Sourland

Very little of this I remember. I never dream of it since I don’t remember.

How at the age of eleven my legs above the knees were amputated & taken from me & I would not run again nor even walk except with crutches flailing & falling & both missing legs alive with pain like invisible flame. How it was Daddy’s fault for Daddy had been drinking at the Fourth of July picnic & afterward driving to the traffic circle for a bag of ice & six-packs of cold beer & his favorite child Jane-Jane in the passenger’s seat beside him & in the confusing dimness of dusk & headlights on the highway there was a head-on collision with a truck whose headlights were blinding or maybe it was just that Daddy fell asleep at the wheel, drunk-Daddy’s eyelids were drooping & drunk-Daddy’s mouth drooping & in an instant the vehicles careened together & the front of Daddy’s car was smashed flat like a snub nose.

I was pried from the wreckage. So it was said. I have no memory of this.

Mostly my face was spared. Except for glass-cuts, bruises & welts but the skin itself was not torn off nor the face-bones smashed. As if God meant to mock: a pretty-girl face on a broken body.

Many of the bones of my body were broken, fractured or sprained but the spinal column was spared, & the skull. All of the parts of my body were great lurid bruises orange & purple like rotted fruit. Both my legs, both my feet & my knees were smashed. There were few bones remaining intact. The calf of my right leg was sheared off. Much of my blood was lost. Transfusions kept me alive. Yet, I had died. It was said that my heart ceased beating more than once. In surgery for six hours & the heart will cease beating after such trauma. Six hours surgery but this made little difference. The leg-bones were lost. The muscle-flesh had been torn away. The surgeon would operate above the knees. The stumps were made to be the same size. The nerve-endings were cauterized. By the age of twelve I’d been fitted with prostheses — prosthetic legs — but these were clumsy & hateful & I could not manage them at first — it would require many weeks & months — it would require years — before I would acquire the skill to use these plastic legs in the way that I do now provoking relatives & friends of our family to say within my hearing as if such words were a gift to the tragic cripple-girl Isn’t Jane wonderful! Isn’t Jane brave! Isn’t Jane a miracle.

My father was very shamed. My father too was injured but he did not lose his legs nor any of his limbs though he would never walk fully upright again & without pain. His ribs were broken & chest muscles lacerated & he could not lie in bed but required a special chair of soft leather with moveable parts that could be lowered & raised & yet often he would scream in pain like a stricken animal. He took painkillers & he continued to drink. He could not look upon me. His shame was so great he could not look upon the prosthetic legs with the perky name Step Up! & he could not bear to hear my crutches against the hardwood floor. It was my mother & my aunt who drove me to the rehab clinic at Robert Wood Johnson so many months. After my father was gone from us at Christmastime we drove to the Fair Hills Mall which is the largest shopping mall in all of New Jersey & there we shopped for presents & when I was tired we stopped to rest & looked at the Christmas tree lights & animated figures & there was Santa Claus on his throne, I was too old & my eyes ringed with the fatigue of an old child but in my Step Up! artificial legs, braces, & crutches, I was small for my age, never would I catch up with other children my age as I would not return to school with my class but would remain a year behind forever. At this time I was almost thirteen but so small I might have been eleven, or ten. Inside his fluffy fake-beard Santa smiled at me as my mother urged me forward. “My little girl is a brave little girl Santa isn’t she! Her name is Jane.”

“Well — Jane! Hel-lo little girl how are you!”

“Jane is very well, Santa. Jane is doing very well.”

Santa’s eyes narrowed in concern. Santa’s cheeks blushed beneath the silly white whiskers, you could see. Santa was compelled to ask, “And what would you like for Christmas this year, Jane?” as Santa asked all the children who came to sit on his knee. I felt the man stiffen, I felt the man steel himself, what words little cripple- Jane might utter. & my mother gripping me, my arm, as if I were a doll who might topple over without Mommy holding tight & smiling as if nothing was more natural than to bring a twelve-year-old legless dispirited child to Santa Claus at the Fair Hills Mall & await her answer to Santa’s question.

I was not a young child even then. I felt sorry for Santa. In a scratchy broken little doll-voice saying, “For Christmas I would like Cowgirl Barbie.”

Whether my father was made to go away or whether my father went away of his own volition was not clear. He would move to another state, Minnesota. Some time later he would move to Wyoming. He would drink himself to death as it was said by my mother & my mother’s family grim with satisfaction.

My mother said it was a blessing he had gone, & I was blessed of God & one day I would understand.

“Why should I believe that?” I asked her.

I was an angry-mouthed girl. I have learned to hide this.

“Because” — my mother chose her words with care, fixing her eyes on my face as if there was no other part of me that could be looked-at, without revulsion — “if God didn’t love Jane very much, He would have smote her down when he took her poor legs. He had that opportunity, & He let it pass.”

The man who is Mr. Erdley who has been my father for many years, who is a professor of engineering at Rutgers New Brunswick, is my stepfather. It is expected of me to say that I love my stepfather as I had loved Daddy long ago but this is not true & I do not say it.

At the library at the circulation desk was another librarian & through that long day I remained in the rear at a computer typing in book orders & I did not think of him — of Tyrell — I would not think of him — & when he came into the library rushed & breathless in the late afternoon, as I had expected he would come, I did not see him nor was Jane Erdley anywhere in his sight. That weekend he had called me — he had left phone messages which I had not answered. He’d sent emails which I deleted without reading. He has betrayed me. There is no love between us. There is nothing — these words chill & hard & resolute as polished stones were a consolation to me. & then through a doorway I saw him, abruptly there was Tyrell, leaning on my crutches I stood very still & calm & observed him — the man who was my lover & who so claimed to love me, yet had been appalled by the sight of me in the Mall; my lover who had been terrified of me, that I would expose him to his wife & rude staring daughters.

At last, he saw me. In his face a look of anguish — I felt the force of his love, & his regret — quickly I drew back, & hid from him.

Thinking Maybe it isn’t over yet. Not yet.

When I left the library that evening — not with the others but at 6:25 P.M. there was Tyrell waiting at the rear & seeing me approach the door quickly he came forward & pulled the door open as I pushed it & in a lowered voice though there was no one within earshot he said, “Jane, may I carry you? — just to my station wagon let me carry you,” & this time I did not say No.

In his arms I feel airy, guiltless. My arm around his neck, my stump-thighs borne aloft in his embrace. The crutches he leaves behind, leaning against the rear wall of the library. In the car he settles me, buckles me into the seat belt & returns to the crutches & positions them beneath his arms — Tyrell is several inches taller than I am, & so the crutches are short for him — he is clumsy & funny using them — “walking” — he has not the knack of swinging his body, his legs as if they were useless, lifeless. But he is very funny — we are both laughing — breathless & giddy like drunken lovers.

At the station wagon Tyrell shoves the crutches into the backseat with a clatter — he seizes my shoulders, seizes my head, my face framed in his hands & he kisses me — his kisses are hungry, predatory — he begs me to forgive him & exulting in my power which is the most exquisite sexual power I tell the man Yes maybe. This time.

Our naked bodies. The man’s body is heavier & thicker than you would think. His chest is nearly hairless, & the hairs a very pale brown, almost invisible. His man-breasts are flat but the nipples are small & hard as pits. On his back, like an outline of wings, are whorls of hair. At his waist, a ring of excess flesh. With what passion the man licks, kisses, sucks at my thigh-stumps, that end above my knees; very excited,