Continuation on a Theme

(Super long. No really, I mean it. You don't have to read it. It just belongs here with the other pieces. Speaking of "other pieces," if you want to read what I've got so far in order, follow these, you glutton for punishment you: Preface, Part 1)

“Special Needs”

My favorite toys growing up were always stuffed animals of some kind. I had about twenty at one time, and each had its own individual name, personality, and place on the bed. (My favorite was a stuffed dog called Timmy. I actually still have him, and he still shares my pillow.) I used to create elaborate adventures with them, in which I was usually a princess, set upon by an evil step-father who hated animals, forced to dress as a peasant and flee my kingdom. I would dress up in a slip (because I thought my slips looked like princess dresses) and hide from imaginary soldiers behind chairs and bookshelves before leaping across my bedroom to my bed, which I was pretending was actually a boat. I'd make sure I had all my little woodland friends safely on the boat with me, and, lying low to avoid being seen by snipers, we'd float off toward unfamiliar shores. Sometimes we would meet enemy ships passing in the night, and I would have to hide the animals under the covers to keep them safe. Once, I took a bullet for a big brown bear named Thomas.

My brothers were crazy about Lego’s. They'd spend hours either poring over patterns that came with various kits, or building huge towers or pirate ships from scratch. For about four years of our childhood, our basement carpet was a veritable minefield, littered with loose Lego’s that made walking in the dark hazardous. Sometimes the three of us would play together, trying to match pictures we saw in magazines or on the cover of the huge Lego bin. Playing Lego’s was just about the only activity that we did do together, the two boys and I. I mean of course we played tag and hide-and-seek, school, movie theater, and other childhood games, but as far as toys went, Lego’s was the only thing we could all play with together without arguing, creating skyscrapers, castles, steamers, trains--anything we could think of.

I sometimes wonder what Rebekah would have created if she had been able. Would she have joined my imaginary adventures, perhaps helping to form new storylines? Would she have helped us build the biggest, most colorful Lego cruise ship ever? Would she have been a painter? Or a dancer? I think she would have been a musician. She loved music. All of her preferred toys were ones that made noise. Her all-time favorite was one that jingled a little tune when she spun a roller on the top. It was perfect, because it didn’t require the kind of fine-motor skills to make it work that other toys did, so she could handle it with her clumsy but beautiful (my mom always called them graceful-looking), tapered fingers. She played with it constantly, and that same four bar phrase was heard in our house almost non-stop. It would run out of batteries periodically, and as they faded it would begin to sound like the far away strains of a carousel languishing in Hell.

"That's starting to sound sick," we would say. Not that we, as a family of hardcore procrastinators, did anything about the draining batteries—at least not for another week or so. For days, the distorted chords would prompt another "That's really starting to sound sick" every few minutes, until someone (usually my dad, since the battery cover required a philips-head screwdriver to remove) finally got around to putting in fresh double A's.

After a while, the toy would simply wear out altogether, prompting a trip to Toys R Us to purchase a replacement. I don't know how many we went through. At least for or five, I imagine.

And so for years, that same four bar phrase echoed in all of our brains. I can still hear it now, as clearly as if it was still playing down the hall from my bedroom. I suppose any normal family, with any other child, would shortly have become annoyed by the same tune repeated ad nauseum, and would relish the toy's demise. But we weren't normal, and Rebekah wasn't like other children. Nothing was too much for us, if it meant that she was happy.


I think that's why I was kind of a hypochondriac growing up. I never really begrudged Rebekah the favor she got, but I think subconsciously I desperately wanted to be made a fuss over too. So at least once a week I'd complain to my teacher, "I don't feel good." A stomachache, sore throat, headache, nausea…Sometimes I even convinced myself that I really had it. The teacher would send me down to the air-conditioned nurse's office, where a nice lady with cool, soft hands would look at me sympathetically, take my temperature, and kindly say I didn't have a fever, but I could lay down for a few minutes if I wanted.

And then I would have a few minutes of being singled out, apart from my classmates who were stuck in their desks, forced to be content with box fans and Palmer penmanship exercises. I could read posters about the importance of washing your hands after coughing or sneezing, how milk would do my body good, and how to properly dispose of hazardous biological waste, while eavesdropping on the school secretary's phone conversations. Soon the nurse would write me a hall pass and send me back to the fat cat that sat on the mat, but for now, I was afforded a moment of quiet, of coddling, of undivided attention.

Unfortunately, my teacher, Ms. Rossow, was much more perceptive than my first-grade mind gave her credit for. One day not far into the first semester, as we lined up to return from gym class (or P.E. as she called it), I raised my hand and murmured those faithful four words: "I don't feel good." With a small sigh and a subtle rolling of her eyes, she said, "You always don't feel good."

Uh-oh.

I didn't say anything, and she shrugged, shook her head, and reluctantly said, "All right, go on down to the office," but I knew I had been found out. I knew that she and maybe even everyone else had caught on to my schemes. I was aware of the reputation that a liar got, because my best friend Jessica had once told me that you couldn’t believe anything Amanda S. said, and that’s why she wouldn’t play with her. I could tell I was in a pretty sticky situation. I realized that I might not even be able to get Ms. Rossow to agree to send me down to the nurse next time. I could never complain of bad health again.

Or at least not for a long while. I bided my time, waiting patiently for enough time to pass to allow Ms. Rossow to forget about all the times I had been faking, so she would be ready to take me seriously again. For months I kept my mouth shut, sitting in the uncomfortable wooden desk (the fourth graders got to use the new, cool looking desks, but we first graders were stuck with the old ones), repeating the vowels, coloring maps of the United States, learning addition, struggling with subtraction, and watching the calendar pages turn.

Finally, I decided it was time. “Ms. Rossow?” I said. “My throat hurts.” “Uh-oh,” she said, coming down the aisle toward me to feel my glands. “Let’s take you to the nurse’s office.”

Success!

I tried to look pitiful as we made our way down the hall, tried to hide the triumph I felt as we neared my old haunt. I silently greeted the faux leather vinyl cot, the hum of the air-conditioner, the ring of the secretary’s phone, the sympathetic face of the nurse and her cool hands as if we were old friends, reunited after a long separation. Ms. Rossow’s renewed faith in me inspired me to strive even for the ultimate goal of any grade-schooler: calling my mom to pick me up early. So when the nurse said I didn’t have a fever, I looked pathetically at Ms. Rossow, who succumbed to the appeal in my eyes and said, “Well, honey, let’s call your mom and see if she’ll come get you. It’s miserable to sit in class when you feel bad.”

Victory was mine! After a minor setback, I had overcome the enemy’s defenses and had, through patience and perseverance, emerged triumphant. I barely managed to keep the exultation from manifesting itself across my face, as I inwardly rejoiced in my own talents of persuasion and manipulation. My success was perfected in Ms. Rossow’s words to my mom when she arrived: “There’s something going around…” and I knew I had won her over completely.

The expression on my mom’s face told me she saw what I was doing, but also that she wasn’t going to say anything about it, either. That is, she didn’t really believe I had a sore throat. I felt fine and she knew it, but she understood that sometimes I needed to be fussed over, just a little. We never really talked about it, and she wouldn’t let me get away with it at home, but sometimes she would come get me at school, even if she was sure I wasn’t really sick. She’d make me some tea, let me read a little in my bed, and then she’d make me get up and do my homework. Sometimes she’d even take me back to school after an hour or so, which was a little humiliating.

Somehow, my mom seemed to instinctively get the fact that no matter how hard she and Dad tried to keep things equal between the four of us, there was just no way the boys and I could compete with the kind of care that Rebekah required, and that we couldn’t help but sense that. Maybe she and Dad were afraid that we would start to actively dislike Rebekah for it, if they didn’t fudge the rules a little bit for us here and there. Maybe we would have. I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem possible, somehow. I can’t imagine not getting home from school to cuddle with her on the floor and make her laugh; I can’t see a day where I would lose interest in that perfect button nose; I can’t picture a time when her happiness could ever lose its place my top priority. If you had met her, you would understand.

There was just something about her. Something divine. Her home-care nurses would comment on it all the time, how they couldn’t help getting attached to her, and how much of a blessing she was to them. They, too, would catch the fever, after working with her for a while. Rebekah’s happiness was paramount to everyone who knew her, and her tragedies were everyone’s tragedies. Once, an exercise in physical therapy proved too much for her brittle bones, causing a greenstick fracture in her femur, unbeknownst to anyone at the time. As the nurse drove her home in our van, Rebekah began crying, and by the time my mom came out of the house to help unload the wheelchair, tears were rolling down the cheeks of both nurse and client.

It was Rebekah, and not my parents, who finally cured me of my hypochondria, even as she was also the cause of it. As I grew older, I took my role as her big sister seriously, taking responsibility for keeping her safe and content. I prided myself on being able to make her laugh more quickly than anyone else, and I delighted in finding new ways to do it. My mom always said that Rebekah’s sun rose and set on me, and I was completely taken with her. We developed a connection I can’t explain, a connection based on love in the purest sense, untainted by petty disagreements, uncluttered by expectations of reciprocity, and uncontaminated by competition. We were closer than any other sisters I had ever seen. She always smiled biggest and laughed loudest when I was around. Never one content to sit still for long, she once fell asleep in my arms. I can still feel the touch of her face on mine, the way her slender fingers felt clasped in my hand, her silky brown curls tickling my ear. She was everything to me, and her love for me came to mean more than anything else.

I stopped pretending to be sick.