Study in Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page B

limbs. And all rhythmically, as if she were a rowing machine or printing press. Yenta taught us Yugoslavian rounds and everyone sang with the forced cheer of camp counselors. Patterning punctuated our day: morning, noon, afternoon, and evening. Under my hands I felt Beckie’s chapped skin, hair, thin wrists and thighs, which I noticed grew more and more muscular as the year wore on. But little else developed from our family’s extraordinary effort.
    Normal babies use Jolly Jumpers, cribs, walkers outfitted with wheels and toys, and then only briefly. But no home of a profoundly retarded child would be complete without:
    The Creeping Box
. Built by my father from scrap lumber and padded vinyl, with eight-inch “walls” on each side. Both ends were open and one was propped up so Beckie could use the box as a kind of chute, slide down on her belly, accelerating her creep across the floor. My little sister Jenny played there and remembers the box sensually—shiny orange fabric that clung to her skin in the heat, a secret place for Chatty Cathy and her friends.
    The Helmet
. Padded inside, black leather out, a pliable hardhat designed to protect her skull. When Beckie learned to sit, legs straight out in a V, she also began to bang her forehead, bending from the waist, knocking repeatedly
thud thud thud thud
against the floorboards. No one knew why, but we’d heard even normal kids did it sometimes. We bought an extra helmet, which she dangled from one hand like a big black yoyo.
    The Bed Bars
. These were anchored underneath the mattress with two long stay rods, when she grew too large for a crib. One morning, we found her pulled up to a standing position in the bed, both hands wrapped around the top bar, ready to pitch forward on her face. Another time she wedged a leg underneath the lowest bar, which pinned her facedown against the mattress. My father dragged a dresser over, flush with the bed, which now resembled a fortress.
    One bright afternoon, mother stood at the front door, shaking her keys. “Want to go outside? Outside?” Beckie balanced against my sister Kim, who held her lightly under one arm.Nancy was stationed halfway to the open door. Again the steel rattle of keys, Mom’s high soprano—”Outside? Outside?” In the excitement, Beckie forgot she was holding on to anyone. She flung one leg out, hauled the other along, uneven this, jerky that, right, left, like a robot on ice. Down the hall she came on her own two feet. She lurched past Nancy without even looking, then tumbled into my mother’s arms. Her first, magnificent steps. She was six.
    What I remember is vertigo, a sudden swooping back, as if I were perched somewhere above the crown molding. So this is what she looks like vertically. All her horizontal oddities were exaggerated, with a few new ones thrown in. Beckie like a drunk flamingo. Beckie with her hands dangling from her wrists, one elbow cocked up, the other tight against her chest. Her body was a jumble of sharp angles, the chaos before the tent poles go up.
    What were we clapping for? Was something fixed? Would everything turn out all right now? My mother’s face was radiant.
    There are numerous, often cruel labels for someone like Beckie—backward, handicapped, mentally challenged, simpleton, imbecile, tard, freak, slowpoke. I don’t remember what my parents called her, but during the sixties the PC expression was “exceptional,” with its upper-crust implications. That was an
exceptional
dinner. He is an
exceptionally
handsome young man. As if we could alter the troublesome deficit by dressing it up in an evening gown.
    I was an enthusiastic reader, impatient with abstraction and inaccuracy, and therefore chose to call my sister what she was—mentally retarded. Before my friends could ask, before they setfoot in our front hall, I prepared them. For Checker Ives in her handmade miniskirt and fishnet stockings, for socially