Dwarf: A Memoir (23 page)

On Christmas Day, while my family gathered in the kitchen and the living room, I asked
to be excused to my bedroom. The pop in my left thigh had grown into a dull ache and
then a hard throb that made me grit my teeth in pain. For days, despite the sharp,
twisting sensations, I continued to push through it, do my leg lifts, and walk around
the house with my crutches. But the sensation soon grew too excruciating to bear.
I had to go to the hospital.

“Now?” Mom asked. This was so unlike me that it worried her.

“Right now.”

Dad joined her in the doorway.

“Can you move?”

“No.”

“Want me to pick you up and put you in the car?”

“No! Don’t move my leg. Something’s really wrong.”

“That’s it. I’m calling an ambulance,” my mother said.

“An
ambulance
?” my father and I said in unison.

“You don’t act like this for it not to be something serious. If something’s wrong,
we’re not making it worse.”

The paramedics arrived, and the fire department trailed behind them. It was such a
spectacle that you would have thought I’d had a heart attack.

“I should have just gone in the car,” I said, shifting my weight while they loaded
me onto a stretcher.

One paramedic put up his hand and motioned for me to stop. “Let us do this,” he said.

“I’m not dying,” I replied. “My leg just hurts.”

“It’s for your own safety.”

I threw my hands up, annoyed at the fuss, and gave in, allowing them to help me. It
all felt so silly, given what I’d already been through. Soon, I was back at the hospital
under an X-ray machine when Errol flew through the door.

“Do you want some pain medication?” His tone was so urgent that I’m sure if I had
asked for a bottle of scotch, he would have complied.

“No,” I said slowly, puzzled. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure you don’t want
anything
?” he asked again, his eyes practically bulging out of his head.

“No, I’m good. What’s going on?”

“Well,” he began, scurrying around the room, “we need to get you into surgery as soon
as possible.”

“What? Why?”

He clipped my X-ray onto the light board and flipped a switch. The bright fluorescent
light cast a creepy glow in the radiology room. He pointed at a spot on the picture.

“Because of
this
.”

I stared at the image of my femur. My thigh bone, the strongest one in the whole human
body, had literally snapped in half. It now resembled a broken letter V turned awkwardly
on its side.

Several hours later, I woke up covered in a thick, hard plaster. One leg was free,
but my right leg and both of my hips were trapped. There was a hole cut out around
my stomach so I could breathe without restriction, but I felt hot and itchy all over.
I was in a body cast. There was no other way to stabilize my severely broken femur,
Errol would later tell me. I looked at the clock on
the wall in the recovery room and then it dawned on me. I had only months until graduation.
As I watched the second hand circle the clock, I began to feel panicked about the
time slipping away. How on earth would I walk across the stage at graduation now?

At home the next day, I was in bed on my back.

Again.

I asked Mom to strap a sand weight around my left ankle in order to keep up on the
exercises as best I could. I lifted my left leg high in the air. While watching TV,
I used an elastic resistance band to build up the muscles in my arms and I continued
to eat chocolate Power Bars to keep up my strength. While Sandy went over corrections
on my English exams, I clenched the muscles inside my cast and held them for five
counts of ten. I did this every day for three or four months until, finally, it was
time to get the body cast sawed off.

While I was home with my tutor, a reporter visited my assistant principal, Mr. Kamataris,
at Marlborough High. He was covering a story about a rising star athlete at MHS, but
ended up learning about me in the process. So he decided to do a story about me, too.
A few days after the article about my surgeries (and my goal to walk at graduation)
ran in our local paper, the cards started rolling in. Dozens of people I’d never met
before were reaching out to wish me good luck and offered their prayers. I read each
one with tears welled in my eyes. The support from total strangers was yet another
nudge to keep going toward my goal.

Then one day, tucked inside a white envelope, arrived the biggest push of all: my
acceptance letter to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I was going to be
a college girl! But first I had a graduation to walk in and that meant making up for
lost time doing physical therapy, starting with the stepper in my room.

The machine was an eyesore, hulking over me and taking up way too much space in my
room. Working out on the stepper was the most difficult exercise in my entire repertoire,
but it was among the most important as well. If I could conquer the stepper, I could
build my strength and stamina and— ultimately— walk longer distances in less time
and in less pain. At first, I wasn’t up for the challenge. I covered the machine with
a towel and pretended it didn’t exist. But it continued to taunt me, so I asked my
dad to move it deep into a corner. That didn’t work for long. I was literally in countdown
mode for graduation and time was running out.

I had no choice— I had to confront the stepper. I pulled myself up onto the pedals
and gripped the handlebars. I’ll do three steps, I thought, and just see how it goes.
On my first attempt, I could barely push the pedals down and complete a single step.
From the tops of my feet to the backs of my thighs, my lower body screamed with pain,
and I was quickly out of breath. I was frustrated, but the feeling of being defeated
by an inanimate object made my motivation stronger.

“Dad!” I hollered after my first attempt on the stepper. He walked down the hall to
my room. “Can you move this next to my bed?”

Dad looked confused. “It will be in your way.”

“Exactly,” I replied with a smile.

Every day, literally unable to avoid it, I stepped onto the machine. The tight, sharp
pain began at my ankles again, crawled over my feet, and spread up my shins and thighs.
Before long, it took over my hips. My goal was to stay on the stepper for the duration
of an entire song.

The first three days I lasted no more than than thirty seconds.

By the end of my first week I had made it to a minute, but I
stumbled off of the machine and fell. I could barely move. As I lay limp on the floor
with my face pressed into the rug, I thought about how little time I had left and
I started to cry. I had reached my breaking point. If I couldn’t walk at graduation,
I would let everyone down, from my parents and friends to Errol to those who prayed
for me and, most important, myself.

“This energy for crying could be used on the machine, you know,” Mom said from the
doorway. She reached a hand toward me and helped me to my feet. I wiped my eyes and
sat down on the bed. “Thanks, Mr. Miyagi,” I cracked. “I’ll remember that.”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me. Get angry with yourself for giving up.”

“Who said I was giving up?”

“You’re on your bed crying. Looks like you’ve given up to me.”

Her calmness infuriated me. “I’m in pain!” I shouted. “I’m allowed to cry when I’m
in pain. I’m allowed to have one damn moment of weakness! You think this is easy?
It’s
not
, Mom! It hurts and I’m so tired of it. Exercising is all I do and I’ll never be able
to stop. I’ll have to work hard to keep my body functional for my
entire
life!”

Silently, she left my room. A moment later, she returned with a straw, still in its
wrapper, and a cup filled with pepperoncinis.

“Since you won’t take pain pills, eat these peppers to help boost your adrenaline,”
she said. “And if the peppers don’t help with the pain, use the straw to
suck it up
and get back on that stepper.”

I had a long hard road out of hell and while I hated to admit it, Mom was right. Crying
wouldn’t help. It would only distract from my ultimate goal, and I needed to make
good on what I told Errol when we first met. I
could
handle this pain. Each day from then on out, I stepped up to the machine, my mouth
burning
from the peppers, and turned on my music. I kept the straw Mom gave me on my bedside
table as I reminder that the big day was approaching fast.

In the final week before graduation, I blasted through my goal of stepping for a whole
song, and pushed myself through extended remixes. Mom would pass my door while making
calls to plan my graduation party, flashing a thumbs-up as she walked by. I was so
ready to walk across the stage and grab hold of my diploma— and my new life.

Graduation day was hot and breezy and I wore my school-issued white cap and gown.
Once we arrived at school, I noticed that nearly everyone had puffy paint designs
on their caps. I did not. They had symbols and quotes from the school clubs they belonged
to and sports they played— memories of time spent in high school. I had nothing. I
should have taped a few pins to my cap or
something
, I thought as I watched my decorated classmates crossing the stage. Then it was my
turn. I stood up, forgot about my plain white cap, and slowly walked to the middle
of the aisle in the auditorium. Screams and cheers erupted from the bleachers and
I felt myself blush.

I hoped Mike was in the crowd like he promised. I knew Dr. Mortimer was there with
his wife, Lorraine, and their kids, Daniel and Sophie. My uncles and aunts were there,
and I was sure my mom and dad were standing up cheering. I looked at the rows of students
who’d already walked and three boys I knew stood up and clapped. After them, the entire
row came to their feet. Then, like a wave beginning at a baseball game, the entire
section stood, clapped, and cheered me on. I watched them for as long as I could until
I had tears in my eyes and the whole scene was just a loud, roaring blur. I had to
move slowly, one foot in front of the other, down the lengthy aisle. It took me much
longer than the other
graduates, who easily breezed across the stage for their diplomas. I began to worry
that I was taking too long, but the crowd’s reaction reassured me.

I had a standing ovation.

Their cheers made me feel like I was ten feet tall as the principal came down off
the stage and greeted me at the end of the aisle. Steadily, I reached out my hand,
gripping my crutch with the other, and took my diploma. I had accomplished my goal
and walked at my graduation. I won.

The moment I got home, I called Mike. His voice was groggy and soft and I immediately
knew he’d been sleeping— he was doing even more of that these days— and had never
come to watch me walk. I was furious.

“Where
were
you?” I shouted, my eyes filling with hot, angry tears. “You said you were coming—
you promised! I
walked
, Mike. I actually walked to get my diploma and you missed it!”

“Oh, sorry. What time is it?”

I was stunned. What did he mean,
what time is it
? First he didn’t go to prom with me, and now he’d missed the most important moment
in my life?

“I’ll be over for your graduation party,” he said distractedly. His promise had no
life behind it and the words died in the air between us. “I’m coming. Give me a half
hour, babes. Love you.”

Mike never showed up.

I didn’t know what hurt worse, my tired, shaky muscles as I stood in the kitchen,
or my heart.

College Girl

The “after” picture! With Mom after my surgeries were completed, at the same spot
in the kitchen where she’d taken my “before” photos.

T
HE
U
NIVERSITY OF
Massachusetts campus in North Dartmouth looked like a futuristic concrete maze. The
tops of all the buildings were flat, and rumor had it that the architect had envisioned
flying cars being able to land on them by the twenty-first century. In 1999, my mom
and I drove down to the campus, which was surrounded by the appropriately named Ring
Road.

We arrived on a rainy day. The classroom buildings and dorms looked damp, dreary,
and uninviting— not at all what I’d been
picturing. I had everything I would need for the next nine months packed tightly into
Mom’s red Jeep Grand Cherokee (she had given me the Pontiac): new bedding, a shower
caddy, pictures of me and Mike, canned food, a mini microwave, a few dishes, and lots
of my favorite outfits. I drove close behind her through campus toward my dorm.

The rooms in my dorm building were small, and mine— a single amid mostly doubles—
was even smaller. The furniture that came with it reminded me of the sickly chairs
at Children’s Hospital. A bed, desk, and bureau were crammed against one of the light
blue concrete walls, and the rug was thin and brown, like the underside of a soggy
pizza slice. As we stood in the doorway, Mom dropped my bags on the floor of the room.
My room. I instantly felt homesick.