Poster Child (13 page)

"Explosion," Hal answered. "Vietnam." I nodded, picturing it. The first time the guys mentioned this strange country to me, I asked Dad to show me where it was on the globe in his study—it was halfway around the world.

"You?" Hal asked.

"Birth defect," I said. He nodded. I shrugged and continued. "Nobody knows why."

"Ah," he said. "Lucky girl. It's good you don't remember. This body is what you've always known." If I had lost my leg in a motorcycle accident or in a war, I guess I wouldn't have been so lucky, or at the very least I would have had a more compelling story. More and more, I was beginning to understand that I was not lucky, but I never told the guys that.

"At least I didn't lose my eye," Hal liked to say, as if this were compensation for losing a limb and gaining a crater in his head. "Now I can see when people are looking at me funny." We laughed about this, but nobody laughed about Vince, Larry's son, who was his father's apprentice and heir to the prosthetic business throne.

"Honestly," Hal once said, "he just doesn't seem right." He tapped his temple with an index finger. "You know what I mean?"

I nodded. I certainly did.

Vince was physically attractive, with curly blond hair and blue eyes rimmed with thick lashes. His well-developed biceps curved out of his short-sleeved work shirts, and he moved with remarkable grace. But his presence did not match his physical appearance and this was disturbing. During all the years I knew Vince while he was Larry's apprentice, he did not speak but simply listened to what his father said, nodding his head slowly and writing on a clipboard. Occasionally, he'd bend down and make adjustments to the leg while Larry instructed him. His palms were always sweaty; his hands often shook. Dad and I called him "Silent Vince." There was something about the way he touched me—respectfully and cautiously, but with a hesitancy that suggested it was difficult to maintain this restraint—that differed from Schmidt's or Larry's touch. If I thought too much about Vince's silence, his dirty white hands, the pressure of his fingers against the top of the prosthesis, near places I had never touched in an intentional way—places only doctors' hands had been—I felt sick to my stomach. I felt dirty.

Whenever Vince was in the room, Tanya stopped filing her nails or reading her magazines for a few moments and looked at the back of his head with disgust or with longing, it was difficult to tell. When he left the room, she let out a little "shht," or a "well," as if she were reeling from an imagined slight or was making a judgment about him to the person sitting next to her, who was often me. In the sixth grade, when I became more interested in things like makeup and clothes, I became more interested in Tanya.

"Let's make ourselves pretty," she said now. "You want your nails filed, hon?"

"Sure," I said. I liked it when Tanya included me in her beauty rituals. She sometimes brushed and braided my hair or carefully applied bright-colored eye shadow or lipstick. She called it "face decoration," not makeup: this was always my argument when Mom insisted that I wash it off. Because his work schedule was more flexible, Dad usually brought me to my appointments. He would often run errands, leaving me free to hang out with Tanya, who with her powerful smell of Giorgio perfume and Aqua Net hair spray, her high heels and cleavage-revealing blouses, was so unlike my mother that she fascinated me. There were three things Tanya did habitually: paint or file her long press-on nails; flip through
Reader's Digest;
and make quick, three-second phone calls (first she removed one of her big plastic earrings—just like female characters did in soap operas—and then reattached it when she hung up).

Mom liked Tanya—"She really is friendly and efficient," she once said. But Tanya was also the kind of woman I was warned about: how
not
to look. She was too made-up, too brash. Mom thought she was "trying too hard to look nice." I wanted to be beautiful like my mother, who was beautiful in a very obvious, traditional way: flawless skin; fine, well-organized facial features; an hourglass figure; soft, stylish hair. Although she had many other gifts—a fierce intelligence, a gift for practical, levelheaded thinking, a generous spirit—I realized that it was her beauty that got her what she wanted most of the time. Still, I thought Tanya looked great.

Tanya lined up several bottles of nail polish in front of me. "Choose a color," she said. I pointed to the red bottle—the brightest one.

"Good choice," she said.

As Tanya was filing away, she looked at me, put down her file, and lifted my chin in her hands until we were eye to eye. Her blue eyeliner looked as if it were leaking out of her green eyes, and this combination of colors looked slightly monstrous. Her hands smelled like peach lotion and cigarette smoke.

"You're so pretty, my lady," she said sweetly. Tanya loved to call me "my lady" or "doll baby."

It was exactly what I wanted to hear. I thought,
Could it be true?

"Yeah, right," I said, blushing.

Gently, she lifted my big glasses from my face and smoothed back my hair. "See?" she said. "Now you're pretty." My heart sank, but I smiled back and thanked her for the compliment, all the while wondering:
What about when I wear my glasses? What about my
limp? What about my braces?

As puberty loomed and issues of appearance became paramount, Andy's male friends were the gauge of how successful I would be in the all-important competition of being "liked." In this, my leg seemed an insurmountable obstacle, as one's likability—as far as I could tell—seemed directly linked to one's prettiness. The braces and thick glasses were bad enough, but how could I be pretty with a clunky wooden leg? I wanted to be the girl Andy's friends had a crush on. Instead, I felt like the little sister whose leg you were trying to steal glances at—what was
wrong
with it—while eating pizza in front of the television.
That
girl
—
Andy's sister. Who? You know,
the one with the fake leg.
I heard this imagined exchange in my head, in all of my vanity, self-consciousness, and paranoia.

At the skating rink, where Andy and I often went on Saturday afternoons, I steered clear of boys in general and chatted with my girlfriends, who stayed off the rink for the agonizing slow skate that always happened just after "Whip It," when you swung with another person in a tight circle, your arms crossed and your hands clasped tightly with your partner's. "Whip It" was great. Slow skate was not. There was no way I was going to stand around and wait for someone to choose me while I watched perfectly formed couples move slowly around the rink as the colored lights crossed over their shoulders, knees, and skates, their gangling or chubby prepubescent limbs made suddenly graceful and slim as they moved in the dim light. It mattered little, because all of my friends hated boys as much as I did.

One day, the girls I would normally chat with during slow skate had suddenly left the benches, drawn by sudden crushes on boys and the desire to stare at them dreamily as they lined up on the other side of the rink in an awkward, disdainful-looking row.

I had no choice but to skate out with my friends or risk being alone and labeled a nerd. We stood there, all of us, straight-backed and trembling against the wooden fence that circled the rink. A boy would skate up, stop himself slowly by breaking on one toe, and wordlessly hold out a hand to his chosen partner. They were like birds landing on a wire, making a soft whooshing sound as they flew away. One by one, the girls were peeled away from the fence. It was too much to say a word, and the ritual of the partner's skate eliminated entirely the strained exchange of niceties. I stared down at my skates and picked at my fingernail polish, letting it fall to the rink in light pink flakes.

Finally, all the girls were gone, and I stood alone. I felt tears forming, and I stopped them. From across the rink I saw Andy moving toward me through the rotating blue, yellow, and red arcs of the disco light. My body froze; I gripped the fence so tightly, I felt a splinter slip into my palm. He stopped in front of me, and I waited for the pack of other boys to follow up behind. I narrowed my eyes at him. I did not believe he would be so cruel.

He held out his hand. "Wanna skate?" he asked.

It didn't matter that it was Andy, who had become an awkward stranger to me in his teenage years. What mattered was that it was the first and only time I would ever skate with those couples, my hand sweating in my brother's. We did not look at each other but simply glided around the rink; it surprised me how well we moved together. I had learned to skate as a Camp Fire Girl and was actually quite good at it. The skates made me fast, which I liked; the wheels helped the left leg swing through smoothly and gracefully. I kept my back straight, tightened my stomach muscles, and very rarely lost my balance.

Andy matched the speed of his skates to mine. As we skated by his friends, I listened for jeers and snorts of laughter, but there were none. I glanced at the boys' faces once—quickly—before looking away. I felt triumphant in some small way as my brother and I moved in a slow, embarrassed, and—for me—grateful circle under the soft, colorful lights.

Chapter Eight

PHANTOM PLAYER

As the student manager of the seventh-grade girls volleyball, basketball, and track teams at Laramie Junior High, I got up at four A.M. during the summer and stayed late after school during the academic year to throw balls at practices and take care of the gear and the uniforms. I kept score at all of the games, and in the spring I timed races and relays. I sang along with the cheerleaders at games "LJH is the best, c'mon, people, yell it!"—and traveled with the team on huge buses to meets and tournaments in Cheyenne, Casper, and Rawlins. I cried when we lost and celebrated when we won, dashing onto the court at the final buzzer and often being lifted in the arms of the girls as if I'd scored the decisive winning point. I hung out in the locker room and was invited to all the parties. I wasn't one of the team physically, but I was beloved the way a mascot would be.

The summer before junior high began, I had decided against a new surgery that would have resevered the bone of my stump, making it shorter and allowing my natural and artificial knees to line up correctly. Although it might have created more aesthetic prosthetic operations, it still seemed too risky. I remembered Hal's flaplike stump and how difficult it was for him to walk well.

I had also exhausted my search for the perfect leg. On one of my trips to Winter Park, Mom had discovered a leg in the changing rooms that did not have a waist strap but instead featured a suction socket. She made a light sketch of the leg and then asked around for its owner—a young woman from Texas. After that, this leg was referred to as "the Texas leg" and seemed to hold out the possibility of something different and better, as if a new leg might change my life entirely. The leg would hang magically from my body. The area around my waist would be perfectly smooth; no strap would dig painfully into my hips.

"I want a suction socket," I told Vince, who, after years of apprenticeship but no formal schooling or training, had finally taken over his father's practice. "That's what I want," I said, showing him Mom's sketch. He barely looked at it.

"Huh," he said. "Not sure I can do that."

"Try it," I said. "Please."

Although the leg Vince finally presented to me didn't look like the Texas leg, I was excited to give it a try. A thin flap of "skin" covered the suction apparatus—a plug—at the front and end of my stump. I was hopeful about the flesh-colored nylon sock over the thigh area; it looked a lot like real flesh.

When I took my first step in the leg, the socket made a distinct wet and sloppy noise—exactly like a fart. I took a few more noisy, labored steps. Vince laughed.

"What about that noise?" I asked, feeling desperate. "It's awful. Am I walking on it the wrong way?"

"Hey, you can just say, 'Excuse me, I had a big lunch.' " He chuckled and grinned. "The vets just point their finger when their legs make a noise." I looked at him, speechless. I was glad I'd asked Dad to wait for me in the "lobby."

My face burned. I adored the vets, but I was not a man or a war veteran. I was a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. I had recently requested that Dr. Elliot
not
bring his gaggle of medical interns to watch me walk around in a thin gown that was entirely open at the back. When I told him this, he looked at me as if I'd asked him for a million dollars. I was fully aware that I was of interest to the interns because of the ways in which doctors had worked on and altered my body. But I wasn't a car or an experiment, and I didn't want to be regarded as such. Eventually, Dr. Elliot understood and complied. "You're all grown up now," he said. Vince clearly was not going to acknowledge this. What was I to him, then, as a patient? Perpetually a little girl? A half-man, an almost-man, an almost-woman, an almost-
person
?

In addition to its disturbing noises, the leg was terribly heavy, and its lip came up too high and dug into my crotch. My stump didn't reach the bottom of the socket but felt suspended just above; the top part of the socket was too tight, as if hands were gripping me. "There's no other model?" I asked finally. "I thought it would be different." I felt humiliated.

"It's just impossible," Vince said, getting huffy. "The way your stump is shaped makes it impossible." I'd heard this before. Because I have my natural heel at the end of my stump, I also have my ankle bone; this creates challenges for crafting a well-fitting socket. To this day, the silicone sockets for my hydraulic prosthesis cost $1,000 each because they must be custom-made rather than injected molded silicone, a more durable and more affordable material. This puts the average price of each prosthesis at $25,000; my current leg is worth more than any car I have ever owned or even driven.

In my newfound role as student manager, anyone with a problem came to me first, whether it be the need for a new uniform (weight gain or loss), a request for counseling (a crush gone awry), or a gear issue (this or that basketball felt flat). I had my own desk in each coach's office that rotated each season and a file for each girl that held her health history, emergency contact information, and uniform size, as well as her statistics—baskets made, points scored, races won—which I tallied after each season before awards were distributed. I was the gatekeeper of secrets and gear. As my friend Sidney said, "You're totally one of us, even though you can't play on the team." Being a phantom player was good enough for me; being the manager was the next best thing to being a real athlete. I told everyone that I was an expert skier—which I was—and this achievement in one area of disabled sports somehow made me feel like an honorary athlete in any able-bodied sport of my choice.

At night or in the afternoon when I came home from practice, I did my own physical work modeled after the girls' exercises: jump rope, wall sits, running drills, jumping jacks, and sit-ups. I worked out in the basement in a kind of fury. I got sweaty and tired, but I could never do all the things the others could do or as well, but I carried on, fueled by an irrational, even delusional hope.

Although I was passing well as normal and had stopped actively searching for a better prosthesis, I continued to nurture a secret belief in transformation. All it would take, I assumed, would be the right leg and the right man who could make it. There was a suction socket out there somewhere that a girl not so unlike me was wearing and living in. There was a beautiful prosthesis that would someday belong to me. Like Cinderella's magical slipper, this leg would make everything fairy-tale perfect. Surely Vince was not the end of the road. I had to hope for something, because how could I possibly conceal myself forever wearing an outdated limb that gave me away with its every squeak, crack, and leak? I was convinced that I would someday wear a leg that made me new, different, and better. Normal. I was absolutely counting on it.

I held to this notion of transformation because I felt there had to be something that would level the playing field, that would restore to me—and the vets and other amputees I knew—the bodies we had lost. I had been taught that if you tried hard enough, you could improve your lot. My wishes for advanced prosthetics were intended to restore the balance in what I thought should be a rightly ordered world characterized by God's grace, fairness, and happy endings. Jesus died horribly, but the world was saved. Humans were sinners, but all you had to do was ask for forgiveness and it was granted, and then you were freed, as we said every Sunday, "from the bondage of sin." I was taught that God wanted humans to be capable and happy so that they could exercise free will and contribute to the world. If you had the misfortune to get your leg blown off during a war or lose your foot as a child, it made theological as well as practical sense that there should be an equally remarkable event to compensate for it. I believed that we deserved some reparation for our pain, some partial redemption for our wounded bodies.

The year I was in the seventh grade, Vince moved his office to an industrial town near Denver where smokestacks belched black smoke and the bumpy, potholed roads were clogged with diesel trucks. There were no high-rise buildings or any of the happy hustle and bustle associated with cities. Although the gaze of the used-car guys had been disconcerting, at least there had been people around. Vince's new office felt completely disconnected from the larger world. The only buildings visible through the windows were warehouses, physical plants, and oil refineries.

"I hate this," I said. "It's only trucks and road and smoke. Gross."

Mom had the day off and was driving us to my first appointment at the new office.

"Look," she said. "Horses." She pointed at a trailer passing us in the left lane. Bits of the horses' brown bodies were visible as they stomped and shifted; their tails stuck out of the trailer slats and waved in the air like soft flags. "They're not trucks and smoke."

"They're probably taking them somewhere to make glue out of them," I said.

"Oh, c'mon," she said. We didn't say anything more about the neighborhood.

I didn't see Hal in the new group of patients, and Tanya had apparently been fired or sought different employment. I missed them both. The new receptionist was quiet and unfriendly, with a fondness for tight, brightly colored skirt suits. The tables in the waiting room were littered with half-filled coffee cups, some with cigarette butts floating in the black, pungent liquid. Two dead ferns drooped from rusted hooks in each corner of the waiting room. A little bell attached to the front door made a sad, tinny jingle to mark a patient's arrival.

When I was small, I had imagined my feet were quickly and easily produced by happy little elves who punched them out of a clever machine. I pictured a strong, handsome man sitting on a table as a prosthetist carefully created a cast of his foot that would later be used to make a fake one for amputees like me. I envisioned feet on pedestals or under glass, as if they were famous pieces of art or ancient artifacts on display at a museum.

At Vince's, I saw the whole leg-making business for what it was: dirty and sordid. The process was reductive and strange. I felt as if my leg—this indispensable part of me—were being built as cheaply and heartlessly by Vince as a factory might make ugly plastic dolls or flimsy lawn chairs.

Vince still seemed determined to speak as little as possible. I explained to him what I needed. "The hinge is squeaky," I said, standing in a small partitioned room, my right foot bare on the chalky floor. I picked up the leg to show him, impressing him, I knew, with my ability to maintain rock-solid balance on the right leg. Although he made me feel uncomfortable, I also wanted to please him. I was indiscriminate in my search for others' affirmation.

"I need a new foot, too." It looked as if an animal had been gnawing on the heel. "It's like something's rotting," I said, and felt angry. What had I done to deserve such a disgusting fate as this? It was worse than thick glasses or braces and headgear and retainers. It was worse than anything I might have gotten stuck with. I wanted all signs of my body's idiosyncrasies and deficiencies to be promptly hidden if they could not be permanently removed. At the same time, I knew that no matter how well the leg worked or how clean the hinges or new the foot, I could never have what I wanted, which was the leg I'd prayed for years ago at my first Communion: one made of soft, pliable flesh and strong bones, with real blood running through its veins. Whatever Vince did, no matter how hard he worked and no matter how ardently I hoped, it would never be enough. I hated him for that.

"The length needs to be checked, too," Mom said, standing behind me. "I think her hips are dipping down to the left too much. You should watch her walk to be sure."

I glared at her. She was constantly watching me walk. Sometimes I'd turn a corner and see her leaning out of a doorway, holding an iron or a shirt on a hanger or a mixing bowl, staring at me with a worried, discerning look, trying to decide when or if I needed to make an appointment with Vince. Every night when I stood up to take my dinner plates into the kitchen, I knew she was watching me.

"Stop it!" I'd scream at her, releasing all of my rage on the most convenient and undeserving target. "Stop looking at me!" Whereas I had once commanded her attention, it now annoyed me when she monitored my gait; it threatened my elaborate and carefully constructed plan of passing as normal. But even as I resented her preoccupation with my leg, I also relied on it. As long as Mom was thinking about it, I could do my best to erase the fact of the leg from my mind. So she was the one who had noticed the chewed-up- looking foot.

Vince nodded and left the room. "We'll see how he does," Mom said.

"It's totally gross in here," I complained. "He doesn't even have any other patients. The plants are dead. Maybe all the patients are dead. Everything stinks. Everything is
devastated."

"Well," she said, "he's the only prosthetist you've got."

We heard the router winding up and starting to spin. Its scratching and whirring blended noisily with the rumble of traffic outside the thin office walls.
s

Even as I longed for a phenomenal new prosthetist to burst into my life like a handsome male suitor in a romance novel (and I devoured these in secret at the public library, always flipping first to the lurid sex scenes), I developed a split life.

With my friends I was chatty, energetic, easygoing, and renowned for telling an entertaining story and a good joke. But my interior world was far different. When I got my first B, I berated myself for hours, somehow connecting my inferior grade—and to me, inferior was anything less than an A—to my leg. If the teacher didn't choose my English assignment to read aloud to the class or if I wasn't the first person with the answer in history or science class, I found a way to blame it on my disability.
It makes me slow, it makes
me weird, it makes me stupid,
I'd say to myself, and vow to do better the next time.