The Importance of Being Kennedy. Laurie Graham

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       THREE CATEGORIES OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

      Baby Patricia was born in May of 1924 but she was a month old before her daddy even saw her. We all went to meet him off the train from New York. Rosie with a painting she'd done for him, Joe tormenting Jack in the back of the car, arms and legs flying, and Kick and Euny hanging out of the window like a pair of ragamuffins shouting, ‘Daddy! We got another sister!’

      Rosie was being tutored at home at that time. They'd tried her at the Edward Devotion where the boys went and they'd tried her at the parish school but she couldn't keep up. She got top marks for good behaviour and effort and a special mention for her dancing, but it was too much for her. She'd toil home on her chubby little legs, dragging behind the bassinet, hardly able to keep her eyes open, school fatigued her so.

      Mrs K did a lot of reading up about slow children and then she took her to see a special doctor in New Jersey, the big expert, Dr Henry Herbert Goddard. She came back wearing her tough-nut face, the one I've seen on her a thousand times, when any other woman would break down and cry.

      She said, ‘It isn't good news, Nora, but I'm determined we can beat this. We just have to make greater efforts with Rosie.’

      She had it all written down, what this Dr Goddard had said. Three categories of feeble-mindedness. Idiots, who were the worst, then imbeciles and then morons. As far as he could estimate Rosie was only a moron.

      Mrs K said, ‘At least she's in the top category. Dr Goddard says idiots have to wear diapers all their lives.’

      Well, I had my Rosie out of diapers before she was two.

      She said, ‘The problem is this, morons are harder to care for because they look so normal. As they grow up they have to be watched every minute or they get into all kinds of difficulties. Do you see what I mean?’

      I didn't see what she meant at all.

      I said, ‘I know she's the sunniest child I ever looked after.’

      ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘She's amiable and eager to please and when she's older men will take advantage.’

      I said, ‘Well, that's a long way down the road. She's only six.’

      ‘But something to think about nonetheless,’ she said. ‘We have to keep her safe from men, Nora, because she must never have babies.’

      I couldn't see why. She was just grand with Euny and baby Pat. And if Herself was anything to go by too much brains and education only made for a restless mother.

      She said, ‘We have to develop what little gifts she has.’

      I said, ‘She has the gift of contentment and that's no small thing. It's like a monkey house upstairs when they come in from school but Rosie'll sit in a corner and play for hours making a tea party with the dolly cups and saucers.’

      She said, ‘I know, dear heart, I know. She's a good girl. But I'm determined to get her reading and writing, whatever Dr Goddard says. Perseverance pays dividends. And you're very good with her, Nora. I don't know what we'd do without you.’

      Fidelma said, ‘She said that? You should have asked her for a raise.’

      But Mrs K didn't give raises, only job security, and variety, because those Kennedy children were like a box of Candy Allsorts. Young Joe was tall and strong, like his daddy, and Pat looked likely to turn out the same way. Kick was thicker set but she had Mr K's freckles, same as Jack did. Euny was the one that most favoured Mrs K, especially when she smiled. Not that that happened so often. She was as skinny as a string bean, wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Euny just lived on her nerves.

      And Rosie was the beauty. She had milky skin and lovely dimpled arms you could just have taken a bite out of.

      ‘Fat,’ Mrs K called it. ‘We must watch Rosie's line or she'll end up looking like a tubby little peasant.’

      Mrs K kept herself as trim as a candle and she expected everybody else to do the same. The children were weighed regular as clockwork and Rosie was the only one who ever got a black mark. Jack had to have extra malt and cod liver oil, to build him up, and Euny got extra bread and potatoes to try and put a bit of flesh on her, but many a time Rosie had her rations cut, to try and slim her down. I didn't approve of it, myself. I like to see a child enjoying her food, not corrected just for the way God made her.

      I had all the girls in matching outfits. They looked a picture, lined up ready to go to Mass on Sunday morning. Wool coats with bonnets and muffs for the cold weather and cotton print dresses in the summer, with white ankle socks and Mary Janes. But when we went to the seashore they wore any old rags, just shorts and vests, first up, best dressed, and they ran around barefoot, brown as tinkers.

      When I first worked for the Kennedys we'd go to a different place every year, but once we'd tried Hyannis we took the same cottage there every year.

      Mrs K's driver said, ‘Know why we're going to Hyannis again? Because Your Man was turned down for the Country Club at Cohasset.’

      I said, ‘And how would you know a thing like that?’

      ‘Because Herself told me,’ he said, ‘when I was driving her into town. She said it was because the Cohasset doesn't take Catholics but if you ask me it's more likely they'd heard about him running whiskey. And do you know why he got in at Hyannis? Because they're not so toffee-nosed down there. They saw the colour of his money and didn't bother to enquire where he got it.’

      I said, ‘So they're no more particular than you are, Danny Walsh.’

      ‘No, well,’ he said. ‘I'm only saying.’

      You have to be very careful with hired help. I wouldn't want servants if they were giving them away with Oxydol.