TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 89

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 14, 20000000006


Dear Denizens of the Tree,

	Channukah is coming upon us fast.  I am 
waiting for one thing to arrive in the mail: a 
full immersion language CD-Rom.  In fact, 33 
languages.  One of them is Tibetan, and that is 
the language that Meyshe is currently fixated on. 
He has learned the alphabet and can read texts, 
though haltingly, but he doesn't have the 
pronunciation right, because he doesn't have any 
native speaker to listen to.  The 33 languages 
ought to be perfect for him.  He just has this 
thing for languages, maybe because it was so hard 
for him to learn English.  He didn't talk until 
he was about six.  Well, he could say words, but 
he couldn't string them together.  I've talked 
about that before.

	What I still have left to buy are some 
nightly presents, little things, for passing out 
to my kids after we light the candles.  I used to 
order things from American Science and Surplus, 
but I've escaped all the catalogues this year 
because of our move.  They'll catch up to me.  I 
know it.  The telephone calls from charitable 
organizations, ecological groups and political 
action committees have resumed after a brief 
stay.  I have learned to say, "No".  I say, "No," 
nicely, but I say it firmly.  And I haven't 
resorted to the trump card lately: I'm on 
disability.  I have two disabled children, and my 
husband walked out on me.  That always got them. 
But now, I just say, "No, I can't.  I'm sorry, 
but I can't."  And then I hang up.



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The Girl Without Arms

	When I was in the fourth grade at John 
Muir Elementary School, there was a girl, Kathy, 
who was in the fifth grade.  The first time I saw 
her, I couldn't take my eyes off of her.  Her 
mother must have taken Thalidomide when she was 
pregnant with her, because Kathy had no arms, 
just little hands coming out of her shoulders. 
The hands were crimped and some of the fingers 
were webbed together.  They were uneven and 
deformed.  I had never seen anyone like her 
before, and it gave me a weak stomach.  I felt 
faint looking at her; a shiver went through me, 
and I went into some kind of shock.  I felt my 
knees buckling and I couldn't get the image of 
her out of my head.  So I went to the school 
nurse and I cried.  The nurse had me lie down on 
the cot, and she asked me what the matter was. 
If I were dizzy, I could lie down on the cot 
until I felt stronger.  I told the nurse that I 
had seen a girl with no arms, and it was making 
me sick.  I felt so sorry for her that my insides 
were coming out, and my outsides were going in. 
What had happened to that girl that she had no 
arms, and wasn't there something wrong with her 
face, too?  It looked so asymmetrical.

	What would I have done if I were the 
nurse, and some little nine year old came to me, 
stricken by the sight of another student, another 
human being, with a glaring deformity?  The 
important thing would be to demystify the 
apparition.  The nurse told me that the girl's 
name was Kathy, and that Kathy's mother had taken 
a drug for morning sickness during her pregnancy. 
The drug was called Thalidomide, and it caused 
terrible deformities in fetuses.  It was taken 
off the market but much damage had already been 
done.

	"She is just like you inside," she said 
to me.  "She's a girl in elementary school, and 
she has to do homework, and take tests, play 
during recess and make friends just like you do." 
She explained that Kathy had to adapt to her 
handicaps and learn to live a full life, just 
like I would have to learn to do.

	"But it scares me," I cried.  "She scares me."

	She told me there was nothing to be 
scared of.  Kathy was a regular person, even 
though she was missing her arms.  Maybe I should 
get to know her.  If I saw her a lot, maybe I 
wouldn't be so scared.  I'd get used to seeing 
her, and it would eventually be unremarkable. 
Still, I could stay there in the office, lying 
down on the cot until I felt all right to get up 
and go back to class.

	I lay there a long time, contemplating 
what it would be like to have to face life like 
that, with tiny gimpy hands coming directly out 
of my shoulders.  Would it be worse than having 
my father for a father?  Would it be worse than 
being my sister's punching bag?  What really 
could it do to the soul to be disfigured?  And I 
thought that most people who thought they were 
afraid of death, were really afraid of living. 
It was living, in a real world, with real 
limitations and real triumphs and tragedies that 
presented the awesome challenges of existence, 
not the universal inescapable fact of one's own 
death.

	Finally, after an hour or so, I calmed 
down, and felt well enough to go back to class. 
The nurse told me not to forget what she'd said 
about getting to know Kathy.  From then on, I was 
fascinated by her and drawn to her.  I watched 
her grip a pencil in her right hand, and lean way 
over, close to the paper, to write.  But she 
could write.  And I watched her use her feet to 
do what many hands do: brush the hair from her 
face, zip and unzip a jacket, help transfer her 
books from the top of her desk to be held between 
her two hands.  She was masterful.

	After a few weeks, I approached her in 
the yard at recess and asked if she wanted to 
play hand ball with me.  We used a volley ball 
against the long brick wall running the north end 
of the girls' playground.  She used her right 
foot to kick the ball against the wall.  I was 
lame at sports, and we were a good match.  After 
the bell rang, we brought the ball to the yard 
monitor and said goodbye.  I found out from her 
that she got straight As and that science was her 
favourite subject.  When we parted, I felt proud 
of myself for having conquered my obsessive fear.

	We both grew up in Berkeley.  She went to 
the same junior high and high school.  And after 
the years of college, I used to see her every 
once in a while, walking down the street, talking 
with friends, or getting off of a bus somewhere 
in Berkeley.  Then a few more years went by.  I 
must have been in my mid twenties when I saw her 
last, pushing a stroller with a perfect baby in 
it.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net