I was not entirely certain what had landed me in this place. My spine was curved, that much I knew, my right side shorter, thwarted, out of all alignment. The word scoliosis meant little to me. I’d flunked a lot of fitness tests. I had a funny walk. Could they put you in the hospital for a funny walk?
There were many patients, one doctor; the wait, I discovered, could take all afternoon. When the nurse finally called my name, I trailed her and my mother into the examination room. My mother helped me tie the blue cotton gown in back. She looked me in the eye when the doctor would not and politely rephrased his third-person questions (“How does she sit?” “Honey, how do you sit?”) until he took the hint and asked me directly.
I lay on the examining table and the doctor measured my legs. I bent over while he took a protractor to my spine. I stood on one foot then the other. It was a game of Simon Says. The doctor muttered as he wrote things down. I was the body in the room, there yet invisible.
That day I was x-rayed for the first time and saw what a misshapen thing my spine was. It started out straight enough but about a third of the way down, my spine began a dramatic curve to the left, making an “S” shape as my lower vertebrae snaked back in the other direction before managing, somehow, to merge into my tilted pelvis. It was a wonder, I thought, that I could stand at all.
Dr. Mangieri explained that I had idiopathic scoliosis. I hated that word, idiopathic, the way it sounded like idiot, suggesting some causal link, some malfunction not only of body but of brain. Was this why I’d been lumped in with the slow girls in guidance? What did brains have to do anyway with a crooked spine? Later my mother explained to me that idiopathic meant the cause of my curvature was unknown. For scoliosis, this was common. Left untreated, the doctor continued, my condition could lead to progressive deformity, chronic pain, possible damage to pulmonary and cardiac function. My translation went something like: This is serious, pay attention, do what he says. And what he said was to exercise. Because I was still growing, he felt that a physical therapy regimen would strengthen my back muscles, helping them prod my spine in the right direction. If that didn’t work, I would have to wear a brace. And if that didn’t work . . . But on that first visit I don’t think he brought up surgery. What I remember is that the threat of the brace turned me into a physical therapy zealot, willing my muscles to straighten my recalcitrant spine. I would not become like those girls in the waiting room, a spectacle encased in plastic and steel.
To correct the half-inch imbalance in my leg length, I would have to wear a shoe with a built-in lift. The lift was expensive and the shoe had to be sturdy. In the dawning era of platform heels, I started junior high with two pair of orthopedic shoes—sensible brown oxfords and saddle shoes. They were heavy things, nothing like Hermes’s winged sandals. They made me feel earthbound, and I loathed them.
Good Girls
Twice a week I went to physical therapy. Because my mother worked, she arranged for her mother to pick me up from school and drive me to the rehab center.
My grandmother built her week around these excursions. A few years earlier she’d left her beauty parlor job and had begun a quick slide into a whiskey-fueled retirement. When my parents divorced she let us have the house and moved to a one-bedroom apartment, which she and my grandfather uneasily shared. She slept until mid-afternoon, gulped down handfuls of brightly colored pills with an orange juice chaser, then fixed herself the first in a long string of Manhattans. Most days she didn’t bother to get dressed. Sometimes though, when we stopped by for a visit, she’d be wearing the longline bra girdle-garter belt ensemble that meant she was going out. This she kept partly concealed beneath an open robe, a modest touch. The garment, with its hooks and straps and elastics, fascinated me. My grandmother wore it whenever she had errands, most often a trip to the pharmacy for cigarettes. Was this, I wondered, what old women had to do to leave the house? My mother wore normal underwear—bra, panties, an occasional slip. My father’s mother, who wore stockings and white cotton gloves even in summer, wouldn’t dream of showing her underwear. Did she, too, wear one of these things? Would I have to?
My grandmother sat on the couch, feet up, tissues, cigarettes, and drink in reach. She smoked Newports by the case, two packs a day, coughing her way through conversations, railing against the doctor who’d told her to quit, triumphant when he dropped dead of a heart attack. Doctors—what do they know? And she’d gesture toward my grandfather, silent and unmoving in his La-Z-Boy. Had doctors been able to cure his Parkinson’s disease? She’d fix herself another drink.
Squat and pugnacious, my grandmother cherished a fight. She needed an antagonist, someone around whom she could build a dramatic narrative. Her sons-in-law—the deadbeat, the bully. The neighbors with their yapping dog. The paperboy who always came late. And the Tomlinson Junior High School crossing guard who had the nerve to expect her to park in the visitors’ lot when her granddaughter had a medical condition and needed to get to therapy and how the hell difficult was that to understand?
From high up on the school steps I’d see her, vivid in a paisley dress, her gold Camaro first in a line of idling buses. Bet the other kids think your grandmother’s pretty cool, huh, driving a Camaro. Bet they wish they could come too.
The longer I waited on the steps, the greater the commotion. My grandmother always parked up front, ahead of the buses, which, she pointed out, had plenty of room to maneuver around her. This was true. But she was up against a Rules Are Rules crossing guard who, like her, was convinced of the moral rightness of his stance.
The crossing guard wrote a citation. My grandmother tore it up. Buses honked. My classmates watched. I was certain that my great love Señor Raul, the handsome young Spanish teacher with the red Corvette and the 007 license plates, was watching, too. Señor Raul who—from what misguided impulse I cannot say—slipped me love notes in the halls: Patricia, mi amor, mi corazon. No, I wanted to holler, this woman with the lacquered hair and gold car, the one waving her arms and shouting, no she did not belong to me. But she did and, chastened, I scurried over to the car, sinking low in the passenger seat.
It’s okay, I’d say. You can park around back. I’ll find you.
And get caught in that traffic? We have to get you to therapy. You have a medical condition—I told him so! Trying to make me go around back. We pay taxes! Who the hell does he think he is?
On and on it went. I put a textbook up close to my face until we were out of school range.
In rehab the other patients soaked in whirlpools or practiced using walkers. They bragged about grandchildren and complained to their therapists about their aches and pains. My therapist was a brisk woman with a German accent and a husband who’d run into trouble with the local Board of Education for barring girls from his high school shop class after the law changed to let them in. The therapist claimed these girls were troublemakers who did not know their place. I, on the other hand, was a good girl, meaning I did not care about shop. By confiding in me, the therapist implied that she and I were conspirators, united in our disapproval of these willful, boyish girls. Never did it occur to her that I might recoil from the idea of being limited and defined by one’s body. Years later, when her husband was at last fired for discrimination, I was glad.
The therapist and I worked on “balance and resistance.” I walked a wooden beam, inches from the floor. I lay on my stomach, trying to keep my arm raised while the therapist pushed against it. Gut girl! she’d cry, encouraging me. But I did not want to be a good girl. I did not want to take shop, I did not want to lie on my stomach behind some therapist’s partition of curtains, I did not want to wear orthopedic shoes. I wanted to be David Bowie, whom I’d recently discovered on FM radio, or Twiggy, whose glammed-out face appeared on the cover of Bowie’s album Pin Ups. I wanted a different body, no body, an elongated body like the one I had, all jutting bones, elbows, clavicle, only different. A body that would land me on the cover of an album rather than a therapist’s table.
&nbs
p; The therapist gave me exercises to do. Every night, for twice as long as she specified, I practiced with the headphones on, listening to Mick, to Bowie. Or I practiced to Cher’s variety show—another one-name wraith with attitude. As I did my arm lifts and push-ups, I imagined myself onstage, a back-up dancer shimmying in glitter.
I am a tightrope walker, see me so lithe. Arms outstretched, schoolbooks piled by the high curb in front of the Mobil Station. Toe, heel, toe, heel . . . steady. It’s not easy to be agile in these shoes; three times this week I’ve crashed to my death. Chin up, don’t look down, ignore the spectators—my fans—pumping gas, wiping windshields, digging for change in their pockets. My foot slips, misses the curb, and I tilt dangerously, flailing my arms. Close! But this time I make it, all the way to the end, hopping down with a twirl of my invisible parasol. The gas station attendant applauds, embarrassing me, but I am pleased, too. See what I have done!
Once a week our seventh-grade class met with the guidance counselor, who showed us movies about drugs. Drugs would make us hear voices, kill ourselves. Look at Diane Linkletter, daughter of the TV show host. She’d taken some LSD then jumped out a window. We saw a filmed reenactment of this and another educational movie in which a young man takes an assortment of mismatched pills and winds up in a hospital. His voice, in halting monotone, told of his experience: It was three weeks before I could remember my name.
These movies were overwrought, hard to take seriously, but the etiquette films were worse. One, about how to date, starred a very young Dick York, the first Darren from Bewitched. With his bug eyes and wide white part, that nasal voice, we recognized him right away, the boys in class chanting “Durwood.” Here he played a teenager who trolls around his father’s garage fixing antique radios. Concerned, his father tells him to swap his suit jacket for an argyle sweater, “act natural,” and start meeting girls. Another film, on the do’s and don’ts of dating, depicted the travails of a young man named “Woody.” Woody makes a mess of things, mashing his poor date at her doorstep as she cries “No, please!” This, we were informed in voice-over, was Wrong! Let’s try again. This time Woody mumbles “Well, so long,” abandoning his befuddled date at the door. Finally, Woody gets it right. He tells his date he had a great time, promises to call her next week, says good night—without the two of them touching.
It was ridiculous. A kid named Woody. The guy from Bewitched. We’d seen Dick York turned into a monkey, a werewolf, seen his ears grow to the size of feet. What was our guidance counselor thinking? In retrospect, though, the movies had a message, one that we couldn’t help but absorb: boys act, girls wait to be acted upon.
I began eighth grade the tallest girl—nearly the tallest student—in my class. A couple of important things had happened over the summer. First of all my mother had remarried. Her new husband was a short-tempered short man, a Nixon Republican, fervent drinker, and junior partner in his brother’s law practice. He could tolerate Chipper, but as for the bookish, sullen adolescent who’d suddenly taken up residence in his home, he made it quite clear that he’d just as soon I find somewhere else to live. Except when absolutely necessary, Tom and I did not speak to each other for the twelve years he and my mother were together.
Another big change had occurred that summer: my growth spurt. I’d gained nearly two inches since seventh grade, much of it over the summer. As I grew, my spine became more twisted. I could feel the curve, the wayward vertebrae just beneath my skin. My hipbone stuck out so much that when I wore low cut jeans, I looked all out of proportion. My right sleeve hung lower than my left; I was always pushing it back. And in school, my right shoulder blade knocked against my chair, bone chafing metal. No matter how I shifted in my seat, I could not get comfortable.
I was still going to physical therapy, but I was slipping by degrees. Every three months I returned to the orthopedic clinic. The routine was always the same. Wait in the corridor outside the examination room. Change into the thin blue gown, then wait in a cubicle to be x-rayed. The x-ray room buzzed with machinery like a low, persistent headache. I would lie on the table and hold my breath as the machine passed over me. Right side, left side, hips hard against the table. Then the table would be tilted upright and I’d do another set, standing.
The doctor began to scowl almost as soon as he switched on the light table. He drew white lines on the films, measured angles of curves, compared current and previous x-rays, and the comparison was never good. For over a year I had been exercising daily and going to therapy twice a week, but by the time I entered eighth grade, it was clear that this was not enough. My spine now looked to be on a collision course with my left hipbone. The doctor explained that I would need to wear something called a Milwaukee brace, a chin-to-hip plastic and metal apparatus like the ones I had seen girls wearing in the clinic waiting room. The brace, he said, would prevent my scoliosis from getting any worse, but would not reduce the severity of the double curve. I would live in this carapace for twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, until I stopped growing, which he estimated would be in three years. The doctor explained all of this in his customary technical language. Beyond the raw details (brace, twenty-three hours a day, three years) I don’t think I took much in. Questions? he asked, but I had none. His sentence was final; it brooked no appeal. He switched off the light table, and my illuminated spine disappeared.
Caged
We drove to a place near the overhead tracks for Amtrak and Conrail. If you were to take the train through Bridgeport now, thirty years later, it would look much the same: piles of tires, car parts in abandoned lots, scabby triple-deckers—an abandoned, broken place.
My mother parked the car, locked it, and led the way to a storefront with prosthetic limbs in the window. There were walkers, bedpans, corsets, canes, all dusty. I did not want to go in. I may have said no, may have said let’s turn around, I may (more likely) have acquiesced. The brace—like the exercises, the orthopedic shoes, like fitness tests, mandatory friendships, and my mother’s remarriage—were all things to be endured.
We were greeted by a large, stubble-faced man who was smoking a cigar. He was the maker of these corsets and limbs, a man who would spread his tobacco-stained fingers on my torso, breathe his sour breath into my face. Dwarves came into the shop, cripples, amputees. He put his hands on them, too, gave them new limbs.
The man told me his name, Buxbaum, said he was going to put me in traction to make a plaster mold of my torso. My mind flashed to a black and white commercial from my childhood. Seat belts! an elegant woman complained. They’re so inconvenient, and besides, they wrinkle my dress. Ominous drum roll, quick cut to an accident victim (the same woman!) in a head-to-toe cast, her limbs suspended by pulleys from the poles of her hospital bed. Traction.
I must have blanched. In any case, the brace maker tried to reassure me, saying it wasn’t so bad. By now I knew enough to know that “not so bad” meant at least somewhat bad and probably worse than that. We went into a back room that was like an auto mechanic’s garage, only with braces and limbs instead of cars. Scattered about were all sorts of tools: saws, chisels, wire clippers, things I did not recognize. The room was drafty and cold. I undressed behind a flimsy wooden partition with a metal stool for my clothes, keeping on my underpants and socks. The floor was dirty. The brace maker wrapped my torso in gauze then strapped my head into a sling. He hoisted me up with a pulley until I was hanging by my chin, my toes barely touching the grimy floor. My hands gripped two monkey-bar-like handles for support, but my weight was all in my chin.
Buxbaum whistled as he stirred a large plastic bucket of plaster. His breath was rancid and there were moth holes in his cardigan. Each layer of plaster had to dry before the next one could be applied. With each new layer, the corset heated up and pressed harder against me, making it difficult to breathe. I hung by my chin, trembling. My jaw ached. I tried shifting the weight from my chin to my hands, but I was strapped in too tight. I couldn’t speak, so I moaned. How much time passed I co
uld not say. When Buxbaum finally freed me, cutting the corset loose with a giant set of shears, I just about collapsed. My jaw was so stiff I could not move it. Bits of plaster clung to my skin. I got dressed, feeling soiled.
In school I didn’t tell anyone I would soon be wearing a brace. Being solitary, I didn’t have confidantes, and I doubt, in any event, that I possessed the ready language for such a conversation. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me or teasing me or making a fuss. I was glad to be excused from gym; other than that, I suppose I was hoping to go unnoticed.
I spent the days before my brace was ready in a kind of countdown state. Three more nights of sleeping “normally,” I’d tell myself. Two more days before everyone knows. One more day of freedom, one more day to be just another girl.
The hard plastic corset buckled in back with a thick leather strap. Attached to this new torso were metal suspenders. I stepped into the brace, put my arms through the suspenders, and grabbed the dresser for support. My mother tugged and tugged. The strap was heavy; it had no give. This was her first attempt at shackling me, and she was having trouble. The corset bumped against my hips. I sucked in my stomach. My mother pulled harder on the strap. I was a debutante being corseted for the antebellum ball. She gave one final emphatic tug and the brace shifted into place on my hips. I could feel the strap buckling, a screw being tightened at the back of my head. I looked at my reflection, looked away. This was me now—these metal bars, these bolts and screws. I pulled up my jeans, but they wouldn’t fit over my hips. My shirt was too tight to button.
The brace’s weight was incredible, a second body to lug. I was tall and slim, but caged I was a heavy, clunky thing. The corset made me stick out in back. I needed pants large enough to fit over my plastic torso, shirts that could accommodate my metal shoulder blades. But my limbs had not grown longer. My new, double-digit sized clothes were too long in the leg and arm. My mother spent evenings hemming, but do hemmed jeans ever look right?
All the Difference Page 3
