“Where? Chapel Hill? They’ve got Norms fighting each other to get in. They don’t take Crips. Even if your mother or sister went along to take care of you, they don’t take Crips.”

“I got into Cross-town High, and they did-n’t take handi-capped peo-ple ei-ther. Un-til me.”

“Okay. Maybe. I mean, I hope you’re right. My mother went to Chapel Hill; she makes it sound like paradise, so it would be great for you to be the first Crip at Chapel Hill.” She sounds conciliatory but not convinced. She picks at the dry white rice that rings the stew. “If they have any sense, they’ll take you and educate you to be a politician or head of a company or an army general—to use your executive ability!”

“What a-bout you? Next year you’ll be in Norm-al school. You should try to get into col-lege.”

“Actually, I probably will, if I live through high school. My mother’s college just built a new campus with ramps and stuff. They told her they’ll take me, since she’ll be right there. Plus, they know I’m a card-carrying genius.”

I ignore that. “What will you stu-dy?”

She digs under the stew to excavate a trench of rice. “History, economics, all that. You know, I want to figure everything out.”

“And be a pro-fessor, like your pa-rents.”

“I don’t think so. They don’t give Crips jobs that other people want. But I won’t go to a workshop, and I won’t be one of those inspirational crippled artists or writers. So I’ll probably drag out school as long as I can, then maybe tutor something at home. But mostly I’ll spend my last years as an ornament to society. Luckily, my family can give me a comfortable life. Odds are, I won’t live long enough to go into a nursing home.”

I am jolted.

“It’s no big deal. Life’s a terminal illness, with onset at birth. Everyone’s terminally ill.” Her flip delivery seems to cover something serious. “I just have a clearer idea of how it’ll be. One winter I’ll get pneumonia and the antibiotics won’t work. That’s what happens to ‘Jerry’s kids,’ you know. Don’t you watch the muscular dystrophy telethon? You CP types do check out the competition, right?”

I do watch it, actually, but I can’t connect her with those kids Jerry Lewis is trying to cure. ‘Jerry’s kids’ are so tragic and sad. She’s such a character. If Jerry offers her a cure, she might just turn him down flat! I don’t know what to say. I wait for her to fill the silence with one of her lectures, but it doesn’t come. I watch her untouched stew go cold. A shiny film forms on the top.