Naked (18 page)

Every now and then I’ll find myself in a car driven by some friend and we’ll pass someone standing by the side of the road.
His hair is rowdy from the rush of passing traffic, and his lips move in what is either a curse or a prayer. I want to tell
the driver to pull over and stop, but instead, pretending a sudden problem with the radio reception, I lower my head until
the ghost has receded from the rearview mirror.

I spent my high-school years staring at the pine trees outside my classroom window and picturing myself on the campus of an
Ivy League university, where my wealthy roommate Colgate would leave me notes reading, “Meet me on the quad at five.” I wasn’t
sure what a quad was, but I knew that I wanted one desperately. My college friends would own horses and monogrammed shoehorns.
I’d spend weekends at my roommate’s estate, where his mother would say things like “I’ve instructed Helvetica to prepare those
little pan-cakes you’re so fond of, but she’s had a devil of a time locating fresh cape gooseberries.” This woman would have
really big teeth that she’d reveal every time she threw back her head to laugh at one of my many witticisms. “You’re an absolute
caution,” she’d bray. “Tell me you’ll at least
consider
joining us this Christmas at Bridle Haven; it just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

I fantasized with the nagging suspicion there was something missing, something I was forgetting. This something turned out
to be grades. It was with profound disappointment I discovered it took more than a C average to attend Harvard.
Average,
that was the word that got to me. C and average, the two went hand in hand.

I was sent instead to a state college in western North Carolina where the low brick buildings were marked with plaques reading
ERECTED 1974, and my roommate left notes accusing me of stealing his puka shell necklace or remedial English book. I expect
someday to open the newspaper and discover the government had used that campus as part of a perverse experiment to study the
effects of continuous, high-decibel Pink Floyd albums on the minds of students who could manufacture a bong out of any given
object but could not comprehend that it is simply not possible to drive a van to Europe.

I spent my year buckling down and improving my grades in the hope that I might transfer somewhere, anywhere, else. I eventually
chose Kent State because people had been killed there. At least they hadn’t died of boredom, that was saying something. “Kent
State!” everyone said. “Do you think you’ll be safe up there?”

I arrived the following September and was assigned to a dormitory largely reserved for handicapped students. It had always
been my habit to look away from someone in a wheel-chair, but here I had no choice, as they were everywhere. These were people
my own age who had jumped into a deceptively shallow pool or underestimated the linebackers of the opposing team. They had
driven drunk on prom night or slipped off their parents’ roof while cleaning the gutters; one little mistake, and they could
never take it back. The paraplegics gathered in the lobby, perfecting their wheelies and discussing their customized cars
while the quads purred by in their electric chariots, squinting against the lit cigarettes propped artfully between their
lips.

The first quarter I roomed with a fellow named Todd, an amiable Dayton native whose only handicap was having red hair. The
quadriplegics had the best drug connections, so we often found ourselves hanging out in their rooms. “The hookah’s over on
the shelf,” they’d say. “Right next to the rectal suppositories.” Over time I grew accustomed to the sight of a friend’s colostomy
bag and came to think of Kent State as something of an I.V. League university. The state would pay your board if you roomed
with a handicapped student, so second quarter I moved in with Dale, a seventy-five-pound sophomore with muscular dystrophy.
I learned to bathe Dale and set him on the toilet. I turned the pages of his books, dialed the telephone, and held the receiver
against his mouth as he spoke. I dressed him and combed his hair, fed him and clipped his toenails, but I can’t say that we
were ever close.

Midway through the term Dale was sent back home to live with his parents, and I moved in with Peg, a fun girl with a degenerative
nerve disease. Peg was labeled an “incomplete quad” and liked to joke that she couldn’t finish anything. Already we had something
in common. She had come to school to escape her parents, who refused her any beverage after 6 P.M. They complained that at
the end of a long day, they were simply too worn out to set her on the toilet. God had chosen her to suffer this disease,
and if she had any complaints, she should take it up with Him. This was a nasty illness that left its host progressively incapacitated.
Peg’s limbs were twisted and unreliable and had a mind of their own. A cup of scalding coffee, a lit cigarette, forks and
steak knives — objects sprung from her hands with no prior notice. She wore thick glasses strapped to her head and soiled
sheepskin booties on her useless, curled feet. Peg’s voice was slurred to the point that information operators and pizza-delivery
services, thinking she was drunk, would hang up on her. Unnerved by the sight of her, Peg’s professors automatically agreed
with everything she had to say. “Good question!” they’d shout.

“That’s very perceptive of you. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what she just said?” She might ask to use the bathroom,
but because no one could understand her, it was always the same answer. “Good point, isn’t it class!”

In the cafeteria she was met with frantic congeniality. Rather than embarrass themselves trying to figure out her choice of
an entrée, they just went ahead and piled everything on her plate.

A person in a wheelchair often feels invisible. Push a wheelchair and you’re invisible as well. Outside of the dorm, the only
people to address us would speak as if we were deaf, kneeling beside the chair to shout, “FATHER TONY IS HAVING A GUITAR MASS
THIS SUNDAY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN US?”

Peg would beckon the speaker close and whisper, “I collect the teeth from live kittens and use them to make necklaces for
Satan.”

“WELL SURE YOU DO,” they’d say. “THAT’S WHAT OUR FELLOWSHIP IS ALL ABOUT.”

For Peg, being invisible was an old and tiresome story. To me, it definitely had some hidden potential. So began our life
of crime.

We started off in grocery stores. Peg had a sack on the back of her wheelchair, which I would fill with thick steaks and frozen
lobster tails. There was no need to slink behind pyramids of canned goods, hiding from the manager; we did our stealing right
out in the open. Peg carried a canvas bag on her lap and stuffed it with everything she could get her hands on. Canned olives,
teriyaki sauce, plastic tubs of pudding — our need had nothing to do with it. The point was to take from an unfair world.
We quit going to the cafeteria, preferring to cook our meals in the dormitory kitchen, the butter dripping off our chins.
We moved on to bookstores and record shops, guaranteed that no one would say, “I think I see that crippled girl stealing the
new Joni Mitchell album.” Circumstances prevented us from stealing anything larger than our heads, but anything else was ours
for the taking.

For spring break we decided to visit my family in Raleigh. Being invisible has its merits when you’re shoplifting but tends
to hold a person back while hitchhiking. We parked ourselves beside the interstate, Peg’s thumb twitching at odd intervals.
The five-hundred-mile trip took us close to three days. It was our story that we were a young married couple heading south
to start a new life for ourselves. Churchy couples would pull over, apologizing that their car was too small to accommodate
a wheelchair. They couldn’t give us a ride, but would we accept twenty dollars and a bucket of fried chicken?

You bet we would. “There’s a hospital in Durham we’re hoping might do some good,” I’d say, patting Peg on the shoulder. “Here
we are, a couple of newlyweds, and then
this
had to happen.”

CB radios were activated and station wagons appeared. Waitresses in roadside restaurants would approach our table whispering,
“YOUR BILL HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF,” and pointing to some teary-eyed couple standing beside the cash register. We found it
amusing and pictured these Samaritans notifying their pastor to boast, “We saw this crippled girl and her husband and, well,
we didn’t have much but we did what we could.”

Someone would check us into a motel and give us cash for bus fare, making us promise to never hitchhike again. I’d take Peg
out of her chair, lay her on the bed, and sprinkle the money down upon her. It was a pale imitation of a movie scene in which
crafty con artists shower themselves with hundred-dollar bills. Our version involved smaller denominations and handfuls of
change, but still, it made us feel alive.

We were in West Virginia when one of the wheels fell off Peg’s chair. It was dusk on a rural state highway without a building
in sight when an elderly man in a pickup truck swooped in and carried us all the way to my parents’ front door, a trip that
was surely out of his way. “Five-four-oh-six North Hills Drive? I’m headed right that way, no trouble at all. Which state
did you say that was in?”

We arrived unannounced, surprising the startled members of my family. I’d hoped my parents might feel relaxed in Peg’s company,
but when they reacted with nervous discomfort, I realized that this was even better. I wanted them to see that I had changed.
Far from average, I had become responsible in ways they could never dream of. Peg was
my
charge,
my
toy, and I was the only one who knew how to turn her off and on. “Well,” I said, wiping her mouth with a dinner napkin, “I
think it’s time for
somebody’s
bath.”

My brother and sisters reacted as though I had brought home a sea lion. They invited their friends to stare from the deck
as I laid Peg on a picnic blanket in the backyard. My father repaired the wheelchair, and when Peg thanked him, he left the
dinner table and returned handing her a second fork.

“She didn’t ask for a fork,” I said. “She asked for your watch.”

“My watch?” he said. “The one I’m wearing?” He tapped his fingers against the face for a moment or two. “Well, golly, I guess
if it means that much to her, sure, she can have my watch.” He handed it over. “And your belt,” I said. “She’ll need that,
too. Hurry up, man, the girl is crippled.”

My mother visited her hiding place and returned with a wad of cash for our bus fare back to Ohio. She called me into the kitchen
and shoved the money into my hand, whispering, “I don’t know what kind of a game you’re playing, mister, but you ought to
be ashamed of yourself.” It was an actual whisper, designed to be heard only by me.

The bus ride back to Ohio was long and cheerless. The second time Peg asked to use the bathroom, I snapped. “You just went
three hours ago,” I shouted. “Jesus, what’s your problem, do I have to take care of everything?” It got on my nerves, the
way she depended on me. We’d gone on this trip, she’d had a good time, what
more
did she want? How was it that by the time we left my parents’ house,
I
was considered the cripple, not her but
me,
me who had to do everything while she just sat there spilling ashes down the front of her shirt.

My mood deteriorated. We returned to school, where Peg related our adventures to a crowd of friends. I listened in, silently
substituting every
we
for an
I.
“We” didn’t talk a truck driver out of thirty dollars and a brand-new curling wand,
I
did that,
ME,
how dare she take half the credit. “She is some kind of brave,” our classmates would say. “I wouldn’t have the courage to
do
half
the things that she does — and I can walk!”

The spring quarter began but by the second week, I’d stopped attending class, deciding instead to bone up on my drugs and
become my own private adventurer. I signed up for sky-diving lessons at the local airfield. The training sessions were deceptively
simple, but when the time came for the actual jump, they had to pry my white knuckles off the wing of the plane. I begged
and pleaded and all the way down I pictured myself in a wheelchair, hoping that the person assigned to care for me would have
none of my qualities. The earth was a grid, a quilt of tidy patches maintained by sensible, hardworking people who played
by the rules and treated every stranger as though he were Christ in disguise. My parachute opened and I promised God that
once I landed safely, I would turn my life around. I’d spin the globe and wherever my finger landed, I would go there. Even
if it was one of those countries where people squatted in the soil, eating porridge from their shit-smeared palms, I would
go. I’d swat the flies from their dung-colored faces and carry them piggyback across crocodile-infested waters if that’s what
it took to clear my name. The harness between my legs was causing unbearable pain, and I accepted it as my first test of strength
and tolerance. The Lord could have my testicles. I’d grant him a finger or two and even throw in a couple of teeth if I had
to, just so long as He left me my spinal column. I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until I was a half mile from my
landing site. When the instructor came to gather my parachute, I stubbed out my joint, saying, “I don’t see what all the fuss
was about. That was nothing.”

At the end of the school year I hitchhiked to San Francisco, enchanted with the idea of leading an adult life surrounded by
people who could wash their own hair. My friend Veronica got me a room at a residence hotel, and I found work as a bicycle
messenger. The streets of my neighborhood were fragrant with eucalyptus trees, and every passing stranger offered the hope
that tomorrow just might be the day I was offered a comfortable job or a twelve-room apartment. I was far from my family and
often pictured them suffering their vacations without me. They had treated me poorly, but I had come out on top because that
was the kind of person I was, headstrong and independent. Me, the winner.