Diana was not surprised when Snow called to congratulate her on getting married and imply that he wasn't going to throw her children into the Games because she was too boring. "And on the topic of children," he said, "when are you going to have them?"
What was he, Mom, Dad, and Aunt Sarah all put together? At least Grandpa's cohort weren't so demanding, but that was because the prospect of even more great-grandbabies made them feel like they should have shuffled off this mortal coil a good decade ago. "Hopefully within the next few months," Diana said. With her finances, having children was easy.
"And how are you planning to achieve that?"
As if there were multiple ways to have a child in that timeframe. "We wrote to the adoption agency already."
"Aha. Are you looking for children of a certain demographic?"
"Sort of." Might as well be honest, he'd find out in any case. "We asked for a child from three to five and with a disability we'll be able to care for at home, since we have the resources and might as well."
"Very kind of you. How many do you want to have in total, if you do not mind me asking?"
"Probably three." They could afford far more, but Diana had the examples of her family, which said that three was more than enough.
"Very compact."
Diana immediately went to Francine once the conversation was over. "I can't believe he wants to know everything about your life," her wife said.
Diana couldn't believe Francine was her wife. "Why repair the infrastructure when you can know everything about my life?"
Francine shook her head. "Awful. So does he give his blessing?"
"Said that our family would be compact."
Francine chuckled and crouched down to pet Orange. Unlike Sooty, he always wanted to sit on everyone. "Your family is pretty small, now that I think about it. Everyone has three kids at most."
"That's because the ex-mayor in our home town does free vasectomies."
Francine stopped giving Orange belly scritches, resulting in an angry hiss and a resumption of the legally mandated cat adoration. "What, personally?"
"No. Mayors used to be elected in our town, so people elected him. He paid out of pocket to have a group of surgeons ride around in vans and do free vasectomies. So, obviously, people like my dad, and Aunt Sarah's husband, got their tubes snipped once they had the children they wanted, which freed up the money for making sure your kids actually survived. The mayor was booted out of office because he made the healthcare system look bad, but they didn't stop him from sterilizing the poor. It's a win-win - the poor can decide how many kids to have and thus do not become as poor as their parents were with seven kids, the elites don't have to worry about an army of unwanted youths nobody can afford to care for running around the streets."
"I have no idea how to react to that."
"Well, I think it's genius. Not everyone can hand out good things in a way that will make up there approve." In hindsight, her neighbourhood back in her hometown had been a good deal nicer than you'd expect from a place where people with such occupations resided. And her family had been socially ascendant even before Diana's victory, gaining qualifications and thus higher wages. It really was unfair that in order to earn more, you needed to invest in training, which took money tons of people didn't have.
"That's true."
It took so unexpectedly long for the process to go ahead, Diana had time to discuss with Adam her mental state and how that would affect her parenting at least ten times, but at last, Snow personally called to say that it would happen in…half an hour.
"Of course," Diana said, mentally throttling the president. Half an hour? They had thought they'd have weeks to get to know the child! They hadn't even started working on their room because they had thought the child would be able to pick from the empty spaces depending on their needs and wants! "Thank you very much."
On the plus side, everyone was even more indignant than her, even Sooty and Orange. Even little Owen, currently being bottle-fed by Michael on the couch (Janet earned more than him, so who went on unpaid parental leave was obvious) seemed to be angry, or maybe he thought the milk was the wrong temperature.
"How can he do such a thing!" Raisa exclaimed. "You can't just drop a child on a family like that with no warning! Did he say anything about who they are, what they'll need, how old they are?"
"No. Nothing. I think he's trying to mess with me."
"But why? Didn't he say he just wants you out of the way?"
"He did."
There wasn't much they could do when they had zero information to go off of and the child could have had any special needs imaginable. Aunt Raisa called a friend of hers and asked him to go to the mall and wait for instructions regarding what clothes to buy. Grandpa made semolina in case they were hungry. Francine fretted with Aunt Nelly. Diana petted Orange. Sooty sat on the windowsill. Michael played with Owen, but he also looked tense.
The actual child acquisition was very underwhelming. A van pulled up, the driver told Diana and Francine to sign a few forms, handed over a folder, and opened the back of the van.
"Get out!" he snapped.
Three children emerged. They were malnourished and very badly dressed. It was already October, but one wore only a pair of shorts, which revealed that they were emaciated to the point of their life being in danger, another had on an oversized T-shirt and flip-flops too small for them, and the third had a T-shirt and trackies but no shoes. Their hair must have been cut a while back, but it was messy and they obviously had lice. They were shivering in the cold morning air. The two better-fed ones were skin and bones, but the other one looked like an anatomical drawing of a skeleton. Just looking at them made Diana feel sick. How could anyone treat a child like that? WHY HADN'T ANYONE CARED THAT THE CHILD WAS ABOUT TO DIE?
By the time Diana recovered from the fact that a) there were three of them and b) clearly Snow didn't care if she found out that Community Home directors skimmed the budget worse than the municipal government, Grandpa, Aunt Nelly, and Raisa had burst into action.
"Diana, call Dr. Bryson and tell them to come here!"
Diana did just that. Grandpa and Aunt Nelly ran to set up the shower in the backyard usually used for rinsing off after dirty work. Raisa told her friend the approximate proportions of the children and that one, the one in the long T-shirt, had no arms. Francine shouted for some time at the driver, who rapidly beat a retreat, and looked inside the folder. Her face fell.
"What is it?" Diana asked.
"Their names are Helen, Alf, and Kim, and they're all six, but that's all we get. We don't even know who's who."
Could children be neglected to the point of not knowing their names? "Um, Helen?" No reaction. "Alf?" Maybe they had something wrong with their hearing? Diana wanted to punch Snow. At six, they would have been working - but Diana's children would go to school. Had it been just a few months later, Diana would have had them delay for a year, but it was still October, they would have to be prepared as quickly as possible so they didn't waste the year.
The children looked confused and terrified. The one with no arms had beige skin and black hair that was probably wavy. The emaciated one who wore only shorts had dark-brown skin, coily black hair, and now had their hands on their ears and their eyes squeezed shut as they sat on the ground, not having the energy to stand. The one in trackies had light-brown skin, epicanthic folds, and probably straight hair in a very odd hue of reddish-brown Diana couldn't believe was real. They were constantly looking around but were hunched over, shoulders on the same level as their ears.
The grandparents really were a well-oiled team. Just minutes later, the first child, the red-haired one, was washed, had their head shaved and nails trimmed, and turned out to be a boy. Since 'Helen' and 'Alf' were gendered names, that was probably the best they had to go off of to determine who was who. They'd wait for confirmation to be sure, many a parent only gave up their child once they could not afford to take care of them anymore. Perhaps the boy's parents had simply suddenly become unemployed. Or perhaps the way he didn't seem to react to sound at all meant he was deaf.
The boy now wrapped in a giant fluffy bathrobe and slippers and perched on a wicker chair with a cup of warm tea, the next one went up, the starved one, who reacted furiously to being touched, batting at Grandma with weak hands.
"Don't worry, it's perfectly normal," Grandma said, carefully washing the girl with a minimum of contact as Diana held the towels and Francine called anyone else anyone could think of. The girl was so cachectic, her bones appeared to be about to poke through her skin. "Your Dad hated being touched, too. So did you and Leonella."
The girl seemed happy to be shaved. She ran her hands over her head over and over before sitting down and rocking herself, arms wrapped around her knees, which were wider than her thighs.
"That can't be normal," Francine said, phone halfway to her ear.
"It's perfectly normal," Grandpa said. "All the kids in the family do that. I wonder what's wrong with her, aside from the starvation - didn't you ask for children with disabilities?"
"Forgive me, Grandfather, but it is not normal. I've never heard of anyone rocking themselves like that."
The last child had somewhat deformed male genitalia - they'd need to ask if this was a problem or just a difference. He seemed to be fairly adapted to his lack of arms and appeared to be the most alert of the three.
"So, who wants breakfast?"
The boy with no arms looked up, looking suspicious. The other two didn't react. When Aunt Nelly gently prodded them out of the chairs, the boy went obediently, but the girl began to shake and scratch her arms, face twisted in a grimace.
"She is just like Pablo," Grandpa said quietly to Aunt Nelly. Diana couldn't imagine Dad acting like that.
The boys devoured the semolina in seconds, the girl refused (no wonder she was so dangerously underweight - ARFIDs were considered a children's condition in poor areas for a reason) and was eventually convinced to drink some meat broth. The girl then curled up in a corner and continued to rock, the boy with no arms sat frozen and clearly had no idea what to do now, and the other boy walked up to the window and stared out of it, constantly looking back to see around the room. That was the tableau poor Dr. Bryson walked in on.
Dr. Bryson's main conclusion was that they needed to see something like ten more specialists. They plugged their little ID machine into the computer and managed to verify that the girl was Helen, had a known date of birth, and was formally registered at Community Home #12. The doctor suspected she was on the autism spectrum ("She is perfectly normal, just like my grandkids!" Grandpa insisted) but could not make any promises regarding what she could and could not do without a full checkup at the psychiatrist's. The seemingly able-bodied boy was Alf, also had a date of birth, and his records included him having become deaf after a fever aged just one and a half. The last child thus had to be Kim, even though they were not in the system, which made sense, as their parents must have seen them and realized they could not take care of them. Given the dismal infant survival rates in Community Homes (Diana suspected that she was now going to become an expert at this), it was a miracle Kim was alive.
While Kim's lack of arms was a very serious disability they would need to put in a lot of effort into adapting for, the bigger head-scratcher was the fact that they had both male and female external genitalia, which was apparently very rare.
"Do you know what their further development will look like?" Diana asked.
"We will need to do further tests."
Diana pitied the kids, who would be dragged all over the place in an attempt to figure out what exactly was going on with them. "Of course."
"I must say, it's a good thing you did. Not many would take in children of that age."
"We didn't do it to do a good thing, we did it to have a child. Children. Whatever."
"Still." They finished writing and handed Diana instructions on how to feed Helen.
Raisa's friend had arrived with clothing and a large box of blocks, so now Alf was busily working on putting something together while looking around constantly, Kim was trying their best to do likewise with their socked feet, and Helen was rocking herself in a corner as she drank more meat broth. They were very adorable in their identical orange sweaters (Kim's was sleeveless), and Diana felt like she'd die for them if she had to. What she really wanted to do was hug them, but they didn't seem interested. When she sat down next to Kim they shied away, so she got back up and joined Francine in setting up a bunch of light non-perishable snacks on the counter.
"Do they even know it's food?" Diana asked. If the Community Home staff were fine with having their charges go barefoot in October and die of starvation, she didn't want to imagine the state of the food.
"Uh, children?" Kim looked up, looking worried. They poked Alf in the leg, who also looked up. "Here's some more food, if you want." Diana distributed a few pieces of the snacks. Helen ate a few crackers eagerly but immediately went back to rocking.
"Now what?" Francine whispered to Diana. The grandparents had gone to set up rooms for the children. Diana would have to make sure Kim could climb out the window in case of fire.
"Bring in Orange?"
"But what if they hurt him?"
"Best we know now." They could have been treated in an infinite variety of ways. The sooner Diana and Francine knew their children tended to act inappropriately, or hurt themselves or each other or the cats or Yeon-Joo and Owen, or anything else, the better.
As it was, the children loved Orange. Diana and Francine showed them how to pet him, and they sat as if hypnotized by the floof. Diana felt like she should have been doing something. What did parents normally do when their six-year-old was playing on the carpet in front of them?
As the hours went by, Diana was able to draw some conclusions. The children were wary but not terrified of adults, and considered being approached a sign that something bad was going to happen. They were accustomed to indoor toilets but appeared to be confused by the showers. They were used to food insecurity and hoarded food, especially Helen, who understandably tried to create a stash of the food she could eat. They tried to take up as little space as possible and make as little noise as they could. Kim could do things with their feet many couldn't do with their hands. Alf could lip-read somewhat but had not been taught ASL - he would have to be taught both, as Kim would not be able to sign - and tried to compensate by constantly looking around. Given how Helen moved and ate, her motor skills were fine, so her disability could not have been too severe, she was probably just in shock from the sudden change. Alf either couldn't or didn't want to speak. Kim could talk fine but was very taciturn.
"Do you know why you're here?" Francine asked kindly. Alf looked confused and drew into himself. Kim tilted their head, eyebrows furrowed. "We adopted you. You're our children now. I'm Mom Francine and that's Mom Diana."
Oh God, she was actually 'Mom Diana' to someone - three someones.
"Uh-huh," Kim muttered. Diana felt her heart break. They were six years old, shouldn't they have been talking non-stop about all sorts of things?
"Are you glad you live with us now?"
Kim looked at them blankly, obviously perplexed at having been asked a question.
"What did you do before?"
"Asked people to give me money."
"What did you do with the money?"
"Gave it to Aunt Celine."
Diana was not surprised, but Kim's words still tore at her heart.
"My poor little skeletons," she whispered, reaching out to cradle Kim's sunken cheek.
There were about infinity things they needed to take care of, and the suddenness of the situation made it even more of a headache. Fortunately, there was no shortage of people willing to help out in one way or another. It was rather awkward to have the grandparents basically do everything when Diana and Francine weren't working at this moment (Diana had gotten into the habit of going to work every day and found the change strange), but Diana had to admit it was a lifesaver. While the two of them played with the children and tried to make them feel comfortable, Grandpa, Aunt Nelly, and Raisa went about their tasks with the methodical precision of an elite Peacekeeper squad.
Diana had insisted that they must get their vaccinations as soon as possible. Francine's family was well-off so that had never been an issue and Diana's family had had enough money for a partial course of vaccines for both her and Leonella (they had gotten caught up after her victory), so the thought of her children being vulnerable to everything from smallpox to polio to measles made her sick. In the unsanitary and cramped environment of the Community Home, they had, of course, already survived several dangerous illnesses. When crouching down to sit next to Helen, Diana had noticed faint tell-tale scars on her face and arms that indicated she had had smallpox. Being one of the most contagious infectious diseases it was inconceivable that the others in the Community Home would avoid it, but Kim said they had never had it. Perhaps they and Alf had simply been lucky, or had a mild case. Diana's heart hurt for the girl. What must it have been like for her, to be sick with smallpox and not have anyone around to help?
Figuring out how to best communicate with Alf was a nightmare. They had hired one of the country's foremost experts in the field to teach him (and also the rest of them) ASL, but the boy still struggled to make sense of his new environment and it was slow-going. His comprehension ability went up once the family was taught how to speak in a way that made lip-reading easier, but there still remained the problem of alerting him without touching or startling him, which scared him.
None of the children were capable of taking initiative. If told to do a task, they would do it and then continue to sit or stand. Helen especially was capable of spending hours playing with the fibres of the living-room rug. According to the psychiatrist, her capacity for learning was probably the same as that of anyone else, which was a relief because Diana had zero experience with people with intellectual disabilities (aside from throwing rocks at beggars with disabilities when she was a child), but it would take her a long time to acclimatize. Her biggest problems were with her physical health. Helen was too weak to stand for more than a few minutes, she had problems with her heart from the starvation, and the psychiatrist could only guess at how her brain had been impacted.
There was an absolute pile of things that needed to be bought for them, but they had to take it slow, because they wanted the kids to be able to choose but their mental state was such that being in a crowded store was extremely difficult (though Diana felt the same). Furniture for their rooms - each had their own room, unfortunately in the basement in the little spaces meant to be servants' quarters, but after what was most likely a large room full of cots and mattresses, a cozy little space of their own would hopefully be pleasant. They needed full sets of clothes. Finally, in late November, after the Victory Tour Diana had completely forgotten about and participated in very perfunctorily, they decided to go on a real shopping trip to buy toys as a gift for successfully going to school for a week.
Alf, of course, went to a school for the deaf. With difficulty, Kim had been slotted into a normal school where they were already popular for their ways of doing things with feet and mouth instead of hands, but with Helen, there had been arguments and psychiatrists until the administration had agreed to accept her together with her sibling. It had gone much better than anyone expected. In class, Helen (still underweight, but not in danger of death anymore) was quiet but attentive, and that was all the teachers cared about. That she spent recess rocking back and forth in a quiet corner was irrelevant to them.
Francine, the better arguer, had gone to their teachers and begged them to not use corporal punishment. Diana remembered well the ruler connecting with her knuckles and could not imagine how her children would react, she had specifically gotten together with Francine when they had begun to seriously discuss the idea of adoption and decided that there would be absolutely no hitting or raised voices, as with kids from Community Homes, that would likely have no effect. The teachers hadn't been able to directly defy the spouse of a Victor, but Diana still worried. As it was, the kids said they had never been punished, but that was probably because they were the most terrifyingly well-behaved children Diana had ever seen. On one hand, she wished they could thaw and run around and play like other children, but she was also worried about them becoming uncontrollable out of overcompensation.
For now, even in a toy store, they stood close to Diana and Francine, touched nothing, and looked around wide-eyed. Various relatives and friends had dropped off this or that, but Diana and Francine saw how they reacted to being given brand-new things and had decided on this.
"Alright," Francine said, "we'll all pick two toys now, alright?"
Diana instantly gravitated towards a gigantic plush blob. Helen agreed with her. Diana found that it was the easiest to interact with the girl, whose behaviour made the most sense. "Which one do you want, little skeleton?" There was an entire shelf of blobs in various colours and sizes.
"The big grey one!" It was as tall as Helen.
Big grey one it was.
Over at the section with dolls, Kim wanted to get one but couldn't decide. "I want one like this," they said tentatively, pointing their chin at a couple with more adult-like proportions. "But not a boy or a girl. I have that."
Unfortunately, non-binary dolls could usually be found in approximately the same amounts as non-binary people. Diana went through the shelf and found nothing, but then an idea entered her head. "You know," she said, "there's an entire store where all the toys are like you."
Kim's eyes widened. So far, by far their favourite toy was a butterfly Francine's uncle had crocheted that had different wings because it was a gynandromorph. Kim was hyperaware of their difference even at this early age because they had constantly been teased by other children over it in the Community Home. Diana didn't have the faintest idea how atypical genitalia were something one could tease someone for, but children could latch on to the oddest things. At least Kim seemed happy to be the way they were, going by their love for the intersex butterfly.
Diana told Francine they'd pop over to another store. Alf and Helen seemed relieved they weren't being dragged somewhere else as well. Diana went with her child to a store that sold scientific equipment and had a little section of science-themed toys.
"See?" she said, holding up a plush cholera vibrio with cute little eyes and a mouth. "This is a bacterium. Bacteria aren't girls or boys, they split in two to make more bacteria."
"They make us sick," Kim said.
"This one does, yes."
"Cool." They poked the toy with their shoulder. "I want it."
Diana let them look around. The kids all found it difficult to make independent decisions and even more difficult to voice them, so when Kim began to stand next to a crate and half-heartedly stretch their head towards it before drawing back, she walked over. "You like this worm?" It was a life-sized plush tapeworm. This would be the perfect gift for a friend of hers who was a doctor.
"How do worms have babies?"
"It's different for different worms, but this one - see how it has segments? Well, these segments have both boy and girl parts, and when it wants to have babies, segments fully develop one set of parts, and it basically makes its own baby worms." Diana had prepared herself for a lot, but as it usually went, she had ended up with something completely unexpected. Like the mating habits of tapeworms.
"Will I be able to make my own babies?"
"No, humans don't work that way. You might be able to have babies like boys do or like girls do, we won't know until you're older." Kim's condition was called ovotesticular syndrome. Their karyotype was 46,XX/46,XY (which could result in anything from a typical physical presentation to Kim), making them a chimera. If they did eventually end up capable of having biological children, it was far more likely that their ovaries would be the ones to be functional.
Kim nodded thoughtfully. "Is this worm actually this big?"
"Yes. It lives inside humans who don't cook their food properly."
Kim's eyes widened. The kids had all arrived with pinworm infections, resulting in the entire household taking anthelmintics prophylactically, but those weren't long enough to wrap around the entire family.
Diana hadn't thought that raising children while being rich was so much work. She had thought the upper-class fashion involved having someone else do most of the work while one spouse worked and the other attended functions, but Diana hadn't realized that simply having a giant pile of money only removed one stressor.
First, there was the fact that there were three of them. Helen, Alf, and Kim were all different people, they had different wants and needs, they wanted to be treated differently. Due to their upbringing, they did not act like most children, though by now, they had made great strides towards it. Helen especially was an absolutely normal six-year-old, though Diana and Francine's families disagreed massively on that.
Somehow, Diana was not surprised to discover that there wasn't a single normal person in her family. For two generations, autism had been drawn towards autism, with poor Francine the odd spouse out.
With Alf, there was the hurdle of communicating with him. There were no hearing aids that could compensate for brain damage, which meant ASL for everyone (except Kim) it was. The entire family spent hours poring over books to learn what Alf picked up in minutes at school. They also got together with other parents of students from his school, where it was glaringly obvious who had deafness run in the family and who had had to learn to sign in the past few years. Diana noticed a rather unsurprising trend - there were quite a few working-class children who would have been able to hear with a fairly basic hearing aid.
Diana had never known that there was an entire deaf community with its own cultural institutions. Alf would be able to attend plays that were entirely in sign language and dances where music was specially picked for the vibrations to be easily felt.
"Hey, Mom Diana?" Alf asked verbally one day as they were digging in the garden.
"Yes?" Diana signed, turning around to face her son. Alf had been taught to vocalize so that he could communicate that way if necessary, and he used it to get people's attention when their back was turned.
Alf put down his spade. "If I didn't have that fever when I was little, would I be deaf?"
"No."
"So I wouldn't have been friends with Ursula and Chris?"
"I suppose not." Diana hoped she hadn't mangled that.
"Mom, you're doing it wrong, this is how you do it. Suppose not. See?"
"Thank you."
"Why did you adopt us?"
"Mom Francine and I wanted children, so we wrote to the adoption agency and asked for one. And they gave us three!"
"Why?"
"Well, because they knew you'd make such good siblings. How can you have Alf without Helen and Kim? It makes no sense."
Alf's face gave away nothing. In sign language, exaggerated facial expressions were important, but Alf struggled with showing emotion. He simply picked the spade back up and resumed digging.
By the time spring came around and Helen turned seven (on her insistence, there was no party) Diana tended to forget the kids hadn't always been hers, but there was always something to remind her. Sometimes, when playing with dolls, the children would come up with horrific scenarios ranging from polio epidemics to maniacs buying children Diana and Francine could only shake their heads at when they got home from work. They worked in different firms - Diana was with a company that made electronic display boards, and Francine was an IT person with the Steelworks, the company that most people had no idea was owned by a person originally from Six.
"So what's Uncle Archie doing?" Diana idly stacked some blocks. Francine had taken Helen and Alf to the playground, but Kim had a cold (as soon would everyone including the cats).
"Taking out the bodies." Kim moved a doll around the floor with their foot as ably as anyone could with their hand. "Uncle Archie is like Yeon-Joo. He used to be Aunt Archie and sells children to buy medicine."
What the fuck. "Who's dead?" Yeon-Joo had recently begun to declare that she was actually a girl. Diana was surprised that children understood gender at that age, she herself had never given any thought to what parts she had or being called a girl until puberty. Maybe normal children were different. As it was, everyone had simply shrugged and accepted it, except Helen, who had not yet grasped the importance of talking about her cousin differently and thus refused to have anything to do with something being different than before.
"Jamie. He suffocated."
"That's sad."
Kim held two dolls close to each other. "He's putting the body in the van. The driver is drinking kefir with the orderly."
Diana doubted that had been kefir. "Who's the orderly?"
"The orderly has a clipboard and checks off dead people. Charlotte died at the hospital and they gave her organs to sick people."
"That's normal," Diana said. "If someone's heart or lungs or liver are broken, they can get one from a dead person."
"Will is alive. Dr. Medical Student inflated his lungs."
During the polio epidemic two years ago, medical students had been sent to hospitals to manually ventilate patients. There had even been cases of patients being taken in for free. "A medical student is not a doctor. They're a future doctor."
"I want to be a doctor. They're powerful."
To a Community Home child who had needed to beg strangers to have shoes to wear in the winter, a doctor was an almost fantastical figure. "You could be a doctor, like Aunt Leonella." Surely not all specializations required arms.
"Nobody can afford a doctor. Not even Aunt Celine, and she's rich. She limps and coughs. She's almost a grownup, she's fifteen."
What? Hadn't the kids referred to her as the director? "Is she the director?"
"The director is on sabbatical in warmer climates," Kim recited. "Aunt Celine is in charge."
Sometimes Diana thought she and Francine had grown up in different worlds, but they and the kids had grown up in different universes.
It was strange how politics, the Games, reshufflings up there - all that faded in the light of work and family obligations, such as regular fights with Francine (where the children couldn't hear or see, of course) over whether yet another allegedly atypical behaviour of Helen was bad or not.
"I understand it's an autistic trait!" Diana hissed, wanting to beat her head against the wall. "But so what? It's just her. Nobody likes being in crowded spaces, she's just seven years old, she'll get used to it with time."
"A seven-year-old having a meltdown in a grocery store, though?"
"Just give her time! What do you propose we do? She already meets Cassidy every week." Cassidy was an expert on ASD who taught Helen various tips and tricks on how to make existence easier. Some of them were revelatory to Diana. She had never understood what 'looking someone in the eyes' meant and had instead looked to their side or above their head, but apparently, all you had to do was look at the point between the eyes! How had she never figured that out? Though even Grandpa had spent his entire life looking at the floor, so she wasn't alone here.
Somehow, they managed to go around in circles the exact same way every single time. Diana suspected that even Adam was exasperated when he tried to get them to see the other's point of view.
Diana wasn't sure how, but the conversation moved to Francine's opinion that the house was no place for children to grow up. Diana actually agreed, the extreme isolation that required half an hour to get to the playground was hardly conducive to cultivating independence, but she was in no mood to agree with Francine.
"And so?" she snapped. "We'd never be allowed to move."
Francine was a much more patient person than Diana and did not blame her for that, instead saying that the children should be enrolled in programs where they'd get to socialize outside of school.
"Why are you saying that like an accusation?'
Francine held a hand to her forehead. "I'm not saying it as an accusation! I just think that it's not good that they're reliant on a grownup to go to the playground." Diana had suggested that they could go alone perfectly well, but that had been strictly vetoed. No independent bus usage for the kids until they were ten. In Francine's opinion, they lacked the required skills.
"How are programs going to help with that?"
"It might make them capable of communicating normally and asking for help instead of standing like a post and waiting for the consequences."
If school hadn't helped there, nothing would, but Diana was tired of arguing. "So what do you think they should do?"
"First, they need to learn how to swim."
That was how next Sunday, Diana, Francine, Michael, and Aunt Sarah took the five cousins to the nearest pool. Given the pool's presence in an upper-class area, it was not the rectangular prism hole in the ground filled with water Mom and Dad had taken Diana and Leonella to a few times so that they wouldn't drown if it came to it.
"Can I go there?" Alf gestured with his chin at a large slide while signing.
"First you need to pass the swim test."
"How do I pass the swim test?"
Diana was still sometimes struck by how much fun being rich was. She could just pay a lifeguard to instruct the kids in actual correct swimming instead of muddling through on her own! Diana and Francine sat on the side of the pool and watched the three splash around in the shallow end. She had worried about Helen not liking the water touching her head - trying to get her to wash her head was an ordeal, good thing she insisted on having a very short buzz-cut and thus her hair could be washed quickly - but Helen was the first to pick up swimming and seemed happy. It was actually Alf, who Diana had thought wouldn't have any problems, who seemed to be neutral about the entire thing.
But if Helen was having fun, Kim was shocking the lifeguards - multiple ones. The young man had told Diana and Francine that he'd try to teach them to tread water so they wouldn't drown but made no promises, but underestimating Kim's legs was never a good idea.
"Mom Francine, Mom Diana, can you go without arms?" they called out as they swam by without any flotation devices.
"No, we can't!" Francine said. "Wow, Kim, you're so fast!"
"Your child must have extremely strong abdominal muscles," another lifeguard, a young woman, said. "Not to mention their legs. Do they do any other sports?"
Francine shrugged. "We just try to encourage them to be independent and do things on their own?" she offered.
"You certainly succeeded. Do you know if they'd be interested in joining a swimming club?"
"Kim! Get over here!" Francine called out. Kim swam over and stopped, standing next to them. "Do you want to join a swimming club?"
"I want to join a swimming club!" Helen shouted.
"Of course," Francine said, clearly stunned by Helen actually asking for something.
"I don't," Alf said.
"Like a team?" Kim asked.
"Yes, a team, a para-swimming team. You know what that is?"
"Swimming for people with disabilities?" They had taken the kids to watch para-soccer, but none of them had voiced any interest - or perhaps hadn't wanted to voice it. Diana still kept on forgetting that their children were still not used to asking for help.
"Exactly. You're so fast, the lifeguards think you could win races if you practiced a lot!"
Kim grinned widely.
"Can I not join?" Alf grumbled.
Diana chuckled.
A/N: ARFID stands for avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder - i.e. picky eating to the point where it is having a negative impact on your life. For some people it's the result of anxiety, for others it's part of their autism, and there's many other causes.
Helen really should have been hospitalized on arrival, but in a country where famine happens every so often, any doctor knows how to treat starvation.
It is in fact possible to swim without arms. Kim will compete in the S5 classification, like Zheng Tao.