A Piece of the World(10)

On top of that, there’s my infirmity. When we’re around other people, Papa is tense and irritable, afraid that I’ll stumble, knock into someone, embarrass him. My lack of grace annoys him. He is always muttering about a cure. He thinks I should’ve kept the leg braces on; the pain, he says, would’ve been worth it. But he has no idea what it was like. I would rather suffer for the rest of my life with twisted legs than endure such agony again.

His shame makes me defiant. I don’t care that I make him uncomfortable. Mother says it would be better if I weren’t so willful and proud. But my pride is all I have.

One afternoon when I am in the kitchen, shelling peas, I hear my parents talking in the foyer. “Will she have to stay there alone?” Mother asks, her voice threaded with worry. “She’s only seven years old, John.”

“I don’t know.”

“What will they do to her?”

“We won’t know until she’s looked at,” Papa says.

A finger of fear runs down my back.

“How will we afford it?”

“I’ll sell a cow, if I must.”

I hobble toward them from the pantry. “I don’t want to go.”

“You don’t even know what—” Papa starts.

“Dr. Heald already tried. There’s nothing they can do.”

He sighs. “I know you’re afraid, Christina, but you have to be brave.”

“I’m not going.”

“That’s enough. It’s not up to you,” Mother snaps. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

The next morning, as dawn is beginning to seep through the windows, I feel a rough push on my shoulder, a shake. It takes a moment to focus, and then I am staring into my father’s eyes.

“Get dressed,” he says. “It’s time.”

I feel the soft shifting weight and dull warmth of the hot water bottle against my feet, like the belly of a puppy. “I don’t want to, Papa.”

“It’s arranged. You know that. You’re coming with me,” he says in a firm quiet voice.

It’s cold and still mostly dark when Papa lifts me into the buggy. He wraps the blue wool blanket he knitted around me and then two more, adjusts a cushion behind my head. The buggy smells of old leather and damp horse. Papa’s favorite stallion, Blackie, stamps and whinnies, tossing his long mane, as Papa adjusts his harness.

Papa climbs into the driver’s seat, lights his pipe and flicks the reins, and we set off down the hard-packed dirt road, the buggy squeaking as we go. The jostling hurts my joints, but soon enough I adjust to the rhythm, drifting to sleep to the lulling sound, clomp clomp clomp, opening my eyes some time later to the cold yellow light of a spring morning. The road is muddy; melting snow has created streams and tributaries. Hardy clusters of crocuses, purple and pink and white, sprout here and there in slush-stained fields. In three hours on the road, we pass only a few people. A stray dog emerges from the woods to trot alongside us for a while, then falls back. Now and then Papa turns around to check on me. I glare at him from my nest of blankets.

Eventually he says, over his shoulder, “This doctor is an expert. I got his name from Dr. Heald. He says he will do only a few tests.”

“How long will we be there?”

“I don’t know.”

“More than one day?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will he cut me open?”

He glances back at me. “I don’t know. No point worrying about that.”

The blankets are scratchy against my skin. My stomach feels hollow. “Will you stay with me?”

Papa takes the pipe out of his mouth, tamps it with a finger. Puts it back in and takes a puff. Blackie clip-clops through the mud and we lurch forward.

“Will you?” I insist.

He doesn’t answer and doesn’t look back again.

It takes six hours to reach Rockland. We eat hard-boiled eggs and currant bread and stop once to rest the horse and relieve ourselves in the woods. The closer we get, the more panicked I become. By the time we arrive, Blackie’s back is foamy with sweat. Though it’s cold, I’m sweating too. Papa lifts me out of the buggy and sets me down, ties up the horse and attaches its feed bag. He leads me down the street by one hand, holding the address of the doctor in the other.

I am woozy, trembling with fear. “Please don’t make me, Papa.”

“This doctor could make you well.”

“I’m all right the way I am. I don’t mind it.”

“Do you not want to run and play, like other children?”

“I do run and play.”

“It’s getting worse.”

“I don’t care.”

“Stop it, Christina. Your mother and I know what’s best for you.”

“No, you don’t!”

“How dare you speak to me with this disrespect?” he hisses, then quickly glances around to see if anyone noticed. I know how much he dreads making a scene.

But I can’t help it; I’m crying now. “I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry. Don’t make me go. Please.”

“We are trying to make you better!” he says in a violent whisper. “What are you so afraid of?”

Like a slight tidal pull that presages the onset of a huge wave, my childish protests and rebellions have been only a hint of the feelings that well inside me now. What am I so afraid of? That I’ll be treated like a specimen, poked and prodded again, to no end. That the doctor will torture me with racks and braces and splints. That his medical experiments will leave me worse, not better. That Papa will leave and the doctor will keep me here forever, and I’ll never be allowed to go home.