by Anne Carter
“What’s wrong, Pauline?” asks Henry.
“You don’t have to play goal if you don’t want,” says Billy.
“We could go watch boxing on TV at my house,” says Stu.
Henry hits Stu with his hat. “Idiot. She doesn’t want to watch fighting.”
I half-laugh, half-cry. These guys are funny. Are these guys my friends?
“My parents are going to have a baby,” I confide.
It sounds so silly when I say it, but they all make a big Ooohhh as if I’ve revealed something terrible. I remember that they each have younger kids in their families. Billy has two little brothers and a sister, and some Saturday mornings he can’t play because he has to babysit.
“That’s too bad,” Stu says. “My little brother’s a real nuisance. He’s always switching the channel or talking or …”
Henry hits him again. “She doesn’t need to hear that part. She needs to hear the good part.”
“What’s the good part?”
Henry runs his fingers through his hair. I know he fights with his sister. I hear them sometimes over the fence or through the windows in the summer.
“Family,” Billy pipes up decisively. “Imagine Christmas dinner. It’s best when it’s noisy and everybody’s trying to talk at the same time. Or when you come home to brag about something and you get a big, loud cheer from the whole family. The more, the merrier, I say.”
“Someone to take your side against your parents when they’re being unfair.”
“By the time this kid is old enough to take my side, I won’t be living at home anymore,” I argue.
“Aw, they’re cute when they’re little,” Stu says. “They’ve got itsy-bitsy fingers and itsy-bitsy toes.”
Henry hits him again.
“Now what’d you hit me for?”
“I don’t know. Your itsy-bitsy brain, I guess.”
I’m laughing now, slapping one crutch against the road.
“Billy!” We hear Billy’s mother calling him from their front door down the street.
Billy grabs his stick. “I gotta babysit. See? There’s the bad part. That’s tough news, Pauline. Real tough. You coming, Stu? Your brother’s playing at our house today. I hate your brother more than you do. What a pest. Come on.”
“I guess we’ll watch cartoons.” They’re walking away, but we can hear them.
“No way. My mom hates cartoons. She says we can watch that garbage over her dead body. Can you imagine? You come home one Saturday and there’s your mom, dead on the living room floor, and you jump right over her because the first thing you think is, oh great! Now I can watch cartoons. Does your mom say dumb stuff …”
They laugh, hitting each other until I can’t hear them clearly anymore. I look at Henry, but he’s not smiling. He takes off his toque and twirls it around his index finger.
“So, do you like Lisa?” I ask him.
“She’s a little sister. Little sisters can be very annoying.”
“So … you don’t.”
“Look. You don’t always like your brother or sister or even your best friend every minute of every day. But they’re good for all kinds of stuff. They’re family.” He pauses meaningfully. “Why’d you get so mad at your dad?” He kicks his foot against the curb. “You’ve got a temper. I worry some day that you’ll stop talking to me again, just like that.” He snaps his fingers.
I take a big breath and let it out. “Sometimes I get mad at the world. Don’t you?”
How’d we get back to this? It must have something to do with what I said about not wanting the baby. Even though I don’t quite get the connection, I blurt out, “You guys helped. I’m feeling better about having a brother or sister. Even if they can walk and run and skate …”
I stop and shake my head really hard, because I can’t lie – I do not want a brother or sister who can skate. “Anyway, I’ll try and be happy about it. Who knows, it might be good for all of us. My mother can worry and fuss over Itsy-Bitsy instead of me, right?”
Finally, Henry laughs. I laugh with him. Henry has this wide smile that goes a little lopsided sometimes. Like right now.
All afternoon, I don’t mind playing goal for Henry. And as we laugh and yell, I play with a new thought. It’s starting to feel okay.
I’m going to be a big sister.
14.
THE NEW BRACE AND
SHOE, 1955
Six months in the House of Horrors.
Physio with Nurse Fredericks twice a day. My muscles gradually came back, except the ones in my left leg. That leg stayed thin and small no matter how much Nurse Fredericks pushed and moved it. I wore a big, clumsy brace around it that I hated. But at the same time, the brace supported me as I learned to walk again.
The first time I walked, leaving my wheelchair, I could only manage a few steps on crutches. But I felt as if I’d run around the world. I thought I’d burst with happiness. I could move, almost like once-upon-a-time, without a wheelchair.
Late in June I got a letter from Tante Marie. Her studies in Paris were almost over. She’d be coming home soon, but she wasn’t going to fly to Montréal. She was coming to Toronto to see me first. Immediately. Me. I was important.
I kept Tante Marie’s letter in the pocket of my shirt. I was so scared Witch Wilson would take it if she found it.
I worked very hard, walking every minute I could on my crutches. I was determined to be normal again. “You have to build up the muscle in your right leg to compensate for your left leg,” Nurse Fredericks said, pushing, always pushing till I wanted to scream.
“You have to keep working hard for the next few years. Your right leg’s coming along fine. I’ve ordered a new brace for your left leg, and shoes. They’re special. They’ll fit you much better. You’ll be walking every day in them.”
I was determined to walk, all right. Walk out of here and never come back.
My parents visited every Sunday but I still didn’t speak. My mother held me in her arms, circling my arms, then my left leg, with her thumb and forefinger. “So thin. So thin, Pauline. You have to eat more.”
She read to me too – all her favorites. Dad brought his little metal hockey players and we played a thousand games: Leafs against the Canadiens.
They brought me Orange Crush every visit and I gulped it greedily, without stopping. Witch Wilson would never take one from me again.
At night I had to sleep with metal braces strapped to both legs. My feet were locked into the braces to keep them from dropping. I hated the braces because I couldn’t turn over in them, but I didn’t drop-foot, whatever that was. My muscles were coming back to life, as if from a long sleep, but the braces knocked against the bars of my crib as I tossed and turned at night.
Nurse Fredericks had a final torture in store for me. One day she looked terribly pleased and clapped her hands as I entered. “Your new shoes and walking brace are here.”
There on the floor were the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen. They were heavy, dark brown oxfords. It was silly, but I’d been dreaming that, just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I’d get dazzling, ruby red slippers to take me home.
Something in me rebelled. No! I wasn’t going to wear those ugly oxfords. I wanted pretty shoes.
I glared at her and thrust out my jaw.
“You don’t like them? We’ll see about that.”
She took my crutches. I teetered precariously. She forced me to sit down. I crossed my arms over my chest defiantly and she scolded me.
“You’re lucky to get these shoes. Lucky to walk. Lucky to be alive. Now stop this nonsense.” She grabbed my feet and pushed them into the stiff shoes, lacing them up so tight I couldn’t bear it. Then she buckled the strap around the brace, again pulling too hard. It hurt.
I pushed her away and she toppled over, caught off guard.
Her face twisted with anger. She stood up and held up her hand as if to slap me. But she didn’t.
“You naughty child!” she said. At that moment I hat
ed Nurse Fredericks almost as much as Witch Wilson. Who was she to make me topple from “lucky” to “naughty” at her whim? She was a naughty nurse!
It wasn’t over.
Roughly she handed me my crutches. A big metal knob pressed against the inside of my leg where the metal bar of the brace fit into the shoe. It rubbed against my ankle.
“Now walk,” she ordered, handing me my crutches.
It was misery. They hurt. They were so tight and heavy that I could barely drag my left foot.
“Lift it up,” she ordered sternly.
But every time I swung my left foot forward, the big metal knob bashed against my right ankle.
She made me walk back and forth, back and forth. Twenty times. The sock on my right ankle was red with blood.
I hated my new shoes and brace. But I hated her more.
All right, I vowed silently, knowing I only had one hope. I wouldn’t give up. I’d wear the ugly shoes and heavy brace and I’d swing my left leg so the metal knob didn’t bash against my ankle.
Soon, soon, I’d walk out of here and go home.
15.
MARCH THAW, 1961
The issue of school stays in the closet, undecided, over the winter. I want to go. I think about it. B writes and tells me to try it. School’s like spaghetti, he says. Everybody makes it and eats it a different way. Yet every time I imagine that stairway, that hallway, bursting with kids avoiding me, I can’t bring myself to do it.
Dad and I make a rink again. Henry suggests we put up sideboards with an opening for my wheelchair. Stu and Billy bring plywood and scraps of lumber from their garages and before long we’ve built the Don Mills Gardens. Dad builds a little bench beside the opening where we can put our skates on, and we play hockey every Saturday and Sunday with Henry, Stu and Billy. It’s the highlight of my week. Thankfully the weather stays cold enough to keep the rink frozen right until March, right until the day of Tante Marie’s arrival.
With the approach of the train from Québec, the mercury fires up the thermometer outside our back window, and my mother goes into instant labor. By the time my father brings Tante Marie home from Union Station, gloomy pools of water threaten our rink, and my mother’s contractions come regularly.
I wait on my window seat, listening to the lilt of Tante Marie’s voice. I ignore the commotion in the front hall as my father fetches forgotten items for my mother’s hospital bag. They kiss me hurriedly and are gone.
At long last I am alone with Tante Marie. We laugh and hug and can’t get caught up quickly enough.
“I didn’t see you for Grand-mère’s death. Now I see you for a birth!” She shakes her head, her hair swinging freely. “It’s got to mean something, don’t you agree?”
“It means she has to have more babies!” I laugh, not really wanting it to be true. I pull out B’s letter and hand it to Tante Marie. “He’s still nuts about you. He wants you to know he’s playing the drums in the school band.”
Tante Marie takes the letter and puts it in her pocket. “That boy will be the conductor one day. I’ll read it later. First, I have a special gift for you.”
Tante Marie drags an enormous bag to my window seat. With a magician’s flourish, she pulls out smocked dresses and knitted sets of matching baby booties and sweaters. I laugh with delight when, from the very bottom, she pulls out a red beret and twirls it on one finger.
“You’re a teenager. I thought you might want to …” she gives it to me and waves her hand in the air, searching for the right expression, “… go wild.” Her eyes tease. “Your maman’s going to wonder at me, not bringing you a book or a pretty dress.”
“I hate dresses. You know that. They only show my legs.”
I try on the beret.
“Ooh-la-la,” she says, standing beside me and tilting it way down over my forehead. “You want to look dangerous, remember? With that beautiful hair of yours, you are going to make some boy’s heart beat a little faster.”
Me? Could my thick brown hair be beautiful? What does Henry think about my hair? I feel a little flip-flop in my stomach … does he even notice?
“Hey,” she says, looking in the big cabinet. “Where’s that table hockey game you used to play with?”
“Top shelf. Unless my mother’s thrown it out. She never liked it.”
She finds the game and pulls it down. “C’est fantastique. What do you say we have our own Stanley Cup finals this week? Leafs against the Canadiens.”
She winks at me. “Guess who I’m gonna be?”
I laugh. My very own blessing is right here. The Good Witch of the East come to save me.
Kneeling at the other end of my window seat, Tante Marie smokes and curses all week as we abandon ourselves to our hockey match. It’s Toronto against Montréal, English against the French.
In a hospital downtown, my mother gives birth to a baby girl. When Dad calls to give us the news, Tante Marie is thrilled for me. I have a sister. Briefly I wonder if a sister is better or worse than a brother. We’re having so much fun that I put that baby sister out of my thoughts.
The evening my dad is expected to bring Mom and the baby home, Henry knocks at the door with a gift. I hear Tante Marie invite him in and I quickly find my new red beret and tilt it to one side, dangerously, just like Tante Marie showed me.
Henry comes into the back room, shuffling from one foot to the other. I feel him staring at my beret.
“It’s going below freezing tonight,” he says. “Should be good for the rink. I … that is, Stu and Billy … I wondered if you wanted to play a game tomorrow.”
Tante Marie is standing behind him. She raises her eyebrows and smiles a silent question at me.
“That would be great, Henry. I’d like that.” I’ll kill her later, if she doesn’t stop.
“I’ll phone Stu and Billy then. We can play in the morning. Maybe we could help with the baby,” he finishes lamely.
He turns to leave and bumps into Tante Marie. “Sorry. See ya, Paulie.”
Tante Marie lets him out and comes back, stands in the doorway. “Help with the baby?”
I take off my beret and throw it at her. “His mother probably made him say that. He’s our next-door neighbor.”
She catches the beret and comes to sit at her end of the window seat. “And a very handsome one,” she says.
I roll my eyes.
“Okay, okay. No more teasing. It’s time for the playoffs.”
16.
FACE-OFF: THE HOUSE OF HORRORS,
1955
In a way, it was thanks to Cindy that I went home.
On the same day that I got my new walking brace and the ugliest shoes in the world, Cindy arrived at the House of Horrors. Janet had gone home the week before and there was space in our ward for another girl. Cindy was five but appeared no bigger than a baby, lying motionless in her crib.
She looked so sad. I wanted to tell her, “You’ll start to move soon too.” But polio was tricky – we never knew how long it would take, or how much permanent damage had been done. There was no way of knowing if Cindy would regain a hand, a leg … or just one toe. But one thing we knew: she’d have to work hard.
Of course, I still didn’t speak.
Thank God, Bernardo did.
Cindy’s first night with us, all of us in the ward listened to her lonely cries in the dark after the nurse turned our lights out. We were separated by our cribs. But listening to her, I felt as if it were me crying. All of us in the ward were Cindy – we were all one child, paralyzed and scared, struggling to go back to our lives, determined to go back to our real, ordinary selves.
“When you stop that crying, Cindy,” B called out loudly, in order to be heard, “I’ll tell you a story.”
“Tell the one about Cinderella,” Lorna said. “That’s my favorite.”
“Where they race around in wheelchairs,” called Frank.
The crying stopped and we heard long sniffs.
B waited a minute and then began to tell the
story. As a little girl, Cinderella, whose friends called her Cindy, had polio and was forced to live in a hospital under the care of her wicked stepsisters.
The night nurse walked down the hallway past the ward. B paused briefly. When lights were out we were supposed to be quiet and go right to sleep. Maybe the night nurse knew what we had to endure with the day shift, with Witch Wilson.
Maybe the nurse knew how much we missed our moms and dads and needed a story to get to sleep. We heard her footsteps get softer and softer, allowing B to finish the story. The prince had polio too and they raced around the ballroom in their wheelchairs. Together they chased the wicked stepsisters away and they were never allowed to bother children in hospitals again.
The next morning, however, we knew there’d be a problem. There was a bad smell – and it came from Cindy’s bed.
We could hear the breakfast trolley rumbling down the hallway. No one said a word.
Maybe, I hoped, Cindy will be lucky and there will be another nurse on duty, one of the nice ones.
But no. Witch Wilson stood in the doorway. She took three bowls of cereal off the trolley and thunked them on the little table where B, Mary and I now ate, unassisted. She let down the bars of our cribs and we were expected to make our own way over to the table to feed ourselves.
Then she must have smelled it, for she stopped in the middle of the ward, sniffing the air. Her eyes darted around the room, accusing each of us until they rested on the new girl, Cindy.
“What do I smell? Someone couldn’t wait?”
She stalked over to Cindy’s bed and put her hands on her hips. “You’ll learn. Just like everyone else here. I don’t put up with this nonsense. I have five of you to feed and change and get ready for the day. All by myself, you hear? I got no time to clean up a big girl like you who can’t wait. So you’re going to have to learn not to do this again. Do you understand?”
Cindy began to cry again. I felt like crying too. It was awful, having the nurse yell at you for something you couldn’t help.
“None of that. I don’t stand for crying.”