by Ruth Behar
I reach for the handkerchief I took away from Mami, the one from Cuba, and pass it to Baba.
“Please, Baba, don’t cry. I’m going to get well. We just have to be patient like you were on that ship.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Baba replies and gives me a smile. “Everything comes to those who wait.”
Baba digs into her purse and pulls out a butterscotch candy.
“Hide it under your pillow,” she whispers. She knows if Mami sees the candy, she’ll take it from me.
“Gracias, Baba. Will you tell me the story again another day?”
“Of course, shayna maideleh, as many times as you want. My life has become a story. One day your life will become a story too.”
“That’s going to take forever.” I sigh.
“But you’ll get there, shayna maideleh, I promise. All we can do is have faith that life leads us where it does for a reason, so we can learn things we didn’t know about ourselves. One day you will look back on your suffering and you will find a meaning for it and that will be your story.”
Just when I have given up wondering if Danielle will ever come to visit, I hear her at the door asking Mami, “Madame, may I say hello to Ruthie? Is she well enough to receive guests?”
“Hi, Ruthie,” Danielle says as she walks into the room. “I’m sorry you can’t play hopscotch.”
Danielle wears a green dress with a white collar and white ankle socks and white pumps with satin bows. Her long black hair is tied into a thick braid that reaches down her back, a green bow at the end. She could not look more perfect.
“I’ll be better soon,” I reply, trying to sound cheerful. “Sit down, Danielle. We can play cards, if you want. Or Monopoly.”
There’s a chair by my bed where all the visitors sit. But Danielle doesn’t sit. She stands there staring at me, shuffling her feet.
“Do you want to sign my cast?” I ask her.
I pull away the sheet from my left side, so she can have a look at how the cast stretches from my toes to my waist.
She takes a quick glance and turns pale. Then she says, “Thank you, Ruthie. Not now. I just came to say hello. Maman said I should come and see you, that it was the polite thing to do.”
I can tell she’s afraid to be alone with me. Maybe she thinks I’m contagious and she’ll end up in a body cast too.
She peeks at her watch. “Sorry. I have to go.”
She runs out of the room like everyone else, without looking back.
After she’s gone, I lie there in my plaster cast, staring at the empty spot where she had been standing.
Everyone has stopped seeing the person that I am, the girl named Ruthie. Sometimes I feel like I am little more than my plaster cast. I have to lie here and be pitied. Where do I hide? Where do I run? I feel naked to the whole world.
The only children who come over every day, without fail, are my cousins, Dennis and Lily. They skid into the bedroom with Izzie and the four of us play a round of Monopoly or Scrabble. But they’re younger and babyish and quickly tire of being cooped up inside. After a few minutes, they run off and play in the street.
One afternoon after coming home from school, Dennis and Izzie toss a ball around in the room. It flies near the bed and I catch it and throw it back. I’m so happy to be a regular kid again!
“Good save, Roofie!” Izzie shouts.
He tosses the ball to Dennis, so he can then toss it over to me. We’re having fun, but Lily rushes to tattle-tale on us.
Mami storms in, yelling, “Niños, don’t play here! What if you hit Ruti’s leg?”
“It’s okay, Mami!” I say. “The cast is hard. The ball won’t hurt me. Don’t make them leave. Please!”
But Mami doesn’t care what I say. She shoos the kids out of the room. “Fuera, niños. Go outside!”
They don’t look back either. And off they go, out to where the sun is shining.
a flashlight and Nancy Drew to the rescue
What does sunshine feel like?
I can’t remember.
Since the window is behind me, I see only shadows and streaks of light.
In the morning the room is pale yellow. In the evening it turns gray. And at night a black curtain falls over the world.
I ask Papi for a flashlight to make up for the sunlight I’ve lost. He gets me one bright enough to shine into the darkest tunnel.
I keep the flashlight next to my pillow. So I can be brave.
The scariest time is the deepest deep of night. Every lamp is turned off in the house and everyone is asleep, except me. That’s when my broken leg hurts the most. I want someone to hold my hand. I want someone to say kind words to me.
But I keep quiet because I don’t think I deserve any kindness. The doctor in the emergency room told me a broken leg was no big deal.
That’s why I cry as quietly as I can in the deepest deep of night. There’s a box of Kleenex next to my bed and I pull out tissue after tissue to mop up my tears.
Izzie sleeps and doesn’t notice.
Last night when I felt scared, I came up with a great idea. I lifted the sheet over my head and turned on the flashlight and leaned it against the cast.
I felt safe, like I was camping in a tent in the woods and surrounded by whispering trees and peaceful bears, like the stories Uncle Bill tells about taking Boy Scouts to Bear Mountain.
Now I’m camping all by myself under the sheet of my bed. I hug myself and say, “You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”
Before falling asleep I turn off the flashlight so I won’t run down the battery but I keep the sheet over my head.
In the morning when Mami comes in with the bedpan she sees me all covered up.
“Ruti! Wake up!”
“I’m awake,” I tell her.
I keep the sheet over my face. I’m not ready to come out of my tent.
“How can you breathe? Take that sheet off right now, or do you want me to take it off?” Mami says, already annoyed with me and the day hasn’t even started.
I pull the sheet away and smile at her. “Look at me, I’m fine.”
She sees the tissues scattered around. “Were you sneezing during the night?”
“Yeah, Mami.”
“Must be all those flowers blooming,” she says, looking out the window. “Winters are so long here in this country I thought I would never be able to wear sandals again. It is such a relief that summer is finally here.” Then she looks at me sadly. “You’ll wear sandals again one day too, mi niña. We just have to be patient.”
“That’s right, Mami. Everything’s going to be all right.”
What courage it takes for me to smile at Mami. To act as if I’m not worried at all.
On the last day of class before summer vacation, Joy brings me a pile of books. “Here you go, Ruthie,” she says to me. “You can read these Nancy Drew mysteries over the summer and take a rest from math. You’re all caught up, so no need to tax your brain.”
I finish reading all ten Nancy Drew books by the beginning of July and then I have nothing new to read and no one to play with. Danielle hasn’t come back. But who cares? She was mean. And Ramu, who’s so nice, can’t visit me.
One of the worst parts about being bored is that there is so much time to think about the terrible things that can happen and how you can’t stop terrible things from happening if they’re going to happen.
Like the night of the accident.
Those boys didn’t know they were going to die when they went to the discotheque. And I didn’t know I’d wind up in a body cast.
I have so many fears. What if I don’t heal? What if my leg stays broken forever? Even the ocean isn’t big enough to hold all my fears.
I am scared of being scared.
Nancy Drew is never scared. That’s what
I like about her.
So I read the books over and over. I read them aloud like an actress onstage. No one is around to listen.
I read aloud from The Clue of the Broken Locket, where Nancy Drew says, “I’m all set to go! Tell me more about Henry Winch and why he’s so frightened.”
I change the line so Nancy Drew says, “I’m all set to go! Tell me more about Ruthie Mizrahi and why she’s so frightened.”
And there she comes, strawberry-haired Nancy Drew, the girl sleuth, so American and so sure of herself, wearing a round collared blouse and a pencil skirt, wielding her magnifying glass.
“Hello, Nancy Drew,” I say. “I’m Ruthie Mizrahi. Won’t you please solve the mystery of why the car accident happened, why I broke my leg, and why I ended up in my bed?”
Nancy Drew smiles down at me, raising an eyebrow. “It certainly sounds intriguing! And I’ve been longing for another case!”
And when I pretend Nancy is with me, it’s not so bad. I have discovered if I only have me, myself, and I for company, I might as well be amusing.
Then, through the open windows, I hear the ice cream truck and kids squealing as they run and play in the streets.
I wish I could be out there playing hopscotch.
I wish I could blow on a dandelion puffball and see its dust scatter.
I wish I could stand in the sun and run to the ice cream truck and buy a chocolate cone and eat it really fast before it melts all over my hands.
I wish, I wish, I wish.
Part III
A STONE IN MY HEART
help me not to hate
Mami has convinced Papi he can watch over me before he goes to work on Saturday morning. She’s going to the beauty parlor to get her hair done. She places the bedpan under me in case I have to pee or poop. My choice is either to hold it in, or sit on top of pee and poop. I decide to try to hold it in.
Papi sits on the chair next to my bed, reading a Spanish newspaper.
I’m angry having to lie there on the disgusting bedpan until Mami gets home and can’t stop thinking about the car accident.
“Papi, tell me how the accident happened.”
He puts down his newspaper, shakes his head. “Why don’t we talk about something else, Ruti?”
“But I want to know. I was asleep.”
“Look, Ruti, what happened was very simple. There were five boys who wanted to entertain themselves that night. The boy driving had never driven by himself. He snuck out of the house and took the car from the driveway without his parents realizing it. He invited his four best friends to go to a discotheque with him. They had a few drinks. On the way back, the boy was driving so fast the car went flying into the air and into our side of the highway. He killed himself and his friends, all five died. Sixteen years old, those boys. Muchachitos.”
“Papi, aren’t you furious at the boy who caused the accident? I am!”
“Your uncle Bill says he’s going to get me a lawyer. He wants me to sue the boy’s family. It’s true we need the money to pay Dr. Friendlich, but I don’t know . . .”
“Yeah, Papi. Listen to Uncle Bill. He’s the americano—he knows.”
“I’m not sure,” Papi says. “We’re nobody. We’re refugees. We just arrived in this country. What if they send us back to Cuba?”
I feel the anger rise to my forehead, hot as a fever.
“Make them pay, Papi! Make them pay! That boy was wrong to be driving so fast. It’s his own fault he died. He killed his friends too.”
Papi replies, “Even good people can do bad things.”
But I hate the boy who caused the accident.
I want the boy to pay for all the sadness he’s caused—for killing his friends, for leaving a lady paralyzed for life, for forcing me to be stuffed into a body cast like a sausage.
I don’t know what to do with my anger that burns and burns.
I am fuming inside my cast. If I could, I’d stomp my feet.
“Can you open the window, Papi?”
“It’s open. But I’ll try to open it more for you.” He jiggles the window frame. “There. Is that better?”
A bit of air comes in, and I listen to the sparrows chirping.
“Are the leaves on the trees very green now?”
“Verde, verde,” Papi tells me. “It seemed impossible that the leaves would come back after such a cold winter. In Cuba, we have one season all year long. But here the leaves die and they come back, verde, verde. It’s a miracle.”
I like the sound of that word, verde, in Spanish. It’s more beautiful than the word “green” in English.
As soon as I can walk again under trees that bloom verde, verde, I’ll try to forget I ever hated. Until then, the hate is a stone in my heart.
Mami comes home from the beauty parlor, happy and carefree, singing “Cuando calienta el sol aquí en la playa,” a Cuban love song about the warm sun on the beach. She looks even more beautiful than she looks every day. Papi leaves the room, and I can stop holding it all in, the pee and the poop. Finally, finally, finally, Mami takes away the bedpan.
Papi changes into his fumigator’s uniform and stops to see me before he leaves.
“Ruti, be a good girl,” he says, and bends down for me to hug him.
“I will, Papi.”
“Don’t think about the accident so much. We have to look forward, not back. You understand?”
“Okay,” I say, but I know the stone is still there, inside my heart. I can feel it when I swallow.
As soon as Papi is out the door, Mami comes back lugging a bucket of water and a large basin and towels.
Mami scrubs my shoulders and the nape of my neck so hard that it hurts.
“Go easy, Mami! You’re not polishing the stove,” I yell.
When she is done, I wash under my arms with lots of soap.
The cast is smelly anyway. It smells worse than Izzie’s dirty socks.
“Now it’s time to take care of your hair,” she says.
“Please, not today!”
I love my long hair that I’ve always worn in two ponytails. Since I can’t leave my bed, Mami has been spraying my hair with dry shampoo and I’ve been brushing it out. But my hair isn’t feeling very clean.
“Stop scratching your head! You look like a little monkey.”
Mami pulls away my pillow and shoves the basin under my neck.
She wets my hair, working up a lather and then rinsing it with cups of warm water. Shampoo gets in my eyes and it stings, and my neck hurts from holding it stiffly over the basin. By the time we’re done shampooing, Mami has spilled soapy water all over the floor and the bed. It’s a big mess and she has to mop it all up. And I end up lying on a soggy mattress.
“This is the last time I wash that long hair of yours! Tomorrow I’m bringing my hairdresser over,” she announces. “I’ll ask her to cut your hair so it will be easier to wash.”
“No!” I scream. “I don’t want to lose my ponytails!!!”
“Do you want long dirty smelly hair or cute short clean hair like a sweet girl? Which do you want?”
“Mami, please don’t take away my hair! Please! It’s all that’s left of my old life, when I was a normal girl who could walk and run and do what she wanted. We’ll get better at washing it. Next time we won’t get everything wet. I promise.”
I look up with pleading eyes at Mami, but she stands over my bed shaking her head. “But, Ruti, just look at the mess we made. Look at me.”
Her pretty pink dress is splotched with water stains.
The hairdresser is named Clara. She immediately cuts off my ponytails with two swipes of her scissors.
“No! Wait!” I scream.
The next thing I know she is dropping my ponytails in a plastic bag. I think she is going to sell my hair to people who make wigs and earn a lot of money.
Clara trims the hair around my head and ears until I’m practically bald. She dries it with a blow dryer. It’s so short it takes no time at all.
As soon as Clara leaves, Mami brings me a hand mirror. “Don’t you want to see? You look nice.”
“Nice? I look like a sad orphan girl who cleans chimneys.” I stare at my reflection. “Why did you do this to me, Mami? Why?”
“It’s for your own good.”
“I don’t want to see myself like this!”
I throw the mirror across the room.
It shatters into lots of little pieces.
“You’re a bad girl,” Mami mutters under her breath as she goes to find a broom and dustpan.
I wish I didn’t hear her say that.
She returns and bends to pick up the shards of glass. I worry she’ll cut her delicate fingers and they’ll bleed.
“I’m sorry, Mami.”
“Seven years’ bad luck,” she says, shaking her head.
I watch Mami sweep and I feel sorry I’m making her work so hard.
I run my palms through what’s left of my hair. I can’t help it. I start crying. My ponytails are gone. My beautiful long hair is gone. The tears spill down my cheeks quietly. I have gotten good at crying without making a sound, without disturbing anyone.
But Mami notices. She comes to sit at the edge of my bed.
“Please, don’t cry, mi niña. Your hair will grow back stronger, believe me.”
“Without my ponytails, I’m the ugliest girl in the world. And I’m a bad girl too, just like you said I am.”
Mami’s eyes also fill with tears. “I’m sorry I said that to you, mi niña. Sometimes I get worn-out and I say things I shouldn’t say. You are not a bad girl. You are a broken girl.”
We both wipe our eyes with tissues, and Mami reaches over and hugs me. I start to feel better right away.
“You know what the doctor said, Mami? The doctor said I’m lucky because I didn’t end up paralyzed for life like the lady in the car in front of us. So that makes me a lucky broken girl.”