Chapter 3 The Limp
Days later, walking home through the Ramble, I stop and look down at my legs encased in my smudged, checked bakery pants.
A thought slowly dawns and unfurls in my mind like a snake.
I’m limping. I haven’t been feeling well, but I thought it was from the change of the seasons.
Fall, with its shorter days and brisk temperatures, signals the slow opening of the door to winter and that always brings with it a sense of melancholy.
It means the end of the fall bird migration when the outside world becomes brown and drab—too much like my inside world.
Each fall I go through a period of sadness when winter takes over, muting out the vibrant greens and splashes of color of the trees, birds and flowers.
I glance around; the leaves are still green, but they look ready to shrivel and dry as the tinge of fall grips the air in mid-September. Winter is coming even if it hasn’t yet started painting the trees, the magic colors of fall.
I frown at my thoughts. What I’m feeling is something altogether different from my normal seasonal grief.
Recently, my knees and hips have been aching all day instead of just in the morning.
Today they feel almost swollen. My stomach knots into a state of panic as my mind immediately jumps to MS. “Noooo!” screams in my head.
Taking a deep breath, I stare up at the clear, blue sky.
The picture that comes into focus is my mother, sitting at the Formica kitchen table with a bunch of pamphlets spread out in front of her.
She just came from one of her first doctor’s appointments after her diagnosis.
I was eighteen. My grandmother is sitting in her recliner, facing the table.
I’m stirring soup on the stove. Mama is reading out loud, translating the pamphlet into Polish.
Mama and Grandma glance sharply at me and silence hangs heavy in the air.
They rarely pay me much attention so, at first, I think I’ve done something wrong with the soup.
But, when I meet their gaze, I don’t see the disapproval that I expect for my cooking — instead, I see pity reflected in their eyes.
Now sensing that I should have been paying more attention, I review my mother’s words, translating them to English and connecting the dots to make the most regrettable picture: “MS can be a genetic disease.” Fear and anguish flood my being and my mother looks contrite.
She shakes her head as if trying to nullify the words.
Leaving my soup pot unattended, I sit down at the table, taking the pamphlet from her hand.
I skim it, silently calculating how many more years I have before I, too, will need to start taking the heavy dosages of medication my mother has started on.
She is struggling with the new regimen of pills that make her sleepy and not herself, but the doctors assure her they are all necessary to help manage her disease.
It was sitting at the table that I worked out the timeline for me, and that timeline became etched into my psyche.
My mother’s symptoms began when she was thirty, right after I was born.
For the first couple of years, she believed the symptoms were related to caring for a new baby.
She struggled to get her doctor to listen to her complaints because of language barriers and her own reticence to complain.
So, for eighteen years, she dealt with the cruel fickleness of MS without knowing what was happening.
Bouts of unsteadiness, muscle weakness, and vertigo, coupled with periods of feeling normal and fine.
She struggled along, living the physically demanding life of a baker’s wife, never knowing when her symptoms would strike or what they meant.
Finally, her diagnosis gave a name to her many ailments.
The timeline I had counted on gave me until I was thirty before I had to start worrying and looking for symptoms, but here I am at twenty-six.
Of course, my timeline was wrong. I stumble along until I find my favorite bench and sit.
My symptoms are real, and now that I’m conscious of them, I realize they’ve been getting worse for the past couple of weeks. Could it happen this fast?
Of course it could. MS is a tricky disease, sometimes disappearing completely only to come roaring back for no apparent reason.
A dark wave engulfs me. What is the point? Why am I even here? Is it truly just to suffer? I haven’t begun to live—and now it is too late. I had 2017 in my head, not 2013.
Getting up slowly, I trudge back to the apartment.
I serve the sauerkraut and pork chops and then clear the dirty dishes.
I’m disconnected from my body, lost in my head, removed completely from this apartment and this life.
Robotically, turning on Babcia’s TV when it’s time for Wheel of Fortune.
My parents settle in for the evening and no one glances at me.
Do they see me at all? Don’t they sense my anguish?
Instead of sleeping, I assess my life in fits and starts throughout the long, miserable night.
My life in review is so painfully dull. I haven’t done one thing that is significant in my twenty-six years.
Unless you count the many embarrassing events and humiliations.
Certainly, nothing I experience resembles the life that the individual in Jake’s bed likely enjoys simply existing.
Life is so unfair.
I quickly cross myself with a pang of guilt. Jealousy of others and thinking God owes you is counter to everything I’ve been taught while sitting on the hard pews of
St. Augustine Church. And these teachings apply doubly to a Jablonski whose family made the ultimate sacrifice. I do ten Hail Marys in quick succession and promise to do more at church on Sunday.
With my penance over, my painful past continues to roll behind my closed eyes like a sad movie—the sleepover my parents had to collect me from when I cried and screamed when we watched ET.
It was absolutely terrorizing when the monster screamed and stretched his neck up.
For years after that, I threw away every Reese’s Pieces pack I got trick or treating, petrified he’d come find them in our apartment above our bakery.
Or the time I brought pierogis to school for Cultures within Our Class, and the kids snickered, “Emma, didn’t bring anything,” pretending they couldn’t see the pale pierogis against the white plate.
The girls from my class who always went out of their way to make my school days lonely and miserable, excluding me from recess games.
In the inky darkness just before dawn, the last painful memory drifts into focus: I’m fourteen and we’re attending my mother’s cousin’s wedding, a small, family affair.
I am wearing my best Sunday dress and feeling quite grown-up.
It is a light-blue dress, and when I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror in the banquet hall, my light-blue eyes look downright sparkly.
As the afternoon progresses, people start to dance, and the music gets loud.
My mother and father are all smiles, looking so relaxed, I barely recognize them.
Mama has been having a good month, with barely any weakness, so they look like every other couple at the wedding: drinking, talking in Polish, and laughing.
A boy approaches our table.
“Hello, I’m Jimmy,” he introduces himself. “Would you like to dance?”
My father says loudly, “Yes, Emma, go dance with the nice boy.” He gestures wildly toward the dance floor.
My mother sees the shock in my eyes and she more sedately motions me toward the dance floor. I wonder where my parents have disappeared to.
I get up obediently and follow the boy to the dance floor. We dance.
After another dance, Jimmy asks, “Want to go outside? It’s getting kinda hot in here.”
I quickly glance at my parent’s table, and it is empty. I spot them near the bar with Uncle Leo and a group of others. Feeling emboldened, I shrug a yes, and we walk out onto the patio.
Others are milling around outside, enjoying the fresh air.
Jimmy pulls me in close and tucks us into a corner.
He feels even warmer than the air in the reception room, but I don’t pull away.
I think he is going to kiss me, and my stomach jumps with nerves.
All the girls at high school talk about kissing boys, and I very much want to see what it is like.
But suddenly, I hear Father Kowalski’s voice in my ear—“Harlot!”—and I jump and pull away, running back to our table, my cheeks flaming red with embarrassment.
If I had only known—how could I have known?
—that this was going to be my only chance for a kiss, I would not have fled.
I wish a warning bell could sound, signaling, “Last chance, take it or leave it.” I would have been so much braver and not run away from a secret kiss in the corner of the patio at Clark’s Restaurant and Banquet Hall.
Right after this, we moved to New York City, and I sealed myself off completely.
My bubble kept me safe from all the hurts and taunts leveled at me for reasons I could not fathom.
A few things could get through. Some unwelcome, like my father’s voice that echoed within about the sacrifices one must make or Father Kowalski’s booming voice, also ricocheted off the walls each Sunday.
But some good things made it through too.
My mother’s soft squeezes when she sensed I had a particularly bad day.
The birds, trees and velvet moss of the Park eased through my walls.
And Jake. Jake could break through until I finally sealed the hole when I was nineteen.
Crazy dreams were just that . . . crazy.
I stare up at the ceiling through the long night of my painful review.
As dawn is breaking gray and bleak, I clasp my hands together, not sure if I am praying or wishing, and whisper in a hush, “Please, anyone. I don’t want to be cured.
I know that is impossible. But please let me live a little before I start to die.
” I spot the tenacious little spider web in the corner of my room and make out the delicate threads and the intricate design. That lifts my spirits a bit.
Getting out of bed, I’m not sure if the aches are from lack of sleep or the MS continuing to assault my nerves and muscles.
I feel a hundred years old as I bend down to kneel beside my bed.
I bow my head, resting it on the thin mattress.
I can’t think of a single prayer to say this morning.
Does it really matter when I’m in hell already?
I shake my head, shocked at my audacity. I really need to get a grip.
During a slow time at the bakery, while my father is taking care of a flour delivery, I call my mother’s MS specialist and make an appointment. They have an opening next week because of a cancellation, and the receptionist shares how lucky I am to get this appointment.
I refrain from saying, “Lucky? Let me tell you, anyone calling your office for an appointment is the exact opposite of lucky.” I suppress a grin then sober up. It’s a morning appointment, so I’m going to have to figure that out.
I go through the week on autopilot, but the world does not notice. Although my father seems to tire of having to remind me to focus on my tasks at the bakery.