Except, a Down’s child will not grow up. A Down’s child will not ever push you away or sneer at you. Or move out of the house.
Daphne was so special because she was happy-seeming all the time. Even when (it was revealed) she wasn’t all that well. She would cough and choke like (possibly) she was allergic to something like pollen or cat hairs and she could be restless, if she had to sit in something that confined her like a stroller. Singing was exciting to her, songs she’d hear on the radio she would sing with the radio voices as if they were actual people in the room with her.
As an infant Daphne had been baptized in the St. Paul Missionary Church. She was taken with the family to services most Sundays and Wednesday evenings and if she got too excitable and chattered too loud Edna Mae would take her outside to wait in the car.
Everybody in the congregation loved little Daphne Dunphy. The minister blessed her, as one of Jesus’s own.
They say that Down’s children are strange-looking with those sort of flat, moon faces like a Mongol face but Daphne did not look so much like this she looked more like a doll with pretty painted-on features. Her hair was pale brown and wavy and her eyes were beautiful though small and slanted in her face and just slightly crossed so you could never tell which eye was looking at you. Her grandmother had told us, she’d been born with weak lungs and a weak heart—the Dunphys were considering whether to get heart surgery for her as doctors were suggesting, or to put their trust in the Lord.
This was a surprise to hear. You would think the heart surgery (in Columbus at the medical school) would be very expensive but Luther was saying, a “pediatric cardiologist” would operate on Daphne for no fee or for some fee that a third party would pay but Luther worried that this was some kind of welfare or federal government program he did not believe in. Whether it was his church beliefs, or Luther Dunphy himself, he would become upset over the issue of “federal subsidies” and “welfare”—the “Socialist state” which was a “godless atheistical state.”
Daphne was hard of hearing in both ears, but she’d got to the point she could read lips, almost. She would stare at your face as if she was holding her breath. No other children cared so much about any adult! The Dunphys began to worry that something was wrong when Daphne didn’t learn to crawl until she was a year old—and finally was able to walk when she was about two, if somebody had hold of her hand. She could not eat food like other children, there was some problem with chewing and swallowing. And there was low thyroid, that had to be corrected with medication (which the Dunphys did not like to give her). You could see that Daphne had “developmental” problems just by the look of her. It was sad when she got old enough to see what other children her age could do, that she could not do; this was frustrating to her, and made her cry. But she was happy just to be with her mother, and didn’t need to play with anyone else. She could recognize herself in the mirror unlike a dog or a cat can do, and liked to wave her hands and laugh at herself like a little monkey.
There was nothing unusual about the Dunphy family. A normal family (more or less) until Daphne was born. And even that—some kind of learning disability, or handicap, isn’t so unusual in a family. Luther Dunphy worked for Fischer Construction, roofing and carpentry. He and Edna Mae belonged to that evangelical church on Cross Creek Road where Luther had done a lot of the carpentry and roof work and painting and was always donating his time doing repairs. Even after he’d had that terrible accident and almost died, and was in the hospital for six weeks, soon as he got back to work he was over at the church, helping out. There were two boys and two girls older than Daphne. The older boy Luke was a worrier, his grandma said, like Luther, but a good reliable boy like his dad. The older girl Dawn had some trouble in school getting along with the other children but the younger girl was a pretty little girl quiet and well liked.