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prominent Bridget Walker, who fell silent when she saw my sister’s sloppy lips pressed up against the window, I held my hands up, one above the other, miming a diagnostic chart. “Here is a ladder with four rungs,” I explained. “Mildly retarded is at the top—those kids are lucky—then moderately, severely, and last of all, profoundly. My sister can’t even reach the bottom rung. She’s microcephalic. IQ of about ten months.” Why not admit it right away, rather than suffer their confusion and stunned embarrassment? I cultivated a circle of friends who knew my story from the inside. Birdie Mintz’s brother was mildly retarded. Frances Strong’s little sister had seizures. Birdie and Frances and I found each other, or we were nudged together by our parents, I don’t remember.
    As much as possible, I held the others at arm’s length, slept over at their houses, met them in the park, or at school. Unlike my cousins, who lived three blocks away, and whose house was constantly filled with visitors, the Gorhams entertained only when we had to. Even now, I grow fidgety and tense with dinner guests around.
    For a few precious years, Beckie was cute. Then she was not so cute, her body an awkward combination of rigidity and slackness. There was no hiding the diaper bulge, or the tea towel knotted around her neck. As she grew, her difference grew. She made her mark on me, like the mole on my right foot, which I tried to hide by wearing sneakers in the summer. But there was no hiding Beckie. We were connected by blood, tissue, skin. Inside her lopsided head, all through her body was genetic material I shared, like it or not.
    Mother and I wheeled Beckie in her scuffed-up stroller to the park, fully aware she was strange, and that made us strange, and every eye was on us while we crossed the dusty baseball field. We headed to the tot playground, where the swings had metal bars to lock her in. The other kids were half her size, un-abashed in their curiosity. I wanted to whirl the stroller about and flee home before I perished from humiliation. But Mom set a stubborn example of patience and education, answered their questions, let the little ones hold her hands, instructed them in Beckie’s gentleness. It was our duty.
    God was a responsible creator, or so went the theory. He permitted only those evils that encouraged goodness, which made us humane and just. Retarded children are a tragedy, but they are also the triggers for compassion, philanthropy, scientific research. Indeed, Beckie gave birth to my mother’s avocation. Finding few services for the handicapped and no central source of information, my mother created Washington’s first
Directory of Services for the Handicapped
. Later, she became director of the Montgomery County Association for Retarded Citizens, a job she assumed while Beckie was in “school.”
    Eager to please, my sisters and I joined her—educating, enlisting, converting. Dad raised up a tent on the sidewalk, and we sold lemonade for the retarded. Nancy volunteered at state institutions, reading and providing companionship to the retarded. We all sold fruitcakes for the retarded—Claxton fruitcakes in red-and-white striped boxes, three dense, ingotlike bars to a box. Every fall we sent out an appeal to friends and family, with Beckie’s photograph at the top. “Dear Friends,” one letter began, typed on my mother’s Royal typewriter and dated November 15, 1967:
    This fall Beckie was seven years old, and like all solid citizens of seven, went off to school. However, unlike most, she was found eligible for admission by only one school in the entire area. It was the Co-op School for Handicapped Children in Vienna, VA, which does
not
require that its students talk, or know what a potty is for. In short, Beckie passed its non-requirements with flying colors. She loves her new school, and has seemed happier, more alert, and