Tragedy

The sound of a slamming door startles me. I peer out of the window to find a van outside the house, a woman emerging from the vehicle, and a young man standing in the street with a smile visible from my distance.

His distinct mannerisms strike my memory from three summers ago, when as a ten-year-old I stared from the beach. I will not forget the pathos of his expression and the movement of his hands.

There is no mistaking him.

And now, the same boy is here, standing outside of my house. 

The mother helps him towards the house adjacent. The house that had once housed, as I had been told, a Down syndrome child.

I abandon my schoolwork—this is the only thing that could draw me from studying for finals—to watch him carefully from the second-story window, as if this boy is a specter about to vanish at any moment.

***

Marooned in a vast wasteland of sand he sat with his mother on a picnic blanket.

“Don’t stare.” My mother caught me watching from a distance.

But he had caught me off guard.

His gaze flashed to mine for half a second, seeing me.

The contrast between his teenage body and his mannerisms was so stark that I took a moment to register the discordance. Once I had, I returned my gaze to the lake water cooling our feet, shaken and sorrowful as I had just witnessed a tragedy, an injustice.

Why is he arrested in perpetual infancy while I am growing healthily with each passing day?

“What happened, do you think?” I watched the crystal water splash at my feet as we walked, listened to the chorus of buzzing summer insects.

Why is he being spoon-fed while I am walking perfectly beside my mother? 

She only shook her head.

And I felt pity for his mother.

“When someone said ‘To be or not to be,’ he replied, ‘That is the question.’” Her face crinkled into a laugh.

My face contorted into an imitation of a smile, I could not bring myself to laugh at something so sad. My neighbor filled her sunlit parlor with stories and wisdoms and now, in my opinion, sorrow.

“So he’s not severely Down syndrome,” Miss Claire-Marie said, the paper-thin skin on her hands wrinkling as she sorted through her photographs. “And we say ‘disabled’, we don’t use the ‘r’ word.” Her eyes narrowed in reproach just referring to it.

I wondered if the boy on the beach had Down syndrome like my neighbor’s son.

“That’s so sad.” The weak condolence was all I could think to give.

“Well…” She turned her face towards the glass walls displaying the view of her backyard like a scene from a fairy-tale, where pollen wisps drifted calmly on a breeze chasing away the heat and shafts of golden sunlight reached through the trees. “…it depends on what you think is sad.”

“…What do you mean?”

“It’s not sad that I have a son. It’s not sad that I get to love him.”

“True,” I said, refusing to think that it was sad that she could have had a “better” son.

“And I believe that we’re all here for a reason,” she continued.

I foresaw the point she was trying to make even before she asked me her question. “How could the existence of human life alone be sad?”

I asked myself at that moment, Just because they are not at full mental or bodily capacity, their lives are not worth living? And as far as I can tell, the boy on the sand or Miss Claire-Marie’s son are not suffering in any way. Could I find a reason to pity them other than that they exist? The question alone is terrible.

“His soul is whole,” Miss Claire-Marie finished.

That is the only thing that matters, I reminded myself. I agreed with her with a slow nod, ten-year-old perspective widening.

“It will never be sad that a child was born.” Her eyes were soft and understanding as if she had explained this to people before.

“So you never wondered why he is the way he is?” I asked quietly.

“Of course I did,” she returned. “All of the time. But I didn’t love him any less. Why would I?”

“He’s no less human,” I whispered, more to myself than to her.

“Exactly.” She pointed at me. “He’s no less than anyone.”

“I just don’t understand why I'm perfectly healthy and fine while other people are…not.” I gazed at the sunshine and fairy-like pollen again, painting an ideal landscape in my mind, one where no one was unjustly disabled. The unfairness of these two boys’ conditions unsettled me.

Miss Claire-Marie arched an eyebrow. “Do you think that all lives have a purpose? Or that we’re just here and suffering is just suffering and life is entirely meaningless?”

It was a heavily philosophical question for a child but I answered unhesitatingly due to years of Bible-reading, “Yes. We all have purpose.”

“Then each person’s disability or genius has a purpose too.” She arrived at her conclusion unarguably as if completing a particularly simple mathematical proof.

A small incessant doubt tugged at me, struggling to accept that there was absolutely nothing I could do to help any of these people, struggling to realize there was no reason for pity. “I guess that’s true.”

Her eyes disappeared into her cheeks when she smiled. “Yes, it is.”

My father noticed first. Both parents smiled as they watched from our distance, as I’m sure many others did.

Downtown had been cordoned off for the dizzying collection of colorful booths and awnings strung with Christmas lights, crowds swarming through the streets, laughter broiling in the air as the fair spun on, but the disarray of my surroundings vanished and my focus locked on just a pair of girls in the distance.

A teenage girl emerged from the photo booth and instantly checked for her friend. She resembled any other high schooler in town with an excess of chocolatey eye makeup, a messy bun pulled high atop her head, a pop-group logo on her tank top as if she was a devoted fangirl.

A younger girl with evident disability and matching shirt rounded the other side of the booth, though not as pronounced or severe as the boy on the sand. As they examined the images together their smiles spoke of pride, joy, laughter.

The fangirl caught my eye as if she’d sensed someone watching, so I conspicuously turned my face away.

“That’s so nice,” my mother whispered behind me.

The fangirl seemed to have an understanding or a connection with the other. She did not seem like a harried mom or an annoyed babysitter—with every guiding touch and genuine smile, I wondered if this was her actual friend or sister or both. I and both parents assumed she was spending time with her out of charity anyway, and she very well could have been, but nonetheless her kindness was evident.

When one of their photo strips fluttered to the ground from their grasp, I chased after it and discovered a montage of smiles and peace signs, reminding me of the photos I had taken with all of my friends in the past.

That girl I used to be stared at the images uncomprehendingly, not understanding at first the purpose of being friends with her if the fangirl’s speech was not fully understood and her conversation not entirely communicated.

My mother returned to me, and noticing my downcast expression, led me away from the festivities through quieter, less manic streets until we crossed the deserted sands leading to the boardwalk. No one else was here to watch the sky glowing with wisps of violet twilight.

“I don’t understand why this happens to people,” I said as our footsteps rocked the dock. A cool lake breeze soared through our hair and clothes, erasing the sensations of the fair.

She shook her head. “I don’t either. But the reason is bigger than one person. It’s bigger than all of us.”

And I tried to envision myself with the boy on the beach.

Would he understand why I was spending time with and befriending him? Would I?

Would I confuse everyone into thinking I viewed him as less than I?

“What if I had been born like them?” I asked.

Seeming to understand my distress, she stopped, leaned her forearms against the railing, gazed into the night. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

“Not at all?”

“Why would I?” A smile creased her lips. “You’re my daughter.” 

“That girl didn’t seem to care either,” I mumbled.

“Why would she? They still need friends like the rest of us.”

I realized with a jolt that she was right and shame crawled through my insides. Could his mother tell how deeply sad I had thought his existence was when I first saw him? 

How many times had she seen children like me who had stared?

***

I saw him once through a child’s misunderstanding eyes. Now outside my window I see the boy with the same woman—she feeds, changes, and loves him more with each passing day—there is no reason to pity that his family’s love may be drawn on more deeply or displayed more evidently, like Miss Claire-Marie or my own mother.

And there is no tragedy in a human life who is touched by a love such as this.