Special, an old Pandora challenge Options

[Ephiny]

Special

They finished the oath, as always, the moment before practice began. In the silence, Hannah jumped up on her bench, declaring loudly,

“Never mind being brave, I want to win!!”

A few parents looked over at her, smiling, but at the sight of June standing nearby, their smiles turned sympathetic. Hannah was always causing problems. If she wasn’t shouting at the coaches, she was bullying the other athletes, challenging them and causing scenes that inevitably ended in forced and terribly insincere apologies.

“Hannah, get down!” June hissed, “winning isn’t everything!”

Awkwardly, Hannah clambered down. “It is,” she muttered, and walked over to where the coaches were beginning to gather small groups together.

June sat down, caught for a moment, somewhere between irritation at her difficult daughter and a vague, fierce pride that she couldn’t quite explain. One of the other mothers, noticing that she was alone, came over to sit beside her.

“This is great for them, isn’t it?” she said, gesturing to the line at the starting point, poised for the whistle.

“Yes,” June said sadly, “I suppose it is.”

She watched Hannah crouch low, her eyes fixed on the finishing point and for one moment remembered holding her, hours after her birth, the child she’d been prepared to give birth to, gone, and replaced with this fragile creature and a group of forlorn doctors telling her about how much could be done these days, what supports there were, and then when they reached the moment that their careful words ran out,

“And of course, you’ll have other children.”

It took weeks before that same baby would cease being a Down Syndrome child and simply became Hannah, awkward, cheeky, funny, grumpy, sometimes downright impossible and always, beautifully, annoyingly and gloriously determined. You only ever had to tell Hannah that she couldn’t do something and she’d set about learning how to do it. That was how they’d taught her cycle, read, manage a cash register in the local shop, and catch a bus by herself when she demanded lifts into town. Telling Hannah that something was impossible was the sure way of ensuring she’d learn to do it by herself.

Since the age of eight, Hannah had been obsessed with running. Physical education was the one activity in school where she was no longer the disabled child, sitting apart, always waiting for assistance. Her abilities matched the others, more than matched in some cases and in secondary school, she realised that sports could become competitive, that you could win prizes and challenge your peers rather than run with them all the time. She joined a team, regularly beat the other girls in races, began to learn cross-country running. It was also the year that the curriculum became too much for her. A sheltered workshop was mentioned tactfully to June and then to Hannah.

“I can’t work here” she said when taken to see it, “they’re too slow. It’s boring”. She glanced around the room, where small groups of adults, many much older than she was, worked at long tables, taking little notice of her. She glanced at her mother, as if bewildered at their decision that this was the perfect place for her. June remembered her own inability to meet her daughter’s gaze.

“It’ll be ok,” she had whispered to her, “you can keep on your running.”

But she couldn’t, not at school anyway. The local sports groups were curiously hesitant as well.

“Would she not be better in the Special Olympics Group?” one instructor suggested.

And here they were. Hannah had a drawer full of medals, throwing each new one into the back of it with a derisive laugh.

“Everyone gets medals here, Mom. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not.”

One day, Hannah had visited the local sports ground by herself, without June’s knowledge. She sat by the instructor’s car until he eventually accepted that she wouldn’t go away and approached her. Later, he told June about their conversation; how he had heard she liked to win. There were many professional runners in his team and Hannah wouldn’t be able to keep up. Wouldn’t that be upsetting for her when she was doing so well in Special Olympics?

“I want to run properly,” Hannah insisted, “I’m sick of everything having to be special.”

But that failed to convince him and Hannah had returned to her own team, shouting at the others in her attempts to make them compete with her, annoying the other parents when their own children came to them with complaints about no one ever really winning.

“She’ll spoil it for them,” one mother said to June, “it’s all the poor things have.”

June forced herself back to the present where the race had finished and Hannah had come in second. The group of parents tensed slightly, waiting for some sort of outburst, but she merely glanced sideways at the winner, a tall girl with long legs and a forced-looking smile. They shook hands and walked together towards the stand of drinks.

“This is really stupid,” the girl said to Hannah, as if sensing a fellow conspirator. June watched them rejoin their group to repeat their oath.

“Let me win, if not, let me be brave in the attempt.”

As they finished, the community cross- country group in the next field raced past, waving enthusiastically. June watched, biting her lip, as the two girls raised their hands slowly, staring past the group of running adults, into the paths of hills and bends and trees before their eyes, stretching far away and out of sight.