One
Conjoined twins
Tippi and Grace are joined at the hip – no, not in the usual sense of inseparable friends; they are literally conjoined at the pelvis, sharing blood and bone. They’ve been dubbed many things – freaks, fiends, monsters, mutants, a two-headed demon, grotesque, a person’s nightmare, devil’s spawn – malice and fear and ignorance colliding in a spew of abusive terms.
Each and every pair of conjoined twins is uniquely different, but …the details of our bodies remain a secret unless we want to tell.
However these two do want to tell: ‘It probably sounds like a prison sentence, but we have it better than others who live with fused heads or hearts, or only two arms between them. It really isn’t so bad. It’s how it’s always been. It’s all we know.’
Tippi and Grace have two heads, two hearts, two sets of lungs and kidneys, four arms. Their intestines begin apart then merge and below that they are one, with just one pair of functioning legs.
The principal narrator of One (by Irish writer Sarah Crossan) is Grace. With masterly understatement she describes the embarrassment of being constantly on parade during medical examinations, of being physically present at each other’s therapy sessions, of being ogled in the street by strangers. And the resentment of having to share each other’s sickbed, of gaining weight because of her sister’s appetite, of feeling drunk or high because of Tippi’s addictions.
Because the line between independence and co-dependence is a fine one. And Tippi is determined to go her own way, being so much more egocentric than her twin:
When Tippi wants something she takes it with two hands and with a body that belongs to us both. I know this should make me angry, but all I feel is envy because I so wish I could be more selfish sometimes too.
When at aged 16 they are finally allowed to go to school, they are surrounded by a peer group aspiring to be somebody – stars, celebrities. For them ‘normal’ is the road to nothingness. They seek to be different, to stand out. But for Tippi and Grace, normal is the Holy Grail and only those without it know its value. It is all I have ever wanted and I would trade weird or freakish or spectacular or astonishing for normal any day of the week.
They’ve always known the statistics are against them; in their early weeks their mother was told they wouldn’t see their second birthday. But they have defied expectation, they’ve survived to their teens. Now though, various physiological incidents remind them that, much as they might protest to their health team that they are ‘OK’, their bodies are telling them they are not.
As time ticks by the chances of us suddenly ceasing to be get quite high. That’s just a fact that will never go away.
Then tragedy strikes. Flu puts a huge strain on Grace’s heart and both girls rely more and more on Tippi’s heart working for both of them. Until that too shows signs of stress. If nothing is done, they will both die … soon. Serious ethical dilemmas present. With no dress rehearsal possible.
The risks are colossal. But are they better faced separate or together? And who’s to say?
When conjoined twins are separated it’s deemed a success so long as one of them lives. For a while. And that, to me, is the saddest thing I know about how people see us.
Ultimately this is a story about human love and resilience. It’s a YA book and written in a curious poetic style with sentences and paragraphs of varying lengths, neither of which would normally appeal to me, but of course, the subject did. Although it’s spread over 430 pages it’s read in a few hours, and what a moving and sympathetic way to introduce such important concepts to a young readership. I’m not surprised it has attracted so many literary awards.