"Special"

(part of a longer piece that I might finish someday)


“Your sister’s retarded?!” He hadn’t been listening, but that phrase had caught his attention. My first day at a new school, I had wanted to think of something about myself that was interesting, that people would remember, something that would make them want to ask me questions—want to be my friend. So I had told a few girls that my sister was retarded.

I had even used that word: Retarded. A word that is offensive to many, and serves as the punch line of everyone else’s jokes. That’s what she was, though, wasn’t it? Handicapped. Developmentally disabled. Special needs. Doesn’t really matter which label you put on it, they all mean the exact same thing. Her brain didn’t work right. At four, it functioned about as much as a six-month-old baby, and it didn’t ever really improve. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t stand or sit up by herself. The part of her brain that controlled the muscles in her throat was damaged, so she wasn’t even able to swallow without choking; she was fed through a tube that led directly to her stomach. She was completely helpless.

But she was interesting. In fact, she was downright spellbinding, if you go by the stares of other customers in the grocery store. And after years of my family patterning our lives around her and her needs I had learned that Rebekah was the only interesting thing about me. At least that’s what I came to believe, subconsciously. I never questioned my parents’ love for me, but I began to assume that, deep down, I wasn’t really very special after all. I mean, I was always very smart. I got good grades, scored highly on standardized tests, and everyone wanted to be my partner in math class. People were constantly telling me how smart I was. My parents were great encouragers, always supporting me, telling me when I was good at something. And I was good at a lot of things, without being conceited or smug. I knew I was special.

But somehow, it wasn’t as special as Rebekah’s kind of special. That’s even the word people would use when they didn’t want to use that “r word” which described what she really was; they’d simply call her “special.” She even looked special. You could tell right away, even if you didn’t know anything about her, that she was different. I didn’t have that. I was ordinary, and while I was never passed over, I knew that to get the kind of attention Rebekah got, you had to be some special kind of special. I suppose I must have thought that the next best thing to being that kind of special was being related to someone who was. I don’t know what else would have prompted me to share such sensitive information with these strangers whom I desperately wanted to know.
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And so, “You’re sister’s retarded?!” he spat out with a delighted sneer. The shark smelled blood.

“Yeah, so? She’s still a person,” I shot back, dignified and superior, waiting for him to be taken aback by my tone, waiting for him to buckle under my righteous indignation, concede the point, apologize, and beg my forgiveness.

“Nyanyanya, rererrer!” he replied, his pretty face made grotesque with mockery of my ferocity.

Dignity has no effect on sharks. Especially not in the fourth grade, and especially not on Brandon B., who was completely aware of his status as the best looking boy in our class. He followed playground protocol to the letter, preying on lesser fish to maintain his place at the top of the food chain. A new girl was definitely a lesser fish, and a new girl with a retarded sister was like the crippled fish trailing half a league behind the rest of the school: easy quarry.

At the time I didn’t understand it quite so clearly; I only burned in the flush of humiliation as everyone else at the lunch table laughed at his cleverness. I’ve never been good at snappy comebacks. If I had been, I could have redeemed myself in an instant, earning the respect of the shiver*, and protecting myself from further attack besides. Witty and blistering retorts can save your life in grade school, but I could never seem to think of them on the spot. If he had waited a few days, I could have devastated him with a biting rejoinder that would have made him wish he had never opened his mouth. But sharks don’t wait for anything, and I was left spluttering, red-faced and ashamed, frustrated that I had made myself a target.

I was soon abandoned for more entertaining fare and quickly forgotten. But I didn’t forget. And having lived most of my life through books and movies instead of actual real-life experiences, I believed that he would eventually be touched by my fury, be overcome with remorse, and repent. When lunch was over and we returned to our desks in the classroom, I glared at him from across the room for a full five minutes, with the romantic idea that he would sense my wrath and start squirming under the heavy hand of conviction. He never looked up, and I soon gave in to defeat.
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The desire to be special is soon replaced by the desire to blend in. It didn’t take long for me to try to hide Rebekah’s existence instead of displaying it. It didn’t take long for me to wish my parents wouldn’t bring her to school functions. It wasn’t long before I wished she wasn’t my sister. I hated the way people stared. I hated the way I had to pretend I didn’t notice if she made loud noises in the middle of a choir concert. I hated trying to be nonchalant while walking down the mall corridors alongside a bright turquoise wheelchair with a constantly humming little girl in it. Even when she was quiet, the wheelchair itself, along with the jerky, uncontrolled movements of her head and neck called attention to us, when all I wanted was to be invisible.

Rebekah became an embarrassment. And that made me feel like an awful person. I hated myself for it. So I never said a word about it, to anybody. I didn’t want anyone to know how selfish I was, how petty and mean, to not want to be seen with her in public. In retrospect, I know my parents would have understood, but at the time, I was sure they’d think I was a horrible older sister, and I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me.

Funny how we do that to ourselves. We long for nothing more than to be known and understood, but we are afraid of honesty. We hate ourselves for what we do and who we are, and we’re terrified that everyone else will too, when they find out the truth. So we pretend to be something else, and then scream in fits of pre-pubescent hormonal rage, “Nobody understands me!”

I wanted so badly to connect with people, and Rebekah was either a tool or an obstacle in this endeavor. It wasn’t until several years later that she became simply what she was: my sister.

*a shiver is a group of sharks, and the fact that i know that should tell you something about how popular i was--or wasn't--in fourth grade.