She Didn't Know It Could Be Like This Chapter 10

[bje]

I think overall the rewrite of chapters 4 and 5 makes the story better and more consistent.

But are some things that now seem strange:
* According to the school counselor, the first tests the school did showed Lauren to be "very bright" and he even uses the word "genius". So it's not clear to me why the school thinks the result is 1st or 2nd grade level.
* Almost exactly (but not quite) the same math equations are in the first test at the school (5 + ? = 8 and 2 X ? + 6 = 12) and in the second test the day after (3 + ? = 8 and 2 X ? + 6 = 12). If it is the same test, the equations should be completely the same, and otherwise they should be more different.
 

By the way, I wonder if Lauren needs glasses since she can better write words from the blackboard when she goes to it.

 

[Ishigreensa]

30 minutes ago, bje said:

I think overall the rewrite of chapters 4 and 5 makes the story better and more consistent.

But are some things that now seem strange:
* According to the school counselor, the first tests the school did showed Lauren to be "very bright" and he even uses the word "genius". So it's not clear to me why the school thinks the result is 1st or 2nd grade level.
* Almost exactly (but not quite) the same math equations are in the first test at the school (5 + ? = 8 and 2 X ? + 6 = 12) and in the second test the day after (3 + ? = 8 and 2 X ? + 6 = 12). If it is the same test, the equations should be completely the same, and otherwise they should be more different.
 

By the way, I wonder if Lauren needs glasses since she can better write words from the blackboard when she goes to it.

 

The math tests, she is yes, a genius.  The first or second grade level is in reading, and yes, I wanted the school to get that wrong, actually, but with the same test and the same results, the professionals figure out that her reading and spelling are stuck at around second grade as well as her vocabulary, but as they looked deeper into what she was doing, particularly in writing, they realized that she actually has better command over parts of grammar and speech than even some fifth graders, thus I compared her similies and metaphor skills to an eighth grader.

The argument over her abilities and if she is working like a first and second grader, is basically looking at her reading and vocabulary alone.-- The school's wrong assessment of the same test.

As far as glasses, yes, she will eventually need them, but that is not the only reason she can't copy words correctly from the board from her seat.  I had an identical problem, and as far as I know, no one knew to test me for it, so I was just slow in recognizing the words I was copying, and just focused on letters, and when I looked up at the board again after copying 2 sometimes 3 letters, I'd get lost where I last left off copying a letter, and this was around 4th grade, I think for me.  So there is something like that going on with her.  Something that is less identifyable and at least in 1979-1980, was not really a red flag for testing.

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 7

What the Urologist Told Them

 

That next day, Bridget and Jack walked into the office with me, and they set the results of the tests on the counter for the office clerk. Bridget had hold of my hand.

“We’d like to see the principal,” Jack told them.

The principal came out, and looked over the papers.

“Your tests are not complete,” Bridget told him. “Yes, she reads like a first or second grader, but if you looked closer at the assessments, you will see that it is believed she will quickly catch up with her peers.”

He nodded.

“We’ve put her in some programs for help,” Jack told him. “Her school services guide should be here before ten. I believe he works ten to two. You will see a letter in there signed by the state and countersigned by the school district giving her permission to have this help. We’ve signed her up for Big Sister Reading, and they will be contacting us with a high school kid to help her with her reading in a few days.”

The principal nodded.

“If you want your counselor involved in her education at all, then I’ll need a school form to sign to give him permission, otherwise, she is already getting a state paid counselor that will see her twice a month, and you will see that we are going to be working on her issues. We’ve also set an appointment for tomorrow afternoon for her to see a urologist, just in case part of her problems are medical where it comes to her peeing her pants.”

“It seems you have done everything necessary for her,” the principal told Bridget and Jack.”

“We want her to continue in the same class with her sister for now.”

The principal nodded.

Then I went to class.

I met Mr. Sean Feist when I came in from Art and then recess and before I started reading. He was sitting in the room when I entered. Everyone was looking at him, and the teacher had to address the class about him.

“Boys and girls, this is Mr. Feist. You know that Lauren has had trouble reading these last few weeks,” she told the class.

“More like, she just reads like she should go back to second grade,” one kid said that made me hang my head.

“Scott, go take a fuzzy and I want an apology written on it in the next ten minutes or you will miss lunch recess while you not only think of a proper apology, but also think the whole time about your aggressive behavior.”

The big fat red-brown hair boy got up with a sour look and went to take one of the naughty notes that we were supposed to write apologies on. I had to write one when I came back to class after I destroyed the counselor’s office. I said I was sorry for ruining his books, but not for getting mad about him taking my family. The teacher said it was a fair apology.

“Now, Mr. Feist is going to be in class with us from around ten in the mornings until about two in the afternoons,” she told the class. “He is going to sit near Lauren, and when I am not giving tests, he is going to be helping her with her work. When I give tests, he will sit in the back table and just observe her behavior.”

I walked over to Mr. Feist.

“I’m Lauren,” I told him. “I’m stupid, so I want you to have this,” and I gave him one of those sorry notes.

Mr. Helper. My nam is Laurn. I am stupid, so you wok is very very hard. I try hard anysin you say, but I get a lot rong. Plese don’t mad. I am stupid. No one tells me I can say I stupid, but I no I stupid. Plese be nis. Luv Laurn.

He smiled and hugged me. Then we sat down. It was not my day for reading circle time, so I had to write a worksheet. My group crowded by. They probably think Mr. Feist is help for them, too.

I read the words, and he held up some cards to me. The cards had hints on them. One card had ‘ea’ written on it, but the a had red line through it and the e had a blue line over it. He whispered to me when he showed me. “Ee.”

When he whispered the hints and he showed the cards to me, I started to read faster. I didn’t have to guess if a word was friften, frigten, or if it was frightened. One looked, when he held up the card gh with a red line through it, and I knew it was frightened.

When I read the paragraph faster, I started to understand the story, too. But he didn’t just hold up cards and give me hints during class. He made me cross the ghs in red on papers, and he made me cross the a in ea and put a line above the e. I looked up at him.

“But I already did the work,” I told him.

“This is so when you look at this paper again, you will know how to read the words.”

I nodded.

He made me do more work than other kids in class time. When I wrote the answers for any work I did, he made me use a red pencil, and every time he showed me the special cards he had for me, when I was writing, I had to switch to the red pencil to write those letters in red. It was more work than just normal.

“You will thank me later,” he whispered. “To get better at something, sometimes, you have to do more work than everyone else at first.”

I was a little bit scared of him, so I didn’t ask to use the bathroom. I peed my pants kind of on purpose. At lunch recess, I was asked to come and talk to him, so I didn’t get to see the nurse at lunch recess. He went through other work I did that morning before he came. He helped me with the math part that was words, and help me to understand why I did the math the way I had to do it. He made me write the directions that were in the book on top of my paper where you are not supposed to write anything.

“I got permission from the teacher, that you can write in this space, the notes I tell you. This way, you can read the directions at home to your parents, and then you can understand what you have to do,” he told me. He made me use the red pencil for special combined letters.

I nodded, and I wrote what he told me to. I started to wiggling my legs a little bit, but he didn’t notice me. Maybe he didn’t care. We worked until the teacher brought the class in from lunch, and then we started Social Studies. He continued to show the special letter cards to me when I looked at him when it was my turn to read. It was getting easier, and he wasn’t even whispering the ea rule anymore. He just showed the card, and I understood it.

I peed in my chair again. This time, I leaked and there was a puddle in the chair. I didn’t want to cause trouble though, so I didn’t say anything. I just continued Social Studies. It was time for him to leave when Social Studies was over. He gave the teacher my cards. They whispered for a minute while I finished peeing my pants, and it leaked off my chair and got on the floor.

“Lauren’s peeing her pants!” a girl near me said.

The teacher gasped and ran over to me.

“Why didn’t you raise your hand, Lauren?”

I shrugged.

She called April to my side. “Take your sister to the nurse and when you come back, I want to show you how to use those cards her helper was using for her. You want to help your sister get better at school, don’t you?”

April smiled and nodded.

“Okay, take your sister to the nurse. Hopefully the nurse has an extra pair of pants for her.”

I walked out of the room, and I looked sadly at April.

“What’s wrong?” April asked me.

“I embarrassed you because I peed my pants, right?”

She hugged me. “No. Mommy says that when you wet your pants, it has nothing to do with people around you. It is your problem, and the only one it should bother, is someone who cares about you. It didn’t embarrass me. It just made me sad because I knew you were scared to ask and then sad when everyone noticed.”

We hugged a moment, and then she took my hand and continued to walk me to the nurse office.

 

I came home in different clothes. April came in the door first, and she patted my hand. She promised to talk to Bridget first before I came in because I was scared to show her that the school had to lend me clothes.

Bridget came out, and she picked me up bring me into the house, touching the back of my pants, probably checking to see if I peed my pants again or not.

“Baby, no one is mad,” Bridget told me. “April told us that you had to work through lunch recess with your new school helper. I probably need to have a word with him about your issues, so to make sure you go see the nurse at lunch time next time.”

I nodded.

“How was reading today, honey?”

“Easier,” I told her suddenly getting a smile. “It was more work because he made me write like this,” and I showed her my assignments. Even my math work had stuff on the top that April’s paper didn’t.

“Why did you write in this space?” Bridget asked me.

“Mr. Feist said he had the teacher’s permission, and the teacher said that yes, for now on, she wants me to write the directions out like that. So, I was told to.”

She nodded.

“See? This part where it says read, I had to mark a line in the a and put a line on top the e. That means this word is supposed to read with the ‘e’ sound.”

“I see.”

April came over with some smaller versions of the cards the man was using.

“The teacher gave me these cards,” April told Bridget and me. “She said that Mr. Fiest was using cards like this, and this our home pack. When she reads at home, we are supposed to not tell her the word, but find a card that has the same rule in it. If we show her the card, and she still struggles, then we tell her the sound of the card.”

April pulled out the gh card with a line through both letters.

“If a rule makes no sound at all, you put your hand to your lips so that Lauren learns that you don’t make a sound this time.”

“Ingenious,” Bridget said.

“Mrs. Horrace wants me to finish our spelling homework and our reading homework together,” April told Bridget. “Then someone has to show her the cards when she is working on her other homework that she has to read.”

Bridget smiled.

“How about I take Lauren to get her into a clean diaper, you two have some snacks, and then you start your reading homework right away, that way, I can help you with that before I have to start dinner?”

I nodded. I liked that plan.

“When daddy gets home, he can help Lauren with her math and other homework with the cards.”

 

The next day was Friday. I didn’t want to write above the line that no one else was supposed to write, not even for math, and not even if the teacher said I could, so today, when we got our papers for math ready, I went down the middle hole on the first paper, and I started to head my paper there. That would give us a big gap and I wouldn’t have to use the clean space on top. The lines would make it easier to write straight, too.

We had PE today, and then recess. April asked me if I peed my pants, when we were playing in the tire at recess.

I shrugged.

“Let’s go see the nurse,” she said, and she made me get changed into a clean diaper.

“You don’t want to leak all over your seat again like yesterday,” she told me. “The other kids saw you pee your pants, and Mrs. Horrace made them shut up about being mean, but it still hurts to pee your pants in front of everyone, right?”

I nodded. I didn’t want everyone to see it happen.

When we got into the classroom, Mr. Feist was there, and Mrs. Horrace saw that we were late. She pointed us to our SQUIRT time groups, and I had some special books in the basket just for me. Mr. Feist insisted the books be put in, and that they be used by everyone in my group, but he didn’t say why.

I think the teacher changed the basket changing rule after that, but I’m not sure. All I know, is after Mr. Feist started putting books in my basket, my SQUIRT groups changed people every week, not just baskets.

Mr. Feist looked at the book with me, and I pointed in the book where I was reading. When I got stuck and looked up at him with my finger on a word, he showed me a rule card, but he didn’t whisper the sound at this time. I was told that if the card was not enough help, just skip that word for that moment, and eventually, I’d learn it by learning to recognize the rules.

SQUIRT time was over, and the teacher started to pass out worksheets. I felt a pressure in my bottom, but I was still scared. I didn’t think it would be too hard to wait until recess. I haven’t had that kind of accident since I lived with the Bridges, well, except like two times in the first few weeks.

Mr. Fiest noticed that I was wiggling my legs a little bit, and I was starting to get stiff and rubbing my stomach.

“Are you hungry?” he whispered to me.

I shook my head no, and we continued a little more. But the pressure was getting hard to ignore. I started lifting up a little bit in my seat, and then sitting down again. My knees were still being squeeze together while my legs bounced a little bit. Mr. Feist whispered to me.

“Raise your hand, Lauren.”

I looked up at him. “Why?”

“So you can ask the teacher if you can go potty,” he told me in a low whisper.

I blushed. Did he know I had to go potty? I started to raise my hand.

Mrs. Horrace was really focused on her own reading circle though, so it was taking her a little bit to look up and watch that we were really working. I felt it pushing at my butt.

She finally looked over at me, and she called me over to her.

“What is it, Lauren?”

“I gotta go potty,” I told her.

“Honey, everyone knows you just pee your pants. I told you, when I am working with a group in circle time, it is not the time to ask me. Hold it for about five more minutes, and I’ll let you go before we start spelling time.”

I frowned. Today was Friday. Fridays were spelling tests. I never argue with teacher though, about rules. So I went back to my work.

“Why aren’t you going potty?” Mr. Feist said.

“The teacher said to wait a few minutes,” I shrugged.

He shook his head, but continue to help me. Before the time was up, and she was done with her circle time, I started to feel poop going in my diaper. But I did it last year just like this. It wasn’t something I expected I could keep from happening the whole year. Every year, I poop my pants at school.

I pooped my pants some, and then the teacher stood up.

“Lauren, do you want to go potty?” the teacher whispered to me?

I shook my head.

She smiled at me. She knew I pottied my pants, but I wasn’t sure if she knew if it was pee or not.

“Alright, class, get a piece of paper ready for spelling,” she told us. For this, Mr. Feist had to sit at a back table. As I numbered my paper, I continued to poop in my pants.

“The first word…,” Mrs. Horrace continued as I pooped some more. She gave us a sentence. Mr. Feist was not allowed to show me any helping cards for this because it was a test.

“The second word…,” I felt a big movement, and a huge mass unloaded into the back of my diaper shortly followed by an unstoppable flood of pee.

By the third word, I was already a mess, but continued on. I withstood the disgrace of sitting there, completely a mess, but doing my work like a good little student.

After the tenth word, the teacher came by my desk, and she took my paper, and she looked around the rest of the class. “Change papers,” she told them. “You,” she said to me. “Go see the nurse, honey.”

I whispered. “I pooped.”

Mrs. Horrace’s face looked white for a second, but she now shook a little bit as she escorted me to the door. “Just tell the nurse it was an accident, honey. I’ll be along after you are all taken to lunch to explain what happened. It’s not your fault.”

I shrugged. “I poop my pants every year,” I told her. “It’s okay. I’m used to it. Thank you for letting me change so soon though.”

And I walked down to the office.

 

The nurse saw me come in from class, so she knew right away that something was going to be changed. She motioned me to go back to the bed where I usually wait for her while she finished with another boy who was not feeling good.

When she came back, and she saw me still standing in my pants covering my diaper, she gently scolded me a little bit.

“Lauren, what is the first thing you do when you come back to the back?” she said in a low voice.

“Pull down my pants and get my icky diaper off?” I said to her.

“You pulled it down the last time you were in here. Why not this time?”

“Because this time, I pooped my pants,” I said my head hanging.

She looked shocked for a moment or two, and then shaking her head, she pulled me to her and pulled out the back of my pants and diaper to see if was telling the truth. She sighed and shook her head again.

“Okay, I’ll need to talk to your parents real quick. Just. Wait another minute, okay?”

I nodded, and stood there, afraid of moving too much because I didn’t want the poop to escape my panty-diaper and get in my real panties or my pants. It was gross enough to poop myself. I didn’t want to ruin these nice clothes the Bridges bought me, before we even knew if we liked each other.

The nurse came back in, and she sat on the bed and took my hands leading me to stand in front of her. “Your mommy says it is up to you. You can let me clean you up, or you can wait for mommy. She’s on her way either way because she wants to check on you since this is the first time you’ve pooped your pants in a long while.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry I pooped my pants, Ms. Nurse. It just came out, and I couldn’t stop it.”

“No one is blaming you, sweetheart.”

I stood there in the back for several minutes because the nurse somehow felt it better for Bridget to do it. It took like twenty minutes for her to get there, and she came in with some stuff to clean me up.

I looked at the nurse and Bridget talk for a minute.

“She wouldn’t really tell me if she wanted me to do it or not, so I figured since you were making the drive all the way over here, you could do it for her. It might make her feel better.”

“Thank you,” Bridget said. “Do you have a nurse’s bathroom, maybe a shower?”

“I have a toilet for when kids feel sick and come in here, but there is no shower in there.”

“Okay. Well, do you have a large tub or bucket or something that you can put some warm water in?”

The nurse brought us a bucket of warm water, and Bridget put several wash clothes in the water. She had some plastic bags, too. Then the nurse pulled the curtain for my bed area closed, and Bridget started to work.

As Bridget started to clean me up, she started to ask me about it.

“Honey, you’ve not pooped your pants at school until now. It’s been what, almost five weeks of school? Why would you do that now, honey?”

I shrugged.

“Are you feeling sick?”

I shook my head no.

“Well, I know you hate pooping your pants. You haven’t done it in a while in public places, either. So, mommy wants to understand. Was it an accident?”

“Kind of….”

“Can you explain to me what happened?”

“Ms. Horrace was having Circle time with another reading group. I raised my hand, and she called me to her, and we talked quietly. There were other kids there because it wasn’t my circle time. And so I was already a little nervous, but she first told me if I remember the rules about asking her questions when she has circle time. I nodded.”

Bridget was still cleaning me, but she rubbed my back, too. She made me feel okay to talk to her.

“She told me that she is used to me wetting my pants. She said to please go sit down, and do my work, and she would let me go in a minute.”

Bridget looked a little dark for a second.

“It wasn’t that long. I was just already holding it a long time because I knew the rule. So she didn’t lie. She did finish like before five minutes and she asked me if I had to go, but I was already pooping my pants, so I got scared and shook my head no. So she gave us our spelling test. I was done doing it before the third word, but after she said the words, she picked my paper up, told the class to change papers, and then quietly told me to go see the nurse. She knew I went potty. I think she only knew I peed, so when she took me to the class door to tell me in private to see the nurse, I told her I pooped my pants. She looked a little upset at first, but then she smiled and said she would come and tell them what happened. I don’t have to worry. It not my fault.”

Bridget sighed but her look got a little darker as she said: “She’s right about one thing. This was not your fault, baby.”

Bridget cleaned me up and then when I was redressed in a different clothes even a skirt to make going potty easier this time because she insist that my other clothes might smell bad to other kids even though nothing got in them. Then I was sent to lunch. An office lady came with me, and put me in the middle of a fifth grade line.

“Your class is already outside playing, so just eat, and then go to class,” the office person said.

I ate lunch with a bunch of strange kids, but no one was mean to me. They just ignored me, because I was strange to them, too. We just didn’t know what to say to each other.

After I ate lunch, I went to my classroom, but just then, I heard my name on the loud speaker.

“Would Lauren Bridges please come to the office,” it said.

I went to the office, and I saw my mommy was still there. “Did you forget why mommy has the car today, honey?” she asked me.

I looked down. “You don’t gotta take me. Everyone knows I just do it cause I’m stupid and I just want to be a bad kid,” I told her.

“Bridget, I thought we were past you calling yourself stupid. You are not stupid baby, and daddy has been telling you since day one, that we didn’t buy any of that garbage that you do it just because you want to.”

“But doctors never find nothing,” I whined. “They’ll make Jack hate me because he will waist a zillion dollars just to find out I’m just stup….” I stopped myself saying stupid because I saw the look on Bridget’s face. She was tired of telling me not to call myself that word.

“Well, we already set an appointment,” she told me. “So we are going to get you checked, baby.”

I nodded.

“And you know those papers that you use to apologize to people for being mean?” she asked me. “The ones your teacher makes you use in the classroom?”

I looked up at her.

“If you call yourself stupid one more time, you are going to do very long form of writing out an apology to yourself on Saturday, and you will not get sister play time, nor television time, or any time to do anything but write that letter. The only thing you will have a right to do until that letter is written, is use the toilet.”

I nodded. I guess Bridget was getting too tired of hearing me say that. I thought she really believed I was stupid, but she was just trying to make me okay with it, but now, I am not so sure she knows I’m stupid at all. She thinks it’s mean, somehow, that I say something that is a fact about myself. She doesn’t believe it.

Bridget took me to a small circle white building. There were like ten cars in the parking lot there. I think it’s called a parking lot. So we went in, and there were people sitting around. Some old, some without children, and few with children playing around. I sat next to Bridget, and she had an arm around me, and pulled me towards her.

It took a long long time until they called my name. “Lauren Westcoverly,” they said, which I was not used to. The school was using Bridges as my last name since I could remember, and I always wrote Bridges on all my assignments. No one called me Westcoverly anymore, and hearing that name, I snapped my head up,and I looked around trying to see if that yellow hair Angela with the daring blue eyes was watching me, or if Robert, with is taut mouth and hand around a belt was watching. I shook a little bit.

Bridget picked me up, and she carried me back to the back rooms.

“I understand that forms have to be accurate,” Bridget told the nurse that was taking us back. “But can you call her Lauren Bridges when you talk to her. The last time she’s heard her name called that other name, she was not in a good place at all.”

“It’s not the way things are usually done,” the nurse smiled. “I’ll go ask my supervisor.”

I was weighed, and they checked how tall I was. “I’m short,” I told them.

The nurse just smiled at me.

They put a thingy in my mouth and I had to close my mouth on it for a while. I didn’t mind. Then they put us in a room, and Bridget was asked to take off my regular clothes and put me in a gown that opened in the back. It had some tie cords back there, and not a zipper or snaps or anything. I think they want it loose.

I sat on the cot, and Bridget stood waiting for the doctor to come in.

“How long has Ms. Wes…,” And Bridget cut the doctor off. “Lauren has had problems since I got her, and if you ask her directly, I think she knows when they first started.”

The doctor didn’t look like he liked the way Bridget cut him off. He eyed her a little sourly.

“What’s your name?” the doctor smiled at me.

“Lauren Bridges,” I said.

“Do you mean Lauren Wes….”

“She said Bridges,” Bridget interrupted him again. “Look, can you and I have a few words outside the office before this continues, or we’ll just find another doctor?”

He sighed and went out of the room with Bridget.

They were outside for a few minutes, and finally, they came back in. “Okay, Lauren,” he said obviously not saying a last name at all. Bridget was eyeing him carefully. “How old are you?”

“Eleven, now.”

“You are having trouble with your pee pee?”

I shrugged. “I wet the bed just about every night, and I pee my pants at school and sometimes when I’m having fun,” I told him. “It just comes out sometimes, and sometimes, I just do it so I don’t cause trouble.”

“I see. Can you remember when you first started to do it?”

“I don’t remember the day it started, but I was eight the first time I wet the bed. It was just after the big car crash that killed my real mommy and daddy.”

“I see. And wetting your pants at school?”

“It started around the same time. I was pooping my pants all the time, too, when I was nine years old.”

“You were?”

“I still do it sometimes,” I looked down. “I had an accident today.”

“Well, has anyone taken you to see a doctor about these accidents before today?”

“Um… yeah, I think. I was told I was taken to see a doctor.”

“You were told, but do you remember being in a doctor’s office? Maybe have a piece of candy after you are checked?”

I shook my head no. “I thought hospitals just checked you, made you healthy, and sent you home. Why would they give you candy?”

The doctor jotted something in his notes.

“Is this the first time you remember sitting on a bed like this?”

I looked around the room and then looked up at him and nodded.

I started to get a little scared.

“Well, I’d like to do some checking around for signs and symptoms of irritations that might be making it hard to get to the potty,” he told me.

“How do you do that?”

“I’m going first of all, to use this machine here, to look inside your body.”

I whimpered and put my hands against my privates so he couldn’t put anything inside there.

“What are doing, honey. The machine is not going to go anywhere near that place.”

“It’s not?”

“No, baby. Here, hold this,” and he took part of the machine that was white, and he gave it to me. “Hold it on your tummy,” he told me. I did. He turned on the machine. I moved it around. I saw the fuzzy picture changing as I moved it around my sides and around my stomach.

“I’m going to look a little bit lower than you are moving it, but I promise, you do not have to remove your panties for me to use it. You might have to pull just the top down a little bit, but you will not take them off, and nothing will go into your panties,” the doctor told me.

I nodded.

“You said that you are a foster mom, on track to adopt her?” the doctor asked Bridget.

“Yes sir.”

“Is this the first time you’ve taken her to see a doctor at all?”

“I’ve, I mean, we’ve, my husband and I, have been trying to get in an appointment for her teeth, for a general welfare, and for other things, but it seems everywhere we turn, we are put on the turtle’s track. I have a dentist appointment set for next month for her, and I have a general health checkup scheduled in… I think it’s two weeks from now.”

“Any reason to believe your daughter has been molested by anyone?” the doctor asked in front of me.

“Not since she’s lived in our home,” Bridget said a little bit of hair raising off her neck.

“I’m not just meaning since she lived with you,” he said. “While it is possible that we may find something today that is causing her wetting problems, there is another explanation,” he told Bridget. “Normally, I wouldn’t even bring it up, just because she wets the bed, but when I showed her the machine and told her I was going to check her, did you not notice how scared she got as she covered her privates?”

“I… yeah, I did.”

“I don’t know of any doctors that need to have a young girl pull down her panties to check for symptoms of infections, injuries, or other health related issues that can be causing this. This seems like some sick twisted thing someone did to her, though I don’t know when.”

“You think someone touched my baby?” Bridget yelled at him.

“I don’t know for sure, ma’am. But there are a lot of red flags. You did say she pees her pants at school on purpose sometimes.”

“She has this idea that she’s not allowed to use the toilet,” Bridget tried to explain. “She especially talks about it when my other daughter tries to get her to get up early in the morning to play. The poor girl thinks it is stealing to get out of bed to use the toilet, so she sits in bed and pees herself. My other daughter has caught her at in many times.”

“Even if she’s been brainwashed that way, a healthy child that has no intention of wetting her pants will rebel. They might try to be sneaky, and hide getting up, but they don’t just wet their pants on purpose unless there is a reason.”

Bridget nodded. “I thought it was because they’d hit her. Her back was all black and blue when I first got her, though it had faded a bit because I got her after two months after she was rescued from her last foster family.”

“Okay, that could make sense,” he said. “But it doesn’t explain her panic when she guarded her privates and said no,” he raised an eyebrow at Bridget. “Did you know that in a small number of children, if they think someone thinks it is dirty to potty their pants, they will do just that, particularly at night, so that they will not be desired?”

Bridget shook her head no. She had tears running down her cheeks.

They were talking fast, and I was laying down. I only heard a word here, a phrase there. I didn’t know everything they were talking about.

The doctor finished with that machine, and he told me to wait a while. Then he took my mom back outside the room. I peed my pants, on purpose. I pushed until it came out, and satisfied my diaper was sagging, I waited for them to come back in. If he was going to break his promise and pull down my panties, I was going to get wet all over his bed and his floor.

They came back in.

“I want to do more tests, but she needs a break. If my suspicions are correct, I think certain tests should not be done right away. I would like you to keep an eye on the color of her urine, and if she complains of it hurting, or if you see any red in her urine, please contact us immediately. I’m going to give her this. This should slow her urine production at night.”

The doctor let us come out of the room. I was dressed again, and Bridget saw my pull up was so wet, it was about to leak. She didn’t say anything though. She just put my clothes on me, and she took me out to the waiting room to wait for paying the window and getting a paper.

“Honey,” Bridget suddenly turned to me when we were in the car. “If anyone puts their hands on your privates, especially against your will, but even if you let them, you tell daddy and mommy both as soon as you can.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just do, please, honey.”

“Okay.”

“And baby?”

“Huh?”

“If you feel it hurt when you go potty, you need to tell mommy. And if you get blood coming out in your pee, you tell mommy that, too.”

I nodded.

Before Jack came home, Bridget was distracted. She kept getting in her own mind when she was supposed to help April and me with reading. She watched me carefully, as though she was scared she’d miss something.

When Jack came in, she told April to watch me, and if I go potty, to watch me go. It was the first time she told April to watch me go potty. Something was bothering Bridget.

We worked on our homework while Bridget took Jack to another room and she talked to him. They were gone in another room for a long time. I peed my pants because I didn’t want April to watch me pee. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust April. I just didn’t like other kids watching me go.

 

April helped me with math even though that part was Jack’s job. They were still talking, and April said we still needed to finish our homework so we wouldn’t have to do it on the weekend. She said she wanted to play with Cindy on Saturday, and she hoped I would go with them. I agreed at once, of course.

 

Finally, they came out of the back room, and Jack came over and he picked me up gently and his eyes were sad. “You know to tell us if people are touching you in a way you don’t like. It is never okay to keep a secret about how someone touches you, even if you think you trust someone,” he told me.

I nodded.

“The doctor thinks someone touched you in a way that scares you and makes you upset.”

“Before I met you and Bridget, someone did,” I told him. “But Angela and Robert never believed me. They knew I am just a trouble maker, so they thought I was just making trouble.”

Those people should not even have children,” Jack said. “Whether they touched you in a way that scared your or not, they hit you.”

“They spanked me,” I said.

“No, baby. They hit you. A spanking doesn’t leave marks all over your body. A spanking doesn’t make you hurt all night long or longer. A spanking should only ever be used… well, it doesn’t matter. You are not getting spanked ever again, either. Not as long as Bridget and I have a say about it. You never do anything that deserves a spanking.”

I looked up at him. “What would I have to do to get a spanking?”

“Why?” he asked me. “Do you want to test me on spanking you?”

I looked down. I was just curious because he said I never do anything that will get me a spanking.

“Well, let’s put it this way, do you have a real gun somewhere, that I don’t know about?”

I shook my head no.

“Do you have secret plans to rob a bank or to burn down a house?”

I giggled. “How’d you burn down a house? You have to have some special stuff for that. If I just used a match, people would know there is a fire long before the house burned up.”

He smiled at me. “Exactly. You can’t do anything that would deserve a spanking.”

I smiled. “What if I hit April, if we got in a fight, and because I got mad at her, I hit her?”

“I would not be happy,” he said with a frown. “I would take away your crayons and some of your toys for a while. I would make you stand in the corner for like fifteen minutes. But spanking you for being mad will not teach you how to redirect your anger.”

I looked down. “I don’t want to hit her anyway. She is the bestest sister in the whole wide world, and she’s littler than me, even if she wants to be the big sister.”

“Your diaper is wet,” Jack said. “Do you want Bridget to go help you change?”

“I just peed. I can do it.”

“Okay. But remember, before you on a clean pair of panties, wash your privates with warm water.”

“Okay.”

I ran up to the bedroom and got a clean panty-diaper and then I went into the bathroom and took off my clothes. I was pretty wet. I was lucky it didn’t leak

[bje]

10 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

“How about I take Lauren to get her into a clean diaper, you two have some snacks, and then you start your reading homework right away, that way, I can help you with that before I have to start dinner?”

As I read Chapter 7, Lauren still wears diapers during the day when she is at home. I had understood from previous chapters that this was no longer the case, but perhaps this has been changed in the rewriting of some chapters?

[Ishigreensa]

5 hours ago, bje said:

As I read Chapter 7, Lauren still wears diapers during the day when she is at home. I had understood from previous chapters that this was no longer the case, but perhaps this has been changed in the rewriting of some chapters?

No, I believe you are right, but it is also dependent upon her staying dry.  I think at this particular moment, the mom is just trying to do what is easier at the moment, too, because she knows reading is stressful for her little girl, so she likely expects her to wet her pants.

[kerry]

I have missed this story until now, and I just want to say how much I enjoy it. It highlights emotions that are sadly too common in our world, where fostering often is just a means to getting more money. Bridget and Jack are saints, and they have raised April so well that I am sure Lauren will grow stronger just from being with them. Still, my heart goes out to this little girl about the things that have happened to her in the past. 

One significant question: I don't understand why Lauren's oral language is so poor. It's not even consistently so, but she sometimes sounds like a non-English speaker. That part doesn't make sense to me.

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 8:

Why Do Other Kids Make Me Nervous

 

It was eight years old, almost nine. I lived with someone before the Harrisons then, and I had been wetting the bed for almost a year now. They put me in diapers at night because of it. They got mad at me and told me that diapers are expensive, but when I didn’t wear a diaper and I peed on the bed, they said that beds are more expensive than diapers.

That wasn’t the worst though:

There was this fourteen year old boy that lived in that house who was called Richard. I never really liked him from the time I met him like three months before this. He was always walking in on me getting out of the bath, saying he was just going to pee even though the fosters told me to take a bath, and even though there were two bathrooms, it didn’t matter. Almost two in three times, he ended up seeing me getting out of the tub. He didn’t look away, either. He just looked right at me saying he was sorry.

I kind of got used to him looking at me after a bath. I once told the foster mom, but she said it was nothing, and I better not make it into something it’s not. He didn’t touch me. Well, he didn’t yet. But it wasn’t only when I took a bath. If I said I had to go to the toilet, and foster mom said okay, he always ended up in the bathroom, staring at me, just as I was about to stand up from the toilet.

“Go ahead,” he would say. “Stand up, so I can go pee. You’re done, aren’t you? Or do you want to hog the toilet and make me pee my pants. I’ll pee my pants, and then tell mom you made me on purpose.”

I knew whose side she would take in that argument. I stood up, and he just stood there, watching me pull my panties up, and then fix my clothes. He didn’t even go to the toilet until I left the bathroom. Sometimes, I don’t think he even peed in the toilet, but I could never make them believe he did that.

I was asleep in the room, a plastic sheet on the bed, and a full tape on diaper that I was not ever allowed to take off on my own. I don’t remember the day. I felt the sleep leaving my body and my eyes. I already knew by now, that getting up in the morning without permission was stealing, so I stayed in bed and waited for someone to come and get me. My diaper was soaked from wetting the bed.

Richard came into my room. I sighed thinking that meant I could get up. I started to sit up.

“What are you doing?” Richard asked me.

“Didn’t you come to wake me up?”

“Maybe…,” he smiled looking at me funny. “Did you wet your diaper?”

I nodded.

“Do you like wearing a wet diaper?”

I shook my head no.

“Well, someone has to take it off for you, don’t they?”

“What about foster mom?” I asked.

“I thought you knew. She got stuck on the road last night. She’s not going to get home until later. I don’t know how you will go to school unless you want to wear a wet diaper to school…,” and he became silent making me think about that.

“What about foster dad?” I asked.

“He already went to work,” the boy told me.

I was getting scared. It looked like the people allowed to touch my diaper were getting smaller, and I started to think I’d have to wear a wet diaper to school. I looked down. There was a girl in the house, Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was just eleven. I didn’t know if she was allowed to help me with my diaper or not.

“I have some breakfast ready for you downstairs, but you can’t have it until you are ready for school,” Richard told me, looking me in the eye.

Shaking, I stared to pee my pants again.

He came over closer to my bed.

“Now, here is the thing. You can either wear a wet diaper to school, and I’ll just put your clothes on you over it, or you can let me take it off of you, and we can to go the bathroom, and wipe you off, and then dress you. It’s up to you.”

“Can we just take off my diaper, and dress me?” I asked hoping he was saying we can dress me, meaning like stepmom does, where she picks something cute for me to wear, and then hands it to me to put on.

“If you take off your wet diaper, you still need to be wiped clean,” he told me. “You’ll still smell like a potty pants if you don’t clean yourself off.”

I nodded. I could clean myself off.

He came closer. “But we have to take your diaper off of you. Are you allowed to touch it?”

I shook my head no, and peed some more into the diaper. I was squirting in it, because really, I wanted to go to the toilet, but I kept leaking, especially when he said something that was scarier than he said before.

He reached his hands out to me. “If you scream, I’ll just make you wear a wet diaper to school.”

I was shaking, and I was peeing again, but I let him undo it and when he started to pull it down, he saw me peeing.

“You are wetting your pants,” he told me when he started to lift the front down.

I nodded, and I started to cry.

He put the front back over me, and he ordered me to finish peeing my diaper. It was too late to get to the bathroom anyway, and I was too scared. The pee poured out even if I didn’t want it to.

He sat on the bed, his hand on the diaper front, touching me, feeling the diaper as I flooded it with my shame. My face was really hot, and tears streamed down my face while I peed my pants sitting on the bed. He finally smiled. “I think you are done peeing,” he said. I couldn’t tell. I was numb now.

He pulled the diaper carefully back, and he smiled. “Yep, all done,” he said. I felt his hand touch me.

I was finally dressed in school clothes, and I went down and saw the eleven year old girl. She looked sad too. She picked at her breakfast, and even though she was up before me, and had time, I don’t think she even touched her food. She just moved it around.

“I just got you two up like I was supposed to,” Richard told us. “You know if you try to tell my dad different, you will be in trouble for lying.”

I nodded and so did the other girl, who was kind of shaking. I didn’t even know she wore diapers to bed. I didn’t ask her if she did. It was embarrassing enough. He then made us eat, and wouldn’t leave the house until we finished our plates. I felt disgusting though. I wanted another bath. Not because I peed, but just because.

 

Sometimes, when foster mom and foster dad were out, and Richard was left with us, similar things happened. He would first, force us to take off our pants and our panties, like in the day time, or he didn’t let us change out of our sleeping stuff if it was the morning, and some reason, foster mom and foster dad were already gone. I found out the first time, one morning, that Elizabeth doesn’t wear diapers to bed. We were both forced to go out in the back yard, and I was still I a diaper, and Elizabeth was still in her nightgown. I was wearing pajama top and pants.

“You both know it is stealing if you use the toilet without permission in the morning,” he told us, and of course, we nodded.

“Well, have I let you get dressed in clothes yet? Have I taken off Lauren’s diaper?”

We shook our heads.

“So, what is the toilet rule?”

“We should be in bed,” Elizabeth said.

“Then you should feel lucky I even let you get up to play,” he told her. “Now, answer the question.”

“It’s stealing,” I sighed.

“That’s right.”

I thought Elizabeth was actually his sister before that first day that foster mom was on the road and got stuck on her way home. I didn’t know he was doing stuff to her, too, until that day.

We both peed our pants multiple times that day he let us up but kept us in pajamas. Elizabeth’s was really turning orange by the third time she peed because he wouldn’t let her use the toilet, and he told her if she pulled her pants down in the back yard, he’d tell his dad on us.

Eventually, he did let us in the house, before evening, and he took my soaked diaper that leaked into my pajamas off me, and he took Elizabeth’s nightgown and her panties off of her. He let us go in the bathroom, but he washed us. It was humiliating, but we had no choice.

 

I was so scared of Richard now. He was getting us up in the mornings. I would not let him feel me peeing my diaper, so I started peeing in my pants as soon as I woke up to keep him from being able to enjoy feeling the diaper get wet. Only sometimes, he isn’t the one that got me, and when foster mom took me to the toilet, and I didn’t pee, she frowned and checked my diaper. She could tell I had fresh pee in it. She just shook her head and told me that I’m going to have to outgrow this, eventually.

 

Finally, a few days after I turned nine, I was put with a new foster family. I think Elizabeth was placed in a different home, too, after me. I don’t know what caused us to change homes, but I was glad. I didn’t have to see Richard anymore.

 

In this home, they told the foster mom and foster dad, who insisted I call them mom and dad, that I wet the bed, I made trouble, and I lie about serious stuff, like abuse. They said they knew abuse didn’t happen at the other home because they checked both the girls for abuse, though I didn’t understand how they checked us. And the foster dad frowned when as soon as the social worker was gone.

“You listen here,” he told me touching my face with his forefinger roughly. “If you ever say something is happening here, and it’s not, I will send your butt to jail.”

I got really scared, then. I knew I could never tell him if Richard had ever found me.

“Now, these are my kids,” he went on. “There is Scott, who is fifteen years of age,” and I smiled shyly and looked up at him. He was a little bit scary even though he looked nothing like Richard. “There is Tom,” he pointed at a boy a few years younger, who turned out to be twelve. And then he smiled and gestured at Amy. “This is our baby. She is seven years old.”

I nodded.

“The boys have their own room, and you girls have your own room. I know you wear diapers at night, so it won’t bother you to sleep with Amy. She wets the bed, too.”

I nodded.

No one believed me that Richard touched both Elizabeth and me on our pee pee place, on purpose. No one believed he watched me use the toilet or watched me get out of the bathtub. No one believed that he sometimes made us pee our pants in the yard, even in our regular school clothes. No one believed that he had anything to do with us peeing our pants.

 

So, a week after I moved in with the new people, I was at school. I raised my hand to go to the bathroom, one day, but when I started to go down to the bathroom, I thought I saw a boy that looked like Richard. I know, that it was quite unlikely I had seen him. He would have been fifteen and he would have been in high school while I was still in elementary school. He couldn’t be there. But at that time, I was convinced I saw him, and I thought he was hiding and following me. I tried to hurry my pace, and I tried to hide in doorways and behind trash cans, and wherever I could to see if I could spot him. I never made it to the toilet. I peed my pants.

“Excuse me, little lady?” I saw a custodian come out of nowhere. “You’re new at this school, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“If you are looking for the nurse,” and following his gaze, it was no mystery why thought I was looking for her, “It’s that way,” he pointed.

I nodded and went red faced, into the nurses office with my first day time accident, ever, well the first one that was not caused by Richard, I mean. Well, sort of.

There was a whole ordeal around it, and a parent-teacher conference was made out of the incident.

“She’s a troubled kid,” they told the teacher. “She lost her parents about a year or so ago, and she’s just been a troublemaker since. The agency has trouble finding people that will take her because she makes up stories about people, and then she does things like pees her pants.”

I didn’t know what I could say.

“Look, maybe just send a student with her next time to make sure she goes to the restroom,” the foster mom said. “Maybe if she realizes these fantasies and these lies are not going to work, she’ll stop with them.”

The teacher agreed.

 

I came out of a session, looking at my state paid for counselor. He had just had me talking about some of my earlier foster homes. He asked me if I remembered my first wet bed, my first wet day at school, and my first experience with calling it stealing if I get up out of hours.

The counselor opened the door, and Bridget came running in, and she sat with me, holding me in her arms.

“It seems she’s been molested a few times in her life,” the counselor told my mom. And two accounts are from older children, children who were over the age of fourteen while the young girl was just eight, nine, and ten years old, and one account was by a man, but she doesn’t remember exactly who the man was. No one ever believed her.”

Bridget frowned. “How can people foster a kid and not believe them if they tell you something so horrible?” she asked the counselor.

“Unfortunately, there are kids who are very manipulative out there. Lauren is not one of them, but because of there being so many that are, sometimes, it is easier for a family to believe a foster kid is being manipulative than to believe your own son or family member is doing something so wrong to a young child.”

Bridget rocked me.

“I didn’t like the session to day,” I told Bridget. “I want to go home.”

“I know you didn’t,” Doctor Stevens said. “But this session was important, sweetie. We will never talk about what we talked about today again, unless you bring it up though, okay?”

I nodded.

“I don’t want to give her any candy. To her, if I give her a piece of candy, it will be a bribe for making her relive her nightmares. Instead, after you have had a chance to talk to her about other things and get her mind off of what she had to share with me, maybe you can treat her.”

Bridget nodded.

We ran to catch a bus because Bridget didn’t have the car today. Once we were seated on the bus, she pulled me on her lap, and she whispered in my ear. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word….”

 

This session was a few days after that Saturday that April wanted me to visit Cindy with her. Cindy was such a fun person! I love Cindy almost as much as I love April!

We got up that morning, and after mommy took off my wet diaper and bathed me so I wouldn’t smell like a potty pants at Cindy’s house, she also packed my go back. She told April strictly.

“If Lauren runs out of pants from wetting herself, it is time to take her home.”

“I promise mom,” she said.

“She has two extra things in the bag to wear in case of wetting, a skirt with leggings and an extra pair of jeans. If she gets a third pair of jeans wet, that means you kids surely have been at Cindy’s house too long anyway.”

April was looking in the go bag, and she frowned up at Bridget.

“Mom, I don’t see any diapers in here.”

“No, honey. The Myers said that they didn’t plan on taking you kids out of the house, so I want Lauren to try to go to the toilet today. They said it wouldn’t matter if she pees her pants.”

Then we were walking down the street towards Cindy’s house. April knew exactly where she lived. April started to teach me this hand clap game on our way. It had a lot of different patterns, and it was fun. We laughed every time I messed it up. I knew I messed it up because I was stupid, but I didn’t say I was stupid out loud anymore. Besides, it seemed that even if I was stupid, I could do stuff. I wasn’t so bad as I used to think.

We came upon this brown and white house with a car and a truck out in the drive way. April stopped and turned to me. She unzipped my pants and fixed me so I was decent. Then after she had it all fixed, she turned for me, and asked if she needed fixed. I thought she was perfect though, so I shook my head.

“Don’t worry if you pee,” April told me. “Cindy already knows you pee, and I told her she could tell her mom, so that way, if you felt better a lady helping you, you can have her help. If you feel better someone you know helping, then I will help you.”

I nodded. “I want you to help me, April. I don’t know those people at all.”

She hugged me and nodded. “Then I’ll help you.”

April took my hand and we walked up and April pushed the ding dong.

A few minutes later, Cindy opened the door with a really wide smile. “You made it!” she said excited. “Your mom said you didn’t have breakfast, just like we planned.”

“How come you said Bridget said we didn’t have breakfast?” I asked Cindy.

“Your mom called us as soon as you left so that we would know to start looking for you. My mom says that for the last month or so, your mom has been really worried about when she lets you go anywhere, like if Lauren might have opened her eyes to things that she thinks are dangerous everywhere.”

I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

“Anyway, I promised we would make my dad’s famous french toast for breakfast,” Cindy told April. “And then this afternoon, we are going to make homemade cinnamon rolls with my grandma.”

“I thought you said your grandma lived out of town,” April said suspiciously. “You said it’s too bad she wasn’t living with you because you’d ask her to show us how to make those.”

“Well, she surprised us yesterday,” Cindy smiled. “When I got home, grandma was at the house. I frowned because I made plans to spend the day with you and to get to know Lauren better, but when I told grandma how Lauren was this really special girl in my class, and the adopted sister of my best friend, she said she’d love me to keep my plans with you so she could meet both my best friend and my new friend, Lauren.”

April and I giggled as we walked into the house.

I saw the woman and the man that were Cindy’s parents. I looked down at my feet. April walked up to them.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Myers. This is my new sister, Lauren. I know the papers say she is like a year older than me, but my whole family, even Lauren, says that she’s my little sister.”

The smiled and nodded.

“And is that the ‘go bag’ your mom told me about that has changes of clothes for Lauren in it?” Mrs. Myers asked.

“Yeah, but you are new to Lauren, so on the way here, we talked, and she wants me to do it. It’s not because anything with you,” April quickly said. “It’s that Lauren keeps getting poo poo heads that treated her bad before our family, so she has trust issues.”

The adults laughed at the way that April said poo poo head. Even I had to smile.

“Well, I’ve got the stuff all ready for french toast,” Mr. Myers said. “Mrs. Myers has to go out for a bit, but grandma Myers will be up before noon, so if you want to have room to eat cinnamon rolls later, I suggest we start breakfast right now.”

All us kids giggled. It was actually fun making my own french toast. We dipped our bread in something that had milk and eggs in it, and some sugar and cinnamon in it, and then we took our plate to the dad, and he fried our bread for us. As we each ate one toast and took turns standing in line, he probably let us each eat three french toasts before he said it was his turn to eat.

We went up to Cindy’s own special room. Not her bedroom, but a special room that we could see all kinds of stuff she did. She said her dad was an artist, and it was apparent that he was pushing Cindy to try things.

“He says I don’t have to do any of this professionally. It’s none of his business what I will do when I am an adult, as long as my profession isn’t bank robber. But he says art doesn’t have to be your job. It can just be a hobby to relax you. And he says that right now, I am just old enough to learn about what it is, before I start junior high, because in a couple of years when I go to junior high, art will be one of the choices. It won’t be an automatic class like at our school.”

April and I just nodded at what she said. We had no idea what junior high school as like, and we didn’t think Cindy did either. She just told what her daddy said. I think she loves her daddy very much, and he is a nice man that she can trust.

Cindy got three small easels cleared off of work, and then she put some tubs of paint on the plastic palates. Cindy told us what they were called as she showed us what she was doing. Then she put these boards, with white paper that looked really fancy on the easels.

“My daddy bought these especially for you,” she told April and me. And she showed me where my name was written on the backs of ten of those papers. “We are just having fun, so no one cares if I or you or if we all draw stupid,” Cindy told us looking at me. “This is for fun.”

If it has my name on it…. But I was a little bit scared, so I asked Cindy. “Can I call home?”

Cindy took me to the kitchen and I asked Mr. Myers if I can call home. They let me.

“Bridget?” I smiled when she picked up the phone. “Mr. Myer’s bought me some really expensive paper, and Cindy says to use her really expensive paint. And I don’t want to steal.”

“Do you remember what I’ve talk to you before about what is stealing and what isn’t?”

She must have somehow known I was shaking my head no, though she couldn’t even see me because of the phone.

“If someone gives you something, and they go through the trouble of putting your name on something, that means it is yours now. If someone gives you something like crayons, food, or anything else to use, if you use it up, it is okay if they tell you that you can. If you get to a last piece of candy for example, always wait and make sure they are okay with it, but if they give it to you knowing it is the last one, then it is not stealing, and it’s even rude not to take it if you are not hurt by it.”

I nodded. “What about stealing their bathroom?”

“Again, not stealing, honey. But how about this? How about you ask Cindy if you can use her bathroom if you feel like going potty? And if you don’t make it and wet, then go to Mrs. Myers or April, who ever you prefer, and ask them to help you change.”

I nodded.

“Okay. Thank you Bridget. Love you. Bye.” and I hung up the phone and ran up stairs to see that Cindy and April were already starting to paint.

“Sorry, Lauren. I told Cindy about your strange idea of stealing, and I told her you were probably checking with mommy again to make sure you don’t accidentally steal, like their toilet.”

Cindy came over and hugged me. “I’m sorry those mean people told you it was stealing to use the toilet,” she told me. “If you want, you can use my toilet anytime you want, even if I’m sleeping. And if you are scared of using it before I say so, then you can always ask. And if you wet your pants, then just wet your pants. I will never care either way.”

I smiled and hugged her back.

She then started to show us how to mix colors to make even more colors than tubes of colors that she had.

“Can I play school with you two, and you be my students, and we use your first three papers to learn how to paint, and then you can use the rest the way you want?” Cindy asked us.

I nodded. April watched me nod, first, and then she nodded. Cindy was actually a good teacher. She showed us how to mix our colors, and she taught us how to get closer and closer to the color we wanted while also keeping another color closer to it in case we wanted to use the lighter or darker version for shadows and stuff.

I was so interested in her lesson, honestly, that it wasn’t on purpose, I promise, but I just peed my pants, not even thinking about the toilet. I just couldn’t draw my attention from the painting, and before I knew it, I was leaking pee in my pants because I forgot I wasn’t even wearing a diaper-panty this time. I always wear diaper-panty when I’m not at home.

It was around one, and grandma Myers came in to see what we were doing.

“I’ve had the stuff ready to go for an hour to make cinnamon rolls with my granddaughter and her friends, and you all have just been up here, ignoring the time, and for at least one of you, ignoring her own body too,” she looked down at my wet pants.

“Oh, sorry,” I blushed.

“My sister has accidents, Mrs. Myers. She can’t help it,” April said.

“Yeah grandma. I told you, Lauren wets her pants at school sometimes. All the kids in the class knows it, but we are not allowed to make fun of it because it’s rude, and she really sometimes doesn’t know she’s peeing her pants until it’s too late.”

Grandma Myers just smiled. “That’s fine, kids. Just do what you need to get your friend comfortable and wash that paint off your hands and faces. Mixing food and paint is not good for your health.”

April washed her hands first, then she helped me wash mine before she started to change my wet pants. She put me in my purple leggings and jean skirt.

I loved it at the Myer’s house. We made cinnamon rolls, played games, painted some more, and finally ended the day after we were cleaned up again, and I had to change into the last pair of jeans again, we watched a movie. I didn’t know it, but I was sucking my thumb and had my head in April’s lap. The only reason I found out I was doing it, was that when the movie ended, and April sat up bumping my elbow and causing me to feel my thumb rub on my teeth.

No one called me a baby even if I peed my pants completely like three times. No one cared I sucked my thumb, and no one made fun of my paintings. Actually, Cindy kept looking at them as if she was grading them. Of course, she said we were playing school, and she was the teacher, so it made sense if she was grading them.

It was dark outside, so the Myers insisted on taking us home, and they said besides, they had to take our paintings with us.

We went into the house, and paintings were put on stands around the house. The Myers told us we could borrow their stands until the paintings dried. But I think two of my paintings were forgotten at their house. I didn’t tell anyone though. I didn’t care. My work is bad and I know it, so probably the worse ones got left so that Bridget wouldn’t be as much a liar as she praised mine as much as she praised Aprils.

When the Myers left, I walked over to Bridget, my head down, and I whispered to her. “I kept peeing my pants. I didn’t even go potty once,” I told her.

“She was painting mom. It was so fun,” April said as if she was defending me. “You know how she forgets and doesn’t know she’s peeing when she’s having fun. We made french toast as soon as we got there, then Cindy showed us her own private painting room, and Lauren called you about if she was allowed to paint, and then Cindy taught us how to paint, and then we made cinnamon rolls, and we painted again, and then we watched a movie. This could not have been as much fun as it was without Lauren, mommy.”

I beamed because she said I made it more fun.

On Monday, I would meet my reading sister. I was finishing up after school, and was going into the cafeteria. I forgot to tell you, that after school, April and I go to the cafeteria and to like a daycare and wait for the second bus. That’s because sometimes Bridget has to work, so we are in this program, that lets Bridget beat us home on the days she works.

I was sitting with April on this Monday afternoon, and Cindy and April and I were talking about all the fun we had on Saturday, and Cindy said she couldn’t wait until we could paint at her house again. Maybe we should paint in the park next time.

I looked down. I didn’t want to embarrass Cindy by peeing my pants in public around her. At school, it was one thing. The whole class knew by now that I wear diapers and that I pee my pants all the time and see the nurse to get my diapers changed. But she hasn’t had to walk with me out in the open where people don’t know about me, and then get the dirty looks from people that see her with me, after they see I’m wet.

That’s when this big person that no one ever saw before walked into the cafeteria and asked a staff member something and then came over to see me.

“Are you Lauren?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Lauren is my sister,” April spoke up. “Who is asking because Lauren not supposed to talk to strangers.”

“I’m Katie,” the curly yellow blond girl with blue eyes said. “I’m from the Big Sisters Reading program.”

“You were supposed to meet Lauren at our house,” April told her with a sour look. Lauren hates reading, and you will make her cry in front of all these people.”

“I’m not here to read just yet,” Katie said. “I just wanted to meet her first, and I wanted to meet you, too.”

“I don’t need help in reading.”

“No, but you are Lauren’s sister,” Katie said. “Like I said, I wanted to meet Lauren first, not read first. We won’t even pull the book out until we get to your house. But your mommy and the school here gave me permission to see Lauren in the after school program.”

April frowned. “Okay, but I’m watching you. If you make her cry in front of the whole room, I’m going to flatten your toes for you.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you’d do it, too,” she said. “How about a peace offering?”

She pulled out two pictures from her bag. They looked the same, and they had words on the bottom on the pictures. They were coloring sheets.

“You only got two?” April said with her arms crossed.

“Well, Lauren just has one sister, right?”

“Well, she’s kind of got two sisters,” Cindy spoke up. “April and I’ve been besties since second grade. Now, I hang out with Lauren and April together.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Katie said with a sad frown.

“It’s okay,” Cindy said. “I have my coloring book in my bag. I’ll just color in that, and the sisters can color the pictures you brought them.”

April nodded approval, but she was still watching Katie carefully, as though waiting for any one false move.

“Well, my name is Katie,” she said again. “I want you to know Lauren, we don’t even have to open a book today. I had to bring one, and at your house, I have show you, and take a selfie showing that I’m showing you the book so my boss knows I brought it up, but other than that, today is going to go how you want.”

I smiled. “Can you test me with my flashcards?” I asked her.

“Sure? Math facts?”

“No,”April said as though she was making a no-duh face. “She has no trouble in math. The special cards are for learning how to read. She actually knows the rules. But when she’s reading, she just sometimes mixes them up or even forgets, and starts guessing.”

“Oh, well, I’d love to use your flashcards to help you,” Katie said to me.

“Mommy said I was going to get a special big friend,” I told April. “And just like I love Cindy and you are sharing your friend with me, I’d love to share my special big friend with you.”

April frowned. “But I don’t need help reading.”

“I bet you don’t,” Katie said. “But I bet you want to help your sister read better.”

April nodded.

“Well, what if next time I come, I bring a game that lets all three of us read, and when it’s Lauren’s turn, I’ll let you help her as much as you think she needs the help?” Katie asked April.

“Alright. But can the game be played with a fourth? I want to let Cindy play if she is there with us.”

“I will make sure it can have as many players as you want,” Katie said. “I just need to know how many people the max is, so I can choose a game that will work.”

“Well, two in case I can’t join should be the lower number and only up to four. The other kids don’t really play with Lauren, so I ignore everyone else at school, too.”

Katie smiled. “Okay, 2 to 4 player game for tomorrow,” she wrote on a message thing on her phone.

While I started to color in the picture with a big girl pushing a smaller girl on the swing, Katie said “Sisters are forever.”

I looked up at her.

“That’s what it says under the picture,” she told me.

I smiled.

“And so are besties,” I said to her. “Can you write it on the paper by the rest of it?”

“You can do it.”

“I can’t. I don’t spell good.”

“This paper is not going to be judged or seen by anyone but you. You can spell it anyway you want,” Katie told me. “And if you really want to write it right, I’ll teach you at home how to write it.”

“Okay,” I said happily.”

My sister gave her a suspicious frown.

Cindy and April whispered for a second, and I thought I heard her say something like “she’s tricky.”

If it was a trick, though, I liked it. I wanted to write that part about besties.

I sat there and listened to Katie talk to me about what she planned today.

“So, after we look at your flash cards, and I help you write your phrase, I’ll show the book I have, and then after you tell me you don’t want to read today, we can talk about your hobbies and I’ll share with you my hobbies.”

She was so full of excitement, it was hard not to like her. Her blue eyes sparkled in excitement. She nearly bounced around as she talked, and if she wasn’t as tall as she was, I’d almost think she was like one of us.

I started to drizzle in my pants, but I didn’t care. I was too interested in what Katie told me.

When we were taken out to get the bus, I saw Katie get in a car on the other side of the large parking lot. She could drive! I smiled and waved at her, but I don’t think she saw me. I think she was racing the bus or something.

We went back to the backseat, and all three of us together.

As the bus started to fill up, I heard someone say, “Does it smell back here?”

I lowered my head because they must have been talking about me.

Cindy patted my shoulder, but April stood up and walked up to the seat in front of us, and she looked right in at the people that were there. I couldn’t see them, but April had a very angry look on her face.

“You chose to sit back here, so one more word about my sister from any of you, and I’ll smash your toes for you!” she said kind of loudly. That brought the bus driver back towards us.

“What’s going on back here?”

“They’re making fun of my sister,” April pointed at them.

“No, we weren’t.”

“You said something smells, and I know you saw the back of her pants were wet,” April told them. “My sister has accidents, and that girl is in my class, so she already knows it, and she’s mean to my sister all the time!”

“Alright, that’s it. You two, get up, right now.”

“But she’s lying,” I now saw and recognized Barbara.

“I don’t care,” he said grabbing her arm and forcing them up to one of the front seats.

After they were gone, we laughed at how mad Barbara looked and how embarrassed she was as she was moved to the front of the bus.

“And that’s why you don’t pick on other kids,” Cindy told April. “In the end, no matter how much fun you think you are having, it is going to come back to you in the end.”

I nodded agreeing with her. The Harrisons found out that you don’t keep little kids in the closet to sleep the hard way when the lady had the police come and help me. Then I looked down at my wet pants.

“Did I do bad to Barbara?” I asked April. “She wouldn’t smell nothing if I didn’t wet.”

“She didn’t smell anything,” April told me. “Did she Cindy? You don’t smell her, do you.”

“Lauren does smell a tiny bit, and she showed her thumb and finger. But Barbara was just being mean about it. There is no way she could smell you from where she was sitting. It’s not that strong!”

“Exactly,” April said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone knows you pee your pants including her, and if she didn’t even want to chance smelling the pee, she had a whole bunch of seats to choose that wasn’t where we were going. She knew that since we were trying to sit together, we were going to back of the bus. She’d have to be stupid to not know that.”

I nodded.

When we got to our bus stop, and we were walking up to the front of the bus, Barbara said something else. “Baby alert!”

The bus looked over at her. “Get off my bus.”

“You can’t kick me off here,” she told him.

We walked quickly away from the bus not wanting to be anywhere near Barbara if she got off at our stop.

When we got to the house, we could see that Katie’s car was already there, and when we went in, the dining room had her bag on a chair, there were a few papers on the table in front of where she was sitting, and she waved at us while Bridget was talking to her.

“I think they kicked Barbara off the bus,” April told Bridget.

“Is that the girl that’s always making Lauren cry?”

“Yeah. She came to the back of the bus where we were sitting and then started acting like Lauren stank, so the bus driver moved her and her seat friend to the front of the bus, and when we were getting off, she called Lauren a baby, and we hurried home because the last thing we heard, was the driver telling her to get off the bus.”

“I’m glad someone is getting on her, but goodness, I don’t think I like the idea that the bus drivers still do that. It’s not as safe for kids to walk home as it once was.”

I looked down. I hated Barbara for always telling everyone I peed my pants when no one else saw it or knew, but even though I hated her, I didn’t want her to get hurt or something. “We should tell the driver to let her ride the bus again,” I told April. “We could just ask him to make her sit in the front all the time or something so she can’t bother other kids.”

“Are you serious?” Cindy asked me. “You want to let that mean pig continue to ride our bus, knowing she’s going to keep being mean to you?”

“Even if she’s mean, she doesn’t deserve to get hurt and put in a hospital or something,” I told her. “I don’t want her near me, and I don’t want her to hurt other kids, so that’s why I said if she is make to sit in the front with the bus driver can see her.”

Bridget walked over and hugged me. “My sweet little Lauren. You have a heart that just can’t be explained.”

Bridget took me to the bathroom, and after washing me with warm water and soap, she put clean regular panties on me, and then we put a skirt on me, and I went back down to sit with Katie at the table.

Katie saw my special cards.

“These cards are splendid,” she said. “So do I just hold them up, and you like tell me the rule or something?”

“No. That not how they work. Do you have that book you wanted me to read?”

“Are you sure you want to read?”

“I want to show you how the cards work.”

She nodded and got out her book, and she took a selfie with it, and then I saw her write some notes down in squiggly writing. I think most of the other kids use squiggly writing in writing class, too, but the teacher never tells me I have to.

She opened the book.

There was a girl w… and I looked up at her. I looked in my cards, and then I found the five w’s. All of them the wh in parenthesis like this (wh)o, and then on the who, the w was crossed out in red. In what, the h was crossed out as well as when, where, and why.

That card had it so you can fold it so that only the part you want to look at is shown, and I showed her. Then I read, who.

There was a girl who liv… and I looked up the card that had ed on it. But that one didn’t look right. I looked more, but I was confused, so I called April.

“I can’t find the rule for this word,” I told her.

She smiled. “Okay, I’ll show her what to do.” April sat in Katie’s lap, and she showed her how we read together.

Katie was surprised that I was willing to read. She looked over at Bridget. “They told me that Lauren might not read for me for like two weeks,” she told her.

“Well, she got this special helper in school last week that brought these cards to her class. Apparently, he has a large set, and he gave the classroom teacher a set, and he gave April a set to take home for her to use at home. Since then, she hasn’t minded reading so much.”

“These cards are really clever. Do you think he’d make me a set, I mean, if I can use them with other reluctant readers, then maybe they would benefit, too.”

“You could take mine, after I get used to reading,” I offered.

“That’s really sweet,” Katie said. “But that doesn’t help me right now. You aren’t the only little girl I read with.”

“Oh,” I said. “Mr. Feist is pretty busy, but maybe April and I can help you make them.”

“That would be really helpful,” she said. “How about next time I come, I will bring markers and some hard paper, and we can work on that together?”

“I would love that.”

“If you wouldn’t mind reading another book for me…,” she sounded like she was asking me.

“I’d love to read another book if I can use my cards again to read.”

“Of course, honey. Any tool that works, and if April wants to sit with me and show you the cards for me, then that would helpful too.”

April smiled up at her. “I thought you were just tricking my sister earlier, when gave her a coloring picture with words under it. She suddenly wanted to add to it, and you were going to make her do it, and then that would make her cry, but it didn’t.”

Katie frowned and bent down to her. “I’m sorry. Honestly, it was a trick, but not one to make her cry. Almost everyone asks what it says, so I usually have them read it with me. When she ignored it, I knew that she was not going to read it, at least not there, so that’s why I told her what it said. I would never trick her to make her cry, but I trick kids into reading all the time, because some kids have a hard time with it, so much hard, that they never want to try.”

April looked up at her. “I knew you tricked her.”

“But as I said, the trick was not to make her cry. It was just to try to get her to read something. I didn’t expect her to read the book at all.”

“She surprised you.”

“Yes, Lauren did.”

Katie let April scoot off her lap, and she felt her pants to make sure of something. April blushed, but didn’t say anything.

“So, we were going to learn how to write something on the paper I gave you,” Katie told me.

I took out the color sheet and saw the two sisters.

“Oh,yeah, and I wanted to add: and so are besties.”

I wrote down and so are all by my self, but then I looked up at Katie.

“How about before we write the next word on the paper, we use something else?”

April turned her own paper over so the back showed. “Use this. I want to remember this.”

Katie put the paper in front of me, and she asked me if I knew the basic sounds of all the letters. I nodded.

“Okay, try to sound it out. What sound is first?”

I wrote b.

“Okay, and …,” and with trial and error and questions, she helped me write out the word on the back of April’s paper, then I copied the word from April’s paper to my paper so the whole thing was there. “Don’t forget your end mark,” Katie told me. I put an explaining mark because I wanted to shout it. Then Katie got this special white paint stuff with a paint brush right on the cap, and she painted over the first stop mark.

I was having so much fun with Katie, that when it was five, and time for her to go, I was sad. I hugged her for helping me so much, and then she drove off, probably to go help another little girl read.

Bridget came over and she sat next to me. “So, what do you think of Katie?”

“She’s nice. She’s going to bring a game for us to play next time I see her.”

“She sounds like a good teacher, huh?”

“She says she’s just a friend, a big friend that helps little girls read.”

Bridget smiled.

“Teachers give you hard homework,” she told me. “So please don’t call me a teacher. I don’t give hard homework, and I don’t yell at you just because you gotta get out of your seat for second because you get excited, or you want to go to the bathroom.”

Bridget smiled. “I see.”

“I like her, Bridget. She’s almost as good as Mr. Feist.”

“She used Mr. Feist’s cards, and I had to come and rescue them because they couldn’t find a card that would help Lauren read a word,” April said. “She’s nice, but it looked like in the end, she just did what Mr. Feist did.”

“Well, give her a break,” Bridget told April. “She’s a kid, and she’s still learning stuff. Besides, Mr. Feist’s method words so well, that mommy relies on it, and I think your teacher even uses in the classroom, doesn’t she?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

I think April was disappointed that she didn’t have another new trick in the way that she helps kids read. But I didn’t want another teacher. I wanted a friend. The reading lady at that other building I went to promised a friend, not a teacher. If she was a teacher, she should tell me why we say stashun but not shime when you see ti together. That reminded me. I have to ask Mr. Feist why ti makes sh sounds. He is a teacher and special teacher for reading, so he knows, right?

Bridget started making dinner, and Jack came in the door. I was feeling something different the more I was around them. April is my sister, and she said mommy and daddy all the time, and they always smiled at her a certain way when she said mommy and daddy, that they didn’t when she just started talking without saying any word to call them. I wondered on it. It had been so long to say mommy and daddy in a meaningful way. I missed my real mommy and daddy. I partly didn’t say mommy and daddy to anyone else because I never wanted to replace my real mommy and daddy. These days, it was sometimes to remember their whole face. It was sometimes hard to remember their real voice. But I’d always remember mommy’s smell and daddy’s touch. I’d always remember the way I felt when they held me.

Jack was helping me with math. He saw that I put the heading on my paper way down the middle these days.

“You do know, normally, your heading goes at the top,” he told me.

“I know. But the teacher doesn’t mind. I told Mrs. Horrace that this way, if Mr. Feist asks me to write directions for it, so I can read it, then I have space to write it without writing in the top. I also said it gives me lines to write it, so it’s easier to make it straight.”

Jack smiled and nodded. “Okay, just checking.”

We continued working, and Jack held me in his lap while I worked. Bridget spoke from the kitchen area.

“We saw her reading tutor today.”

“What was she like?”

“She was very understanding of Lauren’s needs, and she let April show her how the cards that Mr. Feist gave us works while Lauren read the book she brought with her.”

“She sounds great.”

“She really is. I don’t think Lauren could have asked for a better tutor, but somehow, I don’t know if April jealous, critical, or just worried about Lauren. She isn’t impressed by Katie as much as I was.”

“She’s probably just not used to the change,” Jack said. “For as long as she has known Lauren, besides mommy and daddy, April has been Lauren’s go to for help. I think she might be a little bit jealous.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Tuesday I missed school because I had to meet with my counselor. I hated it. Then it was Wednesday.

I woke up, and I was crying.

April slipped over to my bedside, and she touched my nose.

“Do you want me to get in bed with you?” she asked me. I shook my head no.

“Why not?”

“I peed in it.”

“I don’t care.”

“I have to pee again.”

“I don’t care. You always pee on your big sister, Lauren. What is bothering you?”

“You can get in.”

She climbed in, and then got as close to me as she could, and held me. “What’s wrong, little sister?”

“I’m scared if Richard, or if Scott, or if Jason find me again.”

“Are they the people that touched you so you get scared now, and pee your pants?”

I nodded.

“How come you thinking of those people now?”

“The man we saw yesterday made me remember why I started wetting the bed, my pants, and who caused me to get scared to get out of bed by alone.”

“He made you member scary stuff?”

I nodded.

“I’m so sorry, little sister.”

“He said I had to do it, but he promised to only bring it up again if I do.”

I felt myself peeing on my sister, but she didn’t release me. She wrapped her legs around me and held me tight. “Go back to sleep, little sister.”

We slept until Bridget came to get us.

1 hour ago, kerry said:

I have missed this story until now, and I just want to say how much I enjoy it. It highlights emotions that are sadly too common in our world, where fostering often is just a means to getting more money. Bridget and Jack are saints, and they have raised April so well that I am sure Lauren will grow stronger just from being with them. Still, my heart goes out to this little girl about the things that have happened to her in the past. 

One significant question: I don't understand why Lauren's oral language is so poor. It's not even consistently so, but she sometimes sounds like a non-English speaker. That part doesn't make sense to me.

She has poor vocabulary due to being kept shut in and not being read to or given chances to read.  She has been neglected in her education, and when she is hurt badly enough, particularly with the Harrisons, they saw it better to keep her home to hide new bruises and evidence of abuse than to send her to school.  This is why her reading and writing are so bad on top of it.  She is not quite so bad off as a second language learner, in that when she knows a new vocabulary word, and it is used to her properly, she gets it right away.  She can actually think in language far ahead of just the vocabulary she knows.  It she knew more vocabulary, and if she was a more confident reader, she would actually be better at language than some eighth graders.

Her oral language, is the reason the principal at first said she tested as only a first or second grader, but the professional understood the difference between what the girl was saying and what she really knew when checked in depth.  Thus, he has recommended a reading tutor, a school support professional, and a life counselor to deal with her baggage from her past.

[TheJ]

You release new chapters faster than I can read or comment (not that I complain). After finishing reading chapter 7, I'm glad I first learnt to read and write a language that has nearly phonemic writing. 

[Ishigreensa]

26 minutes ago, TheJ said:

You release new chapters faster than I can read or comment (not that I complain). After finishing reading chapter 7, I'm glad I first learnt to read and write a language that has nearly phonemic writing. 

English reading isn't really that hard if parents take the proper steps to teach their kids, and as long as kids don't suffer major set backs like Lauren has dealt with.  Writing, on the other hand, is a bit more of a challenge, because while you can figure out how words sound if you have had support the whole time, because there are so many ways to make sounds for words you haven't seen written yet, it can be frustrating.  Second and Third graders sometimes get frustrated with writing, and poor spellers are frustrated with writing all the way up to about eighth grade, but again, with the right support and good parents, normally, kids have caught up in spelling before ninth grade.

I used to think it was nearly the same no matter what language you spoke.  In Japanese, while hiragana is only ever said one way, and it is the first experience for kindergarteners to read, when they start learning kanji by second grade, they start running into same problems as English reading.

The symbol winter, for example, when written alone, is pronounced fuyu, but when put with another symbol, you have to know if the other symbol it is put with is significant and if because of that, if it has changed the sound to toe, where it is read more like tooooe rather than just toe.  And that is an easy example.  There are a lot of kanji that have multiple readings on their own, and then multiple readings when put with other kanji as compound words, and you have to figure out if you are reading a kanji by kanji context or a double kanji context, and then within that, which reading of four or five for each symbol, is correct.  
 

Japanese is a lot harder when you start reading kanji than English is.

 

[spark]

I just got caught up reading the story, and OMG!   What I imagined to what happened to her compared to what you wrote is huge.  The abuse that you  wrote is so much worse than what I imagined. 

I've got to wonder about the pant-pooping episode.   That would likely get the teacher in trouble with the administration, especially considering how much abuse.   I'm not an expert on family law and foster care. but based on that interview- Angela and her husband would be arrested.   The Bridges are beyond awesome.

 

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 9

The Bully’s Steam

 

My eyes batted open, and my bladder was empty. I could feel water all around us, my sister was holding on to me, as if I was some kind of flotation device from a plane that had fallen into the ocean. I felt more water pouring between us, but it felt a little strange. I thought my bladder was empty. I squeeze my hand between us, and down into my panties. I wasn’t peeing. Some water was still coming out, though, not from me, but from April. April was sleeping. I think she was wetting the bed. I didn’t say anything though. I peed on her countless times. I pulled my hand out, and put it around her bottom. It was definitely her. I felt water come from out her bottom. I still breathed slowly, and eventually, the off and on leaking from her body stopped. When she woke up, she’d probably think I just peed on her. I don’t mind. I’ll take the blame. I wet the bed all the time. This was the first time for April, I think.

A few minutes later, I felt her breathing change, and knew that she was about to wake up. She’d probably whine, assuming I drenched her. I couldn’t blame her. She would think I peed my pants, while I’m awake again, and she’s already taken me potty in the morning, now, three times. I know I can get up and no one will call the police to take me to jail, but I still get nervous if she didn’t specifically take me to the toilet.

April felt around her bottom. She still had her legs wrapped around me. She felt my bottom. Her lip quivered. Something was wrong. She opened her eyes, and they looked surprised, in a scary way. She whispered in my ear. “I think I wet the bed, Lauren.”

I hugged her. “I’m the one that wets the bed,” I whispered back.

“Yeah, but I did this time. I felt your butt and I felt mine. I’m a lot wetter than you are.”

I felt my butt again, and then I felt hers. She was right.

“Your mommy and daddy doesn’t hit for peeing the bed though,” I reminded her.

“I know. I’m not scared of that.”

“What are you scared of?”

“What if people in my class find out I got my doctor problem back, and I pee my pants today?” she asked me.

I hugged her. “How do you know you got your doctor problem back? Maybe it was just a one time thing?”

She started to cry and Bridget was at the door. I don’t know long she was there. I was so focused on trying to calm my sister at first, I just wasn’t looking and suddenly, when I looked at the door, bam, Bridget was standing right there.

“You’re not going to school today,” Bridget told April as she walked over to us to let us know how much she had heard. “I’m taking you to the clinic today, and if they reschedule us, that’s okay, but that will be your excuse for missing today, honey.”

I rubbed her, my hand on her butt because from just checking her to see how much more wet than she was from me.

“I’ll tell the kids you were not feeling good,” I told her. “I won’t tell anyone you peed the bed, no one at all.”

“What about Cindy?” she asked me.

“Not even Cindy, not even at recess in the tire. It not my body. You can tell her if you want later, when you are private and no one will hear, but I won’t tell her.”

“You’re going to school today?”

“Yeah. Someone has to get our homework so we can not get left back. Do you know how embarrass I am that I have to go back fourth grade because I miss too many days, and how embarrass I am because I read like first and second grade, it because I miss too much school. I don’t want you to go back. I want you to do homework tonight by me. I want you to keep with same grade to me.”

“I don’t think what happened to you is the same,” April said. “I missed before. Not too many days, but I missed a few days last year. You can miss with me. It won’t hurt.”

“I don’t want to. I want to get back to my grade. I want to read like everyone else. I want to not have to see a card pointed at me so I can read. I like being in same grade with you, but I don’t want someone to keep telling me the reading of everything.”

“Okay. Make sure you try to sit next to Cindy as much as you can, especially when your helper is not there. She won’t make fun of you, and she’d be happy to hold the cards for you. I don’t trust anyone else, and make sure Barbara is on the other side of the room from you as much as you can.”

I smiled at her. She knew we couldn’t move our desks. Only the teacher can do that. But I understood. I rubbed her a bit higher, where it was more comforting, on her back.

“Does it hurt anywhere?” I asked her.

She nodded.

Bridget helped her stand up, and then she had her point where it was hurting. I nodded. I knew where she was touching, it sometimes hurts when you pee yourself. I hurt there sometimes. I haven’t had reason to tell Bridget that yet because it didn’t hurt there in a long time for me.

Bridget called for Jack.

“Honey, cancel work today, please?” she asked Jack. “April didn’t only pee the bed last night, but she hurts, and she has a fever.”

“Alright.”

“Lauren still wants to go to school, but I want to take our baby to the doctor today.”

“They will probably make her wait and schedule an appointment unless this is an emergency.”

“I know honey, but she doesn’t want to have an accident at school. I told her I’d take her to the doctor personally to set her appointment, as her excuse not to go to school today. Besides, what if it is an emergency? She does have a fever.”

“What are we going to do with Lauren?”

“Their friend, down the street. Call the Myers and see if they will send Lauren to school for us.”

Jack ran down the stairs.

I scooted off the bed and walked over, slowly, and I hugged my little sister. Now, it was my turn to be the big sister. Of course, I would not call her little sister, especially right now. I wouldn’t want to make her upset, and wetting yourself, and then being called the little sister suddenly after that. I know how that feels. It is really embarrassing. I’m not doing that to my bestest sister ever.

We both walked to the bathroom together, and Bridget put me on the toilet. She whispered to me, “Pee if you can go, baby. I need to run the bath.”

She then took April with her to the tub, and she started to run the water, and then she slowly undressed her looking at her clothes. As she took them off, I saw the bottoms were really orange on the floor. I wondered if April had had other symptoms that she had been hiding for a while. Her panties were orange and soaked.

I got off the toilet after she was done undressing April and put her in the tub. Then, she slowly took my clothes off. Where April was sleeping against me, it was orange-yellow pee. Where I peed, it was a little orange, but a lot lighter. And I was put in the water.

I reached for the rag, but Bridget shook her head. “Not this morning,” she told us as she actually washed us this time. She was gentle, and she never touched me anywhere where I was feeling scared or ashamed. When it was time to wipe between my legs, she gulped, but reluctantly handed me the cloth. She did the same for April.

I saw April pee in the bath just before she got her out of the tub.

“Jack!” Bridget cried as if April was suddenly cut or something.

Jack came in, for the first time ever, with us naked in the bath. I put my arms around my chest, and looked up at him, but he didn’t reach for me at all. He picked up April, and he hugged her in a towel. He whispered to her. “It’s going to be okay.”

Bridget got me out of the water even though Jack was right there. “He’s not looking at your body,” Bridget told me. I could see he wasn’t. He was looking at April. I was getting scared.

“I don’t want to go to school,” I told them.

“Why?” Bridget asked softly in my ear.

“April is really sick. I’m scared for her.”

“She’s okay, honey. We are just going to take her to see a doctor, and she will probably go to school tomorrow. She will probably play with you tonight after school.”

“Promise?”

“Promise, honey. She just hurts right now. The doctor will make her feel better.”

I nodded.

There was a ding-dong from downstairs. I guess Cindy and her parents were there to get me. I was still naked.

Jack took April to her own bedroom. Bridget took me to my room, and told me to wait for her. I was in a towel, then she left the room, probably to let the Myers in.

When Bridget came up to talk to me, and get me dressed, and take me down, I saw that Mrs. Myers was in the kitchen drinking coffee. It looked like she was making breakfast for three people.

“You have the number for our regular doctors there on the fridge,” Bridget told her.

“Yes, you told me a hundred times. Just get your baby to the hospital,” the nice lady told Bridget. “Lauren is safe.”

I saw April come downstairs, and Cindy held her hand and they whispered for a minute before Cindy walked over to the table and sat down. April waved at me, her hand looked weak, and so did her smile. I watched her be carried in Jack’s arms outside, and then I did something I hadn’t done on my own, ever. I got off my chair, and sat down on the floor, and put my elbows on the chair, and I started to pray to God.

“God up there? I know I got mad at you for taking my daddy and my mommy. I know you probably hated me that’s why you did that. You probably put me in all those mean homes because I was ungrateful. Because I was a bad kid. I hoped I changed. I hoped I was good. But I didn’t pray enough for you, did I? That why April is sick? Please make her better. I pray to you every night for this day and on. I promise. Please don’t let her be sick when I come home? Please?”

I don’t know why, but I waited sitting there for a long while, wanting an immediate answer. I know that God doesn’t give immediate answers though. After a while, I closed my eyes again.

“Okay, I sorry. I know I did it wrong again. I know you don’t want to answer so fast that we forget why you do something to us. So, please, please, answer soon. Please tell me if you are taking April away from me? I sorry I got mad at you. I promise I am sorry. Thank you for Bridget and Jack. Thank for April. Thank you for my friends too. Thank you for Cindy. She is so nice, God. Thank you for Mr. Feist who is helping my reading and thank you for Ms. Katie, who brings me new books to read. I will read with her even when I don’t want to. Thank you for Dr. Stevens, and thank you for my teacher. She is still a teacher, but she isn’t mean to me.”

I got up, and I sat at the table, and when I did, I noticed that Cindy had her hands together, and only after I sat again, she said “amen,” and then I heard from the kitchen area, Mrs. Myers said “amen,” too. I didn’t know I was praying that loud. Did they hear every word?

“It’s probably just an infection or maybe Kidney stones,” Cindy said to me while we ate breakfast. “Infection can be deadly if you don’t treat it right away, and Kidney stones can even cure themselves after a while, but they are really painful.”

I heard Mrs. Myers clear her throat. “Cindy talking about April’s possible problem is not going to make Lauren feel any better. Why don’t you talk to her about something that she can do, like check to see if her homework is done or something like that, honey?”

“Okay, mom.”

“Mom got me right up because I love April,” Cindy told me. “I would never forgive my mom if she came here and knew that your sister went to the hospital and didn’t bring me, so I didn’t even take a shower this morning.”

“You can use our bathroom,” I mumbled under my breath, not sure if I had a right to tell her so. Still, she would have let April use hers. Surely, Bridget and Jack would be okay with that.”

I looked over at Mrs. Myers. “Did you bring a go bag for Cindy?”

“A go…?” she was confused for just a moment, and then she laughed. “Actually, I guess we did. It’s by the door.”

“The best bathroom for hot water for a bath or shower is on the second floor between April and My bedrooms. You can take Cindy up there and give her bath. I already took one this morning, so I will use toilet downstairs if I have to go again.”

Mrs. Myers smiled. “Cindy, go to your go-bag and get your fresh clothes and take a shower, honey. Be mindful of the time, okay?”

Cindy nodded and got her stuff and went to take her shower.

I went over to the kitchen to see what Mrs. Myers was doing. I guess she was making oatmeal because she was boiling water.

 

Cindy and I was eating oatmeal a little later, and Mrs. Myers pointed up at the clock. I liked the way she made it. It had brown sugar, milk, and raisins in it. It taste really good.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but can you come here?” Mrs. Myers called for me when I got up from the table. “I promised your mommy I wouldn’t set you off to school in a wet diaper, so can I check and see if you are wet, honey?”

I pulled down my pants in front of Cindy. I didn’t really care. It was just Mrs. Myers who had to look and Cindy, who had seen me pee my pants all over her floor last weekend when we were painting. My diaper was dry.

She smiled and nodded. “If you have to go, go potty,” Mrs. Myers said. “If it makes you late, I can drive you can Cindy to school.”

I didn’t have to go, so me and Cindy got the bus. We sat closer to the front of the bus, so that if Barbara was on it this morning, maybe she would go all the way to the back and leave us alone.

Barbara did ride it, but other than a dirty look at us, she just went to the back.

 

For math, we had these little cubes, and the teacher was telling us to use them and find out how many it took to put all over the top of our desks. It took 25. Then she made us measure other places with them. We were measuring area.

I looked lonelily at April’s seat. Wanted her to have fun putting these boxes all over places. We measured our math book cover, when it was closed, and then we spread the book open, and measured that way, too. We measured the space between desks, and we tried to do the chalkboard, but it was too big and the tiles wouldn’t stay because of the force that make you land down when you jump.

I peed my pants while we were measuring, but no one noticed. Barbara was too busy having fun with the blocks to notice when I peed, and I didn’t leak, so I don’t think she would have even known, even if she tried watching for it. Then we went to Music.

I sat by Cindy in music, and Cindy made sure of it, by deliberately sitting us, steering me by the arms as I laughed, down to the front row, and she put me next to her.

“Now we are closer to the teacher,” she told me. “If you pee and Barbara sees it, she can’t make it a big deal without the teacher catching her.”

I nodded.

When Mrs. Horrace picked us up from Music, Cindy told her that she was taking me to the nurse, so we didn’t have to walk in line, and so anything that Barbara wanted to say about her suspicions that I was wet, we didn’t have to listen to.

Then it was reading time, and Mr. Feist was in the room setting up around my desk. He had taken one of the baskets of books, I think with Mrs. Horrace’s permission, and he had put my special books in a new basket. There were not in the same basket. The name tags around me were different, but Barbara was there this time. I glared at her.

As SQUIRT time began, Barbara saw the man showing cards to me, and saw me pointing. She bumped my arm on purpose. Then she did it again and again, until the book fell and I lost my page. I had tears in my eyes.

Mr. Feist calmly got up, and taking my hand and my book, he went over to Mrs. Myers.

“I’m sorry, one of the kids in the group is disrupting my student, so I’d like to take her to the library. With this conversation, and the time it will take to walk back and forth, can I give Lauren five extra minutes of SQUIRT time?”

Mrs. Horrace nodded and we left the room. We didn’t even go all the way to the library though. We just sat outside the door. “I told her we were going to the library so that if a certain little girl tried to follow you, she would realize it was pointless.”

I smiled.

“Okay, it’s still SQUIRT time, whatever that means, so no more talking, okay?”

I nodded and he found my page for me. I think I had to reread some of it, but that was okay. We read through the book, and then he took me in and pointed at my seat. Barbara was moved.

The teacher canceled group reading this morning.

“Look, boys and girls,” she started when I had taken my place. “I know that some of you don’t get along. I know that some of you think the other looks funny, that someone wears the wrong clothes, or someone doesn’t smell the way you think they should. But it is not right to be mean.”

We listened to her while she talked. She didn’t sound mad at all.

“Our country has a pretty long history about the way we used to be mean to each other. But you know what? We are not living in the 1700s, we are not living in the 1860s, we are not living in the 1970s, and we are not living in the early 2000s. We are living today! Why do we have to keep being mean to each other just because we did in our past?”

We all shrugged and looked up at the teacher.

“White, Black, Asian, Poor, Rich, Homeless, Mothers, Fathers, two Mothers, two Fathers, Aunts and Uncles, Grannies and Grandpapas, every person in this room is special. Adoped, Fostered, and Natural, you are all the children of the people in your house. You all have a right to be at school, to learn, and to make the world a better place, but that choice is yours. Are you so bitter, that you would rather make the world a place of hate and place that hurts you over and over gain? Are you so sad, that you want you want to make everyone else sad, so that they cry everyday like you do? Are you so mad, that you want to make someone hit you so that you cry? Are you so lacking in love, that you don’t know what love is?”

She stopped as she had been pacing when she said this. “We have three very beautiful souls in this room that people seem to think are different enough, that the whole class waits for mistakes from them, just so they can have something to laugh at.”

Barbara put up her hand but didn’t wait to say “… like Lauren?”

Mrs. Horrace frowned and glared at her. “I didn’t call on you, did I? There is no reason to point fingers here. It’s not funny to make someone feel left in the cold. When you are left in the cold, it hurts. I know it hurts. You want so bad for it to be someone, anyone else. You want to be inside that warm place, pointing your fingers out at the cold, laughing at those beyond. But do you know what happened yesterday, Barbara?”

She frowned. “The tattle tale peed her pants on the bus, and tried to get me thrown off!”

“You missed the end of that story, little girl, because you are too busy hating Lauren and her friends. Lauren’s mother called the school yesterday afternoon, and she told the principal that Lauren didn’t want Barbara kicked off of the bus. She said she hated her because she was mean to her everyday at school. She said she would make her walk a million miles, if she could, but do you know why didn’t want you kicked off the bus?”

“Because I’d beat her up,” Barbara smiled and puffed out her chest.

“No, little brat! She said she thought you were going to do that anyway today at recess, for telling on her. No, she said she didn’t want you to walk home because then someone bad might kill you, and as mean as you are, you don’t deserve to die.”

The whole class looked over at Lauren.

“Her mom said that,” Barbara put her hands on her hips.

“Actually no. Her mom said that if Lauren had not said anything at all, yes, she was worried that bus drivers still kick you off the bus when you misbehave, but she said that maybe she could just take her kid to school from now on. However, in the end, there was a compromise made. After school, the compromise that we agreed on, and this was actually what Lauren wanted, and what Lauren asked for. Instead of being kicked off the bus, you will sit in the front seats after school so you can’t bother not only her, but other lonely kids, too. With the bus driver right next to you, you can’t make other kids cry.”

The teacher looked around at all the boys and girls, and I felt my face get red. I said that, but I didn’t expect other people to say I said it.

“If Barbara and her friends made any of you others uncomfortable riding the bus home, thanks to Lauren, she now has to sit at the front of the bus when she goes home. The only alternative, is she calls her mom and her mom has to pick her up from school.”

I was ready for a bunch of Barbara’s friends to start throwing things at me, or at least to get a lot of nasty looks, but then, Mr. Feist stood up and started clapping. Then I saw a boy stand up and start clapping. Then three other girls who were not popular in the room started clapping. Most of the room was clapping, and Barbara soon realized that in that room, she only had two friends.

“Kids, Lauren is a strong spirit. Do you think she wants you to beat up Barbara?”

Barbara’s eyes got big at hearing that possibility and knowing she had so few friends now to help her.

“Lauren would not like that. Lauren will not be in a fight like that. She would be the first one out to find a teacher to tell us that Barbara is getting beat up.”

“How do you know?” Barbara had tears in her eyes now.

“Because,” the teacher paused a good long while so that the room was listening to her. “Because she said that Barbara is mean, but she doesn’t deserve to die. If everyone went to beat up Barbara, she very well could die, and Lauren does not wish for you to die. She doesn’t want you to get hurt. She just wished you’d stop teasing her because she has some problems.”

Barbara was full on crying, and she walked over towards me. She wiped at her eyes, and she pulled back her fist. I was afraid she was going to hit me in the eye, and then she suddenly, put both her arms around me. “How could you worry about me after everything I did?”

“Because someone hits, you too,” I said. “My daddy says that hitting you doesn’t teach you how to control being mad. Someone either hits you, or they spank you when you get mad, and so you try to make others mad, so you don’t feel all alone,” I told her.

She nodded. “I am mad, and I’m not mad at you. At least not anymore.”

The teacher didn’t make us do reading the rest of that day, and she didn’t make us do spelling either, but instead, she asked Cindy and Barbara to walk me to the nurse during spelling time, so that I would be in clean pants by the time lunch started. I peed my pants again, and everyone saw, but no one laughed.

 

 

1 hour ago, spark said:

I just got caught up reading the story, and OMG!   What I imagined to what happened to her compared to what you wrote is huge.  The abuse that you  wrote is so much worse than what I imagined. 

I've got to wonder about the pant-pooping episode.   That would likely get the teacher in trouble with the administration, especially considering how much abuse.   I'm not an expert on family law and foster care. but based on that interview- Angela and her husband would be arrested.   The Bridges are beyond awesome.

 

Yes, that was exactly what happened.  That's why the social worker had stopped and decided to go down to call the police.  The woman had scared the child, during the interview, so instead of forcing her to pull off her diaper right then for more confirmation, she had waited to do all that at the office later.  I didn't see a need to write that part in though.  I figured I had hinted enough that the Harrisons were in trouble for what they had done.

The teacher, well, she certainly had to explain herself for sure.  But yeah, Lauren will eventually get moved to another class and so will April, though by then, you might not be cheering.  The teacher is learning, too, just how bad it was.

[kerry]

14 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

But yeah, Lauren will eventually get moved to another class and so will April, though by then, you might not be cheering.

Oh no: that sounds ominous...

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter Ten

 

It was after school, and I was in the cafeteria sitting with Cindy. Katie came to our after school daycare again, and she brought three coloring pages this time.

“Where’s your sister?” she asked me.

“She’s sick,” I said my face blushing. I hoped she wouldn’t ask anything else on that. I promised not to talk about it.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “I hope she feels better soon.”

“Me too.”

Katie, Cindy, and me started to get ready to color, and curiously, I looked at the bottom of the page. There were words on this page, too. The picture showed a boy opening a book, sitting in a chair, and a globe was hovering above the book.

Wen you hav a book, you hav the wo wr wor wrld word in your hands.

“Very good,” Katie rubbed my shoulder and then went through each word with me. When you have a book, you have the world in your hands. I smiled. I almost got it. But does it say that, that way?

“What does it mean?” I asked her.

“It means, smart people read,” Katie told me. “...and smart people control the world.”

“Oh.”

We colored until it was time to go home.

It felt funny sitting next to Cindy, and not April, today. When I got on the bus, I saw Barbara in the seat zigzag from the driver, in the front. She looked at me, and I was tempted to flinch, but the way she looked at me, it wasn’t as mean or as daring as before. She just looked at me.

I smiled at her, and then she even smiled at me. We waved, and I walked back with Cindy, Cindy mouthing “wow” as we sat down somewhere in the middle.

“Barbara has been a real meanie since the second grade,” Cindy told me. “I’ve never seen her smile in my direction before. You must have said something to her that was really meaningful to her today.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said looking down. “Someone does hit her, and the teacher telling her that I didn’t want her to get hurt, I think, and Understanding that not everyone she picks on wants to see her die, is probably what did it. It is free to be nice to people.”

Cindy looked down. “That is all you, girl. No one else she ever picked on would have thought of her getting a bad person picking her up.”

“That part was my mommy,” I said, calling Bridget my mommy for the first time ever. “She said that she didn’t like that they could kick her off the bus even today because things are scary today. She said you can get kidnapped and killed today. That’s why I said I didn’t want her to walk home. I hate her, well, I don’t right now. She smiled at me. But I hated her yesterday, but still, I didn’t want her to die.”

“Even so, I think I would have thought that she got what was coming to her, until it really happened, I suppose. I probably would have felt bad after that.”

“But then, it’s too late to fix it, right?”

“Yeah, right. I guess the teacher is right. You are a beautiful person.”

I smiled.

When we got off the bus, and Cindy was running with me because she had left for school from my house, after all, I saw Katie standing at the door, and someone wasn’t letting her in. I wasn’t sure who it was until I got right up near the door.

“Bridget!” I said out loud. “Is April home?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, honey. The doctor did some tests, and I guess I just panicked this morning. She’s fine.”

Then Bridget turned to Katie. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t get a hold of your office earlier to tell them that we wanted to cancel today. We’ve just had some family issues….”

“Lauren said that April was not feeling well today.”

“Yes, and it does have to do with that, but can you come on Friday? I think Lauren really enjoys you reading with her.”

“I’d be happy to, and I hope April feels better.”

Cindy and I came into the house, and I looked over at the living room area where Jack and April were watching television together. Unfortunately for poor April, she was in one of my pull ups. I didn’t mind, but she blushed when she noticed Cindy. Cindy wasn’t even looking at her diaper though, she just came over and sat next to her, and then she and April whispered something. Cindy nodded. April smiled after that, and they hugged, and they continued to watch cartoons. Jack got up from the sofa, so I sat where he was sitting. My diaper squished. I peed my pants on the bus, but it didn’t leak.

I hugged April. “Did the doctor say anything?” I asked her.

“He said it was a little bit like last time,” she said. “I might wet the bed for a little while, but he’s giving me some medicine, and he doesn’t think I’ll wet as much in the day as I did last time because they caught it sooner this time.”

I hugged her. “You can sleep with me anytime,” I told her. “If you accidentally wet your bed, and get uncomfortable, or if you start in my bed, because I wet still, sometimes enough to leak, and after you’ve wet the bed, you wake up, you can go back to your dry bed.”

She shook her head hugging me. “I wouldn’t do that to you. If we are sharing a bed, I won’t care if you, it’s wet or not, if you didn’t wake up because you being used to peeing, I’d just sleep with you. If anything, if I woke up and my bed was wet, I’d change so I was dry before I climbed into your bed, even if there is a chance you were wet.”

I smiled and looked down. “You know I’m still peeing the bed at night, don’t you?”

“Your diapers don’t leak anymore, though. You are wetting a lot less than you used to.”

Cindy heard us talking, and she scooted off the sofa, and got in front of us, and holding our hands, she smiled and looking in our eyes, so I knew she was not even making fun of us, and she said:

“How about you two spend the night with me this weekend?”

“I pee the bed,” I told her. “I still leak on the sheets sometimes.”

“I’m wetting the bed, too,” April reminded her. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we are best friends, and we still have a plastic sheet from last year when you had trouble, April. A little peeing in your sleep shouldn’t stop you having fun with your best friends.”

I looked at April.

She blushed for a moment looking down. Then she mumbled. “I have to get my daddy.”

I watched her stand up, and I saw her diaper sagging. She’s still having trouble. I know how lonely she feels. Maybe Cindy thought she was trying to share our moment, but I think she embarrassed her, and April, being too nice, just wanted to get away instead of telling Cindy off.

I scooted closer to Cindy.

“You never really peed your pants before, did you?”

“No?”

“You don’t understand how embarrassing it is. She doesn’t want to spend the night with you when she’s peeing her pants all the time. It’s not that she doesn’t love you or trust you. It’s that it is so embarrassing, especially when you do it in front of people that you like and you respect,” I told her. “She really likes you, and she doesn’t want you to see her being like a… a… well, a baby, frankly.”

“You think she’s a baby because she wets her pants?” Cindy asked me.

“No. But you feel like one. You don’t know how many times, at school, when people made fun for me, that I agreed with them because I peed my pants,” I told her. “Ten years old, and peeing my pants at school, in front of everyone. I feel like I’m worse than a baby. I know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop it. Everyone else can not do it, but not me. I’m too stupid. Do you want April to feel like that around you?”

Cindy frowned and looked down. “No. Sorry.”

“Don’t tell her what I said it feels like. She feels bad already. Just try to pretend she went to get her diaper changed made you forget to spend the night on Friday. The doctor is fixing her, so we can spend the night when she doesn’t pee her pants anymore, okay?”

Cindy nodded. “What about you?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop peeing my pants. I’m used to it now. I know who my friends are, and I don’t mind that you know anymore. I just wanted you to understand April. She not used to wetting the bed or her pants. Okay?”

Cindy nodded with a small smile. “Mrs. Horrace is right. You are a special person.”

I looked down blushing.

 

Cindy had already gone home, and I finally had a moment when Bridget was in the kitchen cook, Jack was in the living room watching television with April, and I wanted Bridget and Jack to know how special they were to me. I went to the kitchen, and I was getting hyped up, but then it happened. I started peeing my pants, on accident. Right away, Bridget saw.

“Oh, no,” she exaggerated and the way she cooed, I knew she wasn’t mad at all. She was just worried. “Jack, get in here and help your little daughter,” she called in where April and he were still watching television.

Jack came and saw pee all down my legs and all over the floor. He never once asked me if I did it on purpose, never, since I came here. He just picked me up, and he touched my nose lightly, and he asked. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

I was a little red and hot and feeling shame that I peed in the daytime and didn’t know I was going to do it until I felt my diaper filling up, but he made me feel like I was safe. So, I nodded that I was okay. He carried me up to the bathroom, and put me down by the toilet, there I pulled down my wet things, my soaked diaper and pads, and sat on the toilet to try to pee. Some more pee went in the toilet. I wasn’t even done. Maybe I leaked because I still hadn’t changed from after school.

He came over and waited for me to finish peeing in the toilet. He squatted down and held my hand.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered to me. “The doctor said it will take time for you to learn control again, sweetheart. It was just an accident. But honestly, were you sitting in a wet diaper earlier, and you knew it?”

I nodded. “I peed at the end of the day at school, and again on the bus, but when we got home, things were so many happened that I forgot I was wet. And we watched television, and then I was going to tell you and Bridget something, but before I did, I started peeing. I thought it as okay. I have my diaper on, only the diaper didn’t stop anything. It went right through and started peeing my pants, and mommy noticed, and told you to help me.”

He smiled and still holding my hand, he nodded. “You should have changed as soon as you came home, sweetheart. But it’s okay. You are still learning how your body works again. Mommy says the doctor says you have to learn some stuff about your body, and that you are basically being toilet trained again, sweetheart.”

“Because I’m stupid like a ten year old baby?”

“No, baby. Because, as April put it, you had poo poo heads that taught you to pee your pants and un-toilet trained you. None of this is your fault, sweetheart.”

I nodded. “Like it’s not April’s fault?”

“That’s right, sweetheart. April is having problems with her body, and you are basically having problems because your body and your brain are wired all over the place when it comes to how to go potty.”

I looked down. It was true. Sometimes, I forgot if I was allowed to use the toilet and when and if I was allowed to just go, if I had to ask first. When I get confused, I just pee my pants. It’s easier.

“You know, if Barbara was kicked off the bus, they wouldn’t insist on her walking home,” he told me. “What you did last night, begging for Barbara to not be kicked off the bus, and wanting her to just sit in the front seat…. You didn’t have to do that. The school would have told her parents to pick her up.”

 

I was taken to the bathwater, and Jack helped me get in. “Clean up,” he told me. “Someone will be up in a while to help you out of the tub.”

“How come I can’t get out on my own?” I asked him.

“Well, no one will spank you, if you do,” he told me. “But we feel it safer right now, that you still let someone get you out, maybe for another year or so.”

“Why?”

“Because, it’s mostly mommy. She’s afraid that you might slip getting out and if that happens, you might bump your head and no one will know until you are checked on. If we are not used to checking on you, then we don’t know how long you’d be laying there, hurt, so this is just…. She is a mommy bear, okay?”

I nodded. I can accept not getting out of the tub because I know that is exactly like Bridget. If she has a rule, even if I think it is a dumb one, it is always from her worry that I might get hurt, or April might get hurt, or someone might get hurt. I didn’t mind. I also didn’t mind Jack picking me up and putting me in the bath with my pants off. He has never touched me so I wanted to cry or I was scared. He didn’t even take off my shirts. My shirts can’t be put back on because they got bath water on them when he put me in the tub, but he is always careful not to touch me when I have nothing at all on, and even when my diaper is off, he only touches me then, if Bridget really can’t do it, like right now, she was cooking, and she told him it would burn if she went up with me. I love my Jack and Bridget.

 

“What did you do to my daughter?” I still heard people that weren’t there sometimes. I wanted the voices to go away, but I hear them. They are sometimes, what makes me pee my pants.

“What?” I asked shaking, wondering what eight year old me had done to the five year old girl.

“You peed all over her in bed,” the woman shouted at me. The girl was soaked, waist down, but my own pants were almost dry, except a small amount just by the place where the diaper legs came, it was a tiny bit damp on the insides of my legs.

“I didn’t pee over the bed,” I said. “I didn’t. My pants aren’t even wet,” I didn’t mean to lie. I didn’t feel like they were wet, even though I knew it was a little wet between my legs.

“You wet the bed,” The lady said. “When I pull your pants off, I’ll see a soaked diaper, now won’t I?”

I nodded….

I shivered, but somehow, I came back to the present. I was taking a bath.

 

I sat in the water, and I started talking to myself while I slowly washed my body. “I’m going to tell them,” I told myself. “And I’m going to thank God at dinner. I forgot to say thank you to him when I came in and saw April. I hope he not mad. I should have said thank you right then. I’m going to tell him thank you, and I have to say sorry I didn’t say thank you as soon they told me April is okay. He answered really fast.”

I was still mumbling to myself, and April came in the bathroom.

“Did you wash your back?”

“You know I can’t reach it,” I told her. Well, I can reach some of it, but not the middle. And all those times that people used to say I’m dirty cause I couldn’t reach it, I still don’t like getting out of the tub unless someone has washed my back for me. I looked up at her, hoping she was going to help me.

“I came to wash your back,” she said. “Are you almost done with your bath?”

“Almost.”

She washed my back, and then she knocked at the door. “She’s ready, daddy,” April said, and he came in and picked me up in a towel, and then set me down on my feet.

“Go put on a diaper because it’s almost bedtime,” he told me. “Then you can put on pajamas to cover up, and mommy will be done with dinner by then.”

I nodded. April came with me. She helped me. When I was fixing the pads to keep the diaper leaking, she told me if the pads were sticking out of the diaper. If they stuck out on the back or somewhere, pee would leak off that way and not wet my diaper right, then I’d get the bed all wet or my pants all wet. After I had pajamas on, we started talking down to the dining room together.

“I have something important to say before we eat,” I told her. “And I have to pray to God.”

She nodded. “I think mommy and daddy will be okay with that.”

We sat at the table.

 

Some of April’s favorite foods were out on the table. I think Bridget was trying to make her feel special because she was having trouble since last night. I was glad that Bridget made her feel special. I started to raise my hand, but I got nervous, and it only went half way. I couldn’t get my voice loud enough, that anyone saw me, but April tinged her fork against a her cup. It wasn’t a dainty ting like I think she imagined would happen like in the television shows, but then, her cup was plastic and full of milk, not a wine glass.

Still, Bridget noticed first, and seeing the manner that April was doing it, she put a hand on Jack, and he stopped.

“Everyone, Lauren told me she wants to do two things before we start eating. Lauren?”

I shook a little bit. I don’t remember ever interrupting dinner on them before. I shook my head before I dared imagine what the Harrisons would have done.

“Can I say prayer?” I asked them.

They all answered by lowering their heads. But I got out of my seat, sat on my knees and my elbows in the chair. April saw, and she did the same thing. The adults looked at us for like a minute, and somehow, it was like I made up a rule or something, and even mommy and daddy were on their knees waiting to see what I was going to pray about.

“God. I am sorry. I forgot to say thank you for telling me April will be okay and she was going to be alive as soon as I got home. I know you take a long time to make sure we know what we have. I know that I have the best sister ever. Thank you for understanding and not making me wait to know she is okay. And God, thank you for the new home. Thank you for, um… My Bridget. I will ask her after I talk to you, if she wants me to call her mommy. I’m ready to do that now. Thank you for My Jack. I will ask him, after I talk to you, if he wants me to call him daddy. I’m ready to do that now, too, but before I can do that, and I want you to please please help April understand. I don’t want the to love her less. I want her to feel they are more her mommy and daddy than they are mine, because she was here first. Please, don’t make them love me more than her. Never. Always, let them love April first. Amen.”

I finished, and I waited a second, to make sure my message went all the way to heaven. I don’t remember who told me, but I think someone said the reason you wait a minute after talking to God, is you have to wait for your message to go all the way up there.

I got up on my seat, and around the table, there were watery eyed people all around me. Bridget had a smile on her face. Jack was looking the other way, trying to hide his tears, but April went right to me, and she said, how about if mommy and daddy just loved us, and didn’t pick a favorite?” she asked me.

“You’re not mad?”

“Are you kidding? This means you completely are my little sister now. If we have the same mommy and daddy, no one can say we are not sisters.”

I nodded.

She hugged me, and she rubbed my back.

Then April walked over where we were hugging, and she held us in her arms for a moment. I felt her soft hands and smelled her nice perfume. She had a soft musical tone as she spoke. “We’ve been wanting so much for you to call us mommy and daddy,” she told me. “We were told that asking you to do so from the start, well some people might have been so terrible to you, that you wouldn’t want to. I also know you miss your mommy in heaven, and I would never replace her. You know that, right?”

I nodded. “I know everything,” I sighed. “That’s why I’m okay now. I know what you and Daddy Jack are for me now, and I like it, and I want you to be mommy and daddy now.”

Suddenly, I heard sobbing, and I thought I heard another prayer. I quickly closed my eyes. It not polite to open your eyes even if it’s not your prayer.

“Oh, God. Thank you for sending us our two beautiful angels,” I heard Jack’s nearly crying voice say. “Please fill our babies’ hearts, both of them, with the love that their mommy and I feel, and let them know, we’ve loved them both since we saw their face. That love didn’t change for April when Lauren came into our family, and that love will never change for Lauren no matter who else we meet….”

I never heard of this before, but mommy broke into it. “...And please bless our home with more love and more happiness, and with the strength to help one another whenever we have troubles,” and then both adults said “amen,” together.

Mommy picked me up and took me over and put me in daddy’s lap. Mommy picked April up, and we ate dinner that night, April sitting in mommy’s lap, and me sitting in daddy’s lap. We were a family.

 

Author’s Finishing Words:

Lauren would go on struggling with her body and her mind’s demons for the next two years, but with the support of her family and other resources that she already had in place, it became easier. She wets the bed a lot less these days, and is now, in the seventh grade, wearing panties to school. She doesn’t wet her pants at school, though her parents are still clear to the school, that they need to pay attention to her, and mama bear comes out if she sees Lauren come home wet. Lauren has only wet once in junior high, and she was wiggling a lot. It was impossible to notice how much she wanted to go, but she kept her hand up patiently. You never saw the power of Mount Saint Helens’ Explosion until that day. The School nearly destroyed just from her voice.

Lauren had a lot of friends in junior high, even after that one time she peed her pants, and she stopped other kids picking on each other. She said they only do it because they either don’t have good families, or they are bad people. People felt shame when she put them in their place like that. Those three years of junior high, that Lauren attended, fights were down by half and bullying was reported to be a quarter of what it had in the past. They gave Lauren a special award when she was promoted out of junior high, a prize for peace building. Lauren shook her head, though, not wanting all the credit, and she called three former bullies and two former victims up to share the honor, and she said: “We did this together!”

 

I was thinking about writing more, but actually, I think I told a story here, the story of one girl finding where she belonged, and being accepted for who she is, so I am ending this story.

:: This is my first ever story that has been completed on DD ::

 

On 1/7/2023 at 5:48 AM, kerry said:

Oh no: that sounds ominous...

Sorry, I got your hopes up.  I feel like a story has been told though, and a wise man once said, when you come to the end, time to close the book.

[kerry]

Actually, I like this ending just fine. ? 

I was reacting to what I was reading into your phrasing, not my own desires.

[spark]

Nice ending.   As you said, this is a story that is about a girl finding a home, and that's what you told.  I enjoyed this a lot.

[Little_Mouse]

What a great story - I just had to read it from start to end. Sorry I missed it when you posted it. But never too late to read and acknowledge great stories like this one. Thanks @Ishigreensa love it ❤️

[Arendeth]

Thanks for the story.

[Ishigreensa]

On 6/11/2023 at 10:58 PM, Little_Mouse said:

What a great story - I just had to read it from start to end. Sorry I missed it when you posted it. But never too late to read and acknowledge great stories like this one. Thanks @Ishigreensa love it ❤️

Thank you so much for your support.  I just came back.  It seems something is always drawing me away for awhile, and then I end up coming back.  Thank you for calling the story great, but honestly, I just told a story.  There are a lot of talented people here, and so much support here, that I feel it is easier to share stories here than anywhere else.

 

To everyone else that supported this story and others, also, thank you.  Without your kindness and earnest reading and making some of us feel special sometimes, a lot of great stories from others would go untold.

[LilScawyTribridFaith]

On 1/4/2023 at 8:44 PM, Ishigreensa said:

The math tests, she is yes, a genius.  The first or second grade level is in reading, and yes, I wanted the school to get that wrong, actually, but with the same test and the same results, the professionals figure out that her reading and spelling are stuck at around second grade as well as her vocabulary, but as they looked deeper into what she was doing, particularly in writing, they realized that she actually has better command over parts of grammar and speech than even some fifth graders, thus I compared her similies and metaphor skills to an eighth grader.

The argument over her abilities and if she is working like a first and second grader, is basically looking at her reading and vocabulary alone.-- The school's wrong assessment of the same test.

As far as glasses, yes, she will eventually need them, but that is not the only reason she can't copy words correctly from the board from her seat.  I had an identical problem, and as far as I know, no one knew to test me for it, so I was just slow in recognizing the words I was copying, and just focused on letters, and when I looked up at the board again after copying 2 sometimes 3 letters, I'd get lost where I last left off copying a letter, and this was around 4th grade, I think for me.  So there is something like that going on with her.  Something that is less identifyable and at least in 1979-1980, was not really a red flag for testing.

So this actually 100 percent was me.

When I was in 4th grade my teacher noticed some issues with my reading, writing and spelling. During a parent teacher conference he brought it up to my mom (knowing my dad has the same issues) she got me tested. My English lvls (aside from speaking) were that of a 1st to 2nd graders everything else was either normal or in the case of math which was a couple yrs above.

Luckily the school system I was in had special education resources for me. Tho it wasn't until 8th or 9th grade that my English lvls caught up enough to not feel stupid. Tho even to this day I still struggle with it it's just not as bad.

[Ishigreensa]

In Eighth grade I took a reading class as an elective course, it was sort of for people with a hard time reading, but it is an elective, and I was approached by a counselor that encouraged me to take it after 7th grade.  That helped a lot.  It gave me confidence, so my reading improved, but my copying new words and understanding them is still not as good.  Learning a foreign language, that really shows in that I can't quite hear the words right, and copying unfamiliar words, I still tend to copy letter by letter rather than word by word.

[LilRugrat]

Wow! Thank you for writing this story. I feel, besides the occasional slip up with the wrong name, you have written a deep, and touching story. This story brought me to tears more than once, both sadness and happiness. 

I was molested when I was in diapers. I was also in foster care. My late husband was also in foster care and one set of his foster parents went to prison for the abuse he went through by their hands. 

You are a very talented writer, and for someone who has only watched some documentaries and have never been through foster care, you did amazing with the details. You wrote of things that really is experienced in a negative foster home, the loneliness and seperation from a real family. 

Lilrugrat ❤️

[~Brian~]

15 hours ago, LilRugrat said:

Wow! Thank you for writing this story. I feel, besides the occasional slip up with the wrong name, you have written a deep, and touching story. This story brought me to tears more than once, both sadness and happiness. 

I was molested when I was in diapers. I was also in foster care. My late husband was also in foster care and one set of his foster parents went to prison for the abuse he went through by their hands. 

You are a very talented writer, and for someone who has only watched some documentaries and have never been through foster care, you did amazing with the details. You wrote of things that really is experienced in a negative foster home, the loneliness and seperation from a real family. 

Lilrugrat ❤️

@Ishigreensa

WOW!!  I've read a couple chapters, and this story brings back memories of me being in rehab - I had to do a residential rehab at what they called Vermont Achievement Center. in Rutland VT:   I did 14 weeks in there, and I told my parents that I NEVER wanted to go back:  Back in the 70's, there used to be a residential pediatric unit for children with disabilities.  They were supposed to HELP kids that were disabled, and what they did was really bad.  I could tell you stories of how me, at SIX years old, was basically having to FIGHT for what I needed, what I wanted, and for what is RIGHT and just.  When you are young, your responsibility is to respect people, respect yourself, do what adults ask you to do, and do your best to be a good kid, and try really hard in school - I felt like a prisoner in a place that LOOKED fun, awesome, caring, etc, but it was NOT: 

They TRICKED me into thinking the place was awesome, and it was, when you look at all the things you could do, and the fact that they had a HUGE Gym, and an Olympic Sized Swimming Pool that you could use weekly, but the REALITY was like MeadowBrook, where they would place people that were disabled or otherwise in need of services.  The Place was HELL, and they were like Gangsters:  I was basically stripped of my freedom, my ability to walk, my ability to choose, and then was Diapered, Force Fed, because I didn't eat what they served me, and they called my parents to ask them WHY I would not eat, and I told them that they NEVER ask us what we want for food, they just make eggs, and things that at the time I did not like, and they basically strapped me into my wheelchair, put my tray on, and forcefed me:  They even strapped me into a high chair and did that once:  so I had no choice, no control, so I just decided to protect myself.   They wanted me to act appropriately, then I used the diapers and all of that:  Its all I had for protection! Then, when I wouldn't eat what they wanted me to, I  was asked to leave the dining room, and when I didn't do that fast enough, they grabbed onto my wheelchair, wound me up, so I had a lot of room, and PUSHED me as HARD as they could, toward a bank of windows, a large table, and a bunch of chairs:  I got so mad that i STOPPED my chair, turned sharply so I didn't RAM into the tables and chairs, and SLAMMED my bedroom door, Yelled some bad language, and told them that I wasn't doing anything at all unless I get some RESPECT, and I wanted to talk to my dad, NOW.  When my Dad found out about me not eating, and why, and how they were treating me, he went OFF on the idiots:  telling them that the reason I was doing it was because ONE:  Nothing they served me I liked, so I would NOT eat, so Dad told them they better offer me some choices:  They did, but they didn't like it!  TWO:  Dad was FURIOUS that they did that, and told them that If I called him again, and told Him something happened, they were DEAD - I was also cautioned:  I needed to follow the rules and TRY to get along, which was hard with the staff, UNLESS they were people that I TRUSTED at showed me some RESPECT, which was all I wanted:  I was NOT a six year old CRYBABY, but I tell ya, it took EVERYTHING I had to survive.  I also had to REPEAT 4th grade once because of the loss of my teacher as they taught me what he assigned my classmates, but they had no class, no charisma, no spark:  It was like they were shoveling me my classwork, and I had NOTHING left in the tank:  I Rebelled and told them that I wasn't doing any more schoolwork UNTIL My teacher from MY School. and 5 of my friends from HOME visited me. I cried so hard, I wanted out of that place:  I had nothing to look forward to, except Dad's Calendars:  He showed me how long I'd have to stay, when I could come home, and sometimes Id have Grammy or Grampa Baker walk in:  I locked onto them hard, I loved them so much:  Even Today I get Teary Eyed and I remembered one thing:  No matter how bad something is, I always had them to help me, as a kid and as an adult:  Miss them EVERY day too

They even THREATENED me with punishments if I didn't do something, or did something they didn't like.  The Bastards found out what I was AFRAID of, then used it AGAINST me:  I was afraid of the Cast Cutter, and the FIRE ALARM!  It got so damn bad that they would tell me to do something, or if I didn't shut up, they would use the fear of the Fire Alarm against me: They rolled my BED out in the HALLWAY Under the F'N thing, then they said that they were gonna pull it if I didn't shut UP, and they did that several times:  Then they had to change my casts, so they took me into the treatment room, and TIED me down to the table, and I was CRYING so hard it was ridiculous, and they were Mean, and yelling at me, and calling me names:  GOD I hated that hell hole!

I also remember a time when my brother Richard Lived at Brandon Training School, in the Pediatric Ward.  The place was BRIGHT, AIRY, Welcoming and calming.  One day dad decided that we were going to take a walk in the hall.  The place where Richard lived was NOTHING like what I saw, people locked up behind doors, screaming and all that, scared the hell outta me:  When I think of that place where he lived, and where I lived, it makes me sad, makes me wanna FLEE hard: Run like there's a KILLER behind me:  That place and VAC STILL give me nightmares.  I think I became a DL because of the experience, and also because of the bad treatment we got there.  They helped me with PT, but almost everything else, S U C K E D!!  It's the reason that I probably want to be cared for lovingly and why I wrote my Story:  It lets me get RID of the bad times, and in my world, the ladies won't LET me get scared or have nightmares.  They help me through them  

17 hours ago, LilRugrat said:

I was molested when I was in diapers. I was also in foster care. My late husband was also in foster care and one set of his foster parents went to prison for the abuse he went through by their hands. 

@LilRugrat

In addition to what happened to you, you and your late husband had to deal with Foster Parents that had issues, to put it MILDLY!  A kid is supposed to be sent to Foster Care, and they take CARE of them, NOT hurt them, or abuse them, and We know the system SUCKS:  Its NO WONDER we wanna regress, wear diapers, and live the lifestyles that we do:  I am fortunate that I had awesome parents, and I always remember that for each time I feel sorry for myself, there is ALWAYS someone that is worse off than I am, and I always REMEMBER that my life may suck, but at least I have the FREEDOM to do what I do

If I were in the same place as you right now my dear, I would HUG the heck outta you, and that would HOPEFULLY put some of the BROKEN pieces in place again, and I know its hard:  I give more virtual hugs these days than real ones, but i always am here for those who are in need ***HUGS***

Brian

[Ishigreensa]

7 hours ago, ~Brian~ said:

@Ishigreensa

WOW!!  I've read a couple chapters, and this story brings back memories of me being in rehab - I had to do a residential rehab at what they called Vermont Achievement Center. in Rutland VT:   I did 14 weeks in there, and I told my parents that I NEVER wanted to go back:  Back in the 70's, there used to be a residential pediatric unit for children with disabilities.  They were supposed to HELP kids that were disabled, and what they did was really bad.  I could tell you stories of how me, at SIX years old, was basically having to FIGHT for what I needed, what I wanted, and for what is RIGHT and just.  When you are young, your responsibility is to respect people, respect yourself, do what adults ask you to do, and do your best to be a good kid, and try really hard in school - I felt like a prisoner in a place that LOOKED fun, awesome, caring, etc, but it was NOT: 

They TRICKED me into thinking the place was awesome, and it was, when you look at all the things you could do, and the fact that they had a HUGE Gym, and an Olympic Sized Swimming Pool that you could use weekly, but the REALITY was like MeadowBrook, where they would place people that were disabled or otherwise in need of services.  The Place was HELL, and they were like Gangsters:  I was basically stripped of my freedom, my ability to walk, my ability to choose, and then was Diapered, Force Fed, because I didn't eat what they served me, and they called my parents to ask them WHY I would not eat, and I told them that they NEVER ask us what we want for food, they just make eggs, and things that at the time I did not like, and they basically strapped me into my wheelchair, put my tray on, and forcefed me:  They even strapped me into a high chair and did that once:  so I had no choice, no control, so I just decided to protect myself.   They wanted me to act appropriately, then I used the diapers and all of that:  Its all I had for protection! Then, when I wouldn't eat what they wanted me to, I  was asked to leave the dining room, and when I didn't do that fast enough, they grabbed onto my wheelchair, wound me up, so I had a lot of room, and PUSHED me as HARD as they could, toward a bank of windows, a large table, and a bunch of chairs:  I got so mad that i STOPPED my chair, turned sharply so I didn't RAM into the tables and chairs, and SLAMMED my bedroom door, Yelled some bad language, and told them that I wasn't doing anything at all unless I get some RESPECT, and I wanted to talk to my dad, NOW.  When my Dad found out about me not eating, and why, and how they were treating me, he went OFF on the idiots:  telling them that the reason I was doing it was because ONE:  Nothing they served me I liked, so I would NOT eat, so Dad told them they better offer me some choices:  They did, but they didn't like it!  TWO:  Dad was FURIOUS that they did that, and told them that If I called him again, and told Him something happened, they were DEAD - I was also cautioned:  I needed to follow the rules and TRY to get along, which was hard with the staff, UNLESS they were people that I TRUSTED at showed me some RESPECT, which was all I wanted:  I was NOT a six year old CRYBABY, but I tell ya, it took EVERYTHING I had to survive.  I also had to REPEAT 4th grade once because of the loss of my teacher as they taught me what he assigned my classmates, but they had no class, no charisma, no spark:  It was like they were shoveling me my classwork, and I had NOTHING left in the tank:  I Rebelled and told them that I wasn't doing any more schoolwork UNTIL My teacher from MY School. and 5 of my friends from HOME visited me. I cried so hard, I wanted out of that place:  I had nothing to look forward to, except Dad's Calendars:  He showed me how long I'd have to stay, when I could come home, and sometimes Id have Grammy or Grampa Baker walk in:  I locked onto them hard, I loved them so much:  Even Today I get Teary Eyed and I remembered one thing:  No matter how bad something is, I always had them to help me, as a kid and as an adult:  Miss them EVERY day too

They even THREATENED me with punishments if I didn't do something, or did something they didn't like.  The Bastards found out what I was AFRAID of, then used it AGAINST me:  I was afraid of the Cast Cutter, and the FIRE ALARM!  It got so damn bad that they would tell me to do something, or if I didn't shut up, they would use the fear of the Fire Alarm against me: They rolled my BED out in the HALLWAY Under the F'N thing, then they said that they were gonna pull it if I didn't shut UP, and they did that several times:  Then they had to change my casts, so they took me into the treatment room, and TIED me down to the table, and I was CRYING so hard it was ridiculous, and they were Mean, and yelling at me, and calling me names:  GOD I hated that hell hole!

I also remember a time when my brother Richard Lived at Brandon Training School, in the Pediatric Ward.  The place was BRIGHT, AIRY, Welcoming and calming.  One day dad decided that we were going to take a walk in the hall.  The place where Richard lived was NOTHING like what I saw, people locked up behind doors, screaming and all that, scared the hell outta me:  When I think of that place where he lived, and where I lived, it makes me sad, makes me wanna FLEE hard: Run like there's a KILLER behind me:  That place and VAC STILL give me nightmares.  I think I became a DL because of the experience, and also because of the bad treatment we got there.  They helped me with PT, but almost everything else, S U C K E D!!  It's the reason that I probably want to be cared for lovingly and why I wrote my Story:  It lets me get RID of the bad times, and in my world, the ladies won't LET me get scared or have nightmares.  They help me through them  

@LilRugrat

In addition to what happened to you, you and your late husband had to deal with Foster Parents that had issues, to put it MILDLY!  A kid is supposed to be sent to Foster Care, and they take CARE of them, NOT hurt them, or abuse them, and We know the system SUCKS:  Its NO WONDER we wanna regress, wear diapers, and live the lifestyles that we do:  I am fortunate that I had awesome parents, and I always remember that for each time I feel sorry for myself, there is ALWAYS someone that is worse off than I am, and I always REMEMBER that my life may suck, but at least I have the FREEDOM to do what I do

If I were in the same place as you right now my dear, I would HUG the heck outta you, and that would HOPEFULLY put some of the BROKEN pieces in place again, and I know its hard:  I give more virtual hugs these days than real ones, but i always am here for those who are in need ***HUGS***

Brian

You are so special for having been through Hell and still knowing love.  You are much like the Character of Harry Potter in that world, except that your parents live.  Thank you for sharing.

On 11/15/2023 at 1:14 PM, LilRugrat said:

Wow! Thank you for writing this story. I feel, besides the occasional slip up with the wrong name, you have written a deep, and touching story. This story brought me to tears more than once, both sadness and happiness. 

I was molested when I was in diapers. I was also in foster care. My late husband was also in foster care and one set of his foster parents went to prison for the abuse he went through by their hands. 

You are a very talented writer, and for someone who has only watched some documentaries and have never been through foster care, you did amazing with the details. You wrote of things that really is experienced in a negative foster home, the loneliness and seperation from a real family. 

Lilrugrat ❤️

Thank you for your nice words.  I'm sorry that this happened to you, but my goal is to draw more awareness to it, so maybe, more caring people open their homes so that DHS, CPS, or whatever they called themselves in whatever time, they will have a choice in the future to get rid of bad people, and place kids in deserving homes who know that children are your little angels, who if you treat them right, they will always love you.