Lucky Broken Girl

by Ruth Behar

  “Go to school? But how will I carry my books? I just learned how to go down the stairs. And I’m slow. What if the other kids grab my crutches? What if they knock me down?”

  “Don’t worry,” Amara says. “I’ll take you to school and ask for a volunteer in your class to arrive early and leave early with you every day. You’ll have plenty of time to go up and down the stairs.”

  Mami buys me a white turtleneck to wear with a red jumper and a pair of sturdy saddle shoes. It’s my first time wearing shoes on both feet since I came out of the cast, even if I still can’t set my right foot down on the ground.

  I rush to keep up with Amara on my crutches as we head to P.S. 117. Kids are running all over the place—in the yard, in the hallways. They look like spinning tops. If any of them bump into me, they’ll knock me down.

  I wish I could turn around and go home. But I climb up the stairs with Amara to the classroom. The other kids are already in their seats. Mrs. Margolis, the teacher, comes to the door and says, “Hello, Ruthie, welcome back. Please sit down.” She points to a seat in front. Holding on to the crutches, I lower myself down, feeling everyone’s eyes on me.

  Amara announces, “Ruthie needs a volunteer to accompany her to school and take her home every day. You’ll need to come to school early with her and leave school early with her, until the last day of school.”

  Mrs. Margolis opens her eyes wide and smiles at the students. “Who would like to be Ruthie’s helper?”

  She glances around the room. All the kids peer at their desks or out the window. No one wants to be a volunteer. I know why. The volunteer won’t be able to play tag or jump rope with the other kids before or after school. They’ll miss out on the fun because of the invalid who should have stayed in her bed.

  One hand goes up. One very certain hand rises high up in the air.

  “Teacher, I’ll volunteer.”

  “Thank you, Danielle. Please trade seats with Mary, so you can sit next to Ruthie.”

  Danielle floats over to my side. I feel her hair lightly touching my arm as she sits down. A butterfly has landed on me.

  That first day back in the classroom I take notes on everything Mrs. Margolis says. When she writes on the blackboard, I have to squint to see what she’s writing. I keep looking over my shoulder at Danielle’s notebook to make sure I’m getting it right. Danielle notices and edges her notebook closer to make it easier for me.

  At a quarter to three, Mrs. Margolis announces, “Danielle, you may leave now with Ruthie.”

  Danielle stands, gathers my books and hers. I reach for my crutches and pull myself up. Everyone stares as we leave the room together.

  As I hop along on my crutches, Danielle adjusts her speed so we can walk side by side. She opens the door for me when we reach the landing. I look down at the dark at the bottom of the stairs and feel a lump in my throat. We’re on the third floor and I need to be on the ground floor before all the kids are dismissed.

  I start my descent, crutches, then foot, crutches, then foot, crutches, then foot. Danielle stays by my side, taking a step at a time with me.

  Finally I reach the bottom of the stairs and we hear the bell sound.

  “Don’t worry, we can make it,” Danielle says.

  Just in case, I hop along faster, extending my crutches as far in front as I can to take longer steps. My hands hurt from gripping the crutches so tightly. But I am happy we make it out to the street before the crowds of kids arrive, yelling and running and shoving each other.

  Danielle walks with me to my building. She points to the building across the street. “Want to come over?”

  “Sure. If my mother lets me.”

  I’ve never gone to another girl’s house in America, unless you count my cousin Lily’s house.

  We take the elevator upstairs. Mami gives me permission to go to Danielle’s house for an hour. Then Danielle is to bring me back.

  “Is your mother at home?” Mami asks Danielle.

  Danielle replies, “Oh yes, of course. My mother is waiting for me.”

  Mami looks at Danielle with curiosity. “I remember you are from somewhere else too. Is it France?”

  Danielle says, “No, madame, I am from Belgium.”

  As we leave, Mami says to me, “Don’t tire yourself too much the first day back in school. Be back in an hour like I told you.”

  “But I’m not tired!”

  “You will be later,” she replies.

  Although Mami looks at me sternly, I can see that she’s sad.

  I say to her, “You miss me being at home with the bedpan? Wasn’t that so much fun?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she replies, and she laughs. “But, yes, some of it is true—I do miss being with you.”

  I know Mami is lonely. It’s funny that now that I can go out on my own, she wants me home.

  When we arrive, Danielle’s mother, Mrs. Levy-Cohen, is in the kitchen. She’s dressed in a fancy tweed suit as she stands over a pot of bubbling hot water.

  “Come in, come in,” she says cheerfully.

  Danielle introduces me. “This is Ruthie. Remember you told me to visit her? She was in bed for almost an entire year with a broken leg.”

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen says, “Ooh la la! Poor child. But you are better, no?”

  “Yes, much better,” I say. “Thank you for telling Danielle to visit me. I was very lonely during that year.”

  “I told Danielle many times to go see you,” Mrs. Levy-Cohen says. “All of us in the neighborhood knew how much you were suffering, Ruthie. Your aunt Sylvia told everyone. But we didn’t need to be told. We saw you being carried back and forth in the ambulance. It broke our hearts.”

  Danielle lowers her head and mutters, “I’m sorry. I didn’t like seeing you that way, Ruthie. You were Miss Hopscotch Queen. It wasn’t fair. How could you, of all people in the world, end up in bed, not even able to sit up? It made me so sad. That day I went to see you, all I wanted was to cry and cry. That’s why I didn’t go visit you anymore. I would have made you more miserable.”

  “Did Danielle tell you what she did?” Mrs. Levy-Cohen says.

  “Please don’t tell her, Maman,” Danielle pleads. “She doesn’t need to know.”

  “But I will tell her, just so Ruthie realizes you had her in your thoughts, even if you didn’t go to visit her, as you should have.”

  “Maman, no, but if you must—”

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen looks at me and smiles. “When Danielle heard you were in the accident and lost your go-go boots, she put away her go-go boots and said she would save them for you and give them to you when you were all healed.”

  “Come, I’ll show you,” Danielle says, and leads me to her room. The walls are painted dark pink, a grown-up pink, not a foofy pink. Her bedspread has a cool design of huge red and orange poppy flowers.

  Danielle opens the door to her closet. “Look,” she says. She shows me her go-go boots, nestled in tissue paper, resting in the box they came in. “Whenever you want them, they’re yours.”

  “Thank you, Danielle. I thought you weren’t a true friend. Now I know you are.”

  “I could have been better. But I promise I’ll be better now.”

  There’s a delicious buttery smell coming from the kitchen. Danielle looks at me, her eyes gleaming. “That’s the puffs! Smells like they’re ready.”

  “Puffs?” I ask.

  “They’re the best puffs in the whole world. Wait till you try them!”

  Danielle’s mother calls to us from the kitchen. “The puffs will be ready in five minutes, girls. Please wash your hands first.”

  “Yes, Maman. Of course.”

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen has set the table with two plates, two forks, and two lace napkins.

  “Sit. Quickly! The puffs are at their best right now!”

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen
comes rushing out of the kitchen with a bowl of puffs. She places four on my plate.

  I bite into the first one. I didn’t expect it would be filled with cream. How did she get the cream inside the puff? It’s magic. As soon as I eat my four puffs, Mrs. Levy-Cohen is waiting with another four puffs.

  Danielle is happy I like the puffs so much. “I told you they were unique.”

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen laughs. “Danielle can eat a dozen puffs in five minutes. She’s only eating them slowly because you are here. Masha’allah, masha’allah.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Levy-Cohen, what language is that?”

  “My child, that is Arabic. It means ‘God bless you.’ We say it to keep someone from catching the evil eye.”

  “So you don’t get jinxed,” Danielle adds. “Maman is always afraid of jinxing me.”

  “But you speak Arabic too? I thought you were from Belgium?”

  “Let me try to explain,” says Mrs. Levy-Cohen. “It’s a long story. You see, chérie, I am originally from Morocco. I moved with my family to Belgium when I was a child. That is why I speak Arabic and French, and now English too, with my thick accent. It is Hebrew I should speak, because I am Jewish, but I never learned it.”

  She stands and begins to clear up the plates.

  “Wait, Maman, can we have one more puff? Just one? Please?”

  “You’ve eaten too many, but since it’s Ruthie’s first time, I will make an exception. But only for today!”

  After being upset with Danielle, now I hope she will be my friend. I want to keep eating puffs at her house forever.

  Yes, Danielle is now my best friend! Every day I go to her house after school.

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen always has a surprise in store for us. She says we can’t have puffs every day or we’ll get so fat we won’t fit through the door.

  “Darlings, you must have healthy foods that won’t ruin your figures.”

  She cuts up watermelon and little squares of feta cheese and runs a toothpick through them that has a tiny umbrella perched at the end. She gives us a warm bowl of tomato soup and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. She makes us cucumber sandwiches, the edges scalloped to look like flowers, filled with thin slices of salami. She slices a grapefruit and sets each half-moon before us with a special spoon that has prickly edges so we can tear into it. She mixes up frothy shakes out of cantaloupe.

  Then it’s time for puffs again. Danielle and I each eat a dozen. We feel like we’ve gone to the moon.

  Mrs. Levy-Cohen makes Danielle and me so happy, but Danielle says her mother has had a sad life.

  While we sit and do our homework together in Danielle’s dark pink room, she tells me, “We came to the United States to get away from my father. Maman asked him for a divorce.”

  “Why?”

  “My father was not a very caring father. And he was an even worse husband.”

  “What made him so bad?”

  “He was always at the café or the bar, never at home.”

  “But do you miss him anyway?”

  “No. I hardly knew him. Maman doesn’t miss him either.”

  “Even though he’s your father?”

  “Better to have no father than a bad father,” she says confidently.

  “Your mother is so brave. You are too,” I say to Danielle.

  “Yes, we’re brave . . . most of the time,” Danielle replies, suddenly looking sad. “Last night I had a bad dream, though. Someone was chasing me in a dark alley. I crawled into Maman’s bed and we cried ourselves to sleep.”

  That is how I learn that even Danielle, who is so sophisticated, and Mrs. Levy-Cohen, who had the courage to ask for a divorce, even they are sometimes afraid to be alive.

  I get to shine in the smart class

  On a Saturday afternoon, when Papi is working and Izzie is out playing, Mami sees me sitting up in bed, a book close to my face, and she says, “Talk to me. Let me hear your voice. You always have your nose in a book.”

  “Mami, please don’t make me feel bad because I love to read.”

  “I’m sorry, mi niña. I’m a little jealous. How quickly you devour all those books, as if they were chocolate bonbons!”

  “Books saved me during all those months I was in bed.”

  “I know, mi vida. But now that you’re better, you have to enjoy life.”

  “Okay, Mami, I’ll try,” I say, starting to feel a little exasperated.

  “Tell me, Ruti, what are you thinking about?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I say, eager to go back to my book. “I’ve been missing Chicho. I hope he’s doing all right in Mexico. Do you think he’ll come back?”

  “I hope so. He brings happiness wherever he goes. He’s pure alegría.”

  “At least he can go back and forth to his country. Not like us; we can’t ever go to Cuba again. Isn’t that sad?”

  “Ay, mi niña, we’re getting too tristonas. Let me brush your hair,” she says. “You have such nice curls now. And soon you’ll be a young lady.”

  “Oh, Mami, not now.”

  My hair has grown out, though it isn’t as long as it once was.

  “Please,” she insists. “Are you going to be angry with me forever?”

  “I’m not angry. You can brush it.”

  Mami gently moves from my roots to my ends, smoothing my hair for an instant, until it returns again to its natural curliness, like Papi’s hair.

  “So tell me about the book you are reading that you never want to put down,” Mami says.

  “It’s a book of Greek mythology.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ancient stories about gods and goddesses who once lived on earth. I just read the story of the god Apollo and the nymph Daphne. Apollo adored Daphne, but she wanted to be free, to wander in the woods by herself. And he kept chasing her and chasing her. One day, he was about to catch her, and she called to her father, who was also a god, to do something so Apollo would leave her alone. Her father heard her cries, and as she ran from Apollo, she suddenly felt thick and heavy, her hair turned to leaves and her arms to branches, and then her legs turned into a tree trunk and her feet into roots. She became a laurel tree. Apollo was sad to lose her, but then he used his powers to make her a tree that stayed forever green, so she’d never die.”

  “That’s a strange and beautiful story, mi niña, and you tell it so well.”

  “Mami, I want to be an artist, and maybe a writer too, when I grow up.”

  “Those are big dreams.”

  “But they’re not impossible, are they?”

  “In my time, women didn’t dream so big. It was enough to marry and be a good wife and look after the children. Now it’s different. But you still have to grow up. A mother needs to take care of you, for you to become a grown-up woman.”

  “Mami, I’ll never forget how you took care of me. Te quiero, Mami. I love you.”

  I say the words in Spanish and English, so she knows how much I mean it.

  “Ay, mi niña, I love you too . . . Did I say that correctly? My English is getting better, isn’t it?”

  “It is, Mami, much better. Now you can get around everywhere by yourself. And you can defend yourself in English, if you have to, right?”

  “Así es, mi niña. That cashier at Dan’s Supermarket, who always bothered me, I finally said, ‘Leave me alone or I’ll call the police!’ Now he bows his head when he sees me.”

  “Yay, Mami! That’s great. But can you and I still speak Spanish together so I don’t ever forget it?”

  “Of course, Ruti, por supuesto.” Her eyes gleam brightly, without the usual cloudiness of her tears. “I hope you realize how proud I am of you? Please say you won’t love me less when you’ve grown up and become an artist and a writer.”

  “I’m glad you have so much faith in me, Mami! Don’t worry,
I will still love you when I am famous.” I smile at the thought and then become worried when I glance down at the book on my lap and have trouble making out the printed words. “Mami, I haven’t wanted to say anything, but I think something’s wrong with my eyes. I’m finding I have to hold the book very close to my face to read.”

  “Oh no, mi vida, maybe you need glasses.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want to wear glasses. Then I’ll be a girl who not only needs crutches but also wears glasses. Everyone will feel sorry for me!”

  “Come on, mi niña, let’s not think that way. If you need glasses, you will wear them and hold your head high.”

  Next day we go to the eye doctor and he asks, “Can you see any of the letters?”

  I can only see the top two rows—the big letter E and the F and the P below.

  “Your eyesight has deteriorated,” the doctor says.

  I tell him about my broken leg and how I stared at the ceiling for a long time and how I read two or three books every day lying in bed.

  “That explains it.”

  I get grown-up glasses with black cat-eye frames that Danielle thinks make me look very sophisticated and after a few days I forget I’m wearing them.

  With my glasses, I see cracks lining sidewalks, the petals on dandelions, the iridescent mother-of-pearl buttons on Danielle’s blouse, and all the words and sentences and math problems that Mrs. Margolis writes on the blackboard. I love my glasses!

  Joy was right. Being in bed for a year gave me an advantage over the other students and school is easy for me. Now I get to shine in the smart class!

  Each day in class Mrs. Margolis asks us questions. “Anyone know what this word means? Anyone know what book I’ve taken this sentence from? Can anyone tell me how to solve this math problem? Anyone know the capital of Utah? Anyone know the names of all the oceans of the world?”

  Mrs. Margolis looks around the room to see who will raise a hand. She can count on me to always raise my hand. I raise my hand so much that Mrs. Margolis has gotten used to saying, “Anyone besides Ruthie know the answer?”