This summer, Krista went into convulsions for six terrifying hours. A battery of tests revealed nothing abnormal, and doctors remain mystified. They’re not even sure which child was actually sick. Tatiana threw up as Krista’s convulsions started. Later, however, Tatiana played while her sister’s seizures continued. “Their brains are so intertwined,” says Louise, “it could have come from Tati’s side and Krista got the effects of it.” Krista seems to learn more quickly, even more so, her mother believes, since the seizures. Tatiana is the more vocal. Krista is demanding. Tatiana is more laid back. They fight when tired, sometimes biting or scratching. Fortunately, from a logistical point of view, they are united in their love of The Big Comfy Couch, a children’s television show.
Ask Simms if the girls realize they are different from other children and she pauses. “I don’t think so,” she says, though she knows that day is coming. “At this point, they’re just little girls trying to live like little girls.” Sometimes, she concedes, as Rosa and Christopher tear about the house, “they’ll kind of look at you: ‘Why can’t I do that?’ ” Still, the houseful of older children is good at including them in their play. “We want them to feel as normal as possible,” Simms says, “because they are normal in every sense of the word, except that they’re stuck to somebody else.”
Not everyone agrees. Doctors, ethicists and the public have all weighed in. Among the most critical is Canadian physician Dr. Ken Walker, who writes under the pen name Dr. Gifford-Jones. Last year, in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, he said Simms made a “monumental error” in not aborting the twins. He said the birth was “a cruel experiment and will cost taxpayers millions of dollars in medical and social costs.” Opinions were divided in subsequent letters to the journal. One called Walker’s opinions “refreshing.” Others were outraged. Should doctors have forced an abortion, asked a doctor from Germany. Is cost the determinant for treatment? “Who is qualified to ascertain the quality of their life?” he asked. Simms, curled up on the couch, cocooned with her clan, has no interest in unsolicited second opinions. “I believe in what I believe in,” she says flatly. “Everybody else can just kiss my butt.”
The opening sentences of The Girls continues with Rose’s what-ifs and never-weres: “Never a private talk. Or solo walk. I’ve never climbed a tree or faded into a crowd.” This, too, is Krista’s and Tatiana’s fate, God willing, their mother knows. It is not in Simms’s power to change such
limitations. It is not clear she defines them as such. The differences are what they are, she says, and what they were meant to be.
All she can offer her girls is the greatest gift she has, and hope one day Krista and Tatiana can look back and know that it is enough. “So many things I’ve never done,” says Rose, in Lori Lansens’ wonderful, make-believe book, “but oh, how I’ve been loved.”
