Turtle Boy
Page 25
Then, from below, a second, slightly smaller turtle drifts upward, sticks its beak above the water, and coasts along for a while. I can’t believe this—two turtles! But it’s not just two. I see a third a ways off, gliding like a shadow through the gray-blue murk. I’m surrounded by turtles, and my heart starts to pound. I know that this is the moment. I have reached a place where everything is perfection. I cannot stay here forever. But I can leave a piece of myself here.
I touch the string of shells around my neck, twisting the metal hook that keeps it closed. Once it’s free, it hangs from my fingertips like a strand of seaweed.
“RJ,” I say.
And with that, I loosen my grip, and the necklace slips past my fingers. It sinks into the water, in no hurry, like the turtles, and it swirls as it drops on its voyage. I watch it go. I gaze at the turtles one last time, until my eyes are blind with tears, and then I reposition my body and head for shore.
Like Will’s, my turtle face emerged slowly and then all at once. I didn’t understand my classmates’ cruel comments about my chin until one day, I grabbed a makeup mirror and looked at my face in profile. Suddenly, I saw myself how others saw me. I began to struggle with body dysmorphia, with being publicly reduced to a single body part. When I was fourteen, hospital orderlies wheeled me to an operating room as my mom and dad waved goodbye. Six hours later, I was no longer a turtle on the outside. Inside, however, I was the very same me: afraid of the world, afraid of myself.
I found refuge in music, in playing guitar and drums, in Judaism, in writing short stories—and like Will, I discovered that I was only in the first stages of picking up the pieces of who I am. My sense of self needed to go through a kind of breaking down and rebuilding. Therapy, travel, studies, and art—along with the love of family and friends—helped me to do the work I needed to do: to discover myself on my own terms, not to crawl in shadows, but to step into the light.
Almost thirty years later, I returned to the “makeup mirror” and began writing an autobiographical comic strip—an origin story—about my journey from diagnosis to surgery to true transformation. That comic morphed into the fictional story of Turtle Boy.
RJ, on the other hand, is based not on a single person, but on an amalgamation of several close friends I’ve had throughout my life, all of them, like RJ, proud and determined, yet sensitive and also intolerant of excuses. They saw me for who I am and pushed me to be better. I also want to mention that RJ’s condition, mitochondrial disease, is real, affecting one in every five thousand people. The range of symptoms is wide, and prognoses vary from patient to patient. For more information, investigate the excellent resources at North American Mitochondrial Disease Consortium and United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.
I hope you enjoyed meeting Will, and I hope he inspired you to try something new. I wish you strength as you journey out of whatever shell in which you find yourself.
Deep gratitude to my brilliant agent, Richard Abate, for believing in me, sticking by me, and helping me turn a ten-panel comic strip into this book. To Rachel Kim and Rebecca Gudelis, who helped guide this book along, from the rocky early drafts until it crossed the finish line. To my incredible editor, Beverly Horowitz, whose depth of understanding about what was hiding under Will’s shell (and whose mastery of how to craft a great book) brought our protagonist into three living, breathing dimensions. Your judgment helped me to cut and cut, and your kindness helped it not to hurt.
Thank you to the amazing team that worked on Turtle Boy: Ken Crossland, Tamar Schwartz, Jonathan Morris, Colleen Fellingham (nothing gets past her eye!), and Bob Bianchini, whose jacket design made me laugh and cry.
To Meredith Arthur and Jeremy Moskowitz: thank you for reading early drafts, saying “yes!” and pointing me in the right direction. To Robin, who teaches me every day about saying “Yes, and!” To Sarah Lefton, whose real-life “Yo, Semite” design inspired Rabbi Harris’s T-shirt. To Jenn Sturgill, mile by mile, hill by Fillmore hill, you were my constant Turtle Boy confidante. And speaking of hills, Shirah’s motto, “Is the heart willing? Come what may!”, comes from Israeli author David Grossman’s novel See Under: Love. That simple call for courage has propelled me up many a mountain in my life.
A moment of appreciation for my colleagues and students at Jewish Community High School of the Bay: thank you for sitting next to and with me (literally and figuratively, Roni Ben-David), for allowing me to pitch you early “prototypes,” for offering yourselves as sounding boards, and for cheering me on as I moved from gateway to gateway. You passed me the Kooshball and listened, whether I was griping or exulting. This book came alive and grew over the course of three academic years in the most wonderful school in the world.
To Joe, who has always known the real me.
To my parents, Alan and Kathy Wolkenstein, and my brother, Haran—your love and support helped me survive middle school, and it supported me in adulthood as Turtle Boy moved from a dream to reality.
To Larry Moskowitz and Ouisue Moskowitz, the best in-laws I could ever imagine.
Now, a few words to you, my beautiful, brilliant wife, Gabi. The story of my life would be incomplete without you—you planted a vision in my eye: a blog, a list, a comic strip, a dream, a book. You assured me with perfect faith that it would happen. Block by block, slice by slice, cup by cup, from the arc of Will’s life to “nut loaf,” there is no part of this book that does not bear the tender imprint of your fingertips.
And lastly, to Anna. May you grow up in a world where every child feels seen and loved for who they are. Sing, drum, dance, and run—may your home follow you anywhere and everywhere you go.
M. Evan Wolkenstein is a high school teacher and writer. He attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, and Hebrew University. His work can be found in Tablet magazine and the Washington Post and on BimBam.com.
He lives with his wife and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area. Turtle Boy is his debut novel.
EvanWolkenstein.com
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