The Secret Language of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  “It’s a dragon,” Martha said. “And a very good one, Tilly.”

  “This is what I had inside me,” I said. “A dragon.” Roo would get it, I thought. All my funny little creatures: Who knew they had been there for such an actual, real, productive reason? To save me. And to save Roo.

  “Maybe you’ll find she has sisters,” Martha said. “Friends and relatives. You might have a whole family of dragons in there. Well, we can get you more clay so you can sculpt them all. Meanwhile, you have to glaze and paint her. We’ll fire up the kiln.”

  I knew I should tell her not to bother, it was too much trouble; but the truth was, I felt excited, good about what I had done. And she was right: I had more dragons inside. I felt them smashing around inside my chest, a thousand wings.

  I propped up Sage—her name, after the color of the water bowl and one of my favorite herb beds in Martha’s garden—the best I could on a table in a corner of the barn, while Martha went down to start the kiln. Slater and I began hanging Roo’s photographs.

  Each one was so familiar. I had seen every place, every face that appeared in her pictures. In some cases, I had been standing with her while she’d taken the shot. Would that ever happen again? My mother had told me Newton had rigged up some kind of mad-scientist apparatus that allowed Roo to take photos. Apparently, Roo was happy she could take any at all, but so far, they weren’t the same caliber as these.

  Another dragon, I thought: the my-sister-can’t-take-photos-the-way-she-used-to dragon. There were so many: the my-sister-and-I-were-texting dragon; the will-my-sister-ever-forgive-me-for-kissing-her-boyfriend dragon; the my-sister-is-in-the-hospital-in-Boston-and-I-want-her-home dragon.

  “Should we hang this one right here?” Slater asked, standing by an empty spot, holding up Roo’s time-lapse photograph of last year’s Leonid meteor shower.

  “No, that should be the central piece,” I said. “It’s her favorite. Let’s put it right in the middle.”

  I took the picture from Slater’s hands and walked it to the place of honor—the center of the back wall—so it would be the first thing people saw when they came through the door. I hung it on the nail, then stood back with Slater to admire it.

  “Looks great,” he said.

  “I wish she could be here to see,” I said. “We’ll all be celebrating, and she’ll be up there in Boston.”

  Slater didn’t reply. We continued hanging the rest of Roo’s photos, and it surprised me to realize how excited I was about firing this dragon and making many more. It surprised me to realize I felt excited about anything at all.

  “I’m going back to the studio,” I said, and couldn’t wait to get there.

  “Sounds good,” Slater said. We smiled at each other.

  Then I took my droopy little dragon and ran down the hill to Althea’s studio, to see Martha and find out when the kiln would be ready.

  These are fantastic,” Dr. Gold said, early Wednesday evening, viewing my photographs on the computer screen. “I knew you’d made progress, but you have blown me away with how much.”

  Thank you, I said, beaming inside at the praise.

  “You have really mastered this computer interface, Roo.”

  The camera hardware helped.

  “Yes, Newton did an amazing job,” she said.

  She and Dr. Hill stood beside my bed, conducting my exam together. They examined my head, the incision where the sensor had been implanted. They shined lights into both my eyes. They stuck tiny pins in my fingertips and looked pleased when I flinched ever so slightly. Inside, I was yelping with pain, which I knew was a good sign.

  “She moved!” Isabel said, standing at the end of my bed. She had come up to show me her finished portfolio and look at the pictures I’d taken with Newton.

  “She reacted,” Dr. Hill said, correcting her.

  “That’s a new development, right?” Isabel asked. “Does it mean she’s getting feelings back, she’s got a chance of much greater recovery?”

  “Everyone,” Dr. Gold said, “Roo is right here. Could we stop referring to her as ‘she’?”

  Thank you, I said again, inwardly smiling because she sounded like Dr. Howarth. It didn’t bother me so much anymore, being spoken about in the third person, now that I could communicate. At the same time, I realized I didn’t really miss Dr. Howarth anymore; I only had room in my heart for one crush.

  “You’re welcome,” Dr. Gold said.

  “Yes, Isabel, you did observe a reaction,” Dr. Hill said. “It is too soon to know exactly what to expect, but we are certainly heartened. I think it’s time to discuss next steps.”

  What next steps? I asked.

  “We can begin to think about a rehab facility. Closer to home, so your family can make the trip to visit you more easily.”

  “Gracias, that is great news,” Isabel said.

  Can I go home? I felt breathless at the thought—both excited at the prospect, and really scared. But if there was any way to actually go, I knew I’d get through the fear.

  “There is no reason why you can’t visit home, but Dr. Hill and I would both feel better if you were living in a place where people could respond to all your needs, and where they are prepared for all contingencies,” Dr. Gold said.

  A nursing home? I pictured Marshview, across the river from Black Hall. Our school visited each year, sang Christmas carols to the residents. Old people, some with Alzheimer’s, sitting in wheelchairs while someone played the banjo and sang old-time tunes. The smell of diapers was strong. My heart twisted. Did I belong there?

  “That might be a possibility,” Dr. Gold said. “I would want to make sure they had first-rate physical therapy, and a medical staff that’s tops, and would be willing to work closely with me, Dr. Hill, and Dr. Danforth.”

  Dr. Danforth? I asked, and my heart literally skipped. In spite of the idea of being moved to an assisted living home, the idea of being reunited with her filled me with pure happiness.

  “Yes, of course. She has continued to consult with us, and she would really like it if when you returned to Connecticut, she could take over as your doctor. She is as good as they come, in my book. How would you feel about that?”

  I’d like it.

  “We’ll discuss it much more,” she said. “I’ll leave you two friends together now. Enjoy your visit.”

  Thank you, I said.

  Isabel and my nurse, Nina, helped me into the wheelchair, and Isabel pushed me down to the solarium. During her frequent visits, Isabel had gotten to know some of the patients. My friends.

  At first I had disliked coming here. The other disabled patients shocked me into realizing I was just like them—or worse. Morgan and Dani, the two patients I had seen on my first foray out of my room, had been discharged to rehab units, but other patients had arrived. And we had become friendly.

  Laura, a slim blond eighteen-year-old, had dove into a shallow bay when she was twelve and broken her neck; paralyzed from the neck down, at least she could talk, and she had learned how to control her motorized wheelchair. She had some health issues and was in here for what she called “a tune-up.”

  Patsy, twenty-three and newly married, had spina bifida. She’d had birth defects, been born with a split spine, and as a child her nerve endings and spinal cord had bulged through her vertebrae and caused her brain to swell. She was mentally acute, but her body was frail, her bones deformed, and she had to be in a wheelchair.

  “Hey, Roo,” Patsy called now. “How’s it going?”

  “Having a good day, Patsy,” Isabel answered for me. “How are you?”

  “Pretty good, thanks.”

  “How was your exam today, Roo?” Laura asked.

  I felt closer to Laura than any other patient I had met so far. We were closer in age, and in spite of her diving accident, she still loved the ocean.

  I might be transferred closer to home, I said.

  “That would be awesome,” Patsy said. “What kind of place?”

  Nursing ho
me.

  “Oh, goodie,” Laura said. “Where you can be the youngest one by fifty years.”

  “Hey, be positive,” Isabel said.

  “We’re just kidding around,” Laura said. “DH—disabled humor. You’re so serious, Isabel!”

  “You have to find the right facility,” Patsy said. “Some know how to handle young people, others just warehouse us, keep us clean and fed, not much else. I’ve been disabled since birth, so I’ve seen it all. The best places really get it. You need doctors who understand. Like the one I’ve got now, she’s helping me with fertility treatments.”

  “You want a baby? That’s so great,” Isabel said.

  “Yeah, I want a baby! I always have. Jerry and I went to one doctor, and he was so skeptical. Spina bifida can be genetic, and he was all, oh, you might pass it on to your child. And I was like, why shouldn’t I want someone like myself? As if a baby with my condition isn’t worth having.” She shook her head. “So I found someone new. A woman doctor.”

  “Of course,” Laura said. “A woman would understand.”

  I thought about Newton and me, wondered whether we’d ever be thinking this way, wanting to have a family. Would it even be possible? Before my accident, deep down, I’d pictured us with kids someday, playing on the same beach where we’d grown up.

  “Do you live at home or somewhere else?” Isabel asked.

  “I go back and forth,” Laura said. “My family wants me home, and I love the idea. But it’s hard, I can’t lie to you. I’m here right now because I’ve got a urinary infection that spread to my kidneys. My family has to lift me, and clean me, drive me to classes, and they take me down to the beach, push me along the boardwalk, and they do their best. But my mother’s getting older, and sometimes I can see it in my brother’s eyes he’s kind of over it.”

  Will that be Newton? I wondered. He had lifted me so easily, and he said we were forever. But this could wear anyone down.

  “What classes?” Isabel asked.

  “I go to Lesley University,” Laura said. “I’m studying art therapy.”

  “She’s great at it, too,” Patsy said, smiling warmly.

  Laura rolled her eyes, but she also smiled. “Well, I’ll have to get a master’s degree if I want to work anywhere good. But Lesley has a graduate program, so I’m aiming for that. When are you going back to school, Roo?”

  I don’t know, I said. The truth was, I had given up thinking I ever would. I felt so destroyed, so ugly and alien. But seeing these women, just a few years older than I, made me see other possibilities.

  “She’s coming back for senior year,” Isabel said.

  I looked at her, feeling surprised.

  “You are, chica,” she said, squeezing my hand as if she’d read my mind. “Don’t say you’re not.”

  “Isabel is right,” Laura said. “You are the only one who can stop yourself. The school will find a way for you to be there. I was a disabled kid through half of middle and all of high school.”

  Wasn’t it weird being there with the … I hesitated, searching for the word.

  “Normal kids?” Laura asked, supplying the word, laughing. “Totally, although actually we say ‘typical,’ or ‘people without disabilities.’ Why should they be the ‘normal’ ones?”

  “Yeah, we’re all normal, or none of us are,” Patsy said.

  “So true,” Laura said. “Anyway, after growing up with them, being on the soccer team, acting in school plays—we did The Wizard of Oz the year before my accident—and suddenly I was paralyzed. No one knew how to act, including me. But it got easier.”

  “I thought I was—here’s the word again—‘normal,’” Patsy said. “Because I always had spina bifida. I had no idea I was different until I went to first grade and the kids started calling me Big Head.”

  “They called me Gimp and Wheelchair Girl. Then they got tired of it and figured out I wasn’t all that different than I was before, and it all seemed kind of normal after a while,” Laura said.

  “You just want to have an ordinary life,” Patsy said.

  I never did before, I thought. And I thought how much my family used to make of the fact that I was extraordinary—how I was going to go to Yale, and win academic awards. And you know, I still wanted to be different, wanted to do the best I could.

  “You don’t have to scale back,” Isabel said, as if she could read my mind. “You’re still my amazing Roo. That has not changed.”

  “She’s right,” Laura said. “I didn’t know you before, but I think you’re pretty amazing.”

  “True,” Patsy said. “Dr. Hill wants you fast-tracked into communicating, getting back to your life as soon as possible.”

  “Wherever you go, just make sure you find other disabled kids,” Laura said. “As wonderful as Isabel is, she doesn’t know what it’s like to wear a diaper and not be able to scratch that itch on your nose. No offense, Izz.”

  “No offense taken,” Isabel said.

  “You need us,” Patsy said. “And there are lots of us. I’m in this online club, the nicest people you ever want to meet.”

  “And wicked and irreverent. Lots of kids with brain injuries, actually,” Laura said. “You’ll find good ways to keep your people on their toes. Like, using person-first language. We’re not our disabilities. I’m not ‘the quadriplegic.’ I’m a person with a spinal cord injury.”

  “I used to go to school on what everyone called ‘the handicapped bus,’” Patsy said. “Made it sound like the bus was on crutches.”

  “You don’t say ‘handicapped’?” Isabel asked.

  “No, we say ‘disabled,’” Patsy said.

  I was really starting to like my new friends. I’d have to get used to the language, though. Disabled started with “dis,” a negative. And these were some of the most positive and most-abled people I’d ever met.

  What’s the club called? People with Disabilities? I asked.

  “Nope. The Society of Remarkable Alpinists,” Laura said.

  Alpinists? Mountain climbers?

  “Yeah,” Laura said, smiling. “Because we’ve all climbed mountains higher than most people even imagine. And we do it with style, and we do it every day!”

  We do, I said. Inside I was grinning because I liked the name; they’d gotten it so right.

  I felt tired, and after we said good-bye, Isabel wheeled me back to my room. She sat with me while I dozed. It was strange, but I was looking forward to those chat rooms. I was an alpinist, and I had a lot of questions. And I was even looking forward to seeing kids from my old life, even though it seemed a million miles away. I thought of Tilly. I had always been her champion, stood up for her and protected her. It was weird to think I might have to lean on her quite a bit if I was ever going to return to school. I wondered what it would be like to have our roles reversed.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning, very early, I woke up to see my mother sitting by the bed. That wasn’t unusual; although she’d gone back to work, she often came on her days off.

  But Sunday was our regular time, the day she settled down beside me with the Sunday papers, homework, and whatever novel she was in the midst of reading. Besides, today was the solstice: the exhibition at Martha’s.

  I was surprised, and even a little disappointed, that she was here. I hadn’t seen Tilly, but I knew from my mother and Newton how hard she had been working on the exhibition. Newton had delivered my photos to hang in Martha’s barn. I’d thought my mother would want to see. I gazed at her; she was wearing her favorite summer dress and the necklace of Hubbard’s Point moonstones I’d made for her.

  Why are you here, Mom? I asked.

  “Is that a way to talk to your mother?” Dr. Gold asked. “She’s come all the way to Boston, looking lovely I might add, to see you.”

  “Thank you,” my mother said.

  But I thought you’d be with Tilly, I said. At Martha’s.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Christina said, brushing my hair. “Today’s the exh
ibition.”

  “I can’t imagine your mother wanting to miss that,” Nina said, easing my feet into a clean pair of white pressure socks.

  “The exhibition,” Dr. Gold said.

  Today’s the solstice, I said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Gold said.

  Althea’s sculpture show, I said, looking at my mother, wishing she would go to it.

  “And your photographs will be shown there as well, I am told,” Dr. Gold said.

  Now I saw my mother, Christina, and Nina grinning, as if they knew something I didn’t. My heart began to race.

  What is it? I asked. What’s going on?

  “It’s a long day, down to Black Hall and back,” Dr. Gold said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable with you going without a doctor along.”

  Me? With me?

  “You have to tell me, Roo,” Dr. Gold said, getting down to eye level with me. “It’s a major event for a talented young photographer. And I don’t want you to miss it. But it’s a lot of stress, a trip like this. You have to tell me if you’re up to it. I just want to be sure you’re ready.”

  Today? Right now? I get to leave the hospital?

  “I want to give you the choice,” she said.

  “I’ve hired an ambulance, but you can pretend it’s a limousine, honey,” my mother said.

  My vision blurred with tears. I could only imagine how much that cost. I wanted nothing more than to do this, but everything felt so new, so precarious. I hadn’t left the hospital since arriving in March. What if I had a seizure? Or even another stroke?

  Can I really do this? I asked Dr. Gold.

  “You have to tell me how you feel. I’ll be with you, Roo, the whole time.”

  “And I’ll be in the car right behind you,” my mother said.

  Dr. Gold looked up, toward the door, beckoned someone to come in. “And so will this young man.”

  Newton.

  He walked into the room wearing the suit he’d worn to last spring’s prom. It was black, with a white dress shirt, and a skinny black tie. He looked like the handsomest geek in the world. He held a box. He opened it and took out a bouquet of beach roses.

  They’re beautiful, I said.