Unfair-Chapter 120: Cultural Exchange (Patreon)

Chapter 120: Cultural Exchange

Monday morning was intense.

“Holditinholditinholditin”  I whispered to myself.  My teeth were gritted.  My eyes were watering. I looked up at myself in the ceiling mirror above Beouf’s changing table.  My knees were locked. My fists clenched.

I looked like an inmate about to be executed via lethal injection. The long sleeved romper was bright orange, anyhow.  Except for the snaps, it was kind of nice. Death row inmates didn’t have bright green pythons on their uniforms and bubble text reading “I’m A Hugger'' either.  

Long ago, I’d read somewhere that they did wear diapers for when their bowels and bladders automatically released upon death.  Those diapers probably didn’t have  rainbow colored monkeys dancing and crawling around the landing zone.

“What was that, Clark?” Zoge asked while she undid the buttons running up and down my legs.  “Did you say something, my love?”

“Nothing!” I rasped.”Just talking to myself, Mrs…Zoge!”

My eyes shot down to the pacifier Janet had clipped on my collar.  It was so tempting, so incredibly tempting to reach for it, stick in my mouth, and suck on it.  It’d be like biting a bullet before surgery.  It would also be much easier to ignore Zoge.  That was one unexpected benefit to pacifiers that I hadn’t consciously considered until recently: Amazons didn’t tend to expect Littles to talk as long as they were sucking on a pacifier. It was practically a mute button when it came to complex conversations.

But no. That wouldn’t do.   “Holditin…”

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”  

Come on, Zoge! Just hurry up and open the diaper!

This morning’s private game, the rules of which only I could understand or knew about, was seeing how long I could go before wetting.  With my tablet locked up and hidden away, I had to find other ways to pass the time while holding out hope for a life other than this one.

I’d get my tablet back, I knew that. I trusted Janet enough to follow through on her promises of both punishment and reward with fidelity and sincerity. She thought I was an unpotty trained toddler; closer to two than thirty-two, and nothing was going to convince her or the other giants to the contrary.

As much as that fact sucked, that also meant my punishment was going to be similarly scaled back.  I never would have made my students sit in timeout for more than three or four minutes. There was no reason that Janet should keep my brand new favorite ‘toy’ away from me for more than a couple of days at most.

The one exception to this rule was if the errant child continued to misbehave. It had to be three straight minutes in timeout with sneaking away or repeating the behavior that earned the punishment.  That meant no acting up for that time period.

The goal of this kind of punishment was to take away the desired item until the undesirable behavior went extinct. It wouldn’t do by my calculations to give anyone the idea that I would only behave in order to get the lost object.  The more I asked about my tablet, the longer the sentence would likely be, or the more likely the tablet would get taken away with every minor infraction.

In short, I had to be a ‘good baby’, and asking Janet how long I was grounded from my ‘games’ would only make things worse in the long run.

So why torture myself with holding my bladder? Why not?  Maintaining and building back the remains of my continence seemed like a good exercise to focus myself.  It wouldn’t do to hit the road and have to take bathroom breaks every hour.

Every hour.  Who was I kidding?  Some days I was lucky if I made it twenty minutes before the urge hit and my pants dampened slightly.  I’d given up that much already.  I’d probably need Easy-Ons for at least a couple months before I got full control back.  Didn’t hurt to start practicing now.

Except it hurt so bad!

I’d been up for nearly two hours and was still in my first Monkeez since being changed, but to my body and mind, I might as well have been sitting through an eight hour Muffet movie marathon. Janet had run out of breakfast shakes and I’d had a bottle of Little-Ade on the car ride. Better than so-called goat’s milk. I had skimped on the orange juice and milk at breakfast, but that wasn’t making as much of a difference.  

I’d gone last for the usual round of morning changes at Circle Time and was trying to keep everything inside clamped and outside crinkly. It was my first full day back in diapers all over again, except in reality it wasn’t quite eight in the morning and I knew I wasn’t going to make it anywhere near as long as I had.

Just make it through the change. That was where the goalposts were.  I didn’t have to keep dry all day. I didn’t have to make it all the way through Circle Time. I didn’t have to waste time asking to go potty to Amazons who wouldn’t listen. None of that was going to happen, and I accepted that.

All I had to do was to hold my pee in for this change. I wanted Zoge to see the diaper, see that I was dry, and then snap me back up and set me back down on the ground. Then I’d pee my pants and slosh around the classroom until diaper checks at snack time. Then I could be changed.  

The romper was thick and clingy, made of the same stuff that sweatpants were made out of, and the morning chill was still hanging in the air; especially in the bathroom. Zoge unbuttoned my bottoms and my flesh broke out in goose pimples right then and there.  

I shivered and felt a sliver of warmth spurt into the front of my diaper. I clamped down on everything all at once.  Stopping the dribbling stream was even more excruciating than just holding it.

“Rk!” My tongue almost bled. Should’ve stuck to the pacifier.

“Clark?”  Zoge’s hand zoomed over to my forehead and felt me for a fever.

“I’m fine,” I said, straining. “Just…keep going…”

The Yamatoan did as asked and crossed my ankles so that it was easier for her to shimmy and shift the romper leggings up out of the way and above my waist past my belly button.  Incredible, almost exquisite pain was my reward when she lowered my padded rear back down.  My gut was still throbbing and my penis felt like it was burning from the inside out, so I don’t think I let anything slip out that time.

Zoge adjusted her glasses and stared down at my padded crotch. “It looks...dry?”  She sounded confused.  For what might have been the second or the eighth time that minute she felt my forehead again.  Then she squeezed the front of my padding.  “Are you dehydrated, baby?”

“No…” I said. If Zoge had been looking at my face instead of my Monkeez she would have seen my face locked in a rictus mask of despair. My bladder felt like a nest of hornets had moved in and it wanted to let them out.  

“Just in case…”  The tapes sounded out and the front of my diaper went slack.  No! Now I’d have to hold it longer.

The cold air in the bathroom seeped into me. One freezing hand gently touched my bare belly while the other pulled the front of the diaper open. The cold shock from Zoge’s hand mixed with the rush of fresh air on my privates sent a small shock through my system.  That small shock was more than enough.  

Whether it was because my overtaxed bladder had already reached its limit, or my body was sending a mixed signal to my subconscious about a rare opportunity to urinate in the open air, a hot stream of shot out of my penis.  “FU—!” I jammed my fingers in my mouth out of panic.

The stream arced out over the diaper and started to make a piddling river between my sneakers.

“Ooops!” Zoge yanked the diaper back up over me. My body kept peeing and I slammed my eyes shut in embarrassment. That had been a mistake, sensory wise. I became acutely aware of every single drip and splash of urine coming out of me, bouncing off the inner core and back onto my genitals and taint then lapping up against my buttocks before finally seeping down into the padding. The experience was somewhere between the shock of having an accident outside of a diaper and my leakguards failing.  I think it was the bits of splashback that made it to my thighs.  

I grabbed the pacifier and shoved it into my mouth, so that I could bury my face in my hands.  “It’s okay,” Zoge shushed me. “This happens. This is normal. Nothing to be embarrassed about. You can’t help it.”

I hated that on some level I agreed with her.

The Yamatoan nursery rhymes and morning meeting routines stopped.  “Everything okay in there?” Beouf called from outside the open door.

“Yes, ma’am,” Zoge called back.  

I peeked through my fingers. She mouthed down to me, “Are you done?”  The pain was gone. The dripping was almost stopped.  I nodded. My entire body was pink.

“Everything’s fine, Mrs. Beouf.” She projected.  “Just some extra clean up needed.”

Beouf called back, “Big poop?”  Stifled giggles from my classmates wafted in. No matter how many times it had happened to them, it was still funny when it happened to somebody else.

Zoge let my soaked diaper flop back down. She was already cleaning off the vinyl mat with a wipe.  “No,” she announced. “Just a case of a boy being a boy.”

“Oh,” Beouf said. There was a brief pause while she pondered the meaning. “Ooooh! Does he need any spare clothes?’

“I don’t think so, ma’am.” I felt her eyes scanning the romper for wet spots. “He was pointed down. Maybe some new socks?”  Three seconds later, the girls erupted into laughter. I could only imagine the other guys looking at each other and then immediately avoiding eye contact.

Beouf wasn’t done giving a report on everyone’s pants. “Speaking of boys, I think Billy pooped.”

The aide clicked her tongue and shook her head. “I just changed him!” She started cleaning me up.

“Sorry!” Billy trumpeted.  Chances are Billy wasn’t sorry at all.

Beouf sounded like she was going to laugh. “When you’re done there with Clark, tag out. I’ll take care of Billy.”

I stayed quiet, mourning the loss of my potty training; quietly pondering if I should even try again.

If not for Tuesday, I might have obsessed over it the entire week.

*****************************************************************************************************
Tuesday afternoon was tiring.

“So what are we gonna do?” Tommy asked behind the old oak tree.

I hadn’t come up with a game that afternoon.  Sleep had become more and more difficult, and making up some silly activity to subvert and entertain was beyond my energy level. That and I kept trying to shake the thought that a certain type of milk might help me sleep. Damn, I was going through withdrawal.

“Whatever you want, my dude,” I yawned. The mandatory nap had taken more out of me than put anything back in.  Relax a muscle for too long and it just wants to stay relaxed.

“I meant for pranks and stuff,” Tommy replied. “Messing with the teachers! I wanna do some more of that!”

“Yeah,” Annie agreed. “I wanna see an Amazon cry!”

Been there. Done that. Didn’t like it as much as I thought.  Best not to brag. I kept my mouth shut.

“What?!” Ivy gasped. “That’s so mean!”

Four sets of eyes honed in on Ivy, then me. The looks I got were dirtier than diapers after cafeteria chili.  This is what I got for trying to be inclusive.  I put my hand on Ivy’s shoulder and pouted my lip in thought. How to phrase it without lying?  

“I think this is a difference between Yamatoa and our culture,” I said.  “All our Mommies and Daddies and teachers might love us no matter what, but we like to…test that.  We want to remind them what they signed up for.”

My careful phrasing was met with a circle of confused looks. “What are you talking about, dude?” Chaz asked.
“The same thing I’m always talking about,” I replied. “We’re probably not getting out of here. The only graduation is to daycare. We’re going backwards. We just like giving the Amazons a taste of their own medicine from time to time.”

Ivy’s face was a confused ball of melting wax.  “I don’t understand.”

“Okay,” I said. “Remember when we had that playdate, and you pooped but you didn’t cry because you didn’t want to bother your Mommy and Daddy?”

“Mhm,” Ivy nodded.

“What happened with Ambrose is making so much more sense…” Annie said. Her face was a mask and I couldn’t tell if she was disgusted or impressed. Maybe both?

“Why can’t we play outside of school, Gibson?”

Because you’re almost as big a jerk as me, Billy and less interesting to talk to without a third party minimum to balance you out and pivot to.

I opted for “Have your Amazon talk to mine. Not the point.” I never broke eye contact with Ivy.  “Well, that’s Yamatoan culture. Being a good baby means doing whatever you’re told and not making a fuss.” Ivy was nodding like I was reciting her fairy tale back to her or something.  I saw other nods, but they were more scornful than self-affirming.  

“But real babies,” I said, “babies who are allowed to grow up, get mean and angry and fussy sometimes and disobey their parents. They’re not bad babies. There’s no such thing as a bad baby.”

“What are-?” Billy said.

“Shut up,” Annie and Chaz both cut him off with a hiss. Annie slapped her hand over his mouth for good measure.

Ivy tilted her head to the side and brushed away her bangs.  “I guess not. But that doesn’t mean that babies don’t do bad things…”

I held up my finger as a physical exclamation. “Exactly! But that doesn’t mean that they’re bad.”

“But why do bad things?”

“Because it’s fun!” Tommy blurted out.

My initial impulse was to tell Tommy to shut up. Damn kid was becoming way too much like Billy and not enough like Chaz.  But no. This wasn’t a con. This was a sales pitch. “It is!” I agreed. “And if our Mommies and Daddies love us so much, what’s wrong with having some fun and making sure?”  There was just enough dark edge in my tone and expression to let my comrades in mischief know I was still on their side.  “You try not to cry when you need a change because you don’t want to bother your Mommy,” I pointed to Ivy.  “Others don’t cry because they want to make sure that the Grown-Ups are paying attention to them.  It’s not our fault if we leak or something.”

Ivy’s brow furrowed in thought while she mulled it over.  “No. It isn’t.”

“It’s why if I can hold it I poop just before a teacher table,” Annie volunteered. “Gets me changed right away and makes the lesson shorter.”

“Part of the fun of getting carried and pushed everywhere is dropping stuff and making somebody else pick it up.” Chaz chimed in.

Tommy included, “Sometimes I break a toy and pretend it was an accident. Then I act sad and Mommy and Daddy buy me a new one. I just like it because it wastes their money.”

“Grown-Ups don’t care when I yell at them,” Billy confessed, “but they hate it when I yell at other Littles. So when I’m picking on you guys, it feels like I’m picking on them.”

I widened my stance and opened back up to the rest of the circle. “Most Amazons Adopt Littles and act like it’s our job to be good babies for them.  But really, it’s supposed to be their job to take care of us, isn’t it?  The only job we have is to test them and make sure they’re doing theirs.”

Ivy’s eyes clouded over with worry. “For how long?”

I made eye contact with each of my crew. The A.L.L., as always, was hearing the truth under the truth.  “Until we can’t do it anymore.”

Ivy bowed her head, looking ashamed. “Sometimes I say I’m not hungry, but I really am. I just don’t want what Mommy cooked for me.” Her body language made it look like she was confessing to murder. A thin, dare I say ‘naughty’ smile crept up her face.  “I eat some of it to fool her. I almost always get extra milk before bed instead.”

There was a kind of communal telepathy between the rest of us. My fingers curled in anxiety. Hers wasn’t exactly the same kind of revolutionary talk of subversion that I’d started the club with. We’d hazed poor Tommy into oblivion. Was Ivy’s offering good enough for them?  

Funnily enough it was Billy who broke the silence. “Hell yeah!” he said. He stepped forward with his hand out. “Put it there!”  Ivy slapped his palm and Billy’s entire expression changed.  “OW!” He puckered his lips inward, and then grabbed a pacifier with the hand Ivy hadn’t slapped. He started swearing and mumbling over the pacifier.  “Mmmm! Bam! Bam! Bk.”  He clutched his hand and gawked at it like it had somehow turned to stone.

My little band of Little troublemakers was seeing the practicality of keeping Ivy around, if not the ethics.  Good enough for now.

“You don’t have to do our games like us, Ivy.” I explained. “We just need to know you’re not gonna tattle on us. Okay?”

Ivy pantomimed locking up her mouth and then ruined it. “My lip is zipped!”

“So what do we wanna do?” Tommy asked.

Chaz raised his hand. “What if we chump dump something again?”

“Like what?” Annie asked.

“What’s chump dumping?” Tommy asked for me.

“You know how sometimes teachers can’t find things that they’re looking for?” Annie explained. “That’s us, sometimes.”

Billy let his pacifier drop and dangle. “It’s where we steal stuff and sneak it into the diaper pail.”

“They don’t think to look there,” Chaz beamed with pride, “and if they did, they wouldn’t want it when they found it.”

My head was almost sideways.  “I never taught you guys that.”

“It’s not like we acted good every day before you got here, Gibson.”  Billy rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,” Chaz agreed. “You kinda gave us the idea when you were still a teacher. Finding small ways to mess with them?”  He quickly looked bashful. “Too small?”

I fought back a grin of pride. I really had been prepping the next generation all along, in my own way. Just not the next generation of children. “No,” I said. “That’s a good start. A good way to keep them on their toes and make sure they’re paying attention.”  We all looked at Ivy, again.  “Right?”

“Right.”

“So what are we gonna toss?”

There was brief silence and consideration.  “Crayons?” Ivy said. “We do a lot of coloring. What if we lost the crayons?”
Tommy scratched his chin. “There are a lot of crayons. They’re gonna notice that.”  That was true. Zoge and Beouf had packs and packs of crayons and tupperware full of leftovers from discarded packs.

“Pick a color?” Annie suggested. “That could be really annoying. What if we took away all the browns or something?”

“No, blues!” I said. “No more sky coloring, and with winter coming…” I let the thought finish itself. There was a general consensus of agreement.

“How do you get all the blues?” Ivy asked.

Everyone looked down at Chaz. “Well?” I asked him “How?”

“It’s hard,” Chaz said. “We have to sneak the stuff in when they’re not looking.”

“Like when the therapists have people and Mrs. Zoge is on break.”

“Or you gotta have a really messy diaper or leak so that they’re looking at that and not your hands.” Billy offered.

“How are we going to do that with crayons? All at once?” Tommy wondered.

Ivy stiffened, visibly uncomfortable. We were edging to the line of her tolerance for schemes. “You could…slip them…into…your diaper…and then Mommy…throws them away…on accident?”

“Not always an option,” I said quickly. “Not all of us get easy access to our diapers every day.”  Case in point, all the boys had some variation of a one-piece hoodie on today. Annie had a thin long sleeved romper on with a dress pulled over it. None of us had pockets.  Ivy was the only one who could easily slip anything in or take anything off.

“We’ve got to do it a tiny bit at a time so they don’t notice,” Chaz said. “The more we do it, the more likely we’ll get caught.”

Getting caught would delay the return of my tablet.

“We could eat them,” I said. The astonished and shocked looks all centered themselves on me.  “What? They’re not toxic, they lose a crayon, and it literally ends up in a diaper pail at the end. Changes the color of your poop, though. There’s a downside.”

“Gibson? Are you eating crayons?”

I threw up my hands in defense. “No! I just know people who do.”

“I don’t like it.”  Ivy wrinkled her nose.

An echoing round of “Me neither,” came in reply.

“It was just an idea,” I said. “Don’t get your socks twisted.” I walked out of the circle. “Brainstorm. I like where this is going.  Fill me in when we’re getting ready for the bus?”

“Where are you going?” Chaz asked.  

“I’m gonna go take a dump in the crawl tube.” It was still something of a matter of etiquette to not talk to each other when we had a full load in our pants. The crawl tube provided the most privacy and it beat doing the deed in front of Melony over our afternoon decaf.

“What color is it gonna be?” Billy asked, cheekily.

“You wanna look?” I called back over my shoulder.

“Uh…uh…no!”

“Good.”

I walked across the mulch filled prison yard and ignored the buzzing between my ears looking at Mandy going down the slide, or Shauna and Sandra Lynn playing on the teeter totter.  I hadn’t eaten any crayons, but I had a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless. I was knowingly spreading the Gospel of Amy, taking my resentment and righteous fury and repackaging it as something more palatable to both mindfucked Littles and would-be rebels alike.

I justified it to myself as tricking my friends into giving themselves a gift; like dripping melted cheese over healthy broccoli.  The senior members of the A.L.L. got to continue to be rebels and mischief makers. They got to lie, cheat, steal, and get that sense of control that had been stolen from all of us.  

Ivy? Ivy got to have friends.  

Both were things Amy seemed to have in abundance.  It was better than infighting.

They’d need each other after I was gone.  

Assuming I was going to get to leave…

If not for Wednesday I’d have worried I was losing my touch.

*********************************************************************************
Mid-morning on Wednesday was the definition of aggravating.

“Okay,” I huffed. “I give up.”  

Sosa made a note on her clipboard and released me from her stupid puzzle box torture device.
The box released me, rolled back, and turned into a whimsical dancing robot for about half a minute. I pretended to stretch my triceps behind my head and yanked my hair as hard as I could to stop from smiling. If I peed, I didn’t notice. I’d already started the session damp.

That wasn’t the source of my aggravation. I’d failed a test I was never meant to pass.  No point in being outraged over that.  What really annoyed me was the present decor of the therapy room.  The wall was littered with hand turkeys and pictures of settlers from a bygone era that (according to MistuhGwiffin) probably never existed.

I ignored Chaz swimming in the ballpit, and Annie and Billy sneaking pecks to each other on Winters’s swinging platform. “What are those?” I asked.

“Hand turkeys,” Sosa said. “Want to make one?”  I saw a pair of locking mittens poking out of the top drawer on her desk.

“Not those,” I said. “Those.” Stacked up on top of each other were shoebox dioramas of so- called settlers from ye olden days. It was all cut and paste stuff with popsicle sticks to give a modicum of three dimensionality.  

Sosa followed my finger and grabbed one off the top.  “Oh. These are dioramas of the First Unification.  See?” She pointed to the two groups of people meeting side by side “Here are the Amazons,” she said indicating the taller cut outs.  “And here are the Littles.”  The two groups of paper people were dressed identically. The only difference was the scale. They could have been the same cheap clip-art images just sized differently.

There were two other notable differences. “What’s that?” I asked. One of the Amazon mothers had a bundle cradled in her arms.  

“That’s an Amazon baby,” Sosa said.  She squinted. “This kid didn’t do such a good job of coloring, so I can see what you mean.  Kind of blobby, huh?”

I took the out I’d been given.  “Yeah. Kind of.”

Positioned at the feet of the Amazon cutouts was another Little sized figure. All of the figures had been printed on plain white paper, colored in and then cut out and glued into the diorama’s fictional feast.  The last Little hadn’t just been colored in, but also drawn on.  It had the same clothing as every other male figure, but someone had colored its suit skin tone and whited out the lines that would indicate clothing.  In addition, its groin area was left noticeably uncolored, and the telltale tiny rectangles of diaper tapes were visible.  A little pacifier bulb had been sketched in, too.

Every single shoebox had that kind of modification.  Four Amazons on one side. And three Littles the other, with a babied one by the Amazons’ paper feet.  Some were male, some were female. Some of the diapers were tinged with yellow crayon. Others had safety pins and kite fold lines drawn in instead of tapes, but every Amazon settler family had a babied Little with it.

“What about these?”  I asked.  

“Adopted Littles,” Sosa said. “They would have been called, ‘immature’ or ‘unthriving’, but they probably had Maturosis.”  

Almost every history textbook I’d ever read stated that ancient Littles that were too immature were usually left to die before Amazons made contact with us.  Our two cultures becoming aware of each other resulted in a symbiosis where the weakest Littles were cared for and the Amazons were welcomed with open arms.  How convenient: The tall people are made to look like benevolent heroes and the small ones are either incompetent, or cruel.

The only books that dispute or fail to mention this so-called fact are from Little researchers. The ones residing in Little majority countries like to point out that Littles in those regions do not display any qualities that would require them to wear diapers; save for the same things that would cause any person to need incontinence support or a heightened state of care. They are quick to observe that those who do need that care are not proportionately greater than Tweeners or Amazons who need such support.   The ones that aren’t in those parts of the world go quiet soon after publication; probably Adopted. Running from Adoption, certainly.

My face went blank.  “There’s no records of any Adoptions happening on the first Unification.”  Would that there were. If Amazons had shown their true colors from the very beginning, I might not be in this situation.

“It’s not strictly historically accurate,” Sosa conceded, “but it probably didn’t happen this way anyhow.  The first Unification wasn’t called that until well after the fact.  It’s just for fun. The kids like it.”

“Which kids?” I asked, trying not to clip my words too tightly.  “What class? Pre-K? Je-?” Fuck, what was her last name?  “Starke?”  I hoped not. I’d be ruined if Tracy and my kids had lost Ambrose to get more of the same in a sweeter package. I also didn’t want to think unkindly of Jessica.

“Not Starke,” Sosa replied. “These are some third graders’ projects. I took them out for therapy and they wanted to finish theirs. So they did. The glue needed to dry.”  She pointed to a masterfully made one with clean coloring and cleaner cut lines.  The Little woman had been completely babified in pink, with a decorated diaper that had a landing zone. and slips of paper custom made to resemble a rattle and a baby bottle glued into her hands.  “I made one, too.”

“Third? Like Ja-...Gra-...my Mommy?”

Sosa looked up from her diorama. She’d almost entranced herself. “No, not your Mommy. None of my caseload is in her class. These were Renner’s kids.”

Oh thank heavens! “Renner doesn’t teach third!”

“Oh.  Okay.” Sosa shrugged. “My bad.”  She took out a piece of paper and glided it across her stunted table.  “Hand turkey? Or do you want to go play?”

A spark of that old angry Clark Gibson ignited. “Sure.”  

I held out my hands and allowed her to slip on the mittens without complaint.  “Just in case. This will help you be more careful.”

“Sure!” I beamed.  “Can you help me?”

Sosa’s eyes sparkled. “You bet I can! That’s what I’m here for, bud!”

Perfect.  “Can you be my hand turkey? I want a big turkey.”

“Sure!”  She flopped her palm down on the paper and spread her fingers.  She reached across her chest to go for a pencil.

“WAIT!” I cried out.  Sosa froze.  “I wanna do it!” I stamped my feet anxiously, pent up with toddlerish excitement.

No fool, Sosa looked at the fine point on her pencil.  “I don’t know, Clark. This pencil is really sharp.”  She thought I was going to stab her. After everything I’d already pulled off it was like she didn’t even know me.

“I would like to use a crayon, please.” I smiled, innocently.  A nice, thick, safe, blunt crayon.

“Okay,” she told me. “Let me just get a brown.”

“Blue,” I corrected her. “I want a blue bird!”

“But turkey’s aren’t blue…”

“They are if you put them in the freezer.”

She laughed in surprise. “Okay! You got me there, sir. Sure. Let’s make a blue turkey.”

The therapist fished a pack of very thick, very round crayons, likely the only thing that I’d have a chance of grasping with my mittened hands. She laid the blue one in the palm of my upturned left hand and I squeezed it. I could just barely feel it through the mitten’s padding, and cinched it with my right like a vise.  Something in the gloves were actively working against me, trying to keep my palms flat at all times.  Great for crawling, bad for literally anything else.
Typical.

Good. Typical was good.

“Ready when you are,” Sosa said.

Oh, I was ready.  With tunnel vision focus I took the crayon and traced it tightly around Sosa’s hand. Even with the gloves, it took much too long because of how careful I was being. “There!”


Sosa withdrew her hand and inspected it, suspicious that I’d done something to it..  Blue crayon still clasped, I was furiously coloring in the imprint as quickly as possible.  It wouldn’t look as good as it could have, but it would do the job.  

“Whoah whoah whoah!” Sosa said. “You’re not gonna just make a blue turkey are you? Don’t you want other colors.”  She was letting her guard down.

I abruptly stopped coloring the bulk of the bird. “Yes”

“What colors?”  She was fishing through her crayon pack and spilling out earthy browns and reds.

“Black please.”

“Okay.”

“And yellow.”

“Anything else?”

“Not unless I get to make another bird,” I said. I remembered to tack on a polite and sincere sounding, “Thank you, though.”

I dropped the crayon and it clattered off the table and rolled onto the carpet.  I clumsily grasped the bulky yellow crayon and colored in the finger feathers.

“Okay,” Sosa nodded approvingly.  “That’s better.”

She had no idea.  I picked up the black one crayon and added in the final details.  Namely a curved black beak on the thumb where a turkey’s wattle would go,  and a piercing black eye on a mostly white face.

“That’s not a turkey,” Sosa said flatly. “Is it?”

I smiled vacantly. Distantly.  “I changed my mind.”  I said.   I had made an Amazonian bred parrot, otherwise known as a Rocaw. Something that Miss Winters wanted in her and Sosa’s home.  Something that Miss Sosa was decidedly less enthused about. “Do you like it?”

“Oh cool!” Annie said. “Great job, Clark!”

“Yeah, Gibson! Good going! That’s an awesome parrot!”

“I wanna see! I wanna see!” Chaz yelled from the ballpit.  

“Please, Miss Sosa!” I begged. “Will you hold it up for Chaz to see?”

Jasmine Sosa sighed, defeated and held it up in the air.  It was childish and stupid, but she’d been duped and didn’t see it until it was too late.  

“Awesome!” Chaz said. “Are you gonna cut it out for him, Miss Sosa?”

Bitch wanted Littles to be less independent and to more readily accept Amazon help.  Nothing said that the help or the requests couldn’t be obnoxious, did it?

“Okay…” she snipped. “Sure. I’ll cut it out.”

“And put it on the wall?” Billy prodded. “With all the other parrots?”

“Those are turkeys, Billy.”

“Oh,” Billy lied, “I thought they were just brown parrots.”

“Why would they…? Never mind. Yes I will put it on the wall with the others.”

“Will you take a picture of it on your phone?” Annie goaded. “I bet Miss Winters would love it!” She threw a sly wink my way. Annie remembered what was up.

“Yes I will take a picture, Annie,” Sosa half-growled.  She was clipping around her outline with speed and precision. Impression considering the distraction we were providing.

“Can I make a parrot?” Billy asked. “I want a parrot!”

“Me too!”

“Me too! Me, me, me!”

Sosa craned her neck and stared at a clock on the wall.  “Sorry guys. Not enough time.  Maybe next time.” That was a ‘no’, then.
“When you take the picture, can we watch you send it as a text?” I asked, obnoxiously.  “I wanna make sure Miss Winters really sees it!”

That got Jazzie bristling.  “You think I’d lie to you?” she asked. “Like you lied to me?”  The scissors were getting dangerously close to the thumb head of the paper Rocaw.  She paused, with the blades ready to decapitate the faux bird.  The threat was only implied, but it was still a threat.

“You’re supposed to be a good influence,” Chaz reminded her. “You’re the Grown-Up, remember?”

“Fine,” she growled. “I’ll cut this out. Take the picture, and you all can look over my shoulder when I send it.” Oh this was eating at her in the best possible way!  I doubted it would cause any relationship strife or make her break down and cry after school, but it was enough to just annoy and make dealing with us generally unpleasant.

CA-RUNCH!

Sosa’s head whipped up.  “What was that?”

I turned around.  Chaz was pointing at Billy.  Billy’s jaw worked slowly,  his eyes squinted in concentration and his mouth looking like he’d tasted a bitter lemon.

“Billy?” Annie gasped.

“Billy…”  Sosa said.  “What did you put in your mouth?”

Billy swallowed and opened his hand to reveal half a crayon with a distinct bite mark in it.  He grimaced and stuck out his tongue.  “I thought it would taste better,” he said.  “You want some, Miss Sosa?”

Jasmine Sosa looked like her head was going to come unbolted and fall off.  “Why…?”

Billy was clearly resisting gagging and trying not to throw up. “I dunno.”

One blue crayon down, I guess…

Not quite how I envisioned it. If not for Thursday, I might have dedicated more energy to refining that particular bit of mischief.

************************************************************************************
Thursday before school was something of a bittersweet surprise.

“Hey, Boss,” Tracy greeted me the moment Janet and I were through the door.  She was still in the back of the room. The door to mine wasn’t yet all the way closed behind her.

“Hm?” Beouf said, looking up from her activity table.  “Oh. Hi, Clark!” she waved and let out a yawn.

Normally, Beouf was waiting right by the door, ready to whisk Janet away from me and leave me to the mercy of- “Where’s Ivy and Mrs. Zoge?” I wondered aloud.

“Wow,” Janet said, setting me down, “we made really good time if we beat Hana here.”

Beouf walked out from behind her activity table and to the door. “She texted me a few minutes ago. Ivy and her are running late, but you did.”

“Are they okay?” Janet asked.  

“Mhm,” Beouf said. “Just a broken alarm clock.”

“I bet Ivy woke her up,” Tracy giggled. She fell in step with Beouf.

A light, formal, and unnecessary knock at the door signaled Zoge’s arrival.  We all stepped further into the classroom.  “Good morning everyone,” she said, politely and cheerily.

“Morning,” we replied, practically in unison.

“Good morning, Clark,” she singled me out. “How are you?”

I gave a polite but non-committal. “I’m well, thank you.”

Ivy toddled in behind her. “Hiiiiii” she waved, and did a performative courtesy.  Anyone could easily see the diaper poking out from underneath the hem and stretching her tights thin.  “It’s good to see you all, today.”

“Thank you, Ivy,” came the rote, almost ritualistic response.  Tracy was smiling but rolling her eyes. As was Beouf.  Janet's face was dripping with bubbly envy; probably her imagining me getting to that level of compliance some day.

It had been a long time since we’d done this, but it was a familiar and sentimental song…just one played in a different key.  “Everyone ready?” Janet asked.

I stepped forward to the door and stopped myself. Oh yeah. I wouldn’t be going. I was supposed to stay here. With Ivy and Zoge.  Play. Make small talk.  Get a leash put on me and walk up to the bus loop.

“Mrs. Zoge?” Beouf asked.  “We good to go?”

“I need to change Ivy,” the Yamatoan said. “We were running late and I had to rush.”

“It’s okay, Mommy.” Ivy said. “I’m not itchy.”  We made eye contact. “Maybe kinda…?  Can I have some powder? Extra? And cream?”

“Oh no no no no!” Beouf said. “We can wait. Go change that baby!”

Ever composed, Zoge picked up her daughter with a squelch and toted her towards the bathroom.  “Our bus is last,” she said. “Go on, I trust Clark to behave.”

I received zero warning looks or reminders to keep the promise that had just been made. How weird was that?

“Okay,” Tracy chirped. “Come on, guys.”

The door to my room opened up. A tall skinny twig of an Amazon jogged through. “Hey!” Jessica said.  “Sorry! Mind if I walk up with you to sign in?”

“Not at all!” Janet said, welcoming her sister from another mister.

They opened the door and strolled out two by two, almost in lock step.

“Mommy! Why’d you forget?!”  Ivy whined on the changing table. “You never forget!”  It was hard to tell, but it sounded like Ivy was having fun guilting her mother.  Good for her.

“I’m so sorry, Ivy,” Zoge gushed. “Mommy’s clock broke and we were going to be late. I’ll take care of you now!”

“But Mommy….!”  

I tuned out the rest of the exchange.  They might have started speaking another language. Or not.  I was stuck standing and staring at the door, imagining the phantom backs of my friends.

Something really hit home in that moment. Tracy was free and happy again. Janet and Beouf were at ease around me. My kids had a silly but lovely new teacher and she got along great with everyone else.
.
The old rituals had re-started, only with slightly different ingredients.

The old gang had gotten back together.

I just wasn’t in it anymore.

If not for what happened Friday I might have despaired.
*****************************************************************************
Friday just before lunch was an unexpected bit of catharsis.

“And everyone, Mommy Badger, Daddy Badger, Brother Badger, Sister Badger, and Little Baby Badger had a nice long nap.” Beouf said.  She closed the book.  “The End.” She took a deep breath. “What did all of you think of that?”

There was an extended silence that a group of Littles might interpret as disinterest or not being sure what the best answer to avoid scrutiny would be. Amazons would choose to interpret it as a group of toddlers who hadn’t quite mastered listening comprehension, or perhaps didn’t know how to engage in group discussions.  Sandra Lynn picking her nose wasn’t helping that image.  Nor was Jesse patting the front of his diaper to see how close to leaking he was.

“Well?”  Beouf repeated herself. “What did you think of it?”

It was at best a mediocre by the numbers slice of life story with generic stock characters devoid of personality beyond their generic roles within the prescribed family unit.  Also they were talking badgers that acted like people, and I didn’t understand what the point of that was.  But as far as Amazon propaganda pieces went… “Not bad, I guess.”

“Thank you, Clark,” Beouf said sweetly in her nice teacher voice. “What did you like about it?”

“What did I like about it?” I wondered. “Um…?” I liked that there was only a cursory mention of having to change Little Baby Badger’s diaper. Compared to most other books in Beouf’s library the Little’s ‘babyishness’ wasn’t the focus. I also liked that they got to eat the same food as the rest of the talking country Badgers. It wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the text, but the illustrator put it clearly on Little Baby Badger’s highchair. I liked that it wasn’t a retelling of the Unification myth.  “I don’t know.”

Jesse raised his hand. “Yes?” Beouf called on him.

“Can I get changed now? I’m afraid I’m gonna leak.”

Zoge shuffled up behind Jesse. “It’s almost lunch,” she assured him. “I’ll change you before we go.”

“That the family argued,” Ivy said, “because they all wanted to eat something different. But they stopped fighting because they decided that togetherness was important.”  I grabbed the bridge of my nose and exhaled. A few others quietly groaned.  I couldn’t expect to corrupt/rehabilitate the Little Yamatoan overnight.

“That’s right,” Beouf replied. She didn’t seem pleased. Ivy had probably heard this story dozens of times. As a teacher, Beouf was floundering, drowning even.  “Let me put it another way. What’s something that brings your family together?  Or what is something special that your families do on Unification?”

Sandra Lynn raised her hand.  “They…take care of me…? And…they love me?”

To be fair to her, that was usually the correct answer in these sort of mock discussions.

“But don’t they do that everyday?” Beouf tried to explain. “What’s something special they do?”

“Unification…?” Annie ventured a guess.  “We’re…unified?”

“Yes,” Beouf said, hope and frustration mixing together with her there cross legged on the carpet with us. “What about it?”

Annie just shrugged.

“Diapers?”

“Mommies and Daddies?”

“Love?”

Melony’s head fell and she groaned to herself.  We might have been trolling her. Or not. Hard to say.

I needed a drink…

“What was that, Clark?” Beouf asked. It was a real question.

“I think he said he was thirsty.”  Ivy answered for me.

Fine. Fuck it. She wanted to know.  “I used to hide out with my in-laws,” I said. “We’d hunker down, drink. Have a party.”

“Really?” Beouf asked, her interest perking up. “You never told me…” she was almost hurt, but changed her tone. “Tell me more. What kind of party? A happy party?”

My classmates were shaking their heads for me. “Not exactly,” I answered.  “More like glad we’re still here.  You never know if you’re going to all be together again.”

“My family did that too,” Chaz said beside me.  He leaned over and tossed an arm over my shoulder. Was…was I getting a hug? He sniffled and his voice started to crack. “ I’m not gonna make it this year.”

Without thinking I hugged him back.  Chaz had been Adopted longer than me, but not much longer. This was still his first year in imprisonment, and his Amazons were probably strangers to him before they took him.  No familiar faces this year.  “Me too. Me too.”

“I miss my family,” Shauna said. “My original family, I mean.”
“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t even know if mine know what happened to me,” Tommy moped. “They probably guessed, though.”

“Me neither.”

“Mine too.”

I wondered if the Brauns had reached out to my parents. They had to know about Cassie.  “Me neither,” I said. “Mine too.”

Beouf took this all in. She sat up a bit straighter. “Ok.” she said. “Tell me more. Please.”

We all looked around at one another, bewildered. “Seriously?” Billy asked. “For real?”

Solemnly, Beouf nodded. “Yes. On one condition. I want everyone to tell me a happy memory you have of Unification. It can be with your original family, or the family that found and Adopted you. Your choice.”

“Why?” Mandy asked.

Melony took off her glasses and polished them on her shirt. “Because you’re not just your Maturosis diagnosis, honey. Your block tower got flipped, but all those years before really happened, and they mattered too.”

“I really miss them.” Shauna was breathing heavily. “I’m scared they’ve forgotten me.”

“Do you still remember their addresses?” Zoge asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe you can ask your Mommy or Daddy to help you write a letter to them,” she suggested.  Some light murmuring followed.  Good luck getting a bunch of baby crazy giants to remind themselves of their trespasses; even the ones that had hopped aboard the Beouf train.

It was a nice thought, though. It just wasn’t enough for Beouf.  “Better idea,” she said. “Let’s write letters.”  She stood up far too fast for a woman her age to be comfortable. There was a fire in those eyes. She’d found a teachable moment and was wild to seize on it.  “Let’s share stories and write letters. Everyone should be together on Unification; even if it’s only in spirit!”

There! There was the lady who taught me how to be a teacher!

The murmuring was rising in volume and pitching itself up to genuine enthusiasm and excitement!

Zoge was already raiding one of the supply cabinets for notebook paper, and envelopes.  There was a good chance that some drawer or another had postage stamps in it. All teachers were hoarders at heart. One never knew when some random brick-a-brack would come in useful.

I blinked and saw my house in cinders. Another blink showed an empty trailer park. A third revealed my parent’s gated community and a bin filled with junk mail at the guard’s station.

“What if they moved?”

“What if they send something back?”

“What if they don’t?”

My own anxieties and insecurities were reflected back and voiced by my classmates. Mindfucked and loving it, gaming the system, or suffering silently, we were all unified in our worries about our past lives.

Beouf leaned forward, and huddled over with her hands on her knees. Whether we realized it or not, we were inching closer.  “I don’t know, kids. Do you want to try and find out with me?!”

“YEAH!”  We roared a roar

Ivy’s hand shot up. “Mrs. B! Mrs. B! What about naptime?”

“Not today!”

“YEAH!” We leapt to our feet.

“What about Lunch?” Jesse whined.  The half-moons on the back of his pants were obvious to everyone but him. “Don’t we have to go to Lunch?”

Beouf  looked at the clock. We should have left already. “Mrs. Zoge,” she announced. “It’s the Friday before Unification. The cafeteria is making turkey and stuffing with pumpkin pie. Let’s see if we can get the kitchen to let us borrow those carts they wheel out for us and eat in the classroom. Just this once.  We’ll eat and share stories here. Then we’ll start working on the letters.  Transcribe for the Littles who need it.  Proofread and spell check for those who don’t.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Zoge said. “I’ll see if Miss Tracy or Miss Starke can help me push them.”

“Deal. I’ll start checking and changing,” Beouf answered.  She scooped up Jesse onto her hip.

Zoge speed stepped to the back door to cut through my room. She might catch Tracy, and it would be a shorter walk to the cafeteria regardless. “Anything else, ma’am?”

“Yes! Chocolate milk for everyone!”

A roar of celebration went up. “YEAH!”

We were going to have an old-fashioned classroom party right before a holiday break. It had been ages since I was on the attending side of such festivities.  So much more novel and interesting than being the host!

Even better, we’d be contacting home! Never in a billion years would I have guessed that.

This was great!  I could reach out without my tablet! I could get word to my folks! Or the Brauns!  I didn’t have time to work out a coded message for escape; I wouldn’t dare tell them about Cassie; but I could at least let them know where I was and that I was okay and still me.  It was a step!

If only I hadn’t tripped up and fallen flat on my face less than a week later…