Poster Child (16 page)

"You have to give people a chance," Mom had said that first summer.

"Nobody wants to hang out with me," I'd said. And that was true. My attempts to make friends had been unsuccessful. I felt bored and hot. At night, I did aerobic tapes in the back lawn, carefully recording estimated calories burned after each session. I read countless fashion magazines; I wrote long, sappy letters to my Wyoming friends and racked up the long-distance bill; I read voraciously and fantasized: about love, about the day when my life would make perfect sense, about a body that was different and perfect and the fabulous boyfriend it would enable me to attract.

Mom, pleased that I had found a task I seemed to enjoy and was committed to, often joined me in my exercise sessions.

"Anyway, I need to lose weight," she said as we started a series of squats. "This is something we can do together."

"Lose weight, you mean," I said as matter-of-factly as possible, testing out the idea with her.

"No." She laughed. "Not you, skinny-minny. We can exercise together. It can be a mother-daughter thing." We started doing jumping jacks. "The activity will be good for both of us. Maybe it will cheer you up."

"I doubt it," I replied.

To the songs of Prince, Rush, and Whitney Houston blasting out of my pink boom box, Mom and I jumped and stretched in the backyard, our movements hidden by the tall fence covered with thick vines and richly colored flowers. We sweated together, giggling and motivating each other.

Mom had no idea that I'd already started to keep food-intake journals. I discovered calorie counts in one of her nutrition books and calculated in secret, as if this information were as forbidden as pornography. She didn't know that I cut out pictures of models in magazines, tucked them into the sides of my mirror, disrobed, and then pointed out all the places where I came up short against an ideal of beauty that I simply did not question. I'd continue to do this for another ten years, berating myself as a motivational technique, sometimes on a daily basis. There was a gulf between my reflection and the faces and bodies staring up at me in prone poses of perfection. I was determined to bridge the gap between those two images; at the very least, I would give it my best shot. I resolved to keep this agenda a secret. That way, if I failed, I would have nobody to blame but myself. After I'd stood in front of the mirror and decided which parts of the body needed help or required work, I folded up the magazine clippings and tucked them into my underwear drawer.

But now, only one summer later, I was hanging out with the popular girls. I was wearing their
clothes,
which I realized was part of the problem. I was not like my new friends. As much as I mixed and matched my clothes to create options, there weren't that many artificial limb colors to choose from. My leg may have been "couture" in the sense that it was custom-fit for me, but it certainly wasn't fashionable. A prosthesis was not a teenage girl's accessory. I didn't get to try several of them on, consult a glossy catalog full of options, or choose which color looked best on me. As it was, the wood was at least two shades darker than my fair coloring.

My fingertips traced the metal on each side of the wooden socket. In the store, I saw Melissa and Ashley talking to a boy in front of a display of Doritos. I wanted to open the trunk and put on my jeans that were folded up in a plastic bag under the stolen beer. The girls exited the store and joined me in the car. I wished my skirt would stretch out a few inches or a few feet or, even better, that I would disappear.

My friends giggled and talked inside the car as it sped past the flat land. My upper body felt cold and clammy, even though the night was warm and the humid wind rushed through the open windows and made our flesh sticky. I was used to the all-season Wyoming wind that came in straight, strong gusts; wind like arrows that made precise contact with points on your body—cheeks, elbows, nose. The hot Nebraska wind got under your skin, making it sweat from the inside out. I had never been so sweaty before I moved to Nebraska.

I'd also never worn a miniskirt, not even a short skirt, not once in public, unless it was with thick tights, and that was in Wyoming—ages ago, it seemed, from this night when I was just sixteen and going to a kegger with two other underage girls.

Melissa told a joke, and I laughed when I heard Ashley laugh. I shifted on the seat, trying to figure out how I was going to get out of this one. Why hadn't I noticed how horrible my legs looked when I got dressed a few hours ago in Melissa's massive pink bedroom in her impressive house?

Maybe it was the house, I thought; maybe it was all those huge rooms and tall windows and gleaming counters and framed posters of places I'd never heard of: Belize, St. Martin's, Bonaire. That house was built to make you feel out of place, and maybe that's what had made me think it was a good idea to borrow this expensive skirt with the impressive brand. Spiegel. There had been a magazine with the same brand on Melissa's dining room table, sitting on top of a pile of thick bills. Her mother's eyes slid over the two of us as we walked in the door; her hands fluttered over the bills as she lit a cigarette.

"Hey, Mom," Melissa said quickly before bounding up the stairs. Her mother didn't say a word.

I said, "Thanks for having me over," and scampered up the stairs.

"Is your mom okay?" I asked, trying to adopt the calm and steady pastoral voice I often heard Dad use. She had looked sad and kind of deflated, as though her skin were loose enough to drop from her frame; then she'd be a half-smiling skeleton, smoking, with the breeze from the ceiling fan directing the smoke through the half-open window.

"She's fine," Melissa said, her voice slightly buried as she walked into her large walk-in closet. "She's sober, at least."

"Oh," I said, but since I'd never seen anybody drunk, I didn't have a clue how to clearly envision a sober person.

I didn't have a clue about a lot of things then: drunkenness, tanning methods, how to kiss boys, the benefits of "ultra
ultra
hold" hair spray, which Melissa told me was "rad" as she swept up my hair in a side ponytail, crimped it with a special iron, and then sprayed it until it was absolutely immobile and sticky enough to catch a bug. "This is going to be fun tonight," she said. "You'll see. We have tons of fun in the summer." I wanted to believe her.

I loved being alone with Melissa. She was glamorous in a sloppy, carefree way that I envied and admired. She seemed the epitome of all rich, beautiful girls who didn't plan their outfits but just picked up pieces from the floor and threw them on at the last minute, the look falling together naturally. Melissa didn't plan what to wear or what to buy. She just bought. It was an appealing idea. I wanted to be like her: unstudied yet confidently beautiful. Bright and gleaming.

Melissa's carefree elegance reminded me of the old fashion plates I used to play with at my grandmother's house in Illinois. The dolls were made of thin metal; they had magnetic shirts, trousers, scarves, skirts, shoes, and even hats that clung to their bodies. Once you decided on an outfit, the clothes snapped into place, with everything perfectly aligned. Mixing and matching was easy and effortless. Beauty was guaranteed.

A half-eaten box of chocolate-covered Oreos was spilled out on Melissa's Ralph Lauren comforter. She stuffed one into her mouth and began rooting around again in her immense closet, which was stuffed with piles of shoes and racks of expensive-looking clothes. "I'll let you borrow something," she said, tossing out an empty shoe-box and some hangers.

I looked enviously at Melissa's long legs poking out from beneath her blue satin short robe: the two perfectly matched, well-designed calves; the soft impression at the back of each knee; the even, brown tan. I imagined her sitting on the bed, talking away on the phone with her lean legs stretched out in front of her, dialing the numbers with her toes. All of that perfectly constructed flesh taken for granted. And here I stood with my wooden leg and chubby white thigh. Melissa was the girl I aspired to be; the girl who could reach into that open box of cookies and eat one after the other while twirling the cord around her fingers and talking to her boyfriend. And she would not gain one pound because she was blessed with a rich family, a dark tan, a whole, beautiful body, and, of course, a high metabolism. She pinned up her hair in an arranged mess and looked naturally beautiful without a stitch of makeup.

I felt completely fabricated next to Melissa. Her designer skirts arrived in plastic and smelled like new fabric, while my prosthetic feet arrived in bubble wrap and smelled inexplicably like mushrooms. I coveted her possessions, her body, her life.

I envied her because there were so many things I had to assemble in the morning in order to leave the house. There was the cloth sock that rolled onto my stump before it fit into the artificial socket; there was the thick support underwear I wore to avoid sores near my crotch and cuts into my hip if the waist strap rubbed too hard. I buckled the strap below and to the left of my belly button and then adjusted the leg—twist left, twist right—before pulling on my pants or jeans. I used a shoehorn to put on my shoes. I slipped in my contacts and squeezed my eyes shut until the stinging stopped. I applied makeup because I didn't like my face. I was never seen in public without lipstick on. I was absolutely fanatical about brushing my hair, making it shine. I had my rituals.

So when Melissa offered to let me wear a new and expensive black knit miniskirt that was still wrapped in its catalog plastic, I felt seduced by what I saw as her wonderful, easy way of living. She was like a living fashion plate—everything she threw together looked perfect and wonderful. I, too, wanted to rip a new identity from a package and clothe myself effortlessly in it. I slipped on the skirt and stood in front of her full-length mirror.

"It looks nice," she said. "Do you like it?"

"Do you?" I asked, and she nodded.

"You have such a tiny waist," she said.

We'd skipped out of the house, jumped in the car, and headed out. Everything had been fine until the girls piled out of the car at the Gas N' Shop, leaving me alone with my bare legs.

Guns N' Roses'
Appetite for Destruction
album was in the tape deck, and as we approached our destination, Melissa and Ashley sang along at top volume and I joined them halfheartedly, taking frequent long, slow sips from the Slurpee. I squeezed the flesh around the knee of my right leg and then pressed it against the cold plastic cup.
I'm fat,
I told myself,
and strangely proportioned. My thigh is too
big, and my calf is not muscular enough.
I felt so helpless in my difference that I was utterly disgusted by it.
You're pathetic,
I told myself. If I had only one leg, the least I could do was make it perfect. How hard could that be? I had trained as a skier and developed strong, lean muscles. I had gotten lazy; if I wanted to fit in, I needed to try harder. If I couldn't have two real legs, I would alter the rest of my body to suit my desires.
Back to the calorie books first thing tomorrow,
I thought. Back to doing my homework days ahead of time. Back to the long workouts that left me exhausted. Now what to do about the problem in this moment?
What to do about the leg?

As we pulled off the interstate, the moon reflected off the tall cornstalks waving in the humid air, waiting to be harvested. The air smelled of burning flesh and singed hair, thanks to the new slaughterhouse that had been built on the outskirts of town the year before.

"Gross.
Peeee-ewwww"
Melissa tittered, and the three of us held our noses until the smell faded.

We passed a carload of boys at a stop sign, and Melissa waved and giggled. We were sixteen years old and in a car on our own. Endless fun seemed possible just by driving on a flat stretch of highway to go sit in the dirt around a fire in a clearing near a cornfield. But it was not fun for me; I could not imagine that it would ever be fun.

I had looked in the mirror earlier that evening and seen what I wanted to see, as if borrowed clothes could transform me. I saw the two legs I had always imagined myself worthy of—and in my mind, it was certainly a question of worth—not the fake, creaky one I pulled on each morning. I saw the body I would have chosen for myself had it been possible for me to choose. As if a real flesh-and-blood leg could snap on as quickly and easily as an item of magnetic clothing and be changed at will. I felt sure I was about to be exposed for who and what I was, although I had no words at that moment to explain what this meant to me. What I knew for sure was that I felt entirely alone in this car with my new friends, headed for a crowd of yet more people.

My stomach felt spiked with acid. I hoped it would take us our whole lives to get to that party, but we were passing quickly through town, past trailer homes that looked as though they were sinking into the soggy ground. I felt sweat on my upper lip and neck.

"Ryan's going to be there," Melissa said. I blushed. Ryan had the locker next to mine. He had blue eyes and a crooked smile. I guess it was a crush, but I had never said two words to him. Whenever I saw him, I walked in the opposite direction. Sometimes I ran.

Melissa looked at me in the rearview mirror with her round, doll-like eyes. On my first day of high school, a day I had dreaded after the long, miserable, and friendless eighth-grade year, she had asked me if I wanted to play tennis with her after school. When I told her why I couldn't play, she said she thought my leg was really "neat-o" and "cool." Soon every kid at school knew what Melissa thought, and because she was popular and liked me, I was accepted. It had been a great relief, but now I wondered what I had gotten myself into.