The Saffron Gate (4 page)

^{'When will they be better?' I kept asking, expecting that I would simply wake up one morning, throw back the covers, and walk briskly across my bedroom as usual.}

^{My mother murmured, 'Soon, Sido, soon. Remember how you ran about the yard as a little girl, pretending you were a princess, like the ones in your books? How you twirled about, your dress billowing around you like a beautiful flower? You will be this again, Sidonie. A princess. A beautiful flower. My beautiful special flower, my miracle.'}

^{The fact that her eyes filled as she said these things only made me believe in her conviction.}

^{For the first few months I wept often — tears of impatience, tears of disappointment, tears of self-pity. My parents were sympathetic and did what they could — in both word and deed — to make me feel better. It was a long time before I could understand what an effort this was for them: to put on a positive face and attitude when they must have been as shattered and grieving as I was.}

^{After some time I grew weary of my own burning eyes and the headaches brought on by the crying, and one day I simply stopped, and didn't cry again. When the quarantine had passed and I felt well enough, my friends came to see me. It was the beginning of the new school year, and during those initial visits, when my life felt like a strange, disturbing twilight from which I couldn't quite awaken, I listened to their stories, nodding and imagining myself back in school with them.}

^{Every Friday my mother picked up my schoolwork from Holy Jesus and Mary, and returned it the following Friday; with the aid of the textbooks I was able to complete the weekly assignments and tests.}

^{One Friday, along with my new assignments, my mother handed me a sealed envelope from one of the sisters who had formerly taught me. When I opened it, a letter and a small prayer card, edged in gold, fell from its folds on to the blanket.}

^{The sister's writing was difficult to read, the script small and tight, as though each black letter was painfully forced through the nib of the pen.}

^{My dear Sidonie,
I read.
You must not despair. This is God's will. You have been predestined for this test. It is simply a test of the flesh; God found you wanting, and so chose you. Others have died, but you have not. This is proof that God has protected you for a reason, and has also given you this burden, which you will carry for the rest of your life. In this way, He has shown you that you are special to Him.}

^{As a cripple, now God will carry you, and you will know Him with a strength that those with whole bodies do not.}

^{You must pray, and God will answer. I will also pray for you, Sidonie.}

^{Sister Marie-Gregory}

^{My hands were shaking as I folded the letter and put it and the prayer card back into the envelope.}

^{'What is it, Sidonie? You've gone pale,' my mother said.}

^{I shook my head, carefully placing the envelope between the pages of a textbook.
As a cripple,
the sister had written.
For the rest of your life.}

^{Even though Sister Marie-Gregory had also said that I was special to God, I knew, with a sickening thud of reality, that it didn't mean, as my mother told me, that He would let me walk again. But I also knew that the polio wasn't a test sent by God, as the sister had said. I alone knew why I had contracted the disease. It was punishment for my sinful thoughts.}

^{Since Luke McCallister had come to Larkspur Street I had stopped praying for forgiveness for my own, transgressions. I no longer sent healing thoughts for others in our community who were ill or dying. I had not prayed for the end of the Great War. I had not prayed for the starving brown children of far-away lands. I had not prayed for my mother's hands to know relief from their endless ache, or for my father to be able to sleep without the old and haunting nightmares of the coffin ship that had brought him to America.}

^{Instead I had prayed for a boy to take me in his arms, to put his mouth on mine. I had prayed to know the mystery of a man's body against mine. I had explored my own body with its unexplained heat and desire, imagining my hands were Luke McCallister's. I had committed one of the seven cardinal sins — lust — and for this I was punished.}

^{A week after the sister's letter, I was again visited by the doctor from the public health services. This time I was alert, as I hadn't been on his first call, and read on his face that he had seen far too many victims of polio in too short a time. Openly weary and speaking with a sighing resignation, he agreed, after moving my legs about and testing my reflexes and having me try a few simple exercises, with Sister Marie-Gregory's written prediction. He told me, my parents standing behind him, their faces grey with sorrow, that I would never again walk, and the best I could hope for was that I would spend my life in a pushchair. He told me I should be grateful the disease had only affected my lower limbs, and that I was better off than many of the children left alive but totally paralysed by the epidemic.}

^{After the doctor's visit I resumed my prayers. But this time they had nothing to do with Luke McCallister.}

^{Heavenly Father, Gracious Mother,
I repeated, over and over, week after week, month after month.
If you allow me to walk I shall have only pure thoughts. I will never again give in to the desires of my body.}

^{During that first long year I was forced to remain in bed, propped up by cushions; it hurt my back to sit upright for longer than a few minutes. Margaret and Alice Ann still came to see me, but it was not as before; I began to see that they — these girls I had once laughed with, shared my secrets and dreams with — had, in a few short months, grown taller and brighter, while I had shrunk and lost colour. I listened to them, but now, instead of cheering me, their stories only made me see I was missing out on life. It soon became apparent that they sensed this as well, for they began speaking more haltingly, sometimes stopping in the middle of an anecdote about what someone at school had said or done, or talking about an up-coming dance, or who was sweet on whom, as if they too suddenly realised that they were only reminding me of a life that was no longer mine. Would never be mine. There would be uncomfortable stretches of silence when they would glance at each other, their eyes showing quick flashes of what I saw as desperation or impatience or outright boredom. After some time I dreaded a knock on the front door, not wanting to see my mother jump to her feet far too quickly, and the hopeful smile she gave me as she went to open the door. I was embarrassed by the way she fussed about, bringing kitchen chairs into my bedroom for the girls, followed shortly by a tray with glasses of lemonade and a plate of cookies or slices of loaf cake. I was, for the first time, ashamed of her heavily accented voice — a little too loud — as she tried to make my guests comfortable, or perhaps encourage them to stay longer and come again. She spoke to them more than I did; I had little to talk about. My life now consisted of the walls of my bedroom.}

^{The visits eventually grew less frequent. Although I knew my mother was saddened by my lack of visitors, I was relieved when, after a month of no one knocking on our front door, I knew I wouldn't have to worry about another strained afternoon.}

^{Every week after she picked up my homework, my mother walked another eight blocks to the lending library on Weatherstone Street. She took out the maximum of four books for me. I didn't care what she chose; I read everything. My father bought me a box of watercolours and brushes and creamy paper and a book of photographs of the flowers of upstate New York, and encouraged me to paint. He spoke of how I had shown promise as a child, and how one of my teachers had told him and my mother that I had. an uncanny eye for colour and design and perspective. I had never known, before now, what the teacher had said, and it surprised me. Although I had always enjoyed drawing and painting during the weekly art class, I'd never had the patience to sit too long, preferring to be outside.}

^{My parents brought me a coppery kitten. I named her Cinnabar, and quickly realised that she was deaf, for she didn't turn at any sound, small or large. But it didn't matter; perhaps it made me love her more. The rumble of her purring and her warm fur under my fingers gave me comfort when I read or just lay, staring at the small window on the wall across from my bed, trying to recall the sensation of walking, of running.}

^{My parents also bought a gramophone and phonograph cylinders of Grieg's Peer Gynt, with its two four-movement suites. My father would play one of the cylinders each morning as he got ready for work, and I would awaken to the strains of 'Anitra's Dance' or 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' or 'Solveig's Song'.}

^{At some point my mother directed my father to bring in the old daybed from the porch and put it in the kitchen, so that we could be together during the day while she worked at her sewing machine on the kitchen table.}

^{Every morning before he left for work, my father carried me to the makeshift bed. My mother put the small table holding the gramophone and cylinders beside me; I could reach it should I want to listen to Grieg's music. She also arranged my books and painting supplies on the table, and set Cinnabar on my bed. Then she pulled a straight wooden chair up to the table where she worked the hand-operated sewing machine, adding pockets and inserting sleeves and hemming men's suit jackets, piecework for a small company. I read and painted and played with Cinnabar. After a while she had me do the basting for her, and if she made a mistake, I picked out the incorrect stitches. In this way she was able to complete more jackets than usual.}

^{If I wasn't playing the gramophone my mother sang while she worked, French songs learned as a child in Quebec. At other times she asked me to read aloud. It took me a while to realise, after my reading to her became a routine, that the books she was now bringing home from the library were books she would have read if she'd had time. Some of them were in French. I had to speak in a loud voice, to be heard over the rhythmic clicking of the sewing machine, and to make it more enjoyable I began reading in the tone of the voice of the character. Sometimes, when I read a particularly moving or exciting or humorous passage, my mother's hands would stop, and she would look at me, her head tilted to one side, with a surprised or worried or pleased expression, depending on the novel.}

^{'You have such a lovely speaking voice, Sidonie,' she said one day. 'So expressive and melodic. You could have been—' She stopped abruptly.}

^{'I could have been what?' I asked, carefully setting the book on my lap.}

^{'Nothing. Go on, please. Keep reading.'}

^{But suddenly I couldn't continue. The phrase 'you could have been' hit me with an enormity that shook me.}

^{You could have been.
What was she about to say? Did she remember that when I was young, perhaps ten years old, I had announced that I would become a famous actress, and they would come to see me on a Broadway stage? I thought of the long-ago plans Margaret and Alice Ann and I had made: how we might one day move to New York City, and live together in a walk-up apartment and find jobs at Saks Fifth Avenue, selling fine leather gloves or heavenly perfume to the beautifully dressed ladies who strolled the wide aisles of the store. Margaret went to New York with her mother regularly, and it was she who had told me about Broadway plays and the department stores.}

^{But of course now none of those dreams could become reality. Not for a girl who couldn't rise from a bed. Not even if that girl became a woman who sat in a pushchair. I could never live in a walk-up. I could never even five in a house with stairs. I could never stand behind a counter and sell gloves or perfume.}

^{Now what would I be? What would I become? A small, cold voice entered me; it was similar to the black, tightly written words of Sister Marie-Gregory, calling me a cripple. I suddenly knew that my life might not move beyond this daybed, beyond this kitchen, beyond this house and yard.}