Poster Child (19 page)

I visited Samantha in New York City, and we went to parties on Long Island and to nightclubs in Manhattan. At her house, we hopped around without our fake legs and slipped them off while we watched videos—with her, it was no big deal. We smoked pot and talked about sex, although I fastidiously avoided saying the word out loud.

"Do you take off the leg?" I asked. "Like, during it?"

"Of course," she said. "Absolutely. It's just so much better without the leg on. You have no idea."

I certainly didn't. "Really?" I pressed. "You take the leg off in front of him? He sees you take it off?"

She shook her head. "No, usually while he was in the shower or in the other room, but I have had sex
in
the shower, and that's great."

Sex in the shower; sex with more than one man; sex with
any
man: It all seemed unimaginable to me.

Although I never admitted to Samantha how limited my sexual experience actually was, during these trips I had elaborate fantasies about how my "first time" would feel. But no matter how much I tried to keep them going, they always resolutely stopped at the waist. A man kisses you, puts his tongue in your mouth. Okay. I could get on board with that. A man slowly removes your shirt, removes your bra, touches your breasts, and caresses your neck and stomach. That was all fine, too. But just before those imagined hands touched the small buckle to the left of my belly button that belonged to the waist strap that attached the leg to my body, the fantasy dissipated quickly and was replaced by shame.

Samantha had taken one look at my leg and said, "No way! You
must
get something better! First, we'll get you a decent-looking one and then we can worry about sports legs for running and stuff. Plus, you've got to get a foot for heels, too."
Sports legs. High heels.
I nodded, stunned.

She wrote down precisely what kind of leg I should ask for, and I took this slip of paper to Dr. Elliot. Finally I had the specifics, and from a young, reliable, and active female source who was also a trusted and valued friend.

"This is what I want," I said, showing Dr. Elliot Samantha's instructions. "This. I need a man who can make this." My pulse raced.
Please,
I thought.
Please.

"Okay, peanut," he said. "We can do that." I burst into tears. Finally, after years of hoping, it seemed that transformation would be that simple. The secret, festering hope I'd harbored that my life could change dramatically had not been unfounded after all.

Dr. Elliot referred me to Nick, a new prosthetist in Denver. He had worked with elite disabled athletes and had even been to the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul. I thought of the image I'd adored as a child: the prosthetist who runs out on the track to fix a part or a foot. Nick was this dream come to life. He was professional, knowledgeable, intelligent, and respectful. He understood and had access to all of the latest prosthetic technology and a willingness to convince insurance companies to pay for the specialized, high-priced equipment that is a reality of custom-fit prosthetics. He allowed patients to pay what they could each month without accruing interest on the outstanding balance. My parents' insurance company agreed to pay for 80 percent of the leg's cost, and Mom and Dad promised to come up with the rest.

At Nick's, the waiting room was clean and climate controlled; recent magazines were stacked in neat piles on glass tables. The receptionists were friendly and helpful. All the surfaces were white, and the walls were decorated with posters of amputees skiing, running, or climbing mountains. Waiting on the leather couches were bright-faced young people and even toddlers, as well as older men and women.

I was ready to ditch my wooden leg as quickly as possible. I wanted a state-of-the art prosthesis and an updated body that was beautiful and mobile and, of course, as
normal
as it could be. Yes, I admired Samantha's athleticism, but what I really wanted was to be pretty and real looking enough in order to pass more effectively. This seemed easier than accepting the body the way it was.

"I'll pot plants in the old legs or make them lamps," I joked with Dad as we were driving to Colorado Springs for my first fitting.

Skeptical, he replied, "Don't ditch all of them yet." I ignored him.

During my first fitting with Nick, he gently pressed where thigh and pelvis meet, making sure the lip of the prosthesis fell in the right spot. He touched lightly and only where he needed to, always careful not to touch
there.
It made me feel honored, his careful attention to how everything fit together, the way he knew how my body worked, the way he saw me: as capable and active.

"What kind of leg would you like?" It was the first time a prosthetist had ever asked me this.

I told Nick what I wanted, just to feel this new language moving in my mouth: a Flex-Foot with a cosmetic toe shell, a polycentric four-bar hydraulic knee, new silicone suspension sockets. He nodded, scribbled in a notebook, and presented me with other options I had not even considered. I walked out of the office with everything I'd asked for.

That year—1993, when I was nineteen—I was finally fitted with a prosthetic limb that featured a suction socket and a hydraulic knee unit. The exterior was made of a soft, pliable material and covered with a latex spray that matched my skin tone more closely than any wooden leg had ever done. My Flex-Foot was a carbon-fiber, energy-storing foot that allowed ease and power of movement. Later, Nick made me a leg for running and another with a nine-bar hydraulic unit—the rock-solid knee locked out and was perfect for activities like kickboxing.

The leg not only felt better, it looked better, too. My thighs were the same circumference instead of the artificial leg being much thinner than the real one. It did not have an unnatural, greasy shine that was impossible to mask, even in tights, but was instead covered with flesh-colored cosmetic socks. The things I had always done—walk, run, dance—became so much easier. My body felt literally new. Transformed at last, I put my wooden leg in the closet. I felt reborn.

The fall of my sophomore year, I walked onto campus bursting with confidence and prepared to experience a corresponding renaissance in my love life. With this new leg, I believed I could compete in the dating game just like everybody else. I couldn't wait.

I became a regular at parties at Carleton College—a neighboring "wet" campus where alcohol was freely allowed and abundant—and often went on my own. At one party I was standing around, idly watching the television, trying to see if I was catching anybody's eye. I saw a man with dark hair lean in to talk to his blond friend; they were both wearing jeans and sweaters and holding cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. They looked at me, and I quickly looked away, becoming suddenly fascinated by the television program. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dark-haired guy approaching me, but I pretended not to notice.

"Hey," he said.

"Oh," I said, feigning surprise. "Hey."

"What's up?" he asked.

"Not much," I replied, my heart beating fast. We introduced ourselves and chatted about classes, about how nice the fall in Minnesota was, about what a great party this was. I was so nervous, I forgot his name seconds after he told me. Eventually we sat beside each other on the couch. When I crossed my legs, he asked, "Hey, why are you wearing hose on just one foot?" I took a quick sip of my sloe-gin fizz.

"Oh," I said. "My leg is artificial, that's why." I felt comfortable saying this, partly because I was already quite drunk and partly because it was clear that this man thought I was attractive. A male friend had once told me: "I know if I want to sleep with a woman within the first five seconds of meeting her." I felt that I had cleared the first hurdle, the one I had rarely gotten past in situations like these.

"That's not funny," he said, and gave me a dark look.

Flabbergasted, I laughed. "Really, it's true," I said.

"Seriously, it's really not funny. What the hell?"

I stared at him and realized that he truly did not believe me. What, he wanted proof? A jolt of anger made me pull up the left leg of my jeans, all the way to the gap between the socket and the shank that held the hydraulic, mechanical knee.

My would-be suitor lunged back. "Oh, shit, sorry," he said. I looked up and saw that several people were staring at us. They quickly looked away.

"Uh, I'll be right back," he said. "Need another drink?" I shook my head no, and as soon as he was out of sight, I stood up and stepped through the chatting crowd. I knew he would not be returning, and even if he did—where would we go from here? As I was about to walk down the stairs and out the door, I heard a conversation to my left in the hallway that led to the bathroom.

"I've got a bone to pick with you," said the man I'd been sitting with.

"What, dude? I'm totally wasted. What are you talking about?" I stood motionless at the top of the stairs.

"About that girl. She's got a wooden leg, man. What the hell? I thought you said you'd seen her before."

I didn't wait to hear any more. I walked home quickly through the sharp, fragrant air of a Minnesota fall.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Liz asked the next morning. She'd been out when I got in, watching movies in a friend's room. "You're never here in the morning." She looked at the clock. "Shit, it's almost eleven. You've usually written five pages by now." I'd been awake since dawn, trying to process the previous night as I listened to Liz's heavy breathing punctuated by the sounds of chattering birds. I shook my head.

"Emma?" she said, looking concerned now. "You look funny. What happened?"

"Nothing," I said, too ashamed to tell her. "I'm fine. Just tired."

"I don't believe you. How was the party?"

"Oh, fine."

"Just fine?"

"Well, there was a guy," I started. "He said . . ." But I couldn't finish. I could not repeat the words that had confirmed my greatest fears. I wanted to tell Liz; I wanted her to say,
He's wrong, he's a jerk,
it will never happen again,
even though I wouldn't have believed her.

"Yeah?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Mrnmm," I said. Liz squeezed my hand and didn't make me continue. I began to cry. She didn't say, "Don't do that" or "Stop crying," she just held my hand and never asked me to explain.

For a decade, I'd been pinning the advent of my new life on the acquisition of an improved prosthesis, but I knew now I would not be prancing around or going on romantic dates as I had imagined. Boys were not going to start ringing me up or chasing me down to blurt out expressions of admiration. I feared—even believed—that the encounter at the party had been an accurate glimpse of my future.

That night, I got completely wasted at another Carleton party with Liz and her new boyfriend, Jason, both of whom I ignored. Each time Liz tried to talk to me, I found something else to do or someone else to engage in conversation. She was clearly hurt and confused, but I didn't care. I spent much of the time with my head tipped back in a barber's chair for "Suicides," which involved two people (in this case, strangers) dumping a mystery concoction of hard liquor down my throat.

Back in our room later that night, we ordered a pizza and I ate four pieces in about five minutes. I ate normally only when I was drunk, my loss of control lifted by alcoholic euphoria.

After we cleared away the pizza boxes, I ran to the bathroom and was sick in the nearest stall. Liz came running in. "Let me in," she said, rapping on the locked door.

"Go away," I told her, and started to cry "Go!" I shouted.

"Fucking let me in!" she screamed. "What's the matter with you?" On my knees, I hung my head over the toilet. I had eaten too much. I was a terrible person, a horrible friend. I was so jealous of Liz—acquiring a boyfriend had seemed so effortless for her!

She crawled under the stall and held my head as the last of the pizza and what she identified as schnapps came up. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.

"I'm the one puking."

"You know what I mean." She let go of me and sat against the bathroom door.

I pushed off from the toilet and faced her, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what to do. Something's wrong with me. Does that make sense?"

Liz stood up and flushed the toilet. "Nothing makes sense right now," she said, and held out her hand to help pull me up. "And there's nothing wrong with you, either, so cut that shit out."

As we walked back to our room, Liz steadied me with one arm around my waist. "You know you're great and I love you," she said. "Right?" I nodded, but I still felt that I was the one at fault.

How was I going to pass as normal when my girlfriends were doing the ritual "walk of shame" back to their dorm rooms on cold Minnesota mornings after cuddling naked with a boy in his bed all night? Was I going to ask some dude to lift my leg off his bed the way Liz had gently done before I went to sleep that first year in college? Was I going to ask him to
remove
it when the first guy who'd seem interested in me had been disgusted by a mechanical knee? No way. The body in two pieces was an image of violence, not of sexuality; it was what detectives came to examine after some terrible crime. I thought of the legs that arrived from the prosthetist in "body bags." Disability evoked a zoolike curiosity that was hardly sexual. No matter how hard I tried to pass as an able-bodied woman, the act of removing a leg was not normal—it never would be. How was I ever going to enter this realm of intimacy and sex? My body would always give me away.