The Saffron Gate (5 page)

^{For the next week I told my mother I had headaches and didn't wish to come out of my bedroom. I had her pull the curtain over the window, saying the light hurt my eyes, and that the music from the cylinders pierced my ears. She sat beside me, her hand with its slightly twisted fingers cool on my forehead. 'Shall I have the doctor come? What is it, Sidonie? Do you have pain in your back again?'}

^{I turned away from her touch. What was making me sick? Only the fact that I had seen the door close on my future. Only that.}

^{I suddenly blamed her for making me understand this, with those four simple words:
you could have been.
The cold, unemotional voice I heard in my head now told me there was little point in anything: I stopped painting, saying it no longer interested me. I stopped helping my mother, saying that picking out tiny stitches was difficult; perhaps my eyes had been weakened by the polio. I stopped reading to her, telling her it hurt my throat. I turned from her gaze, thoughtful and intelligent.}

^{It wasn't her fault; I understood that fully and I didn't want her to know the truth. I didn't want to hurt her further by telling her that she had inadvertently held a mirror to my life. Surely I would have held up that mirror at some time — maybe the next week, or the next month.}

^{But I hadn't. She had, and for this I was angry with her.}

^{When twice a day my mother pulled back the blankets and massaged my useless legs, pushing them into the exercise positions shown to her by the health nurse, I stared at the ceiling. She bent and pulled, bent and pulled. I knew there was no use, but I saw it gave her some purpose to believe she was keeping my legs from atrophying, her mouth firm and her arthritic hands —- which surely ached even more than usual from the additional movement — seeming to find new strength.}

^{Now when I told her I needed to use the metal pan kept under the bed — and with her help, and me doing my best to lift my legs with their new and frustrating dead weight, we managed — I couldn't look at her. I thought I saw pity in her face, a false cheeriness, as if she didn't mind carrying the noxious pan away to dispose of. I thought of her doing this for the rest of her life.}

^{Eventually I resumed my spot on the daybed in the kitchen, for the boredom of my bedroom made me want to scream with frustration. I said I felt well again, and went back to the old routines of helping my mother and reading aloud, for it was better than lying alone in my room.}

^{I don't know whether my parents were aware that something had changed, had perhaps broken, inside me. They acted in the same way as always.}

^{When my father returned at dinner time and he and my mother sat at the kitchen table, cleared of the sewing machine and the piles of jackets and sleeves and pockets, I ate my supper from a tray on my lap. But now, instead of giving Cinnabar small nibbles of my food, or taking part in my parents' conversation, I silently watched them. I looked at my father's greying head, bent slightly forward over his plate, and the mark at the back of his neck where the stiff collar of his chauffeur's uniform had formed a dark band of red. The rest of his neck looked vulnerable against the darker welt of skin.}

^{My mother clutched her knife and fork awkwardly because of her swollen, knobby knuckles. As before, they spoke of small events, of local gossip and the latest price of pork or tea. They also spoke of the ongoing horrors of the Great War, and the fear that our boys might soon be going to join the fight. But when they tried to bring me into the conversation, asking what I'd been reading, or making unimportant conversation about the weather, or which of my friends they'd seen, I answered only in syllables and phrases.}

^{They spoke as if the world was the same place it had been before polio. Before
my
polio.}

^{Don't you see?
I wanted to shout at them.
How can you pretend that nothing is changed? How can you sit there, talking and eating as if it were a normal day?}

^{My life would never again be the same. I would never run down our quiet road, my hair blowing out behind me. I would never sit on my old childhood swing in the back yard and pump myself high into the air, feeling the satisfying rush of air and delightful dizziness when I closed my eyes and put my head back. I would never pirouette before a mirror in a pair of pretty high-heeled shoes. I would never stroll down a busy street with my girlfriends, stopping to look in store windows as we planned our lives. I would never again dance encircled in a boy's arms.}

^{I would never live a normal life, and yet my father and mother pretended they weren't thinking about it. They pretended they were ignoring the fact that I sat like a propped-up doll in the corner of the kitchen, and for this I was angry with them.}

^{I knew they loved me, and did all they could to make my life as pleasant as it could be. And yet I had no one else to be angry with, I couldn't be angry with God; I needed Him on my side. And so I was quietly angry with them, every time they laughed, every time they looked over at me, smiling. Every time my mother showed me a pattern, asking if I'd like her to make me a new dress. Every time my father held one of my paintings near a window, shaking his head and saying he didn't know where my talent had come from.}

^{And not even that — the painting — gave me pleasure now. I had grown to love the feel of the brush in my hand, the way the soft colours bled on to the thick paper, the way I could create shadow and brightness with a subtle shift of pressure: I loved the sense of accomplishment I felt as an image moved from my mind to my hand, emerging on the blank paper.}

^{The only small satisfaction I took now was in stroking Cinnabar, whispering to her and holding her against my chest as though she were a baby, and I her mother. Yet another of the
you could have beens.
I would never cradle my own child.}

^{By the end of that first year I became the new Sidonie, the one who put away all hopes and dreams. I saw them as bright, pulsing lights, with the lid of a wooden box closing on them. The lid was rigid and hard, unmovable.}

^THREE

^{T
he second year passed, and slowly, changes came about. I was finally able to sit up without assistance, and I moved from the bed into a wheeled chair. This gave me a certain freedom; after many attempts
and many falls I learned to pull and swing myself from my bed into the chair without help. I no longer had to wait for my mother to come and assist me in bringing the pan or washing myself; I could wheel myself to the bathroom and into the kitchen. I could eat at the table with my parents. If my father or mother pushed the chair over the high doorway sill, I could sit on the porch in pleasant weather.}

^{With this my spirits rose. On the porch one warm evening, I laughed at Cinnabar, seeing her leap straight into the air, frightened by a large cricket that hopped over her paws. My parents came to the doorway, and I told them about Cinnabar and the cricket.}

^{My father opened the door and walked to me, standing behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it. 'It's the first we've heard you laugh since . . .' he said, and then stopped, turning away abruptly and going into the house.}

^{In that instant I understood how much my parents had wanted — and waited — for that most simple and human response: my laughter. I understood how they waited for me to smile, to talk about ordinary things, to paint with passion. They wanted me to be happy:}

^{I knew how much they had done for me. I was now past seventeen. Even if I would never accept what fate had handed me, I could pretend, for their sakes, that I still found pleasure in life. I owed them this, at the very least.}

^{The next day I asked my mother to teach me how to use the sewing machine, telling her I could help her with the piecework when she was tired. Her mouth trembled, and she put her hand over it, the fingers so twisted. I suddenly saw that her hair was now completely white; when had this happened?}

^{I took up my paintbrushes again, and had my mother bring books on gardens and botanicals from the library.}

^{And within a few months I had learned something valuable: that at some unseen moment, what starts out as a forced behaviour may become an involuntary one.}

^{Now I found myself singing along with my mother as we sat together at the kitchen table. I did all the sewing, as her hands caused her such torment, and yet the income generated from the piecework afforded us small extras. She always sat with me, watching my left hand push the fabric under the needle, my right hand turning the wheel, and sometimes now it was she who read to me.}

^{We talked of the Great War, our boys sent over, and she told me news of those I knew from school — which ones had already left in the first waves.}

^{By the end of that second year, I proved the doctor — and Sister Marie-Gregory — wrong. It may have been a combination of reasons: one exhausted doctor's quick prognosis, my body's own strength and resilience, coupled with my mother's endless work on my legs, my determination to rise from the hated chair, and perhaps, I told myself, just perhaps, all the praying.}

^{I was fitted with heavy metal braces from ankle to thigh. They bit into my skin, but they kept my legs from buckling. And with the aid of crutches, I was able to pull myself out of my chair. At first I did little more than drag my legs behind me, my arms growing tight and muscled, my armpits callused from bearing my weight on the crutches, but eventually I was able to swing my legs from the hips, putting pressure on the bottom of my feet. My right leg was now shorter than the left, and so sturdy boots with one built-up sole were made for me. It was only a parody of walking, but I was once again upright, and able to move about, although very slowly.}

^{I stood, I walked. My prayers had been answered. But the cold voice that had taken root within me stayed. In body
I was more like the old Sidonie. But inwardly she was gone.}

^{And life was altered in another way. I didn't want to leave the yard. I never resumed my old friendships, for by now, over two years later, and approaching my nineteenth birthday — all the girls I had gone to school with had left Holy Jesus and Mary. Although neither Margaret or Alice Ann had gone to New York as we'd once planned, Margaret was in training to be a teacher, I heard, and Alice Ann had a job selling hats in a fancy shop. Other girls were learning the skills to be nurses or typists; a few were already married. The Great War was over, and some of the young men returned to Albany. Some didn't.}

^{Although I now found great pleasure in my painting, spending hours every day executing botanicals, I hadn't finished my final year of school, although the teachers offered to bring the exams and supervise while I wrote them. I simply lost interest in doing the school assignments. Besides, I told myself, what difference would it make? I would never go out into the world — or even into the main streets of Albany.}

^{My father had been aghast when I told him I didn't care about achieving a high-school diploma.}

^{'I didn't come to this country — nearly dying on the journey in the hold of that stinking, cholera-infected ship — to have my own child refuse the education handed to her. What I would have given to have your opportunity . . . don't you want to
be
something, Sidonie? You could learn to use a typewriter, and work in an office. Or become a telephone operator. Or, Lord knows, you could work in a sewing factory. You're already a top-rate machine operator. There are many jobs where you don't have to walk or stand for long periods. You would make your mother proud, learning, a trade. Wouldn't she, Mother? Wouldn't she make you proud?'}