Such a Pretty Girl. Nadina LaSpina
called the factory fattoria, which I thought was hysterical, since fattoria means “farm” in English.
“Are there cows where you work?” I asked.
She didn’t appreciate the humor. She took her job very seriously. An expert seamstress, she was proud when her work was appreciated by her boss. And above all, she was happy to have found a place where people spoke her language.
My mother had not been going to church but didn’t seem to miss it. Maybe there were no churches nearby. Or maybe after working Monday through Friday, she needed rest more than church services. I asked Audrey if she ever went to church and she laughed. Of course not! She was Jewish, she said. And she was not religious, and neither were her parents. I was glad to learn it wasn’t necessary to be religious in America.
Both my parents left early in the morning to go to work, my father to his construction job, my mother to the factory. I was alone most of the day, but I didn’t mind. It felt great to move around the apartment in my wheelchair—into the kitchen to get a soda or make myself a sandwich, into the living room to turn the TV on, and into the bathroom by myself. Although to get into the bathroom, I had to transfer to a stool, since my wheelchair didn’t quite fit through the door. Taking a bath was tricky and I could do it only when my mother was there to help me. Audrey told me her bathroom was big; she could get her wheelchair right next to the bathtub and get in and out by herself.
TV was a novelty for me, since in Sicily only rich people owned one. I loved our set, encased in shiny dark wood, with a huge nineteen-inch screen. I watched game shows and American Bandstand, trying to remember the words of the songs I’d learned from Audrey.
One day, I turned on the TV and a bunch of disabled kids were going around on a stage, some with braces and crutches, and a woman in a low-cut dress was guiding them and patting first one, then another on the head—all this while a funny-looking man sang some sad-sounding song. I wasn’t sure what they were doing. I got a strange feeling in my stomach, as if I was going to be sick. Maybe the ham I’d just eaten was spoiled.
“Send money so these unfortunate kids can walk,” the man pleaded. I remembered that my father had told me how in America they collected money on television to find a cure. I felt as if I were one of those TV kids. I felt like I had in Sicily when people looked at me and clucked their tongues, got all teary-eyed, and murmured, “Povera ciunca.”
“I’d rather not walk,” I told the man, as if he could hear me. Saying that made me feel better. But I was glad my father wasn’t there. When he asked that night what I’d watched on TV, I said game shows. But I told Audrey the next time she called, and she said she felt like puking, too, whenever she watched the telethon. That’s what that show was called.
Twice a week, the home instructor from the Board of Education came. He was a nice man who brought me books and praised me for my progress in learning English. I liked his visits, but I wished I could go to school and meet other kids.
Audrey was now a freshman—which was a funny word for a girl—in a regular school with a ramp at the entrance. Her mother drove her there. There weren’t many accessible schools, she told me. She was lucky to go to one, though she couldn’t get into the auditorium and the science lab in her wheelchair. She had lots of friends, but she complained that they left her out of many things they did.
Sometimes I wished I could live with Audrey in her house with the ramp and the big bathroom, and go to school with her. Then I remembered how difficult it had been for my father to bring me to America, find a ground-floor apartment, and the hospital and the doctors I needed. I thought about how hard my parents worked, and I felt guilty for wanting more than they could give me.
Whenever Audrey and I were in the hospital together, and especially when we managed to be in the same room, we were thrilled. The first few nights, the two of us were so busy catching up, we wouldn’t sleep at all.
“What’s going on in here, a pajama party?”
Janet, the nice night nurse stuck her head in the room, trying to sound angry, but we could hear the laughter in her voice. If mean Miss Martins was on duty, we had to be careful and whisper and put our heads under the covers to muffle our giggles. She heard us anyway and came marching into the room.
“The next time I come in here, I’ll give you each a shot.”
“You can’t do that without a doctor’s orders,” Audrey said, bravely challenging her.
“If I hear so much as a peep coming from this room, you’ll find out what I can do!”
Audrey’s favorite topic of conversation was Richard, a sophomore at her school. She had a major crush on Richard. She described the way he looked in the minutest detail—how his hair curled over his ears, his eyes slanted up when he smiled at her, his lips pouted just slightly…. When she described his cute butt, we’d both giggle so hard that if Miss Martins was on duty, she’d march in with her hands on her hips. If she was off, Audrey went on talking, both of us laughing harder and harder, until she got to the big bulge in Richard’s pants. At that point, we’d be practically having convulsions under the covers, and that’s when Audrey cried out, “Oh no, oh no, I’m wetting the bed!”
Because of her spina bifida, Audrey’s bladder control was not the greatest, and she did have an accident once in a while, especially when she laughed too hard or got too excited. Though I couldn’t see what she was doing under the covers, I knew her hand was between her legs as she tried to stop the pee from coming out. Polio had not affected my bladder at all. But I made believe I, too, was afraid of wetting the bed and I put my hand there and squeezed my legs together as tightly as my polio-weakened muscles allowed.
Audrey’s relationship with Richard never went past his smiling at her, saying hello, and two or three times pushing her from the elevator to her classroom. Yet I was jealous. I wished there was a boy I could talk about with Audrey. But since I hardly ever went anywhere outside of the hospital, I never saw any boys who weren’t handicapped, other than my cousin Victor.
In the hospital, Audrey and I were quite popular. But the boys in the hospital, as cute as some of them were, couldn’t compare with Richard. Richard was a thousand, maybe even a million, times better. Because Richard was not handicapped. He was “normal.” Audrey was sure that had she not been handicapped, Richard would have asked her out on a date, kissed her, and made out with her. It was a real tragedy that because of her disability she was missing out on Richard’s love. But she kept hoping he would fall in love with her in spite of her disability.
Why normal boys were so much better than handicapped boys was not a question we ever thought of asking. Nor did we ask why normal boys didn’t consider us—handicapped girls—worthy of their attentions. These were facts of life, unquestionable and unanswerable.
Every morning before breakfast, without even thinking we might want to wash our faces, Audrey got her makeup bag out.
“What color eye shadow do you want to wear today?”
I’d shrug, too inexperienced to make such a decision.
“What if I wear blue and you wear green?”
Any color was fine with me. She grabbed the side table, which was on wheels and could be pushed back and forth between our beds, and placed all sorts of tubes and jars on it. At first I didn’t know what to do. I’d put on too much eye shadow, get it all smudged.
Audrey laughed. “You look like you got punched in the eyes!”
Then she’d show me how to do it right. I was a fast learner and before long I could apply makeup like a pro. What fun it was! Rubbing foundation on our noses and foreheads, defining our cheekbones with blush-on, carefully applying mascara on our lashes and frosty shadow on our lids. On our lips we’d wear light pink lipstick.
“You girls look like you’re ready to go partying,” the nurse’s aide said when she brought our breakfast.
Audrey put all the makeup back into the bag to make room for her tray.
As soon