Poster Child (6 page)

"Now hold the stump away from your body to let it dry," Schmidt said. He left the room while the warm plaster cooled. I leaned back against the table, and Dad and I stared down at the mummified stump, not saying a word. We listened to Schmidt bellowing the words to a country song in the other room. The plaster finally set, and the cast was stiff enough to remove.

"A-ha!" Schmidt exclaimed as he twisted the cast off gently. It resembled a snakeskin newly shed. Using a pencil, Schmidt made several marks on the outside of the mold. "This is the house for the residual limb," he said, tapping it with his index finger. He looked up at me. "Like a little house."

I didn't know what residual meant, but I understood that my stump would live in that house made of plaster and that's how I would walk. It was another type of brick house, but unlike the other one that had imprisoned me, this one, made of wood and metal, would set me free. The mold reminded me of a gingerbread house, the way you'd put the wet pieces of cake together and wait for them to dry into something solid, something real, something that could be called by name.

"Now we can make the leg," Schmidt said.

"Using that as a model?" Dad asked, clarifying.

"Yes, for the socket." Schmidt looked at me. "The little house. Now, the metal hinges at the sides of the socket will mimic the motion of a knee." He moved his hand back and forth through the air. "It's a simple motion, simple system." He stood up and opened and shut the door of the exam room with his plaster-covered hands, leaving two white handprints on the door. "The knee is like a hinge," he said. "Just like a door hinge."

After Schmidt left the room, Dad pushed the door back and forth. "That makes sense," he said.

While we were making another appointment for the next week in the "reception area," which was a tiny front room with a smelly old couch, a few chairs, and a pile of outdated
Time
magazines stacked on a dusty table, the bell on the door rang. For a few moments, the open door let the sounds of traffic rush in. As Schmidt flipped through the waterlogged appointment book, I turned around and saw a man who was very tall and looked older than Dad, but not as old as Schmidt. His dark, wavy hair was streaked with silver, and his leathery skin made him look like the ranchers who attended Dad's church. He wore khaki shorts; his right leg was shiny and wooden with bright metal hinges where a normal person's knee would be. When he walked, his foot swung out to the side. It was an odd, awkward movement, as though the fake leg might fly off his body at any moment. The leg made noises like a squeaky door as the man came closer. Was I going to look and sound like that when I walked?

I looked up at Dad and saw that all the color had drained from his face. His eyes looked wide behind his glasses; one of the lenses was smudged with a bit of white plaster. The hinges of the man's leg made a scraping sound as he crouched in front of me. I thought he looked like a robot, and not a very modern one. I knew it was rude to stare, so I looked at his face, my mouth partly open. His face and neck were sweating. "High-five, little lady," he said, and held out his tanned, perfect hand. When he smiled his teeth were white and even. I slapped his warm hand and giggled.

"Good luck!" he called to us as we left the building.

Driving back from Denver to Laramie, a three-hour drive, I asked Dad, "What did Schmidt mean by a good one?"

"He meant that your stump is healthy and looks strong."

"Really?"

"Yes. It all healed perfectly."

Healthy and strong was good. I felt proud, as if I had had something to do with how well I had healed. It meant that I wouldn't walk like that nice man I'd met on the way out of the office. I felt better, although I hadn't realized until that moment how unsettled I'd felt.

"What does 'residull' mean?"

"You mean 'residual'?" Dad was silent for a moment. "It means what's left after something is taken, goes away. What's left over."

"Like leftovers?"

"I guess so."

Residual. What's left when something's taken away. This strange word that I had never heard before and didn't completely understand made me sad. I looked out the window and watched as a truck barreled past us on a steep hill. As we passed Abe Lincoln's monument on I-80,1 stared into his bronze, deeply lined face until our car was too far away for me to see him. As soon as I had the leg, I was going to walk right up to that monument. No walkers or scooters or casts or crutches. Just me and my good and healthy stump.

I would remember this experience later. The words themselves, "residual limb," implied lack and also—to my mind—held within them a kind of mythic power. They were labels for the body, albeit ones I didn't initially or immediately understand. Even so, in that moment in the car, I had already resolved to overcome those labels—to prove even the words wrong.

A few weeks later, Dad and I returned to Schmidt's office. "Ready to get rid of those?" Dad asked, pointing at my crutches. I nodded.

"There she is," Schmidt said as we walked in the door. He stood in the reception area with the leg in his arms and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Leaning forward to balance my weight on the crutches, I took the leg and held it in my hands. I felt inside the molded plastic socket—it was perfectly smooth. I ran my fingers over the orange, toeless foot. The wooden calf looked solid and flawless. The buckle on the canvas waist strap was silver and shiny. There was a barely visible line where the foot met the ankle. The metal hinges on each side looked sleek and mechanical. The leg was made especially for me. It was mine. Now I could walk like other kids; I could have adventures, no longer bound by any cast. "I want to wear it," I said. Schmidt carried the leg into the changing room, and Dad and I followed.

That afternoon, I walked the runway with the prosthesis. I had discovered a treasure: this new body of mine, this new wooden leg.

Dad and Schmidt clapped and cheered as I went back and forth across the thin strip of linoleum that ran the length of the front room. The leg made either a loud thump or a crack each time I swung it through, as if my forward motion—at last!—were special enough to make its own sound.

"How does it feel?" Schmidt asked.

"Weird," I said. He looked at me. "But good." It wasn't like walking with a cast at all. The leg felt like a part of me, like an extension of my flesh-and-blood stump; it
was
me. It did feel strange at first—and heavy—but soon it felt natural, as if the body filled it exactly the way it should.

"Does it hurt anywhere?"

I shook my head. "Well, it kind of rubs on the side, but it's okay."
Don't take it away,
I thought. "It's okay," I repeated.

"Show me where it rubs," Schmidt said, and I pointed. "Ah," he said, and marked that area with a red grease pencil. I watched him. "Don't worry, it will rinse off," he said. I unbuckled the strap and slipped off the leg. Schmidt moved his hands over my stump, checking skin temperature as a gauge of irritation. "Come with me," he said, and Dad bent down so I could hop up on his back. I wanted to see where my leg was going.

We walked to the back room, where Schmidt set the leg on a pedestal and used an electrically powered router—like a long arm fitted with a metal tip—to grind out those places where I'd felt pressure on my stump. Dust spun out everywhere as the socket was modified. "Makes good dust!" Schmidt shouted.

Back on the runway, I put on the leg and took a few steps.

"Better?" Schmidt asked. I nodded.

I used the bars along the runway to steady me when my balance faltered. "It will help your limp if you imagine swinging the leg through as smoothly as possible," Schmidt advised. I imagined the pendulum in a grandfather clock swinging gracefully and evenly as it marked each second. I took a few more steps. "Good," he said. "Much better."

I looked at Dad. "Looks great!" he said. "Wow."

Schmidt periodically leapt out in front of me and bent to make an adjustment, asking again about pressure points and turning the left foot in and then out again to match the position of my right foot. "You don't want to look pigeon-toed!" he warned. I thought of a car race I'd seen on television, when a mechanic ran out to fix the cars after an accident to get them up and racing again. I thought of designers nipping a hem or adjusting a belt on a model before a fashion show. I was pleased with both of these associations—divided, as they were, between rugged and lovely—and I was absolutely thrilled with my new leg. After a while, I no longer needed the bars.

"Look at that. Look at her go," said Schmidt. He watched me carefully, clearly admiring his handiwork.
I'm going,
I thought.
Here
I go.
Dad looked as if he were about to burst into tears or laughter or both at once.

"I want to go faster," I said, looking at Schmidt. "How fast can I go?"

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, "You go as fast as you want to." I hugged him, cigarette and body odor and all. Dad laughed.

After that, I walked everywhere until I was sore and exhausted. I did not allow the leg to be removed from my sight. At night, I slept with my arm slung around it, and if I slipped out of it to watch television at night, I made sure to keep a hand on the foot, the ankle, or the strap. If I hopped off to the bathroom, I instructed Andy to look after it, as if the leg might walk away on its own. Although I later went through periods of being cavalier about my prosthesis—tossing it about or throwing it down the stairs to watch it bend at weird angles like some kind of strange, anatomical Slinky—much of the time I guarded it as fiercely as I did during the days when it first was mine.

Initially, everything about the new leg seemed miraculous. Not only was it much prettier and more interesting then my flesh-and-blood leg, but it had freed me.

The leg slowly revealed itself to be far from perfect. The waist strap chafed against my hips and made my right leg go numb if I sat still for too long. I often dropped the strap into the toilet when I was in a hurry. The metal hinges ripped my clothes. The cheap silver buckle tarnished quickly. I liked the look of the leg's slick wood, but I could not sit in a smooth chair without sliding out of it. The SACH foot soon had its share of grass stains and dirt smudges that looked like bruises; after a while, the initial bounce disappeared, and it felt like walking on a block of wood.

"Those feet are not free," Dad reminded me, pointing out the most recent, permanent stain.

"Uh-huh," I said, but I didn't want to be careful while playing outside. I wanted to be active and adventurous.

During the summer, the socket was incredibly hot; the thin fabric stump sock was wet and stinking at the end of the day. I used to dare myself to smell it, amazed that such horrific odor was produced by my body. The metal hinges on either side burned me when I touched them after being out in the sun.

Dad oiled the hinges with WD-40 when they became stiff and creaky in the winter. I hopped up on the thick rope swing that hung from the garage rafters and moved back and forth through the air. My arm muscles strained as I rose higher and higher, leaning back to create more momentum. I felt as though I had two bodies: the one on the swing with its right leg pumping and straightening and the other body that needed the leg to walk and run, the one with the artificial part that was being oiled and tended to as I looked on. I was comfortable with both embodiments. After they were oiled, the leg's hinges leaked frequently, and I left a greasy mark on my clothes, car seats, bedsheets, or the couch—anywhere I sat down.

While visiting my cousins one summer, I left my leg unattended at the public pool for just a moment to show Erica, Sarah, and Beth how well I could dive, and when I resurfaced and found that it had disappeared, I became hysterical. Erica and Beth stayed with me while Sarah shot into action, as was her way. She roamed the pool area and the locker rooms until she tracked down the thief and shook him down. Carrying it carefully in her arms, her steps sure and steady, Sarah returned the leg to me.

I frantically wiped down the socket and the hinges with my beach towel, as if to remove the mark that this foreign handler—this thief—had left on a part of my body. "He does that again," Sarah promised, "and I'll make his nose bleed." I nodded, thankful and vindicated. We never had problems at the pool again, although one of my cousins would always work on her tan in order to stand watch over the leg where it leaned against a plastic pool chair, completely covered by a beach towel. When I was ready to get out, the wrapped prosthesis was brought like an offering to the edge of the pool. I dried the stump as quickly as I could and slipped on the sock, my hands sometimes shaking. I didn't like strangers staring at my body, at my deformity, although I was perfectly comfortable having my leg off around friends and family. I shoved the stump into the sun-warmed socket, buckled the strap, and tied the towel around my waist to cover my lower half. Immediately I felt better, like any another girl having just finished her swim.

At slumber parties, I clung to the leg inside my sleeping bag with both arms wrapped around it as if it were a favorite stuffed animal, a beloved pet, or, much later, a lover; as an adult, on overnight train trips, I zipped it into my coat and used it as an uncomfortable but functional headrest, wrapping both my arms around it to hold it firmly in place. If anyone tried to take my leg—as a joke, as a way of being cruel—he or she would have to take me with it.