Handle With Care Read online

  My God, what kind of person was I, wishing a six-year-old would get hurt?

  At the school, Charlotte lugged the equipment out of the van and set it in a corner of the classroom. There was a quick powwow with the teacher and your aide, Charlotte explaining which injuries were bothering you today. Meanwhile, you sat in your chair near the cubbies as children funneled around you to hang up their jackets and take off their boots. Your shoelace had come untied, and although you tried to lean over to fix it, your foreshortened arms couldn't quite span the distance. A little girl bent down to help you. 'I just learned how to tie them,' she said, matter-of-fact, and she looped the laces and knotted them. As she bounced off, you watched her. 'I know how to tie my own shoes,' you said, but your voice had an edge to it.

  When it was time for snack, your aide had to lift you up to wash your hands, because the sink was too tall to accommodate your wheelchair. Five children jockeyed to sit next to you. But you got only about three minutes to eat because you were scheduled for physical therapy. That day alone, I'd learned, we'd be filming you at PT, OT, speech therapy, and visiting a prosthetic specialist. It made me wonder when or if you ever got to just be a kindergartner.

  'How do you think it's going so far?' Charlotte asked as we walked down the hall to the physical therapy room, trailing you and your wheelchair and your aide. 'Do you think it will be enough for a jury?'

  'Don't worry,' I said. 'That's my job.'

  The physical therapy room was adjacent to the gymnasium. Inside, on the gleaming floor, a teacher was setting a line of kickballs down. There was a wall of glass, through which you could watch what was going on in the gym. It seemed cruel to me. Was it supposed to inspire a kid like you to work harder? Or just depress the hell out of you?

  Twice a week, you had PT with Molly in school. Once a week, you were taken to her office. She was a skinny redhead with a surprisingly low voice. 'How's the hip?'

  'It still hurts,' you told her.

  'Like I'd rather die than walk, Molly, hurts? Or just ouch, it hurts?'

  You laughed. 'Ouch.'

  'Good. Then show me your stuff.'

  She lifted you out of your chair and set you upright on the floor. I held my breath - I hadn't seen you moving without a walker - and you began to shuffle your feet in tiny hiccups. Your right foot lifted off the floor, your left one dragged, until you paused at the edge of a red mat. It was only an inch thick, but it took you ten whole seconds to lift your left leg enough to gain the clearance.

  She bounced a large red ball to the middle of the mat. 'You want to start with this today?'

  'Yes,' you said, and your face lit up.

  'Your wish is my command,' Molly said, and she sat you down on the ball. 'Show me how far you can reach with your left hand.'

  You reached across your body, putting an S curve into your spine. Even giving it all your effort, you could barely keep your shoulders from facing squarely forward. This put your eyes in line with the window, where your classmates were engaged in a raucous game of dodgeball. 'I wish I could do that,' you said.

  'Keep stretching, Wonder Woman, and you just might,' Molly replied.

  But this wasn't really true - even if you learned enough flexibility to dodge and weave, your bones wouldn't withstand a firm hit.

  'You're not missing anything,' I said. 'I hated dodgeball. I was always the one picked last.'

  'I'm the one picked never,' you said.

  That, I thought, will be a great sound bite.

  Apparently, I wasn't the only one. Charlotte glanced at the camera and then turned to the physical therapist, who had your belly bent over the ball and was rocking you back and forth. 'Molly? How about using the ring?'

  'I was going to hold off another week or two before I did any weight-bearing exercises--'

  'Maybe we can work on the soft tissue? To improve her range?'

  She settled you on the floor. The soles of your feet touched together, a yoga pose I could manage only on a good day. Reaching onto the wall, Molly untied what looked like a gymnastics ring, which was dangling from the ceiling. She adjusted the height until it hovered just over your head. 'Right arm this time,' she said.

  You shook your head. 'I don't want to.'

  'Just give it a try. If it hurts too much, we'll stop.'

  You inched your arm higher, until your fingertips brushed the rubber ring. 'Can we stop now?'

  'Come on, Willow, I know you're tougher than that,' Molly said. 'Wrap your fingers around and give it a squeeze . . .'

  To do that, you had to lift your arm even higher. Tears glazed your eyes, which made your sclera look electric. The cameraman zoomed in on your face, a close-up.

  'Ow,' you said, starting to cry in earnest as your hand clutched the ring. 'Please, Molly . . . can I stop?'

  Suddenly Charlotte wasn't sitting beside me anymore. She'd run to you, prised your fingers free. Tucking your arm close to your side, she cradled you. 'It's okay, baby,' she crooned. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry Molly made you try.'

  At that, Molly's head snapped around - but she kept her mouth shut when she saw the camera rolling.

  Charlotte's eyes were closed; she might have been crying, too. I felt like I was violating something private. So I reached over and put my hand on the long nose of the camera, gently forced it toward the floor.

  The videographer cut the power.

  Charlotte sat cross-legged with you curled in the bowl of her body. You looked embryonic, spent. I watched her stroke your hair and whisper to you as she stood, lifting you in her arms. Charlotte turned, so that she was facing us and you weren't. 'Did you get that on film?' she asked.

  Once, I watched a news story about two couples whose newborns had been switched by accident at the hospital. They learned only years later, when one baby was found to have some god-awful hereditary disease that the parents didn't have in their genetic makeup. The other family was tracked down and the mothers had to trade their sons. One mother - the one who was getting a healthy child back, as a matter of fact - was absolutely inconsolable. 'He doesn't feel right in my arms,' she kept sobbing. 'He doesn't smell like my boy.'

  I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

  But what if the child never knew the parent quite as well?

  Like me, and my birth mother. Or you. Did you wonder why your mother had hired me? Why you were being followed around by a camera crew? Did you wonder, as we walked back to the classroom, whether your mother had brought you to tears on purpose, so that the jury would squirm?

  Charlotte's words kept ringing in my ears: I'm sorry Molly made you try. But Molly hadn't. Charlotte had insisted on it. Had she been doing it because she truly cared about the range of motion in your right arm after your latest break? Or because she knew it would bring you to tears for the camera?

  I was not a mother; I might never be. But I'd certainly had my share of friends who couldn't stand their own mothers - either they were too absent or too smothering; they complained too much or they noticed too little. Part of growing up was distancing yourself from your mother.

  It was different for me. I'd grown up with a tiny buffer of space between my adoptive mother and myself. Once, in chemistry, I'd learned that objects never really touch - because of ions repelling, there's always an infinitesimal space, so that even when it feels like you're holding hands or rubbing up against something on the atomic level, you're not. That was how I felt these days about my adoptive family: to the naked eye, we looked like a seamless, happy group. But I knew that, no matter how hard I tried, I'd never close that microscopic gap.

  Maybe this was normal. Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways. Some knew what they were doing - like my birth mother, handing me over to another family. And