asked Auntie Jenny. “Did little Corinna tell you she had to go when you came to get her?” “No,” Van-van smiled. “It was my idea to bring her up with me. She said she gets to use the toilet though, so I was going to let her go if it was true.” “Alright, since she didn’t bring it up, first, you can go first.” I watched Van-van get on the toilet and start going. I looked down at my shoes while she was mid-stream, a little embarrassed to watch another person do something so private. I suddenly had to really pee though, as I heard the pee pushing into the toilet and I whimpered up at Auntie. “I have to go….” “Well, Van-van will be off of the toilet in a moment honey.” I squirmed and crossed my legs. It was kind of sudden, and I squirmed to stay dry while Van-van was squirting the last of it into the toilet and then started to wipe. Suddenly, I felt a little bit dampen my panties, and I held my hand against me, trying to block it come out. Auntie Jenny reached down and undid my pants as Van-van stood up, and she pulled my pants down and then my panties. I looked up at her kind of scared, but she sat me on the potty. “You wet a little bit,” Auntie whispered to me. I nodded. “Just a little bit?” “You could have told me and asked to go potty any time while you were watching cartoons,” she told me. “But you held it until Van-van came to get you, and that’s why you almost didn’t make it.” I looked down. I didn’t hold it on purpose. I didn’t realize I had to go until Van-van was going. “You technically went in the toilet,” Auntie Jenny told me looking me in the eye as pee started to escape my body. “But if you can only go if someone asks you to go, then we’ll need to let the teacher know about that, too.” “I… I can go on my own?” “Well, you need to show me. Remember, you have to pee at least once more in the toilet before bedtime anyway.” I nodded looking down at my feet. I was so embarrassed. I had never had this happen where I almost wet myself without knowing I had to go. I didn’t understand why it was happening… only I did have this problem sometimes at school. Sometimes, yeah, that’s why other kids bullied me about the toilet, actually. They had seen me squirming outside the toilet, brought on suddenly. Maybe…. Maybe there was something actually wrong? Tears in my eyes, I looked up at Auntie Jenny. “Um… sometimes… at school?” “Yes, sweetheart?” “Only sometimes….” I looked down, tears at the corners of my eyes. “Just sometimes… I… have an emergency before I know I have to go potty.” “Well, that’s too bad,” she frowned. “I think you should see a doctor anyway, so we can get it checked out. I’m guessing you are telling me about that because that’s what happened just now?” I shrugged. I wanted to say yes, but was kind of scared of what she’d say if I did. “Well then, you don’t need to try to go potty again tonight, honey.” I frowned up at her, my eyes getting big. “I thought… if I proved myself…?” “Sweetheart, if you are potty trained, but you are having trouble getting to the toilet, the last thing we need is for you to be trying to hold it longer than you should.” “But… I don’t want to pee my pants on purpose,” I started to cry. Auntie Jenny held me and rocked me while I sat on the toilet. “Van-van, you can go ahead and wash your hands and go eat your snack. I’ll take care of baby Corinna for now. She needs a mama’s touch right now.” Van-van nodded and walked over to the sink to wash her hands. “I know, baby,” Auntie Jenny whispered to me. “You just come and get me later, whether some is already coming out or not, and we’ll take you to the potty and I’ll take you just before bed, to see if you can get some out. You can pee in the toilet at home, if you can get there. But at school, it will be easier on the teacher for you to just wait for a good time to let him know you need to see the nurse.” I was crying now. “It’s not ideal, I know,” Auntie Jenny told me. “We will get you to see a doctor soon, okay?” “Okay.” “Do you remember when you started having trouble getting to the toilet at school?” I shrugged. “Try to remember, honey. The doctor will probably ask you the same question, and it’s better if you’ve already thought about what is going on so it’s easier to answer.” I looked up at Auntie Jenny, and she looked like she was being genuine. “I… I’m not sure if it first happened last year or the year before. But it started to happen maybe the second or third time, after I was told to wait?” I sighed and look off into space, trying to remember exactly how it all started with the bullying, and the accidental wet seats, and the teachers always telling me to wait. “It was last year,” I finally remembered. It was just before Christmas, the first time I had to struggle to hold it. I mean, it felt natural, but I was just waiting because we were singing a Christmas song, and I was afraid to interrupt. I finally saw a chance and asked to go, but the teacher said Music was almost over and I could wait ten minutes… only, only I couldn’t. I peed my pants.” Auntie Jenny frowned. “Well, the teacher didn’t know you were already holding it for a long time, though, did she?” “No?” I shrunk in on myself now realizing that was probably my fault, too. I let Autnie Jenny take my hand and lead me to wash my hands, as I started to remember a little more. A few days after that, I had been in the classroom, working on some crafts for Christmas. Yeah, elementary school kids actually did crafts, singing programs, and other holiday themed things around the holidays to include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day at that time. I was in a group that was putting together a chain of red and green construction paper to decorate the gym in for our program, when I had to go. I rose my hand. “Corinna?” the teacher called me. I nervously walked over to Mrs. Baites. “What is it, Corinna?” “I have to go pee.” “We will be finishing up in about twenty minutes, and it’s not right to let others clean up your mess, is it?” “No, ma’am.” “You can go on our way back to the classroom.” I hung my head and went back to my group, struggling after a bit, and eventually peeing my pants again, as I was cleaning up the mess. This time, everyone in my group had seen it happen. I didn’t tell Auntie about that incident though, because I was afraid it was my fault, for sure. So I just looked down and said I kept peeing my pants during preparing for the Christmas program. I just kept having accidents because maybe I was too shy to tell them I had to go because everyone was working, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was being lazy. “Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Auntie Jenny helped me washed my hands and then she held me for a minute. “Sometimes, school can be scary for little kids.” I looked up at her, my eyes wide, and I frowned seriously at her. “I just need you to think about how you developed this pattern of peeing your pants, especially at school so that when we talk to the doctor, it can help that doctor find out how to best help you, baby.” “Okay.” At dinner, we were all called by the bell. Van-van quickly got me to stand up, and she straightened my clothes for me, and then we ran to the top of the stairs. “Okay, hold on to my hands,” she reached out and took both of mine. The boys ran down one side of us while Van-van was using both hands to hold both of my hands, walking me slowly down the steps. When we reached the bottom, and Van-van straightened my clothes again, and then helped me stand correctly next to her, we waited for Auntie Jenny’s inspection. “Boys, you know we have a baby in the house right now. I do want you to respond to the bell, but you also need to be mindful of the baby. Carl and Theo, you could have hurt both Vanessa and Corinna by trying to push past them. Next time, Jason, you will walk down with the girls when you are all called at once, and you will make a buffer between the younger boys and the girls until the younger boys are past them. Understand?” “Yes, Aunt Jenn,” all the kids said at once, except I was slower because I said “Auntie Jenny” instead. “Alright, come into the dining room and take your seats, and then I have something that everyone needs to hear.” We all walked in, and Van-van lifted me, awkwardly, into my chair while I also climbed into it, to help her, and she got me settled, and when we settled, everyone had been looking at us waiting for the two of us. “Corinna is going to go to school with you all tomorrow,” she told all of us. “So, I’ve seen how this goes, and I know that some people are cruel. My household will not be cruel, though. You kids got it?” Again, everyone chorused, “Yes, Aunt Jenn.” “Now, we know how Coloreds are treated sometimes, and we don’t like it, do we kids?” The other kids said “No, Aunt Jenn,” though I couldn’t tell if they really understood, or if she had just trained them to always agree with her whatever she said. “Corinna might have been picked on a bit by her last school. I’ll deal with the adults in the best way I can, but you kids need to be there, and redirect any attention that you see Corinna getting on the playground, if it looks like she’s in trouble, being bullied, or is just having a hard time.” “Aunt Jenn?” Jason spoke up. “We aren’t all in her classes. I don’t know how I’m going to stop bullying on her when the fifth grade is outside at a different time than the fourth graders.” “You will just do your best, Jason. If you see it, you stop it.” “Yes, ma’am.” “Now, Corinna has some toileting problems, as you all already know, but there might be more to her toileting problems than I knew last night. The child is going to try to go in the daytime at home, at least. But at school, it might be hard for her.” There was a moment of pause around the table. “If you see any of the kids telling her that she can’t go, or pushing her for whatever reason at recess, I want you to get her some help from a teacher. If you try, but the teacher ignores it, then let her have an accident. Don’t disobey the adults, but when you come home, tell me everything you saw, okay?” The others nodded in agreement. “And you, honey, if you have a natural accident at your seat, don’t worry. The school knows because I told them today that you might wet your pants, and you are not to be hit for it, but if the classroom teacher knows you have to go, and they tell you no, and it seems like too long for you, maybe on purpose, just come home and tell me your feelings. I’ll expect some accidents on your own at school, so don’t feel forced to lie, sweetheart. Tell me if you just couldn’t wait, or if someone caused you to wait an unreasonable time. Understand?” I looked down. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be good.” She wrapped her arms around me, and she looked at the others again. “This doesn’t only go for Corinna, of course. If any of you feel a teacher is being unreasonable to you, you need to tell me. You should know that already, but just in case it wasn’t clear before, I want to know if anyone is mistreating you at school whether another kid or an adult.” “Yes, ma’am,” all the kids around the table answered her. “Alright. Let’s eat, then.” So…, I started to eat, but I was trying to process what this lady was really like. She seemed crazy one minute, and then very much on all of us kids’ side the next. She had a strict bell rule, and even told me if I wet my pants again tonight, basically, because I probably only have one more chance to go before I sleep, and I needed two times making it… if I don’t, she’ll just assume that I pee my pants in the daytime a lot, and not worry about me using the toilet, but if I make it, then she’ll let the school know that I can use the toilet. It was like she was all over the place. It was a few hours after dinner, and we were all in the living room, playing a game called Clue. There were just enough spots for each of us to have a token to play including Auntie Jenny. I suddenly got up off of the floor from my spot and walked over to Van-van. “Can you take me upstairs?” My side kind of ached, and I felt like I needed to go. I hoped she was going to take me. “Aunt Jenn?” Van-van spoke softly. “I think Corinna is trying to tell me to take her to the bathroom.” “Did she tell you that’s where she wants to go?” “Not exactly.” “Well, make her tell you. She has to learn to speak up for herself at school if she doesn’t want to be peeing on herself, so have her wait until she asks you properly.” Van-van looked back into my eyes. “Well, ask me to take you, and I’ll take you to the toilet, honey. Can you say, ‘Van-van? Can you take me potty before I pee pee my pants?’” I looked over at Auntie Jenny who was watching me, and then the boys who were all watching me, too. They all seemed to expect me to do this. “Okay,” I breathed in gathering up some courage to say what I needed…. I looked up at Van-van, and I blinked my eyes trying to get the embarrassment out of the way, at having to speak like this in front of kids all pretty much my age. “Van-van, can you please take me upstairs to go potty? I don’t wanna pee pee my pants.” Van-van looked over at Auntie Jenny, and Auntie nodded in agreement, so Vanessa started to take my hand and lead me to the stairs. I made it up the stairs, to the bathroom door, inside…, and just sat down on the toilet in time as pee almost, but didn’t quite, let go in my panties. I made it! I relaxed and peed for a few seconds, and then Van-van clapped for me. “Wait until I tell Auntie that you went, and didn’t even get any on your panties this time! She’s going to be so proud of you!” Blushed really red and held my head low. “You don’t have to be sad or scared,” Van-van told me. “You went potty in the toilet, and Auntie is expecting it. You were a very good girl!” After our family game, Van-van took me up to our room. “Look, Corinna, we are going to school tomorrow on the bus, and we are going to be going home together, right?” “Yeah?” “Well, there are a few things you are going to have to know about riding the bus with us.” “Okay.” I shivered a little bit. Didn’t Auntie Jenny already have enough rules already? I sat on the bed, looking down at my thighs while Vanessa started to talk to me about some more rules. “Missing the bus is a big giant no-no, no matter your reason! If you are not out and on the bus in time, not only will you get it, but Jason will get it, and since Aunt Jenny put me in in charge of you, even if just upstairs, then I’ll get it, too. I don’t care what your reasons are, you are to go straight to the bus as soon as you can.” “Okay,” I shivered. I mean, I would have planned to do that anyway. I didn’t want to wait for an hour for Auntie Jenny to get me, if I missed the bus. “We walk quickly to the bus stop to get on the bus in the mornings, and we walk quickly to get home after school. If we come in the house late, we’ll get it. Understand?” “Okay,” I shivered again. “Auntie Jenny has a lot of rules.” “Yeah, she does,” Vanessa agreed. “But her rules mostly keep us safe. She needs us to get home as soon as we can, that way, she can expect us at a reasonable time, and if we don’t show up, then she’ll know we are in some kind of trouble, maybe even danger.” “I… I see,” I muttered not fully convinced on that reason. “Any way, you are to get to the bus as soon as you can after school, and we might sound like we are rushing you to either the bus or back home from the stop, but that’s so we don’t get in trouble.” “I… I won’t dawdle.” “Okay. I’m also setting the alarm a little earlier for tomorrow morning.” “Why?” “So you and I can get a quick bath,” Van-van held my face in her hands. “You pee the bed, and neither of us should go to school smelling like pee at the start of the day, okay?” “Okay.” Van-van then helped me get my shirt off and then my pants off so I was in just an undershirt and panties, and she smiled. “You just went potty, right?” “Yes, Van-van.” “So, you don’t need to go right now?” “No?” “Good. Now you are going to sleep in just panties tonight and an undershirt. It will make cleanup easier tomorrow morning.” “If you say so.” Van crawled into bed with me, but she had a long sleeping top on, and then she cuddled me close to her, and we went to sleep. The last thing she whispered to me, was that I should go ahead and wet the bed. She doesn’t mind if I wet on her. I was in class. There were these people around me that were like a blur. I didn’t know any of them, and yet, somehow, I did. I was at my desk trying to concentrate on the lesson, and watching the teacher’s every move. These blurs of people seemed to be animate around me, and they made me nervous. “Corinna is drawing,” a girl shouted out at the teacher. I looked up at what seemed to be a giant. The glaring adult face was hovering over my desk in front of me, and I started to move the paper, but the adult snatched the paper from my desktop. "What is this junk?” the adult screamed at me. I sat up in bed, breathing heavily. It was a dream, but it was real at the same time. I was in first grade at the time, I think. I don’t remember if the teacher actually called the drawing junk, but she was not happy that I was doodling when she was talking. I went to the principal’s on that day to explain why I disrupted class by playing around. I sighed and went back to sleep. My butt and the bed still felt dry as I laid myself back down. I was in class again, and again I saw the same woman teacher at the front of the class. I shivered. I knew her well. She wasn’t the meanest person that has taught me in the last three and nearly half years, but I was still scared of her as I sat watching her write a problem on the board. It was not a difficult problem, really. It was just 8 + 5, but being in first grade, I stared at the foreign concept for a few minutes. I could easily add one and even two to a number at that time without any trouble, but finger adding was not allowed in her class, at all. “So, we are going to be learning how to add numbers where the answer is over ten,” she told us once she had the problem written. “Teacher?” a girl in the class raised her hand. “Yes, Barbara?” “Corinna is doing it again!” “Doing what, honey?” “Making her chair make noises. I can’t hear you.” The teacher gave me the scary look, and I gulped and sat up straighter, and pushed my knees together, trying not to relax so the noises might go away. I wasn’t sure why my leg sometimes moved without my permission and bounced sometimes. I mean, sometimes, it was because I wanted to pee, but sometimes, it just did it. “Now, class,” the teacher returned to her lesson. “I have eight here,” and she drew eight squares and put these square one nip lego things together to show she had eight. “Now I want to add five….” I looked at the long stick she had made, that had eight on it. “If you add two on it, you get a ten,” a boy called out. “That’s right, Jerry,” the teacher smiled. But before we do that, how many are we adding to eight?” She looked right at me. “Corinna?” “Five?” I said nervously. “Is that a question? Are you even paying attention?” “I am,” I whimpered. “You even have 8 + 5 on the board.” “Good, well, how about you come up here and take two of the five pieces, and add them to the eight?” I shook as I got up from my chair. “Come on, girl,” the lady motioned at me. “You’re not in trouble. Just do this problem for us.” I walked up and the teacher showed me the lego pieces, well, not really legos, but pieces that snapped together, anyway. While I put the two pieces on the eight piece stick, and then snapped the last three pieces together, my knees started to wobble, and squeeze in at one another, and my hand started to be tempted to go down to my privates. I felt some pressure in my lower tummy, or was it lower than that? “Come on, girl, put the three pieces together,” the teacher said impatiently at me. I worked on it, getting nervous and they didn’t want to snap together. I shivered. “Corinna!” she yelled at me. I started to wet my pants…. “Corinna!” I heard the voice again, only the teacher’s face was blurred. The classroom was disappearing. I was being pushed by something, and then my eyes opened, and Van-van was shaking me awake. I felt myself peeing as he shook me and sitting up, the pee still squirting, stopping, and squirting out into my panties…. “Corinna,” Van-van called at me again. “Come on. You need a bath. You’re peeing your pants.” I rubbed my eyes, and scooted off of the bed. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For what?” Van-van put an arm around me as we walked. “For wetting the bed again?” “Corinna, I don’t care about that,” Vanessa said. “I didn’t wake you just because you were peeing. It’s time to get up and I expected you to be wet when I started to wake you. Don’t be scared, okay?” “Okay.”

Good questions! Shall we read together what is going through her head in a few chapters? LOL. And Auntie... Do you think she's cleaning everything? ::evil grin::

Chapter 3: The Fourth Grade Baby I had spent the rest of the afternoon in the hospital waiting room, and into the evening, I had stayed until my mom woke up, and she spoke with this lady to take me somewhere safe until she could get out. So, at six-thirty in the evening, I was in the car of this lady I barely knew, and having peed three times while waiting at the hospital, twice in my pants and once in the bathroom, I was sitting in a smelly wet skirt as we approached this place that was nearly forty minutes from the hospital. “Now as I told your mother,” the lady in the car said to me, “this lady takes in kids that need somewhere to stay short term, but she can be kind of strict and believes in an orderly house where the kids do as they are told.” “Okay,” I barely whispered up at the black hair lady. I never really caught her name, but then as far as I knew, this would be the only time I’d see her anyway. We had to pull onto a dirt drive off of the interstate at one point, as this lady had lived way out there, and we had to stop in front of a gate, where the social worker had to get out and move a large log-like post pulling some of the wired fence with it to unblock the road, and then we drove on through and the rest of the road probably went another three or four minutes until it ended in a large area with a big house, a chicken area, and a pick up parked in a large space. There was more to the property than that, and I could see off in the distance, other fences, those ones made of wood, and thought I had seen a horse or two and other animals like sheep and cows. “Now,” the lady stopped our car and turned to me. “Your mom has made it clear that I will tell the lady that she’s not allowed to swat you or scream at you for peeing in your sleep, but if you have any control over it at all, I do suggest you try to get the the toilet anyway.” I blinked up at her. “While Mrs. Loveland might keep her word and not be too strict about your peeing in your sleep, that doesn’t mean she can control all the other kids to stay quiet. She has no kids of her own, and at the moment, there are four other kids staying at her place.” I nodded. “Did you pee your pants again?” she asked me. I looked down afraid to answer her, so she put her hand in my lap and felt me. “I didn’t do it just now,” I whimpered when I knew she felt the wetness in my lap. “You didn’t?” she asked. “No, ma’am. I last peed in my pants at the hospital, just before you came to take me here.” “And why did you do that?” I shrugged. “I don’t know…,” but that wasn’t exactly true. I just didn’t want to tell her that I was scared to leave my seat. I was afraid the doctor wouldn’t be able to find me and lead me to my mama. I was afraid that I’d be lost forever, and never see my mama again, and anyway, I really wanted to see my mama, so I didn’t move from the spot they put me, and had already peed myself a second time at the hospital before that because that very reason, and the second time at the hospital, I peed as we were leaving because right after seeing my mom, probably only for about ten minutes, things moved so fast this woman coming in and talking to my mom, I was too scared to interrupt them, and I peed sitting in the chair by my mom’s bed while they talked. “Well, you are soaking wet,” she frowned at me. “And we never got to your house to get you any clean clothes, so I hope the lady has something your size to wear, or I don’t know what you’ll do tonight for fresh clothes.” I shook, but the lady opened her door and after frowning at me, pointed at the door at my side, and then she got out. I shook as I walked a few steps behind her towards the Green painted house with a black roof. Anxiety was creeping into my bones as the lady walked ahead of me, and then waited turning my direction to see me waddle up behind her, trying to pull the wet cloth of my skirt away from my bottom as I walked. “Hurry up, child,” she sounded urgent. “Pulling at your skirt isn’t going to make it magically dry. Mrs. Loveland is going to know you’ve peed yourself as soon as she meets you.” I hung my head in shame and finally stood just a foot or two behind the lady as she turned and knocked at the door. There was no doorbell. We waited about a minute or two before the inner door opened and then the screen, and I saw this woman with a few lines on her face, grey-blue eyes, and hair that was a mix of gray and blond. “Hello?” “You remember, this is the girl I told you about that would be coming to stay with you for a few days?” the woman reached back and taking me by the shoulder, pushed me forward. The other lady looked me in the face for a moment, and then stepped back and looked at me top to bottom. “She looks about nine or ten?” “She’s nine,” the lady said that I’d been with for a bit. “And you said she pees the bed, right?” “Yes, she does. Her mother made it quite clear that she does, and that she didn’t want anyone swatting her for it, or even yelling at her for it.” “She smells,” the second lady said with no filter. “That’s because she’s been peeing in her pants all day, apparently. She’s peed her pants at least once at school, and then twice while she was waiting at the hospital.” “You never said I’d be getting a baby to watch.” “Are you saying you won’t take her now?” “No, no, I can take her. But I’m not going to get stuck with her. You need to find someone to take her in three days, if her mom isn’t out of the hospital by then.” I just looked at the ground while they talked about me at the door. “Well, turn around girl,” the woman whose house I was going to be staying at made to turn my shoulders as she said to turn. I did, and when I looked up at her, she had a frown. “She’s completely soaked. Did she wet herself in the car on the way over?” “I don’t honestly know,” the social worker frowned down at me. “She says she last wet at the hospital, but you are right. She’s pretty soaked and my car seat was pretty wet. She’s probably just scared to admit to peeing herself again, which could make the fourth time today and not the third time.” The lady shook her head. “Well, does she have any clothes to change into?” “I’m afraid her house is locked up, and I can’t legally get in it until tomorrow morning.” “I see. So I will need to see if I have anything that will fit her then?” “I’m afraid so.” “Don’t bother getting her clothes at all then, I guess. I probably do have a few things that will fit her that she can wear until she leaves in three days, whether with her mom or with someone else if her mom can’t take her yet. I mean it, I’m only watching the child for three days, then you need to find somewhere else to take her.” “I understand. Thank you for letting us put her with you for now.” “Believe me, if it were early in the day, I’d have insisted you tried someone else first, but I know you have a hard time placing a child in an emergency at night.” “Thanks again.” The woman took me by the hand and left the social worker to go back to her car. “So, you like to pee your pants, do you?” she asked me. “No?” “You are soaking wet, aren’t you?” I looked down. “It’s fine that you pee your pants all the time, child. It is what it is, and there is no way that you are going to suddenly stop in three days just because you are here with me. But you will not lie to me about peeing yourself, and you will come straight to me if you have anything in your panties, understand?” I just kept looking down. “If you can’t promise to come to me, then I’ll let the other children know to keep an eye on you and to bring you to me if they find you wet or smelly.” “I… I don’t pee my pants all the time,” I whispered. “You peed yourself at least four times, today, though, didn’t you?” “That’s because…,” and I started to feel tears run down my cheeks. “...because… because, I… I couldn’t hold it.” “I know, child,” she put a hand on my shoulder, and it wasn’t mean at all. It felt tender. “Look, little one. I’m getting a bit old, and I don’t mind taking care of children that need a place to go, but I’m getting too old to watch babies, especially nine-year-old children that have not grown out of being a baby. I didn’t give the lady three days to be mean to you, but rather, to make sure you have someone that can keep up on checking on you and making sure you are staying as cleaned up as possible. That’s why I’m probably going to have to have the other kids watch you for me even if you tell me that you will be honest and come to me when you are wet. I just don’t trust you will, honey. You seem too scared and embarrassed. I get it. You probably have something that either you know about or maybe you just haven’t had money to get checked by a doctor, but no nine-year-old pees her pants more than two times in a daytime even if it’s because of difficult situations unless you usually do pee your pants, honey.” I frowned and kept looking down at the ground. “I do pee the bed.” “Well, that can’t be helped, can it? And with peeing your pants all the time, I don’t see how you could… not be wetting the bed at night.” “I… I don’t wet my pants all the time.” The tears came down my cheeks faster and faster, and my voice cracked as I said ...’all the time.’ “It’s alright, child. Come on. I’ll let you meet the others, and then we can see what I have that fits you before giving you a little bath.” I followed the lady in, but somehow, I felt like she was going to insist on me being a baby the whole time I was there. As we entered the house, I noticed that the living room went off to one side of the front door and the dining room went off to the other side, down the middle from the front door, was a small hall around the stairs that went up to a balcony that overlooked the living room, the entrance hall, and the dining room space. Hanging just outside the dinning room area that had a table large enough to seat eight, there was a bell that hung from the ceiling. “See that bell?” the lady asked me. I quietly looked to see it as hanging all the way from the ceiling that went all the way through to the ceiling that must have been a part of the second floor’s ceiling. “I expect you to come the first time you hear it, unless you are outside with permission, or you are doing your farming chores,” she told me. “I’ll demonstrate now.” She took hold of its trailing string and gave it a few sharp swings causing a very loud sound to erupt near my ears. I shivered there, as the sound had brought a thunderous sound of foot steps running on the balcony overlooking us and down the steps until I saw four other kids standing in a line. “Name, age, grade, and greeting,” the woman barked like a drill sargeant at the other children. “Jason Hill; oldest of the Loveland children, age ten and in the fifth grade;” the yellow blond easily biggest boy of them started. His blue eyes lingered on me before he gave his greeting. “Good evening, new sister.” “Carl Westcoverly; fourth grade and nine years old;” a boy a little shorter said with long brown hair and green eyes. His face had freckles, and he stood so straight, he really looked like he had practiced this a lot. “Theodore, sometimes Teddy,” a shorter boy than the other two responded. This boy had brown hair, too and his eyes were brown. “I’m in third grade, and I’m nine. Hi sister.” Then it was the girl’s turn. “Vanessa,” a girl with a voice a little less noisy than the boys’ rang out. “I’m nine and in the fourth grade.” She was a little taller than the boy on the end, too, and she had yellow blond hair and brown eyes. She looked like she had a little more weight on her than even the middle boy, too. “Evening, sister.” “And I,” the woman now introduced herself. “I am Jennifer Loveland, and you call me Aunt Jenn, Auntie Jenny, or Miss Jenn. I will not answer to anything else, and you will be spanked if you address me another way, and then get mad when I don’t respond. I am the head of this house, and I make the rules. Understand baby?” I nodded and sank in on myself as she called me baby in front of everyone else. “Go on, child. Introduce yourself to the others, and make sure you include that you are now the Loveland Baby or you will be reminded of your position in a more direct way that won’t feel good, got it?” I gulped. “I… I’m Corinna Phillips,” I could barely hear even myself. “I am nine years old and in fourth grade. Thank… thank you for letting me stay here for a while with you.” “Come here, child,” Aunt Jenny motioned at me. “You will call me Auntie Jenny from now on because of this,” and she spun me around and showed everyone my back. “Baby Corinna wets her pants. If any of you see her pants wet or notice she otherwise smells, I need you to come and get me immediately.” I shivered. “You forgot to tell everyone that you are the Loveland baby, so I need you to do your introduction again,” and she turned me to face the others, and I noticed they had not yet left where they had been standing. “Well, go on, baby,” she coaxed me. “I… I am Corinna Phillips. I am nine years old, and in fourth grade. I… I…,” my voice was getting quieter because I was really ashamed at being calling myself the baby when there was a boy younger than me in the line. “I… I am the Loveland baby,” but I don’t think anyone heard the word baby when I finished. “Thank you for letting me stay here,” was fully inaudible as I only mouthed those words. “No, Corinna,” Aunt Jenny swatted my wet backside. “You didn’t say it loud enough. You need an example? Jason, demonstrate.” Jason gave his introduction again. “Now, I want you to add that not only you are the Loveland baby, but tell everyone why, that you pee your pants sometimes.” I shivered, and felt myself shaking. I started over, but it was too quiet and she slapped my wet skirt again. It didn’t hurt, but I still felt shamed when she swatted at my wet clothes. “Again.” Finally, I was able to say it loud enough, though by that time, I was crying as I said everything, and I finished with…, “and I’m the loveland baby because I pee my pants sometimes. Thank you for letting me stay a little while.” “Better,” the lady said. “Boys, go back to your homework. Vanessa, take the baby to the bathroom and start taking off her clothes. If I come in on you, and she’s doing anything herself, you will both get it.” “Yes, ma’am,” Vanessa said without even a cringe at the thought of touching my wet butt or skirt. As we walked up the steps, Vanessa held both my hands, almost like you might guide a toddler up the stairs. “You will find that just doing what Aunt Jenn says is easier the first time around. She told you to call her Auntie and Jenny, so I suggest you get used to that right now. It doesn’t matter what she lets the rest of us call her. If you are told something exactly one way, you will find out the hard way, if you shouldn’t do what she says, and even if she said only three days, I guarantee you, when the three days are up, whether she has you trained or not, you are not going anywhere unless your mom is ready to get you.” I just walked with her and listened in shock at what she told me. “Now, I’m not a fan of what I’m about to have to do to you anymore than you are a fan of it being done to you, but you heard her. If you so much as touch one button on your shirt, we’ll both get it. So I have to take your clothes off you.” “Okay,” I looked down. “You can cry,” Vanessa told me. “She said you are the baby, so one thing that allows you to do..., that the rest of us can’t do unless she gives us permission, is to cry if you are in trouble. So go ahead and cry if you feel like it. You won’t be in trouble because even if I told on you for crying, I’d probably get it for telling on the baby before you’d get it for acting like she told you to.” I whispered up at her. “So… the bell thing is serious?” “Dead serious. Jason got it good the first day he was here because he didn’t listen to the bell. He admitted he even heard it but wasn’t done with a video game he couldn’t save, and he got it bad. You don’t disobey the bell. Never disobey the bell.” I shook, and she started with my shirt. “You are the baby,” Vanessa reminded me to which I nodded. “So, if you have any pee in your body at all, right now, I need you to let it out.” I looked over at the toilet. “No, baby,” Vanessa sighed and took both of my hands. “You are a baby. Just pee your pants so we don’t both get in trouble.” “Why would I get in trouble for not going in my pants?” “The same reason Jason got it for not responding to the bell the first day he was here. It is expected that you only need to be told once, and she called you a baby, and then showed us your backside, didn’t she?” I gulped down a heavy tear as I looked into Vanessa’s eyes. She was being serious. “It’s expected of you. You don’t use the toilet for peeing anymore, at least not here. I don’t know why she’s decided that for you. It’s never been done before, as far as I know, but the fact she showed us your backside, and made you say that’s why you are a baby, it means you don’t pee in the toilet anymore.” Tears streaming down my face. “They already think I peed in the car just a few minutes ago.” “Well, did you?” “No?” “Then it doesn’t matter what she thinks. You will get in trouble if I let you use the toilet or pee now; or don’t do it again until you are eating dinner or something.” “I… I don’t have to go right now.” “Okay. Then I’ll go ahead and take off your skirt. Don’t pee directly on the floor though unless you want her to catch you doing it, and then you'll get it for that.” I nodded and she took off my skirt, and as she was pulling down my panties, the lady walked in on us. “I have her clean clothes right here,” Aunt Jenn told us. “Vanessa, you go ahead and get some clothes to wear, too. Since you are washing her, you might as well get a bath with her. Baby, that means no peeing in the bath, understand?” I nodded. She then started the water for the bath while Vanessa was out of the bathroom, when she came back, Aunt Jenn took Vanessa by the shoulder like she had done me at first, not where it hurts, but firm enough that she had to look up into the dictator’s eyes. “You are not to leave Baby Corinna on her own on the second floor ever. She could fall down the stairs if you leave her on her own up here. You, too, Corinna. You are not allowed on the second floor unless you come up here with either Vanessa or myself. The boys can’t watch you bathe or dress you into clean things, so they are not responsible for you when you are on the second floor. That’s Vanessa’s new chore.” “Yes, Aunt Jenn,” Vanessa said with her head lowered. “Good. Now bathe the baby so I can go make dinner. And Baby Corinna, you do everything that Vanessa tells you, and you can call her Van-van if you want.” The lady left, and I sighed in relief, but now, Vanessa went right to me, and helped me into the bath. “At least around Aunt Jenn, you need to tell call me Van-van from now on. She expects it, and trust me, you don’t want to break her rules.” “Okay.” I shivered at the thought of breaking her rules. It was mentioned twice that Jason had gotten it for not listening to the bell. Vanessa seemed even scared to break protocol when Auntie Jenny was talking to her, so I was sure Van-van wasn’t just leading me on a joke. I saw how rigid the others stood when I met them. This was a no-nonsense place, and the lady was not to be disobeyed, ever. “I don’t really pee my pants like that all the time,” I whispered to Van-van. “Well, even if you are telling the truth about before, you do now, baby. If you don’t, you’ll get us both in trouble. So, if I see you trying to break the rule, I will try to make you do it, since I’ll get it, too, if you don’t.” “You will?” “Yep. Jason gets hit all the time when any of us mess up because he’s the oldest. Even if I miss a chance to help you either pee your pants or change you, if Aunt Jenn finds out, and even if Jason doesn’t know what happened, he’ll get it for allowing us to disobey her.” “That’s just… not fair,” I whimpered. “No. It isn’t fair, so don’t expect any help from the boys if you ask them to break the rules to hide you peeing somewhere besides in your pants. They all know you are the baby, and they don’t want to get in trouble, so if you sneak off to pee somewhere not in your pants, you are fully on your own. Understand?” I nodded. This woman seemed like she wasn’t fully there. I wonder how or why the children were still stuck with this lady. I had thought from hearing the social worker talk to me, that if even my mama was doing something wrong, she’d have to take me away from her. So how was this woman getting away with all of this? I had had a bath, and Vanessa took me naked to her room, where she first dressed herself, and then she pointed at the mattress. “That’s where we will both sleep,” she told me. “I thought this was your room.” “There are only three bedrooms in the house,” Van-van frowned looking downward. “We are both girls, so we share this room, and the three boys share a room, and then Aunt Jenn has her room. She won’t take anymore boys in because she has maxed out boys, unless the state takes one of the boys away from her.” “So, one more girl might have to share a bed with us later?” “I’m afraid so.” “But that I wet in my sleep wasn’t a lie, so how am I going to keep from getting you and someone else that we share with wet?” “You can’t,” Van-van frowned. “I am pretty sure Aunt Jenn expects me to be wet from you in the morning, and if I’m not, she’ll think I either got out of bed and slept where I wasn’t supposed to, or I was mean and kicked you out of bed or something.” I shook. “I could ask her to sleep on the floor?” “No, please don’t do that. Even if I wanted to let you sleep on the floor to keep from getting peed on, Aunt Jenn would think I bullied you into it. Please, don’t do that.” “Okay.” She helped me put on some clothes that were actually not a bad fit. They weren’t brand new or anything, but as used clothes go, they were in really good condition. The next morning, I started to stir in bed, and felt around it. The bedding was soaked from my nighttime problems, and it felt like a particularly heavy problem, of course it was probably heavier because I was afraid to pee the night before. I couldn’t go to the toilet, and I wasn’t used to just wetting on purpose, actually, so I went to bed on a full bladder. I probably peed more than twice though… but I wasn’t sure. I never knew really how many times my body peed at night. I noticed that Van-van wasn’t in bed or anywhere upstairs. I called for her and for someone else, anyone else, but there was no answer. I started to cry and walk towards the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the crazy Auntie Jenny. “Don’t you dare put one foot on those stairs without help,” she frowned up at me. “You know you are not allowed to be on the stairs by yourself. Look at your clothes! You peed the bed, again, didn’t you?” I nodded. “That’s because you are…,” and she trailed off and looked expectantly up at me. “...Because… I… I’m a baby?” I offered. “That’s right. And babies don’t use the stairs by themselves, honey.” I nodded, and let her come up to take me by the hand to help me down them unnecessarily. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked and I had to shake my head no. “Now, why don’t we take you to eat some breakfast, and then we’ll discuss what is happening today.” “Where… where is everyone else?” “They went to school, baby. It’s a school day. Didn’t you know that?” I gulped. I knew very well that it was Wednesday. “Why didn’t I go to school?” “Sweetheart, you are likely out of your regular district here. We have to change schools for you to continue, and that is one of the things we will be doing. I also need to let the school know that you pee your pants all the time, so they are not too worried when you pee in the classroom.” I blushed. “I don’t. I promise.” “Honey, stop that this instant. I won’t spank you or yell at you for peeing your pants, but I will for lying, got it?” I nodded sadly. “Good. Now stop denying your potty problems. Your teacher will know that you just pee your pants so they will know not only to tell you to sit down if you ask to go pee, but they will tell me you tried to lie and get out of class time.” I sighed. It seemed that Van-van was right. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And it seems things are getting worse for her. A storm that is yet brewing as we speak.... Thank you, followers for watching this story unfold. I know it's got a bit of my old pattern, but this story has a couple of things that are a little different from my last attempts and my last and only completed story, "She Never Knew It Could be Like This" which is in the completed stories now. I finished that one almost two years ago? I think. Anyway, here is hoping this one goes better than a lot of my unfinished work, and I do have another one on the fire that follows Cait and her sisters, but I'm still brewing that one together to try not to get stuck....