Just Call Me Acrobat

I spent most of my time in-cast confined to bed. Not because I had to be, but because if she didn’t absolutely have to, my mother considered it too much of a bother to get me up and about. I was heavy, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to assist in positioning, and the doorways in our house were too narrow for my wheelchair to fit through unfolded, which meant that every time I needed to change rooms, I had to be taken out of the chair so it could be collapsed and relocated and set back up, and then carried to it and settled in again. No doubt it was a pain in the ass.

Not that I’m making excuses for my mother, because I’m not. She took a furlough on the waitressing to stay home and care for me and Matt, but Matt was the only one she ever cared for. Me she left alone as often as she could: she dumped a stack of Little Golden Books on the table next to my bed, threw me a few dolls, and left. I was so bored.

We’ve already covered my reading comprehension. Little Golden Books? Please. The Pokey Little Puppy was so far beneath me, I’d have never deigned to touch it if I hadn’t been about to croak from the monotony of spending every single day in the exact same spot. As it was, I read every one of those incredibly banal books about a thousand times apiece. Then I read them back to front. Then I read them in Pig Latin. I was so bored, I picked the strip of wooden edging off the bedside table just to have something to do. I threw back the edge of the blanket and spent hours making up stories about the characters on my sheets: Strawberry Shortcake, Huckleberry Pie, and the dog called Pupcake had some pretty wild times during those interminable afternoons. Sometimes I got so bored, I’d holler that I had to pee just to have a change of pace. God forbid I actually did have to pee: my mother usually just snapped at me and went back to “Days of Our Lives.” Some days I had to beg for a half hour or more before she’d carry me down the hall to the bathroom, mouthing off the whole time about how impossible I was to deal with. But bedridden me did not care: she thought she was miserable? She could scratch her leg if it itched. She could wipe herself after using the toilet. I’d show her miserable: instead of shutting my mouth when she demanded silence, I got louder and more obnoxious and took the slaps with a defiant glare.

One day, I got so tired of lying still that I started experimenting with using the bar between my casts to pull my legs up over my head. I discovered that if I rolled up off the small of my back, heaved my bottom half into the air and pulled with all my might, I could turn a flip. Hallelujah! I could play Acrobat!

The new game was great. I’d twist and squirm until I was upside-down in the bed with my casted feet touching the headboard. This maximized the amount of mattress I could use, meaning I could flip two, sometimes three times before I ran out of space. Occasionally I overdid it and crashed to the floor, but I figured out how to pull myself back up with a good grip on the footboard and a mighty lunge. I had fantastic upper body strength after a bit.

I could flip for hours before I wore myself out: I accumulated a lot of pent-up energy being in bed all the time. I’d play Acrobat until my face was red and I streamed with sweat and I’d given myself a headache. It was a lot of fun; I’d laugh and laugh every time I teetered off the end of the bed and thumped to the floor. I have no idea what made crashing to the hardwood so incredibly funny, but it was. I think I just needed a reason to laugh, and so I made one. I’ve always been good at that. I still cackle at the slightest provocation. I have a giggle that never quits. Why, I don’t know. It just is. That’s just me.

I wasn’t in bed unceasingly, of course, though it felt like that pretty much all the time. I got up in the evenings when my teacher, Mrs. Quinn, came to the house to give me my homework. She sacrificed a lot of her own time tutoring me so I wouldn’t fall behind and have to repeat the first grade. I don’t know whether the school paid her for it or not, but either way it was an amazing thing for her to do – now that I’m old enough to realize what it would have meant, I’m absolutely certain that I’d have rather peeled all the skin off my body with a paring knife than have stayed under my parents’ roof for an extra year because of missing out on “Frog and Toad lived on an island.” I wish I could find her and thank her for her help.

I also got up when Daddy got home, if I wasn’t up already. Mrs. Quinn didn’t come every single day, so sometimes I was still in bed when the sound of the Jake brake on his semi signaled his presence. Coming into the house and finding me shut off by myself in my room always made him angry. Little girls needed air, he said. Little girls needed sunshine. Little girls needed somebody to play with, somebody to talk to. He’d pop his head into my room and ask had I been out of bed. If I said no, he’d stomp into the living room to find my mother. Their voices would start out low at first, so soft I could barely hear, and then get louder and louder as he got madder and madder at my mother and her response to his question of why I’d not been outside my room for so long, which was always the same: You don’t know what a hassle she is to deal with! You’re never home! Sometimes the fighting would reach way, way back into some realm of truth that my mother kept locked up inside her head and drag up how she really felt about the fact that I existed at all. She’d screech, You want her? You take care of her, then! Absolute silence would fall over the house. My face would burn and burn and burn with hurt and shame.

Then my father would start to splutter. I could picture him standing there, working his mouth like a dying fish, curling and uncurling his fist. He never hit my mother, but there were times in those days when he wanted to – he’d take all his anger and direct it at the wall instead, or at the nearest piece of furniture. A few times he put his fist clean through, and once his flashlight. He’d punch so hard the house shook, then turn on his heel without a word and come to fetch me, scooping me into his arms and carrying me down the hall and out the door into the cool of the evening while I clutched at his shirt and hid my face in his neck to smother my tears.

If there was enough light left in the day, he’d settle me in the grass at the bottom of the hill under the oak tree. Then he’d go back inside and come out with his big hands full of Barbies and little clothes and brushes. Are these okay? he’d ask, and he’d look so wounded standing there, so hopeful that I’d approve of his choices, that I never could bear the thought of sending him for something different. I’d pat my casted legs and he’d hand me all the toys and then disappear around the side of the hill into the basement.

He may have been out of sight awhile, but Daddy was great company even from a distance. I’d hear the crack of a can of beer opening, and then the music would come on.

My Daddy loved Credence Clearwater Revival. He had a tape player and a couple of cassettes, and he’d pop one in and turn it up as loud as it could possibly go. The sound would pour out of the basement and fill the air, and he’d start to sing with it. I never could resist singing along. Proud Mary, Suzy Q, Run Through the Jungle, Cotton Fields, Good Golly Miss Molly. We’d sing. I’d play with my Barbies. He’d drink another beer, and then another beer, and then another beer.

I didn’t begrudge my father his drinking when I was little. I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t see it as a problem. He wasn’t a mean drunk, like some: when Daddy got drunk, he just got evermore fun to be around. He was the kind of drunk who’d go off and dance by himself in a corner somewhere and then sleep it off in the front seat of his pickup with his feet hanging out the door. He didn’t have violence in him then. Anger and frustration yes, but not violence, not yet. He and my mother fought and fought, and the only thing he ever hit was something that wasn’t alive to notice. Pour a few beers in him and he was happy, cheerful. He loved to play with me and Matthew. We spent every night in the basement with him – every single night we possibly could. And they were good nights, wonderful nights, full of play and laughter and music and the adoration of two little kids who thought their Daddy walked on water. I will never forget those nights. The sad part is, my Daddy probably doesn’t remember any of them.