He smiled at the librarian, then barked at her. As she walked away, he turned back to me, still chuckling. “That’s Ms. Wright. She’s super nice. She lets me sit in here during lunch even though my tics are sometimes really loud. Hardly anyone’s in here during lunch, so it’s the best part of my day.” He tugged at his hair again. “So is that what you tell everyone? That your arms were torn off in a circus accident?”
“No, that’s my newest story. I was born like this. The truth is totally boring so I make up stories for fun. I have lots of them if you’d like to hear.”
He nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Aven.”
“I’m Connor. I would shake your hand, but . . . ” He motioned toward my armless area, blinking his eyes rapidly and barking as he did so.
“But you have horrible warts all over your hands,” I said.
Connor laughed again. “You’re funny, Aven.”
I blushed. My skin is so fair even the slightest flush to my cheeks makes me bright red—I was probably neon right now. I once Googled “excessive blushing” and found out there’s a terrifying name for my condition: idiopathic craniofacial erythema. I went to school the next day and dramatically announced, “I have idiopathic craniofacial erythema!” My teacher called my mom out of concern for my health that evening.
Connor blinked rapidly and barked again. “How long have you been going here?”
“Just started a few days ago,” I said. “My family and I moved from Kansas.”
“Kansas,” Connor repeated. “Ever see any tornadoes?”
“Sure. We had a storm cellar and everything. A lot of people do.”
“Did you ever have to get in it?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “But luckily our house never got destroyed or anything.”
“I thought you were going to tell me some crazy story about your house getting swirled up in a tornado with you in it or something,” he said.
“No, I just tell stories like that about my arms. Though, come to think of it, losing my arms in a tornado would be a great story. I can see how a tornado could suck them right up.” I pondered this for a moment. “I’ll have to think of one later.”
“Cool. I can’t wait to hear it,” he said. “I’d love to see a tornado.” Connor jerked his head and barked again. “So why’d you move here anyway?”
“My parents run a place called Stagecoach Pass. We actually live there, if you can believe that.”
“That’s so cool,” Connor said.
“Not really.”
“No, it is. I live in an apartment really close to it. My parents took me once, but I haven’t been in a long time.”
“Well, you’re not missing anything,” I said. “So don’t worry.”
“Do they still do gunfights?”
“Yes.”
“And camel rides?”
“Yes.”
“And gold—”
“Yes.”
“Cool,” Connor said.
“You should stop over sometime,” I told him. “Since you haven’t been there in a while and you live so close. I can even get you a free ice cream cone.”
He looked uncomfortable at the invitation. “Maybe. I don’t really like to go out a lot.”
“Oh, okay.” I watched him as he continued to blink his eyes rapidly. “So all these things you do,” I said. “Like the barks and the eyes and the jerks and all that, that’s from your . . . ”
“Tourette’s. Yeah, it really sucks.”
“You can’t just, like, hold it in? Like a yawn?”
Connor nodded. “I can for a little while. I’ve tried before—to act normal just at school and hold in all my tics. It hurts, though. It’s really, really hard to hold them in like that, and then when I’d get home it would be a tic explosion like you can’t imagine. It really upset my mom, and I would be so exhausted from holding them in all day and then letting them out all night that I couldn’t even do my homework or anything. So I don’t try to hold them in anymore.”
“Can you take medicine for it or anything like that?”
Connor shook his head. “I tried some medication and it didn’t help. It made it worse, actually. And it made me supertired all the time. I could barely get out of bed.”
“Isn’t there anything else you can do?”
“Sort of,” Connor said. “Before my parents got divorced last year, I was seeing a therapist. But my mom’s too busy working now, so I don’t go anymore.”
I frowned. “How do the other kids treat you?”
“Okay. I guess most everyone is used to it by now. Sometimes I get made fun of—I’ll hear kids barking in the hall or wherever. And some days, when the tics are extra bad, I hear some of them laughing. One time I heard a couple of kids giggling behind me in class, and when I turned around they were mimicking me—jerking their heads.”
I cringed. “That’s terrible.”
Connor shrugged. “I think some of them assume I do it for attention, but I don’t care. Most people I meet think I’m doing it deliberately at first.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I had thought that, too. “Do you have any friends?” I asked.
Connor shrugged again. “I’ve only been here a year. My mom and I moved to the apartment near Stagecoach Pass after we sold our house, so I had to change schools. It’s been kind of rough coming to a new school and all that. I guess that’s why I spend a lot of time in the library. What about you?”
“I haven’t made any friends here, but I had a lot of friends back home in Kansas. I guess because we all grew up together, no one thought I was weird or anything. They were just used to it.”
Connor nodded. “Yeah. I had a couple of friends in my old school who didn’t get annoyed by my tics, but I don’t really see them anymore now that we live so far apart.” Connor rolled his eyes and blinked rapidly. “Has anyone been mean to you?”
“No, not really. They just act weird around me, you know, like they don’t know whether to look or not, to ask about it or not. But no one has talked to me like I’m an actual person.”
Connor nodded in understanding. “People act like that around me, too. Except I think it’s that they don’t know whether to laugh or not. Like they’re not sure if they’re being mean or whatever. Some people just ignore it, like it’s not even happening. I guess I like that the best.”
“Some people do that to me, too, but in my case it’s kind of ridiculous,” I said. Conner jerked his head and laughed. “Yeah, like my armlessness is something that could slip by someone. I mean, how unobservant do you have to be to not notice that someone doesn’t have arms?”
“I’m pretty unobservant and it only took me about a minute.”
“My point exactly.” The bell rang for class to start, and my happy mood sank. I wanted to stay here with Connor. It was nice to have someone to talk to besides my parents. “I guess I better go get my bag.” I stood up from the table and looked down at him. “I’m glad I stopped in here today.”
Connor looked back up at me and smiled. “Me, too.”
On Sunday afternoon, I wrote another blog post.
When you have a malformation (yuck, I hate that word) like I do, you definitely have to deal with the usual looks. The most popular look I get is the one I like to call the “I’m so cool nothing fazes me, not even your missing arms” look. These are the people who pretend they don’t notice my missing arms. You could also call this the “Sure, I’m totally used to seeing people with no arms” look or the “I have tons of armless friends” look. These people are just way too blasé about it. I mean, come on, you really don’t notice my missing arms? Because I can tell you do by how you refuse to look at my torso like the whole sun is sitting on my chest. Just go ahead and look, for goodness sake. Look and ask questions if you want. These people try way too hard.
Then there’s the look I like to call “Oh my gosh, I’m staring at your armless area. Just kidding, no, I’m not. Now I’m staring. No, I’m not.” These are the p
eople I can clearly see staring at me out of the corner of my eye, but as soon as I look at them, they look away. Seriously people, you’re not fooling anyone. Just keep on staring—it’s okay to be curious. Everyone is.
There’s also the dreaded pity look—the “Oh, you poor thing with no arms” look. These people not only look at me, but they give me a pitifully sad smile when I make eye contact with them. They should save those looks for starving, homeless orphans. Being armless isn’t that bad.
And then there is the worst look of all. I have to deal with it because it almost always comes from little kids who haven’t learned manners yet. It’s the “I can’t stop staring at you because you’re a freak” look. Sometimes these looks end in screams and kids running away.
I stopped typing. The post sounded all lighthearted and ha-ha funny. But I didn’t write that I ignore these looks to the best of my ability. I didn’t write that I pretend they don’t bother me, but even after thirteen years of seeing them, they still hurt. I also didn’t write that the last time I got one of these looks was just the day before, while I was grocery shopping with Mom.
Mom likes to take me grocery shopping with her. She says it’s because I need to learn how to grocery shop on my own, but I really think it’s because she likes having a child slave to command. So Mom basically makes me handle all the groceries in the store—I have to get the canned tomatoes from the bottom shelf, the soy sauce from the top shelf (I’m so flexible, it would blow your mind), the cereal from the middle shelves, the bag of apples from the produce department (we go with bagged produce so I’m not putting my feet all over the fresh food in front of people), and yes, even the rotisserie chicken. The rotisserie chicken was sort of a disaster, but that’s not the point of this story. The fact that it takes us three hours to grocery shop isn’t the point either. Sometimes I wish Mom had some other hobby besides teaching Aven how to do stuff.
So I was in the cereal aisle trying to slide this box of Corn Puffs out from the shelf with my foot. I had just finally gotten it wedged between my head and shoulder, but as I stood up and turned to drop it into the cart, I caught this little girl standing in the aisle giving me the dreaded “I can’t stop staring at you because you’re a freak” look.
I stared back at her for a moment. “You got a problem with Corn Puffs?” I said.
Her mom’s head shot up from reading the label on a box of instant oatmeal. She saw what was going on and grabbed her cart and daughter and scurried away.
I acted all cool, like I couldn’t have cared less about it. But I still remember it happening. I remember every time it happens.
When I was done writing my post, Dad asked me to help him put some fresh paint on the flat wooden pictures standing by the front entrance of the park—the kind with cutouts people can stick their heads through for photographs. I seriously doubted anyone took pictures with the faded, wooden figures, but I agreed to go with him because I’m such a good daughter.
I could see why he wanted to freshen them up; the paint was so faded you could hardly tell what they were anymore, and one of them looked like you were sticking your head through a giant boob—not exactly the family-friendly image we were going for.
Dad put a chair out for me to sit on while I painted with my foot. My painting skills aren’t exactly the finest, but I can manage large simple pictures. Just don’t expect me to paint your portrait unless a stick-figure face is acceptable.
As I worked on turning the boob back into a small hill with a barrel cactus on top of it, I saw Connor walking over the bridge that connected the parking lot to the park—the bridge was built to go over a wash. Washes are like empty riverbeds that run all over North Scottsdale so that when it rains, the water can flood the city in an orderly manner.
Connor didn’t have to go through a kiosk or anything like that as he entered the park because admission was free—all the money made was from paying for the many “attractions” we had. Pfft. If you could call them that.
“Hey, Connor,” I said as he walked up to me, barking a few times on his way. “You came.”
“Hi, Aven,” he said, looking around, squeezing his hands together. “There aren’t very many people here.”
“Oh, this place is always dead,” I told him.
Connor seemed relieved.
Dad looked up from painting the gun in a cowboy’s hand. I had thought it was a sea cucumber, but a gun made a lot more sense—why would the cowboy be pointing a sea cucumber at people as they entered the park? And where would a cowboy in the middle of the desert get a sea cucumber from anyway? “Who’s this, Aven?” Dad asked.
“Dad, this is Connor. We met at school.”
Dad reached out his hand and Connor shook it. “Nice to meet you, Connor.”
“Do you mind if I take a break?” I asked Dad.
He looked at my handiwork so far. “It definitely looks less boobish, so I guess you’re free to go.” I handed him my paintbrush, slipped my shoe back on, and walked off with Connor down Main Street.
Connor suddenly chuckled beside me. “It’s just so cool that you live here.”
I scowled at the comment. “So what have you been up to?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “My mom’s working all weekend, and I got tired of playing video games so I thought I’d walk over and see if you were here.”
It made me feel good that he had come here just to see me, especially since he had mentioned not liking to go out a lot. “I like to play video games.”
He looked surprised. “Really?”
“Yes,” I said, annoyed at his look of surprise. “I can play. I bet I could kick your butt at just about any game.”
“Are you challenging me? Because pretty much all I do when I’m at home is play video games. I’m like a professional video-game player.”
“We’ll just see about that,” I said. “Does your mom always work on the weekends?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, she works all the time. She has two jobs.” He shrugged again, and I realized the shrugging was another one of his tics. I wondered how many different tics he had.
“What does your mom do?” I asked.
“She’s an ER nurse.”
“That’s cool.”
“I guess,” Connor said. “Except I never get to see her.”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I walked up to the porch of the soda shop and sat down in one of the rocking chairs. Connor sat beside me. I tried to think of something else to talk about. “My mom took me to this cool instrument museum yesterday. Have you ever been there?”
Connor shook his head. “I don’t get out much.”
“Do you play any instruments?”
He shook his head again and barked. “No.”
I waited for him to ask me if I did. He didn’t, and I figured it was because he assumed I couldn’t. “I play.” I hadn’t meant to say it with quite so much sass.
He looked surprised again, of course. Why were people always surprised I could do stuff? I bet I’d get surprised looks if I told people I can breathe air without help or swallow my food or pee in the toilet.
“What do you play?” he asked.
“Guitar.”
“With your feet?”
“No, with my belly button.”
Connor’s eyes widened, then he pursed his lips in a little smirk. “You’re joking again, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I play with my feet, not with my belly button.”
“Awesome,” he said, rocking in his chair and blinking his eyes rapidly. He did look impressed. “Play for me sometime? I’ve got to see you play with your feet.”
I shifted in my seat. “Um, sure.” I didn’t tell him I also wrote my own music and sang.
In fifth grade, I had come to the realization that it was far more productive for me to channel my creative storytelling into songwriting than to only use it to shock people with morbid horror stories about my armlessness. I had written several songs since then. Most of them were prett
y bad—like take an ice pick to your own ears bad. A song I wrote about learning how to put my first bra on immediately comes to mind. A couple were possibly worth playing, but the only people I had ever played for were my parents.
“Do you ever see your dad?” I asked him.
His expression turned somber, and I was instantly sorry I had asked. “Not much.”
“That’s too bad.” I rocked in my chair beside him.
“He and my mom used to fight about me all the time.” He looked out at Main Street as he spoke. “He didn’t understand why I couldn’t just hold my tics in. It made him angry. He always said to me, ‘Connor, why don’t you just knock it off? Look at how upset you’re making us. Just stop it!’
“And my therapy bills were expensive and my dad didn’t want to pay for them anymore. He wanted me to just take the meds and stop ticcing, but they made me feel awful. I think my dad would have done anything to just stop my tics. And when he realized they weren’t going to stop, he couldn’t deal with it. So he left.”
“I’m sure your parents had problems that had nothing to do with you or your tics,” I said, thinking Connor’s dad sounded like a real jerk.
“All their fights were always about me, my tics, my bills. I can see why they can’t stand me. I can’t stand myself most of the time. I wish I could hold the tics in and pretend to be normal.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was sure Connor was wrong about his parents. I couldn’t imagine parents being like that. “I’m sorry. I wish I could grow arms and pretend to be normal.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up a little.
“I still don’t completely understand why you can’t hold your tics in. I know you said it hurts, but why?”
Connor thought for a moment. “It’s like when you have a bad cough. You know, when you get that tickle in your throat and you really want to cough. You can concentrate really hard on holding it in, but it’s so uncomfortable and eventually you just have to cough. That’s what it feels like to not tic—like this painful feeling in my chest builds and goes up to my throat until I just have to bark. Or it builds in my eyes until I just have to blink to relieve it. Then it builds again. And again. It never goes away for long. It always builds again.”
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus Page 4
