Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience (12 page)

On that Sunday before school started, Mom and I went to the eleven o’clock Mass. Mom then charged for the breezeway to see if the class rosters were posted. “They better have put you in Sister Luke’s class,” she said.

I was sweating to keep up with Mom, who, in those days, moved in jerky, robotic strides. Her hair was no longer a lacquered crown but a blow-dried Joan-of-Arc cut, not so different from the one I was forever trying to grow out. Before I caught up to her, Mom had already turned back. “Come on,” she said, grabbing my arm. “The list isn’t up yet.”

I had to chomp down on my glee. There was still hope. I might yet find myself in someone else’s class.

T
hat same afternoon was the church picnic. The older kids didn’t come anymore and Mom eagerly volunteered to stay home with the babies, so Dad had become accustomed to taking us middle children. Inside the park he always bought a long strand of ride tickets, which he divided into four equal strips to dole out to Liz, Frankie, Ted, and me. We grabbed our tickets and took off. Dad would park himself in the beer garden with the other fathers, where he’d recount details of baseball games while the oom-pah band played. He’d point out how a pitcher might flick his wrist on a fastball or how a husky boy—a slow runner—would throw the weight of his body into the second baseman, taking him down before the ball met his mitt.

I went straight for the rides, stopping at the roller coaster, where I assumed that my brothers had also stopped. I’d never gone on the roller coaster alone, and I kept moving forward with the hope that I would find them or someone else I knew.

When my time came, I took the last available spot: a car with a girl I didn’t know inside it. I put my left leg, the one with a real knee, over the edge and into the car fairly easily; but because the girl took up too much of the seat I had no space to swivel around and bend my mechanical knee. I’d never met this girl, so I was afraid to ask her to climb out for a minute while I manipulated my wooden leg to fit. Since I was in bell-bottom jeans, she probably didn’t realize my legs were wooden. There was also the fact that I wouldn’t tell people about my legs. And I was turning ten, the golden age of “I didn’t mean to” and “I forgot.” Finally, there was my fear of making someone else feel self-conscious.

Instead I strained in my seat, twisted and jerked, but my knee wouldn’t bend enough. Finally I gave up and left that foot, clad in its saddle shoe, dangling over the lip of the car. The kids behind me shoved at my back. “Come on! Come on! What’s your problem?” The operator, who looked to be about seventeen in his shag hairdo, came up to my car and said, “Whaddaya wanna do here?”

I wriggled around to break out of the car, but it was just as hard to get out as to fit inside. Dozens of kids in the cars ahead of mine turned to stare me down. I summoned every muscle in my stomach to lift myself out, but the wooden leg jamming my path was like a wrestler pinning me down. “Just go,” I finally said.

The operator craned his neck forward and squinted as if he hadn’t heard me correctly. “What?” He scratched his head. “Just go?”

I nodded.

“Sure?”

“Uh huh,” I said.

He broke out in a grin that revealed a chipped tooth. “Okey-doke,” he said.

My eyes darted anxiously at the girl beside me, a signal for her to volunteer to get out. She only shrugged. So I grabbed the safety bar, which, because of my jammed leg, was not completely engaged. The girl beside me looked to be about ten also. Maybe she forgot, or didn’t mean to, but she did not complain.

“Here goes,” said the boy at the control station, and he yanked the lever.

The roller coaster was like any other: the first hill the steepest. You advance by a crank that slowly ratchets each upward kick (chicka-chicka-chick) until you’re near the top, where you sit for a moment and look out at the crowd, maybe gasp, and then scream your head off while being jolted downward. Fortunately, this roller coaster was not particularly steep, and that could be why I had let this bad idea go so far. But as we approached the first peak, it wasn’t the hill that was threatening me. It was the right-side post, supporting a sign that warned: “Hold Your Hats!” The signpost was only inches from the track, and it looked like my leg would not clear it. All the way up I calculated the distance between that post and my curling foot—a hook waiting to be snared.

During those tantalizing seconds near the crest, I would need to let go of the safety bar with my right hand—my good hand—so that I could hold my wooden ankle as close to the car as possible until we cleared the signpost. This would leave me with only my four-fingered hand, now sweating, to grip the disengaged safety bar as we topped the crest and were thrust downhill. I was near the back of the train. The stillest of moments was already happening for those cars ahead of us. They were crowning the arc, and everything seemed to slow almost to a halt. I smelled the sweat of my palms mixing with the metal of the safety bar and heard only the choppy breath of the girl beside me. I saw her snatching glances at my foot. But then she leaned into the safety bar, pushing all her weight into it, securing it for both of us.

I sighed just as the car picked up speed again. I had a moment as if I were hovering above the fairgrounds, or maybe that’s just how I remember it. I see myself laboring not to be distracted by the boys to my left who were rocking a Ferris wheel car so ferociously that they nearly somersaulted in it, nor to my right by a vast stretch of bluegrass where a tuba slogged out an oom-pah tune while polka dancers swirled and weaved through beer stalls around the fathers of boys on baseball teams. My own father might look up from his bratwurst in time to see the signpost rip me from the car and spit me to the ground.

We picked up speed.

My foot cleared the post by about an inch. It happened so fast that I can’t say if I had the ankle in my hand or if the post was just far enough away. In any case, I had no time to think before I faced the downward thrust with just my claw hand on the safety bar and a quarter of my body swinging recklessly from the car.

I grabbed hold with both hands and felt my teeth clacking in my ears. My stomach dropped on the descent. Now, having triumphed over this hill, I decided that I was in charge of this game. I was more than a survivor. I could grab or let go as I pleased. The idea that my foot was rattling alongside me, slapping at the car like a dog chasing after a pickup truck, exhilarated me.

When the ride ended the conductor came up to me, took my hand, and yanked me from the car with a congratulatory slap on the back. All the kids who had been staring me down at the start were now cheering me on. Parents stood at the gate with their mouths agape. I bounced down the ramp, my proudest moment ever. I could not wait to tell Dad my story.

From the gate to the beer garden I saw the fathers at their usual picnic table, one of the farthest from the crowd. Dad was not among them. My throat dried up. Would Dad laugh at my bravery? Or would he scold me for not getting out of the car? Maybe he’d put a hand on my shoulder and rub my angel wing, or give me a proud slap on the back.

I was crafting the story in my head: the flopping ankle, the sweaty fist,
Hold Your Hats
! I tapped anxiously against the denim on my good thigh as I waited for a woman with a pram to quit blocking the entrance. Inside, I headed for the beer stalls. And there he was, alone, under the shade of a beer truck, leaning into the counter in a sort of James Dean style with his moon belly over a pair of khakis, graying hair in sideburns that were a tad longer than in previous years though not the pork chops that other men sported in 1970. I had to blink and check again because I’d never seen Dad alone in a crowd. He had millions of friends, old friends from high school and college, and in a place like this he knew dozens of other parents with kids of all ages. Now he looked like an outsider. There was something about the way he stared out at the crowd as if to find someone in particular, while in fact he was probably avoiding eye contact with everyone in sight. People were reaching over and around him at the beer stall. It was time for him to get out of the way, but for some reason he was not going out to join any of the other fathers. I knew that since Mom’s hospitalization she had lost friends. I’d heard her cry about it to Aunt Gert. But Dad?

From several yards away I saw Dad strike a match and stop to glance around before touching the flame to his unlit cigarette, as if embarrassed to be smoking. That was odd. Most of the parents smoked. Dad had never seemed ashamed of doing so. Why did he look so awkward?

Dad’s oldest friends were not members of our parish. Many of them lived on the Eastside, where Dad had grown up. He met those men downtown for lunch every Friday. They stood by Dad. I hadn’t considered that in our neighborhood, parents were taking notice when Mom ranted about the clergy at the A&P checkout counter. The folks here had liked her just fine when she was merely very religious, but now ...

I limped faster across the line of stalls to get to him, to save him, and to win him over with my story. As I passed the hot dogs and cotton candy, I imagined the deadeye he would give me, the challenge, the glance at his watch: “How long is this story going to take?” Then the transformation, the silent puff of air, the moment of supreme doubt before his laughter would erupt. Dad had a laugh that exploded from the belly. He’d bunch up his face in an effort to tamp it down. When the laughter broke loose, it seemed victorious, although he looked like he was in pain.

He was only a few feet away from me when I reached the popcorn stall. Although he was facing me from the beer counter, he didn’t notice me. I opened my mouth to call to him.

Sister Luke stepped into my path.

“Mary. Eileen. Cronin.” This was how she always addressed me. “How fortuitous!” she said in a whisper-gasp with a hand to her heart, while I wondered if fortuitous meant “life-threatening.”

The crowd shoved around us. She was blocking my view of Dad. Then Sister Luke, still with hand to heart, reached out to my shoulder as if putting a healing hand on me, taking the energy from her heart and transferring it to mine. I heard kids laughing as they skittered past en route to the popcorn stall.

Beyond her wimple I saw two other fathers approaching mine at the beer stall. Dad straightened up to greet them. He shook each hand, talking with a lit cigarette gripped between his teeth, his knees locked to ground himself.

Now Sister Luke was tilting her head, smiling, and again her wimple blocked my view of Dad. Once more I shifted so I could keep my eyes on him, but she was whisper-talking, and I had to lean in to hear her over the accordion and tuba. She said something like, “I’m so pleasedtohave murmur murmur.” I didn’t understand why she was saying, “Pleased to meet you.” I turned from Dad’s knees back to her face and struggled to hear her.

Her cheeks glowed red. I could see that she was insulted, so I scrambled for a better response. “Pleased to meet you, too?”

She gave me a puzzled look, her face deepening now to maroon, as she raised her voice over the tuba. “I said, ‘I’m so pleased to have—’” The oom-pah song ended, and I heard, “in my class.’” I felt those words like a great gust of wind, and I had to shift so I wouldn’t lose my balance.

I remembered Dad, and my eyes darted back to him. He was listening to one of the men with rapt attention, though I couldn’t make out what the man was saying. I saw Dad’s face go slack as the man raised his right hand, which then swooped down like a bird coming in for a landing, or a roller coaster coming fast down a hill. Dad’s eyes followed that hand and grew wider, filling with either horror or awe as he took in the story that I so longed to tell him. I saw the man’s pinky bobbing like a broken wing or a leg slapping alongside a car. Dad’s wide-eyed horror turned into a constricted face of concern—or was that anger?

“Did you hear me?” asked Sister Luke. She was now screaming over the tuba, “Mary. Eileen!”

That’s when Dad jerked his head in my direction. Soon, he and all the other fathers and Sister Luke were looking at me, expectantly. I stood there with no idea of what to say. Each wanted something different. Sister Luke wanted an enthusiastic “I’m so glad to be in your class,” which I couldn’t give her. The men looked ashamed to be caught talking about me. Then there was Dad. I had come here with a story to top all others, or so I thought. But the astonishment on his face warned of something I hadn’t considered. Had my reckless behavior embarrassed him? His life was becoming one endless humiliation.

One of the other fathers waved me over to join them, and Sister Luke stepped aside. “Go on,” she said, with a swish of her arms.

Just as I reached my father, another man slapped him on the back. “What a lucky guy,” he said. “How many of these girls have you got, Dick? Four?”

Dad lowered his eyes. “Five.”

“Five!” The man blew through his teeth. “And all beautiful.”

Dad muttered something in an obvious effort to change the subject. Now I was astonished. Did he not see me as beautiful? I was sure he saw Mom that way. My sisters, too. Our eyes caught for an instant, but his face had retreated behind a mask.

Only with age would I see that this man’s compliment offered a way out of the awkward roller coaster business. In any case, what happened next was that the mask on my father’s face crumpled up in laughter: a titter that built into one of his explosions. I was hoping that this was about my roller coaster story, so I laughed, and the other fathers joined in. I wasn’t sure these fathers even knew why they were laughing. When it occurred to me that my father could be laughing at the idea of me being a beautiful girl, my own laughter almost turned to tears.

In no time, Dad was ushering me away from the men. Along the way, he took out his hanky and blew into it, one of those thunderous honks that made him all-powerful in my eyes—a man capable of great noise. But then I began to lament my stolen glory. The roller coaster story was a once-in-a-lifetime event and I hadn’t been able to tell it to Dad, the person I wanted to make laugh more than anyone on earth. In my frustration I lashed out. Dad looked so startled that it was as if I had reached over and slapped him when I asked, “And why didn’t you agree with that man when he said I was beautiful?”