A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  Memorize my lines? How about memorizing a new way to walk? How about memorizing the twelve-inch scar on the leg that was saved? How about memorizing the image of the man who ripped a part of my body away from me?

  I’m pulling down my scenes? She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a pulled-down scene. Just seven weeks ago, I had one hell of a pulled-down scene.

  No character growth? Aren’t I doing enough?

  I looked up at her, begging the tears in my eyes to evaporate before she saw them, but they didn’t, and she did. Her eyes widened, and she took a step back as she noticed the intensity of my reaction. “Opening night is three and a half weeks away, Colleen.” Her eyes held a desperate plea. Please be okay. We all need you to be okay.

  I knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to put the rest of the cast at risk because I wasn’t memorizing my lines. These people had all been so generous, kind, and supportive since the accident. The least I could do was memorize my lines. This play was what mattered most right then.

  I decided to do what I was told even though this play was a bigger commitment than I really wanted. What I really wanted was to cry and scream, to throw things, to be alone with Harvey, the man who hit me, in a small room for a whole day so I could rip him apart, limb by limb. But good Catholic girls didn’t act vicious, let alone think evil thoughts of violence. Good Catholic girls did what they were told. And so I gulped down my hostility and got ready for my performance.

  Opening night of any play was always a big deal. The stage crew often decorated the casts’ hallway lockers, sentimental notes were shared among the cast and crew in the dressing room, Miss Lewis always wrote an encouraging note to each member of the cast and crew, and my family always had flowers for me and signs reading BREAK A LEG! But opening night of Funny Girl was something special. As well as getting all the normal opening-night kudos, I received so much more. Rob was there to sit beside my family and cheer me on. My physical therapist sent me a dozen roses, my aunts and uncles came to my performance, and even Miss Lewis sent me flowers. Though Sandy, the girl playing Fanny Brice with full comedic force and a lyrical voice, was the leading lady, I felt like the star of the show opening night. While I loved all the attention, something kept nagging at me. Something elusive, irksome, and true. Why am I receiving such praise now? And what am I really receiving praise for? Why are people so proud of me? And what does their pride really mean in terms of what is expected of me?

  I made it through our performances the best I could. Each night we received a standing ovation, and I smiled and waved at the audience with the rest of the cast. But after our final performance, when we were finally striking the set, I realized that I couldn’t strike this new role from my life, not entirely. I wasn’t Mrs. Strakosh anymore, but I had set a precedent for being the brave survivor.

  Two weeks before graduation, I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to study for a final exam, and I was having a hard time focusing. The front door opened, and Mom escorted the parish priest and two of my high school teachers, Mr. Sanders and Miss Lewis, into the room. I was stunned and confused. Though Father Dave visited often, having teachers in the house was a rarity. They all sat down around the table and handed me a letter.

  I glanced around at all their expectant faces, wondering what was going on, and when Mom nodded that I should open the envelope, I obeyed and took out the hand-written note inside. As I read it, I realized what was happening. Mr. Sanders had talked about this last fall, but I had completely forgotten about it. He had planned a summer trip to Asia for students, to be led by him and his wife. What I slowly started to put together was that people from school, church, and the hospital had all donated money to enable me to go on this thousand-dollar trip. I tried to hide the panic. I tried to mask my fear. As I was learning to do, I revealed only excitement and joy. I could see the pride and happiness on all their faces. They were so pleased they had kept this a secret from me over the past two months. Through shared laughter, they all told stories of how I had walked in on conversations they were having about the trip and how they had each almost ruined the surprise.

  But under my smiling face, I was wondering, How will I do this? Won’t this require a lot of walking? I had never left home for a month before or traveled outside the United States. No one asked me if I wanted to go! The good girl in me felt guilty for even thinking such ungracious thoughts. The trip was so huge and unknown, though. My life already felt so huge and unknown. I was barraged with kindness and good intentions, and I felt the mounting pressure to perform once again. The play was over, but now I felt like I was playing a part in a life-play. This part had been thrown into my lap—the role of a lifetime.

  I knew I didn’t want this part. I hadn’t auditioned for this part; I hadn’t rehearsed. This part had no script—in fact, the script was being written day by day, moment by moment. I didn’t have control over where the script was going. And people around me had creative license to add whatever scenes they pleased, like a four-week trip to Asia. Being the star of this play, I had to ad-lib my way through each scene. My family, friends, teachers, and doctors were like audience members, observing my every move, smiling, clapping, laughing, crying, watching me play my new part—so invested that I didn’t feel I could let them down. And so I knew I would perform, whether I wanted to or not.

  One of these new parts was playing the Golden Girl of the senior class. Because I survived the accident and resumed normal life so quickly, I received multiple end-of-the-year awards: the Girl of the Year award from the Signet Society; one of the top ten seniors of the year as chosen by the senior class; the distinction of being in the National Registry of top seniors; and three college scholarships. The accolades kept coming, and the praises boosted me up, all with the veneer of a promise that I was something special. But deep down, a hollowness whispered to me when I was alone and told me I wouldn’t have received any of these awards or scholarships if I hadn’t lost my leg. I dared not admit it to anyone for fear of being ungrateful, but I knew if I were truly standing on my own two feet, this wouldn’t all be happening. I wouldn’t even have my deepening relationship with Rob. I was just beginning to figure out that who I was on the inside didn’t matter—only who I was on the outside. I had to lose a part of myself to be something special.

  6

  SEEKING COMFORT

  In Star Trek: The Next Generation, a species called the Borg is united by a collective consciousness. Each humanoid is identified by their place in the collective: “seven of nine,” say, or “two of ten.” Growing up in my family, as the fourth child, I was “six of eight.” We were the proverbial “all for one and one for all” family. There was great comfort in growing up absorbed in this collective. We laughed alike, prayed alike, thought alike, and eventually we would be expected to vote alike.

  Catholicism was infused into our clan. Our faith defined us as a unit and was integral to our family’s identity. Our social circle was centered around the church and our Catholic grade school. Mom and Dad’s faith guided their decisions about how we served our community and helped others. We were so close, it was like we were different aspects of one being.

  Mom and Dad had six children in eight years. Although we were tightly knit, each of my siblings had a distinct quality that distinguished them as a unique thread. The eldest, Maureen, had a sharp mind; Mary Beth, who came next, was the musically talented one; Kevin, the eldest boy, was Dad’s constant companion on fishing and hunting trips. I was convinced he was Dad’s favorite. Then there was me—every family has one—nondescript, vague, nothing special. This is how I had always seen myself and how I assumed everyone else saw me, too. Matthew and David, the two youngest boys, were like two peas in a pod: they were loud, funny, obnoxious, and endearing. I desperately looked to my siblings to see who I was, but the reflection was vague. I saw I was a Haggerty, I was Democrat, and I was supposed to be funny and kind; but I could never see the specifics of who I was.

  I was thirteen years old when D
ad died. All six of us children banded around my mother in support like white blood cells enveloping an infection, for she appeared to be the one most deeply affected. Her pain was our pain. We selflessly gave up social events to stay home and keep her company. We ensured her birthday, their wedding anniversary, and all major holidays were as happy as possible. We made homemade gifts oozing with meaning and sentimentality. And during those first grief-filled years, we each learned empathy skills and became highly sensitive to others’ pain. While on the outside it looked as though our collective had dwindled, we held to Dad’s spirit and memory so tightly that he retained a place in the whole.

  But in the midst of that loss, I still felt as dull as the winter skies of my native Washington. I’d wanted to stand out, to peek through the clouds and sparkle some of my uniqueness to my family and to the world, but I figured that wasn’t my fate. God’s plan for me was to be plain. I knew my place; I knew what part I played in our collective. I was the shy one. I was the baby girl. I was the wallflower. No one seemed to expect much from me other than to show up and be kind.

  In those earlier years before high school, I only had one friend, Patty. I would look at her when we were together and try to see who I was in her eyes, but again, the vision was cloudy. What Patty reflected was my sweetness, my quietness, and my occasional daring spirit. She and I got along so well I never had a chance to understand how to be in a relationship with another person while exposing and accepting the differences between two people.

  Because of the closeness of my family and my relationship with Patty, I reached adolescence confused about where I ended and other people began. After my accident, I couldn’t have been more different from other people—or more separate from them. My amputation catapulted me into a distant universe, and yet here I was, still living on Earth. The only evidence I had that I was still here was my body—my now-deformed and ugly body. Though my family was a great source of comfort to me, they were also my most frequent reminder that I was now alienated, cut out from their normality. When we were young, Mom and Dad demonstrated the waltz and the Lindy to us, and we would sometimes spontaneously get up from the dinner table and dance. After my accident, when the urge to dance first hit my family, I froze. How do I do this? How do I even try without looking like a moron? If there was a safe place to put on my gimpy dancing shoes, it should have been with my family. If there were people who could make me feel proud of myself for trying, it would have been my clan. And if there were men who could get me to twirl with glee under their strong, capable arms, they were my brothers. But I knew I was no longer like them.

  I experienced the way people looked at me in the real world. The looks of admiration and pity. The look that, even though I couldn’t name it yet, said, “Wow, you’re so brave. I admire you, but I wouldn’t want to be you.” I could tolerate that from outsiders, but I couldn’t risk seeing those pitying looks on the faces of my family members.

  The longer I lived as an amputee and the more being one-legged became my new normal, the more the compliments bothered me because they marked me as insufficient. These comments told me that people saw something to be compensated for in the fact that I was an amputee. More to the point, the praises of strangers let me know that I was being seen not for who I was, but for what I was missing.

  No one in my world knew my internal experience, my secret world, my spirit world, the tender, quiet, child part of me that was impacted by my amputation. And their questions and accolades couldn’t and didn’t touch this part. This sacred, hidden part was difficult to articulate, name, or even understand. Every day I was drowning in a deeper chasm of insecurity and doubt, and I was desperate for some form of relief.

  That summer I told Rob, “I want to start smoking.” I was surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth, but once they did, they rang true. I needed something to help me calm down.

  “Well then, go ahead,” he said. I was taken aback. Rob had strong opinions about a lot of things, and he made it clear he didn’t like cigarettes. Rob was my world, and his go-ahead was all I needed.

  Turning to cigarettes was the only way I knew how to deal with the feelings I was stuffing into the depths of my heart. By the time I confessed to Rob that I wanted to start smoking, I was on the verge of bursting. My feelings were a jumbled mess of sadness, anger, resentment, rage, and fear. Adapting to my prosthetic leg slowed down the physical pace in my life, but everything else was swirling past me at warp speed. Losing my leg tore my world apart, and I felt like my life had been put back together with clapboard; there was no solid foundation to me anymore.

  When I sat alone with a cigarette, I could slow down and think. As the smoke swirled around me, I was enveloped in my own little world. I escaped, if only for a few minutes, the unspoken expectations from everyone else that I be happy and positive. It was my time to numb out.

  7

  BODY OR SOUL?

  Iended up attending my first-choice university, which was two hours from my home. I spent most of the first semester racking up phone bills talking to Rob. We were miserable without each other, so he enrolled and moved up for second semester.

  In April of 1980, during my second year of college, I finally had my day in court with Harvey, the man who hit me with his green Pacer and took my leg from me—and so much more. For the rest of my life I would retain only about two hours of fragmented memories of that weeklong trial. I was told I couldn’t communicate with Harvey because we were adversaries. I sat at the prosecutor’s table between my mom and my lawyer, sneaking peaks at Harvey, who sat at the defendant’s table with his head cast down. My lawyer told me that he had ulcers. I was happy that he was suffering in some way, but I also felt guilty for my happiness. When I took the witness stand, my lawyer lauded me for having never been to therapy. He praised my strength and determination in the face of adversity. This only reinforced that I was doing the right thing by stuffing my feelings. There was a moment when I looked at nearly all the adults in my world from up on that stand and wished they would teach me how to deal with my feelings, instead of teaching me how to stuff them.

  In the end, the jury was divided in their understanding of exactly where the accident had happened. My lawyer could tell they were going to be a hung jury, which meant we’d have to go through the whole, painful process again. We ended up settling and I received a tenth of the amount we asked for. Early on in the process of preparing for the trial, my lawyer explained that this trial was really my insurance company suing Harvey’s insurance company, so when we settled, I felt betrayed by Harvey himself. He should have stood up in court and demanded that I be fairly compensated. I had a lifetime of prosthetic legs to buy, years of physical therapy, massage therapy, and acupuncture—as well as doctor appointments—to pay for in my future.

  After the trial was over, one juror came up to me and explained that one female juror—ironically, the one my lawyer thought would be most sensitive to my case—thought the accident was my fault. Her opinion had hung the jury.

  The moment I heard that she blamed me, though I was physically incapable of running, my body mercifully carried me quickly through the courtroom, down the hall, and into the stairwell. Mary Beth was right behind me, and when we closed the stairwell door, we both screamed and wept in each other’s arms. How could that juror say the accident was my fault? Didn’t I do the right thing by getting out of the car on that snowy day to flag down help? Harvey was the idiot who was driving too fast. Mary Beth kept apologizing, saying she should have made me stay in the car, but she wasn’t the one who I needed to hear from. The trial was over, and Harvey had left the courtroom without talking to me.

  Mary Beth and I stayed in the stairwell until we were able to catch our breath. I wiped my nose with the sleeve of my shirt and looked at my sister’s face, which was blotchy and red like mine. Holding her gaze, I knew that the accident was not our fault. Not mine, not hers. But we were united in this suspended guilt/grief state. That green Pacer had changed both of our live
s forever. Though we would handle our feelings differently, and the consequences of the accident would be different for each of us, we would be on the same journey in search of healing and freedom from the burden we carried together.

  I went back to school when the trial was over and resumed life as though I had not just faced the man whose car had cut off my leg. In early June, I began mysteriously waking up to intense nausea. It sat in my stomach like a bad meal refusing to digest. I grew so frustrated that I resorted to sticking my toothbrush down my throat to get the sickening feeling out of me. I didn’t understand what was happening, and I was embarrassed that my roommate Laurie could hear me throwing up from her bedroom next door to the bathroom. But curiously, I only felt sick in the morning. Maybe I should have guessed what was going on, but after I made myself throw up, I usually felt fine and went about my day like it had never happened.

  This was my first experience living away from home outside of the dorms, and I wasn’t sure what I should do about my ongoing sickness. Within a few weeks, the nausea was getting worse and lasting throughout the day. I knew pot was good for nausea, so on a Wednesday afternoon after classes, I asked Laurie for a joint. We lived in a house on top of a well-populated hill overlooking a bay. After classes, we often sat in the two overstuffed chairs facing the picture window to talk about our respective days. That Wednesday, we assumed our usual positions in the rockers overlooking the bay and lit up.

  “Colleen, do you think you might be pregnant?” She took a hit and passed the joint to me. A completely different nausea filled me—the queasiness of fear.

  “Pregnant?” I blurted out, coughing and sputtering on the smoke I’d just inhaled. “I can’t be pregnant. No way!” For most people, the suggestion of pregnancy as an explanation for my symptoms would have made immediate sense. But for me, the girl who had spent the last two years ignoring her deeper feelings just to get through each day, ignoring hard truths was right in my wheelhouse.