A very good girl.

I’m in third grade and in love with two things. The first is Miss Moken, my fashion icon, who teaches in sleeveless shifts and heels. The second is my Brownie uniform. I get to wear it to school every Wednesday, which, in my mind, gives me an air of importance. I have after-school meetings to get to. I have badges to earn. I’m a Brownie.

The uniform is a bit butch for a girl who loves twirling in floaty dresses, but maybe that’s what makes it thrilling. It brings out a side of me I didn’t know existed. Each Wednesday, I become a serious sort, a no-frills-girl who wears her beanie with purpose.

The uniform is the color of the mocha frosting my mother spreads onto dark chocolate layer cakes. The belt and beanie are a deeper, more serious brown, and the tie is red; a slash of lipstick on an otherwise unmade-up face.

Miss Moken has written 24 + 37 on the blackboard and taps the chalk like a cigarette as she waits for an answer.

I have 61 written on my paper but since I answered the last question, I don’t raise my hand. Gary Kaufman solves it correctly, as usual, and Miss Moken erases the equation. She writes 71, criss-crosses a plus sign beneath it, and pauses as if she wants to come up with just the right number to pair it with. She goes with 40, and I like the way the chalk sounds, tap-tapping on the board. I work the equation on my paper, but I’m thinking about something else.

I have to go to the bathroom.

I look at the clock. 2:40. I can hold it in for 20 minutes. I sit with my chin in my hands, staring at the blackboard. I cross my legs tighter as someone gives the right answer and Miss Moken triumphantly claps the eraser to the blackboard, creating a huge puff of chalk dust that makes her pull her head back and say “ooh.” I peevishly wonder who’s in charge of cleaning erasers this week, noting that, clearly, they’re not doing a good enough job. But this distraction doesn’t keep me from my more important thought - I really have to go.

She jots another equation on the dusty board. I cross my legs tighter.

She taps her chalk as she waits for an answer. I tap my pencil and bite my lip. It’s 2:45. And there’s no way around it. I have to go.

I raise my hand as Miss Moken awaits the answer to “22 + 68,” which is so easy, I can’t believe no one else has their hand up.

“Debra, you’ve already answered a few. Let’s give someone else a chance,” she says. Which is so Miss Moken. Always fair. One of the many things I love about her. But not now.

Someone raises their hand and gets it wrong, which makes me crazy.

“Anyone else?” Miss Moken asks.

Again, I shoot my hand up like a drill sergeant, but Miss Moken’s eyes scan the room. I glance around and realize - it’s not that no one knows the answer, it’s that the class has hit a wall. It’s the end of the day and math concentration has been replaced by doodling and daydreaming.

I don’t know who’s more determined - Miss Moken or me. I keep my arm in the air and she keeps swiveling her well-coiffed head, waiting for another hand to appear.

I cross my legs even tighter. My arm is getting weak, so I cradle its elbow with my free hand. I want to bolt to the door but obedience has me bolted to my seat. I’m a good girl and am not capable of interrupting a lesson or leaving a classroom without permission.

Finally, someone raises their hand and says “90,” and Miss Moken’s smile is magic. She says “Ok! Just one more!” and turns her back, squeaking the chalk as she taps out two more numbers and even I wonder why she won’t just call it a day.

It’s almost 2:50.

I’m sweating and, to my horror, beginning to whimper. I squirm, my legs, a jumping helix, crossed at the thighs and ankles. “I can hold it,” I say to myself. “I can. I can. I can.”

And then I can’t.

The warmth between my legs is a shock of simultaneous relief and horror. And once it starts, I can’t make it stop. I’m helpless and exposed and the hand that I’d been raising falls, to cover my lips, which won’t stop quivering.

My tears are fast and I have no more control of them than I do the sweat that makes my uniform almost as wet above the waist as it is below. My ears are filled with a buzz that’s broken by the sound of gasps and someone saying “ew.” And then a few giggles. All muffled by the horrible hush of a room that has changed forever.

Miss Moken turns and her beautiful chiseled face loses its shape. She looks into my pooling eyes and, very softy says “oh, honey.” She walks to my desk and whispers “come with me.”

My face burns because the only thing worse than sitting in my wet Brownie uniform will be standing in it, but lovely Miss Moken is waiting, imploring me with her kind expression, so I get up.

I don’t want everyone to see the giant wet spot on my bottom, so, for the second time, I do the only thing I can. I turn, and walk backwards to the door. I look down, which is better than meeting the eyes of the other kids, but it also puts something I wasn’t anticipating into my line of sight.

The puddle under my desk is bigger than a Twister mat circle, but not as neat. And it’s spreading. I fixate on my chair, which is dark with wetness, as I continue to shuffle backward toward Miss Moken.

I have known embarrassment, but this is different from the blush that follows a silly act. This is the sting of humiliation. No one has wet their pants since first grade. I’ve made a spectacle of myself. And left evidence behind. The thought of the class, alone with my puddle, with no Miss Moken to temper their disgusted shrieks and unkind laughter brings my shoulders up to my chin. The puddle has soiled more than my beloved uniform. It has soiled me.

I look down as Miss Moken and I walk toward the bathroom, thinking, with regret, about the giant thermos of orange juice I had at lunchtime. And about how I kept playing Cat’s Cradle with the other girls instead of using the bathroom after lunch, when Miss Moken asked if anyone had to.

My glamorous teacher takes my hand and walks me toward the restroom. I enter a stall, pull down my soaked underwear and trickle out what’s left in my bladder. I open the door and Miss Moken is waiting, her kind eyes trained on my puffy ones.

She parts her Revlon-red lips as I open my bitten, chapped ones, and in unison we say “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Debra,” she murmurs. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I should have called on you.”

“Do I have to go back to class?” I ask so softly she has to lean in.

“No,” she answers. She says that I can leave now and does something unthinkable. She unties the sweater that’s draped around her neck (like a movie star) and hands it to me.

“You can tie this around your waist,” she says.

“But I’m….” I can’t bring myself to say “wet.”

She fixes me with her hazel eyes and says “You’re fine. And you’ll be fine. I promise.”

I blurt that I need to get my lunchbox and beanie, picturing both cherished items in my cubby and she says she’ll take care of it.

And then, as if she couldn’t have astounded me more, Miss Moken hugs me. I smell her powdery perfume and instantly jut my hips back, hoping she can’t feel my wetness or smell me. But she doesn’t seem to care.

As we walk to the front door, a janitor wheels a pail and mop past us and, newly embarrassed over what he’s about to clean, I avert my eyes. At the door, Miss Moken gives my shoulders a little squeeze. I can feel her eyes watching me, as I heavily walk away from the school I had approached with such joy that morning.

My mother puts my uniform into the washing machine as I take a bath, where I let myself cry loudly for the first time. I close my eyes and re-hear the “ew” and the giggles and run the faucet, so I can sob.

My mother says I should walk onto the playground with my head held high and smile as if nothing happened; which doesn’t sound like great advice. But it’s all I have.

So, the next day, in a fresh plaid jumper, I arrive at school with what I hope is a highly-held head. No one is mean, but I know they know. Every once in a while, I glance at Arthur Frey, who, in first grade, left a milk carton in his desk for three days and made the class smell like vomit, and I fear that I’ve joined him in being a kid who will always be remembered for having done something disgusting.

I homework and hopscotch my way through the week and almost feel normal, until the following Wednesday. I open the closet and slide the hangers away, to reveal what I’ve been avoiding looking at, and there it is. Ironed and crisp and ready to serve. I sniff the back. It smells fine.

I hold it in the air, pinched between my thumbs and forefingers, eyeing it with resentment. If The Incident had happened in any other dress, I could have retired it from my lineup. But this one has to be worn. I’m a Brownie. And Brownies follow the rules.

At the end of the year, I’ll join my fellow Brownies in a Flying Up ceremony, where we’ll become Girl Scouts and I’ll be all too happy to replace my sad mocha dress with one that’s fresh and new and green. But I’ll never love Girl Scouts the way I love Brownies. My Brownie love is simple, and fueled by a belief that being a good girl is all that matters.

But good girls stay seated.

And sometimes, you have to stand up and leave a room.

Because being good is one thing.

But being good to yourself is quite another.