by Rolli
Abilities Camp
Abilities Camp sounded fun. I was glad to get away. There were a few wheelers sitting outside, so I loosely associated with them until my parents drove away. Then we wheeled into the auditorium.
I’d never seen so many sick kids. The girl next to me . . . She was just a head in a chair. I sat around until the lights went mostly out. Then the fat lady licked her microphone and said dramatically: “We are not disabled. We are multitalented.” And everyone cheered, who was able.
When the lights came back on, I looked around. The head in the chair was staring at me. This other girl was struggling with her nebulizer.
I never really realized I was a freak until someone made a camp for it.
Smudge
In my dreams I have a wheelchair. Every time. Other kids are playing ring-toss with unicorns and I’m wheeling along, looking for ramp access.
One time on AM 800 CHAD this dream expert was talking about either lucid or lucent dreams. The idea is you’re dreaming, you realize you’re dreaming, you take control of your dreams. Then you really could if you wanted toss those rings, or eat the mayor, or pretty much anything else you could think of.
So I tried it. Just before I fell asleep, I told myself I was going to have — I think it was a lucid dream. The trouble is when you’re dreaming, you can’t tell you’re dreaming. So if you’ve got a baby growing on your kneecap, your brain just says: “Yup. As usual.” You’re supposed to insert a clue into your dream before you nod off and when you run into that clue you’ll know you’re asleep. In my dreams I’m usually just quietly reading, so my dream clue was that I’d read the word “smudge,” which is my least favourite word in English and the first word that terrible poets reach for when they’re trying hard to be metaphorical.
So I kept thinking smudge, smudge, getting sleepier and sleepier, and when I dreamed I was reading I saw the smudge, and had an epiphany. I threw my book down. “I’m dreaming,” I said to myself. “This is all a dream. I’m taking control of my dreams. I’m going . . . to fly.” Flying, just the freeness of it, is probably the ultimate wheeler fantasy.
I closed my eyes. I focused.
And then it happened.
I felt myself rising higher and higher. I got that butterfly feeling. It should have been so amazing.
But it wasn’t amazing. It was fucking depressing. Because my wheelchair just floated up with me. No matter how hard I rocked or pushed down on my armrests, it stuck to me. And I felt so much sadder and more devastated than I’ve ever felt in my waking life.
I floated back down to the ground. I picked up my book and I kept on reading.
Then I woke up.
Drawing
I should probably draw a picture of the old man. If I get recalled to life again people will want to know who to look for. Or if they just find a skeleton with a memorandum book.
Drawing isn’t my forte. I draw a lot. A couple months back I drew a picture of a hermit crab out of the encyclopaedia and even though I don’t really like people to see my work I was proud enough, it even looked like a crab, to stick it on the fridge. No one said anything till the Jehovah lady came. My mom lets them in because she can only disappoint family members. They went into the kitchen. I listened from the top of the stairs. The lady must’ve seen the drawing because she said: “Oh how old is your little one?” There was a long pause, then mom said: “Twelve.” Then a longer pause where I imagined the Jehovah lady screwing up her corneas and maybe slanting her head like a puppy. “Oh,” she said, finally. Then she started in about Jehovah. I retracted back into my room like the nearest seashell.
I guess with my skill a drawing would be worthless. And there’s no point again because the old man looks exactly like da Vinci’s self-portrait.
It’s uncanny.
Dentistry
I bit the dentist. If you gouge your hook into my cavity and ask me if it hurts I’m going to bite you. Like the crocodile in Peter Pan. My main virtue may be my strong teeth.
I get my dentistry done now at the hospital. They put you under and after you can’t have solid food or your lungs will collapse. The doctor illustrated this by drawing eyes on a sandwich bag, then blowing it up and popping it on his chest. At the same time as the pop the nurse jammed the IV in. The last thing I remember is the doctor crumpling the puppet with its head blown open.
I couldn’t eat for three days. I could have broth but chose not to. Not snacking is murder. I wanted some mixed nuts but kept imagining my chest flattening like the card guys in Alice’s Adventures. Or my head blowing open.
On the fourth day I ate breakfast and threw up. “Life is simpler,” my mom said as she wiped it up, “when you don’t bite people.”
She’s probably right.
Symphony Under the Stars
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’d been out so long and away from everything. I thought maybe I was going crazy.
I woke up. It was nighttime. You could hardly see anything but the old man was still moving. It felt like he was pushing me uphill because of the pressure of my head against the headrest.
I closed my eyes again. I couldn’t see anything. The pushing got slower as the hill got steeper. The old man was really puffing. I was worried he’d drop dead, then I’d roll back over him and tip over. There might be coyotes.
I heard something. It got louder as we went along. It sounded like music — but it couldn’t be music. I hadn’t had much water or sleep. A hallucination.
It sounded like Handel or Mozart. Then I was sure it was Mozart. It was a divertimento. I have a CD of divertimentos.
There were lights on the other side of the hill. The old man slowed down but kept pushing me. The music got louder as the lights got brighter. It was like there was a crown on top of the hill. Then we were on top of the crown.
For a minute I thought I was dead though I’m not Christian. I’d been moving to the light and there was music. And then all these people. There were maybe five hundred people sitting and standing at the bottom of the hill. It was like a small valley filled with people. There was a symphony on a stage. The lights were shining on a banner that read: “SYMPHONY UNDER THE STARS.” My parents had taken me to something like this years ago, maybe even in this same spot. For a while they thought it was important to nourish my brain.
It was so amazing to hear music again I almost cried. I was so thirsty and this was as good as water.
The old man stopped pushing me. I think he was listening to the music. He stepped up to a tree. He put his arms around it and looked down at the lights and the people. Then he sat in the grass and looked and listened. He put his head back like he was in ecstasy.
We sat there for close to an hour. They played Schubert and a few movie themes. Then everyone clapped and started walking away. The musicians packed up their instruments. The conductor held his hand above his eyes and looked up at us almost like he could see something. Then he turned and walked away with the rest.
The old man jumped up and pushed me down the side of the hill into a new area of darkness.
I wondered . . .
Will I ever hear music again?
Dream
I can’t forget. Your memory helps you but it kills you too. It picks you up and it drops you. It’s your depressed mom who loves you and wishes you were dead.
My mom gets me into my chair. I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed so it’s easier for her, my dad leaves early, to pull me straight back into my chair. When your mom’s grunting under you, you can’t forget you’re a flour bag. When you move your hand and it doesn’t move how you need it to. When you rest it on your armrest, press a button. Everything reminds you.
But I want to forget. I want to lay back in the grass and not think about the million strands of grass, but just relax. I want that so bad. It’s a dream, it keeps me going. If I could forget for just a minute. It’s sad but it�
�s my dream.
It’s better than nothing.
The Sea-Wave IX
Years, appeared. They merely appeared. I lay them . . . on the table. And counted them.
I have my freedom.
But I did not have my freedom.
When you are imprisoned, it is your skin, and some other thing, which are imprisoned. A small thing: a particle. There are so many elements in a chemical. Remove one, and it is some other thing. It is not the chemical. It is nothing.
I now had my freedom. But I wanted a particle. The other thing. It remained in prison. Lying, by the next condemned man. As a facing page.
It will lie there, forever.
The Sad Fly
Just thinking about my mom . . . I’ve thrown up before. She’s not what you’d call motherly. She never really held me. I’ve heard her say: “I’m not a baby person.” But you had a baby, Mom. I imagine her reading magazines, and my dad holding me, looking worried and sad.
No one holds me now. I sit in my corner. Mom reads magazines, Dad sits attached to his paper, like a sad fly.
I don’t think having a damaged kid really killed my mom. But it murdered my dad. He’s never said that, but . . .
I can tell.
Observation
My one hobby is observation. I wheel right up to the margin till my feet touch the red line and I sit there and stare. I make my observations, I write them down. When you’re old especially, life has to be just an album of observations; you turn the pages all day until your arthritis aches. When you’re a wheeler, that’s really all life is, too. You’ve gotta hold onto things or you’ll have nothing. And you already have so little.
Conversation
The point of conversation is to stop a person’s words from ever getting out of their mouth. Someone talking is that foam sealant that keeps the listening person’s words from leaking out. If they do get out, maybe there was too much space between your words, you have to cut them off like sausages and cram them back in. If the person talks about their new business, you tell them how it’s so very likely in today’s economy to fail. You push the words down their throat past the epiglottis until they choke to death. Then you go on talking.
Walking-Stick
The old man has a tattoo on his forearm. Something with claws, a lion or a dragon. He rolled his sleeves up when I thought he was going to try climbing this dead tree. But he just pushed on it like he wanted to topple it. It was dead but not dead enough. He gave up.
He pushed me for a while, then stopped at another tree. There were a lot of white dead trees in this area which I think comes from flooding. This one went down easy. It smashed on the ground and bits of branches went everywhere. One scratched me on the cheek hard. I touched it but there wasn’t any blood.
I watched the old man picking up branches and dropping them for a long time. He picked up one long one and whacked it on the ground till the fragile bits snapped off. Then he tested his weight on it. I assumed he wanted a walking-stick. Though he hasn’t used it yet. He just rests it across my handlebars and holds onto it and pushes me at the same time.
I’m not sure what he’s up to.
The Glass Jar
The glass jar my mom throws pennies in plays the wedding waltz when you open it. You just have to wind a key in the lid. When I was younger, when my mom rolled her pennies, it was my job to wind up the jar. When I heard the wedding waltz I knew my presence was needed. It made me feel needed. It was something I could do usually without help. It was important. Small things keep you going.
Over time the jar stopped working. The music got so slow it was chilling. I’d feel suspense. I’d imagine skeletons dancing. My parents seemed happier when they were younger.
Once when I wound the jar it went clank and died. “Look what you’ve done,” Mom said. She didn’t need me after that. She rolls the pennies herself now, in silence.
But sometimes when she opens the jar it still makes one ding like a last gasp of romance. I can hear it even from my room. It reminds me of how things were. I used to — I’d get so sad. I’d close my eyes for a long time. But not anymore.
I stopped winding my heart up a long time ago.
Shining Star
She’s our shining star. We love her. The disease has stolen her. It’s taken her away. But . . . we can still see, if we look closely, in her eyes . . . that old sparkle. She smiles. In some tunnel of her mind, she’s smiling.
She’s our shining star. We love her.
Jane
I have an auntie who’s — most people would say — retarded. Everyone calls her Janey, though I think of her as Jane, because Janey just makes her sound cuter than she really is. Because she is basically a shakey, wired lady with a moustache. She has glasses, but she doesn’t look through her glasses. She looks over them, and her eyeballs are meatballs and terrifying. Her ordinary voice is screaming.
Jane is Mom’s sister so she materializes at times. They can’t stand each other but guilt is the staple gun that holds families together. I hate going anywhere or being seen with Jane because I know what people are thinking. They’re looking at the two of us, and then at my parents, and thinking: Whoa, imagine being stuck with one of those, AND one of those. Their hearts must be like ripped-apart flags. We can now be pretty happy by contrast, and have those ice-cream sandwiches after all. Also, they probably think we’re both retarded, and that it’s one of those fun outings that retarded people are made to take at strip malls and smaller parks.
Jane lives alone but shouldn’t. Mom said she has the IQ of maybe a four- or a five-year-old. There aren’t many four- or five-year-olds who have their own apartment, plus a cat, with cat shit all over everything, and burned-black pots and pans in the trash can.
I overheard Mom say: “My life would be simpler if Janey didn’t exist.”
I overheard Dad say: “Shh.”
Bodyguard
I hate my face. My nose looks like it broke off a statue and got pasted on in a hurry. My one eye is higher than the other. They had to pry me out of my mom with pliers. The regular forceps didn’t work so someone had to get special forceps from the basement. Your skull is taffy when you’re born and if they stretch it they’re scared to push it back. If they’d known how I was going to turn out, they maybe would’ve cared less and pressed in the dents with their thumbs.
Compared to Jay Kwan, I got off easy. The one side of his skull is twisted up. His left eye is up in his hair. When I first saw him I wanted to cry. Also he was cute, he would’ve been so cute, if it weren’t for his tragic deformity. He’s weirdly popular. His girlfriend is normal and volatile. I don’t think anyone would tease her — or him, either — or she’d just erupt. She’s like his crazed bodyguard, which is just what a disabled kid needs in their life. Or they’ll never make it.
Helen
Sometimes the old man says what sounds like “Helen” just under his breath, which considering how bent over he is is practically right in my ear. It’s unsettling waking up with this raspy “Helen” in my ear like a wasp. Once he shouted “Helen” when he woke up then he ran to me. I’m not sure if he thinks my name is Helen, or . . . He could have me confused with someone else, which would make this whole thing a dumb mix-up.
I don’t even look like a Helen.
The Sea-Wave X
Whenever . . . I was joyful (I was so seldom joyful), there would be a voice. In my ear. A soft voice. A voice like the water. It would change, as water changes. But the words. They did not change. The words. They were always the same.
“The sea-wave comes and goes forever. It rushes against everything forever. Nothing, not iron, survives it. For the sea-wave flows forever. It takes away everything, forever. All crumbs, and the phantoms of all things. Until they’re nothing. Everything, we have. The good things of earth. The miserable things. All suffering. All, is salt. Your bones. They will wash away. It will take them, the wave, away. The Earth itself,
is salt, and will wash away. In the wave. For it comes and goes, forever.”
And there would be no more joy.
Sunburn
My hands are so burnt now they’re not hands. They’re tongues.
I’ve never had a tan. There are gross old celebrities who resemble smoked fish because they think if they hide under a tan we won’t notice they’re three-quarters dead. I feel like one now.
I need my sunglasses. I have a small hole in my one cornea from looking at the sun too much when I was younger. I remember once my auntie said to me: “What are you doing?” I was staring at the sun. “Don’t do that,” she said. I kept doing it. “Do you want to be blind too, kid?” she said, turning my wheelchair around. Later, I bit her thumb.