Читать книгу Such a Pretty Girl - Nadina LaSpina - Страница 15

4

BLYTHEDALE

The big cast had to stay on for another six months after my spine was fused. Since my mother worked and couldn’t take care of me at home, in July 1963, I moved from the Hospital for Special Surgery to Blythedale, a convalescent home in White Plains, about an hour and a half away. A few other girls, including Susie, went there also, as did the only boy, Edwin. I went gladly. I wouldn’t have wanted to be at home, unable to move.

Blythedale was like the hospital, young children on one side and older kids on the other. Except no one had surgery there, and there were no doctors making rounds. You saw a doctor only when you got the flu.

Since I had no choice, I got used to being dependent and being handled by nurses and aides. In the big casts, we were not allowed to get up on stretchers, but our beds were pushed around by porters. We all lay on our stomachs, with sandbags under our chests, which lifted our torsos so that we could freely use our arms. Our beds got pushed to the recreation room, and to the schoolroom, where the one teacher, Miss Fox, treated us all equally, whether we were in first grade or twelfth.

“No talking or laughing!”

Our beds were also pushed outside, on the extensive Blythedale grounds. It felt strange but wonderful to be in bed under a tree. I hadn’t seen so many trees since I’d left Sicily. During the last two years, I’d been indoors, either in our Brooklyn apartment or in the hospital.

I loved watching the squirrels chase each other and listening to the sparrows chirp. It was summer, so we stayed outside most of the day and sometimes into the evening. If Seth and Sarah, the two recreation counselors, could work late, we might have a campfire. Some in beds, others on stretchers and in wheelchairs, we formed a wide circle around the fire. Seth roasted marshmallows and Sarah played her guitar and sang. We all sang along.

I knew Audrey wouldn’t be able to come see me in Blythedale. I had hoped to talk to her on the phone. But that wasn’t easy. There was a pay phone in the recreation room, but I had to get someone to push me there, put the coins in, and dial the number for me. It took a lot of coins to call Audrey on Long Island. When I managed to call her, and told her about Blythedale, she said it sounded like the summer camp for handicapped kids she went to.

To talk to my parents, I had someone put in the coins, dial the number, let the phone ring once, and then hang up so I’d get my coins back. My parents knew it was my signal and called me.

Since Blythedale was so far, my parents could come only on weekends. That’s also when Susie’s parents came. Often my parents and Susie’s met at the station and arrived together, carrying shopping bags full of good food: fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, dried sausage, crusty bread. We all sat together under a tree and had a picnic. Speaking the Sicilian dialect, our parents reminisced about their beloved island and its legendary beauty. They also talked about the poverty, the lack of education, the unemployment that forced many to emigrate. Sometimes my father recited Sicilian poetry. His favorite poet was Ignazio Buttitta. My father sounded angry and sad as he spoke of Sicilians being scorned for their dark complexion, their alleged uncleanliness and laziness. His voice got loud. Other kids’ parents looked at us. “Semu chiamati pi mjuria terroni; ca l’omini da Sicilia non semu genti boni. To insult us they call us ‘made of dirt’; Sicilians, they say, are not good people.”

During the week, I spent the mornings studying. Miss Fox was not much help, but the college students who came and tutored us were great. They came from different schools—from nearby Westchester Community College as well as from faraway New York University. I loved to hear about their courses. To me, even midterms and finals sounded like fun.

I studied American history, read about the colonies and the Revolutionary War, tried to memorize the names of the presidents, was fascinated by Abraham Lincoln, was horrified to learn about slavery. I read about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, known as FDR, the president who had polio. My book said he “conquered polio” to become one of our greatest presidents. I asked my tutors if he was really cured, as my father had told me. “No” was the answer, “but he couldn’t have been president if he had been seen as handicapped.”

In the afternoon, we had recreation. We didn’t glue tiles on metal ashtrays like we did in the hospital. Seth and Sarah had us write poetry, act in plays, and work on art projects. I adored them.

Sarah had very long, dark hair, wore sandals, and always carried her guitar. She taught us folk songs. Folk songs were different from the songs I listened to with Audrey. They were quieter and more serious. I didn’t like them at first, but when I listened carefully, I realized how much meaning was in the words. The songs reminded me of my father’s poetry. They were about freedom, equality, solidarity, peace, not about boyfriends and girlfriends. We listened to Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary on the stereo in the recreation room. I tried to sing along: “If I had a hammer…” Sarah’s favorite folksinger was Joan Baez. The first time I heard a Joan Baez record, I was spellbound. I had my mother pack all of Audrey’s 45s and take them away.

Seth also wore sandals and had lots of curly brown hair. He talked about Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King was not a medical doctor, but a doctor of theology and a Baptist minister. Seth and Sara were both Jewish, like Audrey. I knew kids of various Protestant denominations and a girl who was Hindu. Since in Riposto everyone was Catholic, I loved the idea of people having different religions, or no religion at all.

Dr. King, Seth told us, was a leader in the civil rights movement. I wanted to know all about the civil rights movement. I was outraged at the thought of racial segregation and discrimination. I was mesmerized by the story of Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the back of the bus. I wished I could be a freedom rider. I pictured myself on a bus heading south, sitting next to Marcus, my favorite tutor, a very handsome black student from NYU. I wouldn’t be afraid to get arrested, I told myself. I would be proud to go to jail with Dr. King. Nor would I be afraid of the Ku Klux Klan. I pictured myself holding Marcus’s hand and confronting a man in a white hood.

Seth, Sarah, and Marcus had gone to the March on Washington on August 28. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country were there, they told me. How I wished I could have gone with them!

“Did Joan Baez sing?”

Of course, they told me. But the most exciting part of the rally had been Dr. King’s speech.

“What did he say? Tell me everything.”

They couldn’t tell me without getting all choked up. Even Seth’s eyes got misty as he recalled Dr. King’s words: “I have a dream…” Sarah started strumming her guitar and humming softly. We all sang “We Shall Overcome.”

The months passed quickly in Blythedale. In my bed in the big cast, I watched the leaves on the trees turn yellow and red, and dreamed of the time when my hair would be long like Sarah’s. I would be a college student, go to folk concerts, and go to demonstrations in Washington and hear Dr. King speak.

One day in November, I was in the schoolroom, working with Marcus, when Sarah tiptoed in and whispered in my ear that there was a phone call from a friend of mine who seemed anxious to speak to me. I asked Miss Fox to excuse me and asked Marcus to push my bed to the phone.

It was Audrey. She started crying the moment she heard my voice. The boy she had a crush on had a girlfriend, a normal girlfriend, of course. I couldn’t make out the boy’s name, that’s how hard she was crying—was it Harry? He had told Audrey he liked her but said there could never be anything between them, since she was handicapped. The boy wanted Audrey to meet his girlfriend, whose name was Margie or Marcie. He had introduced Audrey to his girlfriend as his “handicapped friend.”

“I can’t be his friend, period? I have to be his handicapped friend?” Audrey sobbed. “And you know what the little bitch had the nerve to tell me? That she sends money to the telethon, like I should be grateful for that!”

I listened in silence. I couldn’t think of any comforting words to say.

Finally, she stopped crying. “I didn’t even ask how you are.”

Since my mind was brimming with so many new ideas, I couldn’t hold back. I started talking about the college students who tutored me, and about Seth and Sarah. I told her how I wanted to go to college, wanted to fight for civil rights, go to demonstrations, and hear Dr. King.

“I can’t wait to be out in the real world!” I said.

“Oh, you’re so naïve!” The bitterness in her voice hit me like a spray of snake venom. “You think they’re all waiting for you with open arms in the real world! Don’t you understand? No one wants anything to do with us because we’re handicapped! The only thing the real world has to offer us is pity!”

Audrey was right. No matter what my father said, I knew I wasn’t about to be cured. How could I go to college when I couldn’t even get out my front door? How could I be a freedom rider when I couldn’t ride on a bus? How was I going to get to a concert or a demonstration? And what good would a handicapped girl be at a demonstration? Or anywhere else, for that matter? For days I cried.

Before long, I wasn’t the only one crying. About a week after Audrey’s call, another call came, for Seth, while we were working on one of our art projects.

“The president’s been shot.”

Seth’s face was as white as the sheets on our beds. He turned on the big TV set in the recreation room.

“The president’s been shot,” the nurses’ voices echoed down the hallways.

In the following days, everyone crowded in front of the TV, crying. And I cried along with them. For the handsome president who was now dead, for his beautiful wife, who looked so sad, and for the two children, who would never see their daddy again.

I kept crying, even after everyone else had stopped. I cried because it was too cold to go outside, and the trees I loved were all bare. In Sicily, where the winters were mild, I’d never seen trees look so dead. I cried when it snowed so much that my parents couldn’t come see me. And because I didn’t like the food they served us and missed our summer picnics. I cried when the nurses were mean to me or too rough and hurt me. I cried when my roommates teased me because I was always crying.

Then the six months were up and it was time for the big cast to come off. Back in the hospital, they cut the cast with an electric circular saw down the middle in the back, rolled me over and cut it down the middle in the front, then forced it open with a pry bar. I came out of the cast naked and shaking, just as I had been when they’d put it on me.

“Your back looks nice and straight,” one of the nurses said. “Do you want a mirror?”

But all I wanted was to be enclosed, hidden again. They put a smaller cast on me, which had to stay on for four more months. It covered my torso, from under my arms to my hips.

“What a nice shape that cast gives you!” Audrey said when she came to visit me in the hospital.

I hadn’t seen her in over six months. She looked beautiful, with streaks in her hair—highlights, they were called—and her makeup so perfect. She said she had learned to accentuate her features without looking made-up. She seemed happy; she didn’t talk about Harry, or whatever his name was. She brought me eye shadow and hair spray. I hadn’t been wearing makeup all those months in the big cast, so I didn’t even remember how to put it on. And my hair had grown back, but I didn’t know what to do with it.

Audrey went to work.

“Your hair has grown in so nicely!” She played with it, teasing it on top, making it curl over my ears. Then she made me try on the eye shadow. “I knew it was your color! You look so pretty!”

I did feel pretty again. “Thank you, Audrey.”

I hugged her, now that in the smaller cast I could reach her, and asked, “Are we blood sisters again?”

“Of course”—she laughed, hugging me back—“we’re blood sisters forever.”

I went back to Blythedale feeling pretty. In my shapely new cast, I wore jeans and bright- colored sweaters, instead of the triple X nightgowns that had been my exclusive wardrobe for many months. With my hair curly and shiny, and some makeup, only enough to bring out my features, I didn’t feel like crying anymore. I could turn myself in bed now, though I still needed some help washing and dressing. I wasn’t allowed to sit in a wheelchair, but I could wheel myself on a stretcher, on my stomach, a pillow under my chest. I became a pro at maneuvering, and, though it was still winter, I liked to sneak out the door.

In March, I looked for signs of the coming spring. It made me happy to discover grass growing where there had been none the day before, a violet shyly opening up to the mild sunshine, then the first tiny leaves appearing on trees.

Edwin, who had gotten his four-month cast a month before I did, also liked to sneak out the door. Two years older than I was, he was almost eighteen. We met outside and went all the way to the end of the path, where you could see the highway.

“That’s a ‘62 Chevy Impala! That’s a ‘61 Dodge Dart!” He pointed to the cars as they zoomed by.

I didn’t care, but I tried to look interested.

When he got tired of looking at cars, he kissed me—clumsy, open-mouthed kisses that almost made me choke. Then he squeezed his hand inside my cast, but I didn’t let him get in far enough to touch my breasts. Whenever his hand went toward the zipper of his pants, I got nervous, thinking I heard someone spying on us, and made him stop.

Audrey approved of Edwin. Since he had only scoliosis, no other disability, he rated pretty high in her book.

“Maybe he won’t have much of a protrusion on his back when he’s done,” she said.

The morning after our first campfire of the season, I hurried to the pay phone with a bunch of coins I kept under my pillow and called Audrey. I told her how Edwin and I had parked our stretchers right next to each other’s and shared a heavy blanket. Seth had some trouble getting the fire started, but once it got going, it was the most beautiful fire ever. Trembling from the excitement, and the still-chilly weather, I’d let Edwin guide my hand to his crotch under our blanket. I touched something hard and throbbing.

Audrey got so agitated, she wouldn’t let me tell the story.

“You held it in your hand? Wow, how big was it? How long? How hard?”

“It was big,” I told her, though I had no basis for comparison.

I think for the first time Audrey was jealous of me.

I never found out how much of a protrusion Edwin had. He went to HSS to get his cast off and I never heard from him again.

“Of course,” Audrey said. “Now that he’s practically normal, he wouldn’t want anything to do with a handicapped girl.”

“I didn’t love him anyway,” I declared.

When my turn came to get my cast off, I was nervous. I’d already been fitted with braces while at Blythedale. At HSS, they would teach me to stand and walk. I’d seen kids walking with braces and crutches. It didn’t look easy.

It was even harder than I’d thought. I exhausted myself every day in PT, determined to learn to walk as well as I could. Unlike Audrey, I felt I had to walk. My father had brought me to America so I could walk. I wanted to repay my parents for all the sacrifices they had made. But now I understood what Audrey meant when she talked about those who had only scoliosis being “practically normal.” I watched my Blythedale roommates come into the hospital, shed their casts, and walk out looking gorgeous.

When Susie joined me at HSS, I was so happy. Her cast came off and we went to PT together. But Susie had learned to use braces and crutches when she was a little girl. It didn’t take long for her to get back in practice. She went home, while I was only starting to take tentative steps.

I felt so awkward and clumsy, though my therapist generously praised me for my progress.

“Leave your braces on and take the crutches to your floor, so you can practice walking on your own,” she said one afternoon.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I stammered.

She just smiled as she secured the crutches to the back of my wheelchair.

When the elevator doors opened on my floor, my favorite nurse was there.

“Congratulations!”

That evening, she helped me get ready to surprise my parents. She picked the loosest pair of pants I had and put them on me, pulling them over my braces while I lay in bed on my back. She assured me the braces hardly showed when I stood leaning on the crutches, full of trepidation. I waited at the door of my room until she announced, under her breath, as she quickly walked away, “They’re here.”

I saw my parents heading toward my room, and I started stepping, right crutch, left foot, left crutch, right foot, very carefully, trying not to shake, hoping not to fall. My parents stopped in the middle of the hallway and watched me. I got within a few feet of them. My mother had tears in her eyes, and my father had a big smile on his face.

“Look how tall you are!” my mother exclaimed.

Then my father spoke: “I’m sure before long you’ll be able to walk without those sticks.”

My heart sank. It had been so hard to learn to walk with crutches, and now he expected me to learn to walk without them? How was I ever going to do that? Can’t this be enough? I wanted to yell. But suddenly, I felt so exhausted. I knew I couldn’t walk back to my room. When I turned and saw the nurse had brought out my wheelchair, I was so grateful.

A few days after, I fell in PT and fractured my right knee. They sent me back to Blythedale for six weeks, to give my bone time to heal. I was grateful for the reprieve. Though I kept saying I couldn’t wait to get out, in all honesty the thought scared me. What was I going to do when I went home? What was I going to do in the “real world”?