Free Gracious Living by Andrea Goldsmith Page B

angelic child, screamed, how he fought when Kate attempted to touch him. And bit! Huge red welts into the thin skin on the back of his own hand and perfect ovals in the softness of Kate’s upper arm. Such a wild anguished child he was, who made a mockery of the innocence of childhood.
    Walter, they were to learn, was a child like no other. It was as if there were several children in that one beautiful body, each taking his turn to be seen: this week the tranquil one, next the savage, one day wrestling like a machine, another standing at the window with an expression of such deep humanity that you were touched by something rare and precious. It was more than great beauty with Walter, he seemed to affect you in a very particular way, filling you with an agitation – a joy, of that there was no doubt – that some might recognise as spiritual.
    Of all the children it was Sherrie Warneke who looked the most odd. She was only two, but she was small and shrivelled like someone very old. The head in particular was tiny, making hereyes, which were of normal size and very crossed, look almost malevolent. And yet the whole face gave a different impression: the broad cheeks and pointed chin, the tired mouth and sallow skin revealed a melancholy that had no place with any child. She sat on the floor at Lauren’s feet, careful not to touch her mother. She sat, unoccupied, ladylike, not touching her mother and not being touched. Fortunately, children learn what’s best for them. After the first few Thursdays, Sherrie knew to spend the first hour at her mother’s feet and then edge her way over to Penny, where she would sit quietly while Penny stroked the dark spidery hair and the hunched and fragile shoulders. Sherrie could say a few words and as the little face jerked into speech Lauren would grimace at the reedy timbre, while Penny and Elizabeth would admire her cleverness and look with sadness at their own silent children.
    They had all come to the group for answers. Well, perhaps not all. Kate, they were to learn, never asked questions; Penny already had the answers – what she was after was action; but Elizabeth and Lauren wanted answers: Elizabeth so she could incorporate Ginnie into her former tidy life and Lauren so her husband would not leave her. Lauren was the oldest of the group by about ten years. She and her husband Stewart already had two teenage boys; Sherrie had arrived after several miscarriages to much excitement and joy. Lauren, privately, had also been relieved, she needed another child now the boys were older; she knew how to be a mother but did not know much else. And she had mothered Sherrie well until the problems appeared, although if she dared criticise Stewart, she would admit that she was quite a good mother to Sherrie even after the problems started; it was only when she realised Stewart regarded his daughter as a spear through their marriage that Lauren withdrew her love from the child. Now she hated herself for the way she treated Sherrie, and along with the hate was a malignant guilt: painful, spreading, engulfing the life she so desperately wanted to save.
    Stewart said it was up to her, he said the decision was simple and he would not wait forever. But she kept delaying and as time passed she saw that Sherrie was not as handicapped as the doctorshad first suspected; she watched as the child learned to sit and crawl and finally walk; she heard her daughter’s first sounds and then the words, and with each new skill the pain worsened. How much easier it would have been if the child had been very handicapped, totally incapacitated, with no personality, no possible future. How she wished her child could never know, never understand what her mother would have to do. For Stewart and the boys were her life, and although she harboured no illusions about her marriage, she also knew that at thirty-six she had made her choices and there was no turning back. She could not imagine a life outside her marriage;