Summary

The narrator recalls a childhood friend calling her mother “a cripple” (105). The narrator was shocked as she had never heard anyone refer to her mother this way. Her grandmother always referred to her mother’s condition “as a birth injury or a forceps injury” (105, McCracken’s italics). Her mother did not like being called disabled, but did not mind “the now-outdated handicap” (106, McCracken’s italics). When the narrator learned her mother hated the use of the word “lame to mean bad,” she was surprised (106, McCracken’s italics).

Despite her condition, her mother’s body “was just her body” (107). She never regarded it as something to be transcended. The narrator hates the idea that a character’s personality can be explained by their past. Her mother always spoke fondly of her own past. Her body was never an obstruction to her life.

The narrator...