The Nakeds Read online

  He nodded.

  “For my headache,” she added, returning to Hannah’s side.

  Dr. Bell told them that this second cast was a special cast, one he hoped would straighten out Hannah’s foot. “Let’s get this on you, shall we?” He slapped his hands on his big knees and stood up. “Let’s get this going.”

  He started with the gauze, wrapping it around and around Hannah’s leg, her calf, her ankle, her foot, leaving her useless toes free. She was leaning back on her elbows, watching him.

  “It’s a lot like polio,” the doctor said, finishing with the gauze and moving on to the roll of cotton.

  “What?” Nina said, horrified. Getting hit by a car was one thing, but having a disease—a disease—was another.

  “What’s happened to Hannah’s leg is what we used to see with polio cases—the nerve and muscle damage.”

  “Polio?”

  He nodded.

  “More movement will come back to her, though, right?” Nina said. “Hannah was in the hospital for four weeks before she could move those toes at all. And now she’s wiggling them. You saw them wiggle. One day she couldn’t do it and the next day she could. It’s possible. I’m sure it’s possible.” She looked at him, searched his face.

  He said nothing.

  “Don’t tell me it’s not possible,” she said.

  Dr. Bell didn’t respond, which, they both knew, was a sort of response. He stood up again and walked over to the sink. He put on plastic gloves, so tight they slapped against his wrists. He reached into the sink and scooped up the hot rolls of plaster, then carried them across the room, milky white drops falling from between his fingers. He sat down and began wrapping the first roll around and around Hannah’s leg. He worked around her calf and ankle and foot and started humming.

  When one roll was finished, he picked up the second one and began again.

  “What are you now, Hannah? Eight?” he asked.

  “I’m seven,” she said.

  “She just had a birthday last week,” Nina said, trying to sound upbeat.

  “You could pass for eight,” Dr. Bell said, winking.

  “She’s very mature,” Nina said.

  Finally, he rubbed the cast up and down and sideways too, working with both hands, smoothing the plaster out with such care it was as if he was making art, a sculpture, something beautiful and permanent.

  • • •

  Two days later, the cast completely dry, Hannah was back on Dr. Bell’s examination table. To her left, a circular saw with white dusty blades hung from a chrome-plated mobile stand. “This isn’t just any cast. It’s unique,” he said, pulling a black marking pen from his jacket pocket.

  “Hear that?” Nina said, smiling at the doctor. She crinkled the table’s white paper in a clenched fist and took in a deep breath.

  Hannah wasn’t biting, though. She knew the little yellow bus that took the slow kids to school was unique, and she knew the kids themselves were unique too, and she knew her leg was unique in the same way.

  Dr. Bell was drawing on the cast now—what looked like an outline of a huge kidney bean that wrapped around her ankle. He stood back and admired his drawing for a second before pulling the mobile stand closer, lifting up the saw, and turning it on. It whirred and vibrated in his hand. He leaned down then and began, twisting the saw, maneuvering it around his drawing.

  When he was finished, he used what looked like a large bottle opener to pop the chunk of plaster out, making room for what was next. He slid across the room on his stool, the little wheels squeaking and struggling, and opened a drawer. He pulled out a metal contraption that looked like a shackle and held it up proudly for them to see. “It won’t hurt. It just looks like some sort of torture device,” he said.

  “Hmm,” Nina said.

  Dr. Bell wheeled back over to them. “A little pressure at night after you twist, that’s all.” He fit the metal contraption into the space left around her ankle, fit a metal screw and a tiny wheel in place, and gave the two of them instructions to twist the screw an inch to the left. “It’s important to do it every single night.”

  “Of course, Dr. Bell,” Nina said. “We’ll do whatever you say. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”

  Hannah was quiet.

  “Of course we will. We want to walk, right?”

  “I want to walk,” Hannah snapped, surprising even herself.

  Her mom cleared her throat and looked like she was about to cry.

  On crutches, Hannah did walk, but it was stepping into the world in a new way: pushing off with her arms, lifting her one good leg in the air, and thrusting forward—a short flight to the next square of linoleum or shaggy carpet, the next patch of grass or piece of sidewalk. It was a steady business of effort and relief, and when her two feet were off the ground, swinging forward together, she was aware for that brief second of not being planted to this world.

  • • •

  Dr. Bell’s hybrid was a strange contraption made of plaster and metal that was cast and brace, an amalgam, something she’d wear for eight months without one signature or set of initials, without one sketch or funny drawing.

  • • •

  And every night before bed, they twisted. Once in a while, Hannah did the twisting by herself, alone in her bedroom, but usually her mom sat with her, drinking tea and watching Hannah twist. And sometimes her mom said, “Let me do that, baby girl. Here, let me.”

  She’d ask Hannah if it hurt and she’d say no.

  “At least the doctor didn’t lie. Your father, the dentist, he lies. Once he filled a cavity of mine and said it wouldn’t hurt. Well, I nearly shot out of the chair.”

  Hannah was twisting, trying to concentrate.

  “Do you miss him?” Nina asked her.

  Hannah looked up.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” she said.

  18

  MARTIN, CROUCHED between a Volkswagen bus and a black El Camino, kept an eye on Hannah’s front door. Three girls played hopscotch across the street. They’d drawn squares with yellow chalk on the driveway and were singing some girlie song that Martin didn’t recognize. He wished Hannah was up and healthy and playing with the girls. He wondered if they missed her, if the four of them used to play together.

  One girl said something about a boy named Ryan and the other one said, Hey, he’s mine, and Martin decided that the three of them were too mature for Hannah anyway. Let them hop around and talk about boys, he thought. The three of them looked alike, matching shorts and shirts tied at their waists, matching blonde ponytails and bangs, white sandals with fake daisies at the center. They looked stupid, he thought, and he couldn’t tell them apart, and when they hopped fast, one behind the other behind the other, they could almost have been one girl with one long pale curtain of hair flying behind her.

  He’d moved from behind the El Camino and stood behind an oak tree. His bike was a few blocks away, propped up against the side of Tony’s apartment building. What would happen if the girls caught him behind the tree, he wondered. They’d probably scream and think he was some sort of a pervert, which he wasn’t, no matter how weird his dreams were. Perhaps if the girls caught him they’d figure out who he was and what he’d done, which was worse than if he were just a flasher like that guy Brandon Striker who dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade to roam the neighborhood and show his dick to all the high school girls who wouldn’t look at his face when he was just a student. It was said that Brandon targeted the girls who had snubbed or made fun of him. He was unique that way, the cops had said, and he was labeled The Revenge Flasher, but no one ever ended up in a hospital without a spleen or with a fucked-up liver, no one ever ended up maimed for life because a guy flashed his dick at her.

  This was the fourth day in a row that Martin had been here, waiting for Hannah to come out and show him that she was OK, maybe not perfect, but still a whole girl. He thought that if she didn’t come out today he’d give up. He’d continue leaving presents on the porc
h but wouldn’t hide out here like an idiot.

  It was mid-afternoon when they finally came out of the house. He thought Hannah maneuvered pretty well on the wooden crutches and was impressed with what he decided was her ability to adapt. Oh, who was he fooling, he quickly corrected himself: It was summer and she was in a cast and she was probably hot and, despite a short giggle at something her mom said, Hannah was probably cranky as fuck. Her mother wore a silky dress and high-heel shoes and was even prettier than Hannah, which might have been because she was that kind of beautiful or maybe because she was a grown woman. There were flesh-colored pads on the crutches to protect Hannah’s hands and underarms, and one of the hand pads sprung loose and was rolling down the driveway. Her mother rushed to retrieve it, and while Hannah stood waiting by the car, Martin got a good look at the strange cast. It didn’t look like any cast he’d seen before. There was a clamp or something metal around her ankle, which told him that Sandy was right, that something was very wrong with Hannah’s leg.

  The girls were waving at Hannah now, but hopping at the same time, and Martin wished they were more sensitive. Couldn’t they see that playing hopscotch was something Hannah could not do? Couldn’t they stop hopping for one fucking minute? Finally one girl did stop hopping, but only to stare at Hannah and her mother, who was now taking the crutches from under her daughter’s arms and laying them in the backseat of the car. Hannah was on one foot too, hopping, just like the stupid girls, which made Martin want to cry. She took a couple quick hops before her mother helped her into the car. She rolled the window down.

  “Hey, Hannah,” the one girl said with her stupid voice.

  “Hi,” Hannah said out the window. And her voice, he thought, wasn’t stupid at all; she sounded smart and sad and older than she was.

  By the time mother and daughter had pulled out of the driveway, the girls were finishing up their game. Martin heard them talking, something about Hannah’s broken family or her broken leg, he couldn’t be sure. Either way, he didn’t like them. They were gathering up their box of chalk and plastic cups and a bag of potato chips from the ground. One girl rubbed the bottom of her sandals on the asphalt, erasing the yellow numbers and squares. Finally, they skipped up the driveway and headed toward the front door.

  Martin looked around the neighborhood, poking his head around the tree to make sure he was alone. Satisfied, he crossed the street and walked up to the Tellers’ porch, where he very carefully set down one more Get Well Soon card he hadn’t signed.

  He had the maps laid out on his bed at home.

  He had his tip money under his mattress.

  He had the bus schedule hidden in his sock drawer.

  He imagined himself crossing the country, talking to strangers on the bus, and making up lies about himself.

  He took a quick look back at the envelope he’d left for Hannah, and then walked back to Tony’s house to get his bike.

  19

  THE HOUSE went up for sale—a bright orange sign dug into the front lawn. It told people, Hannah thought, that someone didn’t love them, someone had left them, and that they, in turn, were leaving the house behind.

  When her dad left her mom, he’d left Hannah too, moving into the home and arms of a woman her mom called that whore shiksa or that surfing Jesus freak. Worse, her dad had told her that he’d been thinking of converting to Christianity. He had left them on so many levels, left her mother physically alone in that big king-sized bed, in a house that was falling apart, and with a damaged daughter to care for, and finally he’d left their religion and culture too, become another man completely. A man who wore shorts and rubber sandals and too-bright Hawaiian shirts, a thirty-three-year-old man who was taking surfing lessons and going to church.

  He calls himself a Jew for Jesus, her mom would say hatefully. A Jew for who? What’s a Jew for Jesus? A nebbish traitor, a man without a backbone, that’s what, she’d say, answering her own question.

  But her mother would soon lose her religion as well, which made Hannah believe it was something they had practiced without being certain. It seemed as though being Jewish was only necessary to define them when they were together, what they were: a Jewish family from the East Coast, living on the West Coast now. But once their union of three ended, so too did their apparent beliefs.

  When Hannah came home from the hospital, they lit the candles on Friday nights as they always had, but it felt pretend, false, like dress-up. It was a thing they had done as a family, and now with just the two of them sitting at that too-long table with the empty chair at the head, they were barely that. After three weeks of rushing through the prayer with less and less enthusiasm, the fourth night they just sat down with deli sandwiches and tomato soup and ate, pretending it was any other day of the week. And her mom said, “We should move, Hannah. We’ll make a new start, that’s what we’ll do.”

  • • •

  Soon, strangers were making their way through the rooms and halls, whispering about the weedy backyard, the filthy pool, and the gaudy bathroom wallpaper. They moved through the living room and kitchen and den, stood inside the walk-in closets and sniffed. They opened the pantry and commented on her mother’s choices. “Fresh peaches are so much better. I’d never buy these things in a can,” one woman said. And her husband stood next to her, nodding and tugging on her blouse like a five-year old. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, whining loud enough for Hannah to hear all the way from her bedroom.

  They were rude, like they owned the house without even buying it. They picked things up, inspected them, and put them down—a self-help book her mom had left on the coffee table, the clock, the TV Guide—and Hannah didn’t understand what those small things had to do with the house itself, how it could affect someone’s choice to live there. Often, she watched from her room, propped up in bed, staring over the pages of whatever book she was reading at the nosy strangers and counted the minutes until they said thank you, until they said good-bye, until they stepped out the front door and out of their lives.

  Sometimes they knocked on Hannah’s bedroom door before entering and sometimes they pushed right through. Eyes went right to her cast. People had stories of their own: broken tibia, torn ligament, tennis elbow. This man fell out of a tree when he was eight. This old woman twisted her ankle on her wedding day. Thirty-five years ago. Walking down the aisle and then flat on the floor. Remember that? Remember that, honey? she said to a fat little man who only grunted and turned away from her, stepping out into the hall.

  People assumed Hannah’s leg was broken, but she’d tell them no, it wasn’t. Despite her irritation, she was often just lonely enough to engage them in conversation when they made an effort. She would say that initially her thigh had been broken and in traction, but it had healed nicely in the hospital. Some people wanted more information and probed further, but when she’d tell them the truth—the doctors weren’t yet sure what was wrong with her—their expressions changed. They grew serious, crossed their arms. When she’d tell them that she was hit by a car, they’d step back, away from her.

  “Here, on this street? In this neighborhood?” one man said. He was very thin and old, with skinny cheeks that jiggled when he turned his head. He wore a light blue polyester suit and dirty white shoes. His wife, also in blue polyester, was even thinner than he was—her face was a gaunt mask covered with light powder.

  “Oh, my,” the wife said, clicking open her purse, then clicking it closed for no apparent reason. “What sort of crazy drivers live here?” she asked her realtor, who glared at Hannah.

  “Were you playing in the street, honey?” the realtor asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  “I heard she was playing in the street,” the realtor said to the couple, talking out of the side of her mouth.

  “That’s a lie,” Hannah said.

  The realtor laughed nervously. She clutched her blouse at the neck and shook her head. “Honey …” she said, an admonition.

  “We don’t have sid
ewalks. There’s nowhere to go. I had nowhere to walk,” Hannah said.

  “Bye-bye, dear,” the realtor said then, steering her clients away.

  20

  HANNAH SPENT time on her back, or sitting up with her leg outstretched and resting on a pillow on the coffee table, watching television or reading books. She read whatever she could get her hands on: her mother’s magazines, the dentistry textbooks her father left behind. She discovered The 1970s Woman, who worked out of the house and wanted everything: a man, babies, a career, a gray suit, a reliable watch, the perfect stroller, and silky lingerie. And she read about teeth, looked at the pictures of molars and bicuspids and cavities.

  Limited mobility kept Hannah inside her head, inside her room, and mostly inside the house. And that first summer, things were breaking inside that house: Screens were coming unhinged; the sliding glass door didn’t slide anymore; the dining room table tipped to one side, needing a shim; mothers and toasters and air conditioners were falling apart. The television was stuck on one channel, so Hannah watched the news. She was especially interested in stories about natural disasters, the earth cracking open like the biggest mouth and swallowing thousands of people, a massive wave erasing a coastal city in Thailand, a hurricane spinning villages into scraps and dust. How insignificant a house became, how little protection it offered, what pitiful shelter.

  She followed the news story about the park ranger Roy “Dooms” Sullivan, who’d been struck by lightning seven times—the first strike shooting through his leg and ripping off his big toenail. Another bolt zipped through his hat and set his hair on fire, and the last one scorched his belly and chest.

  She used the wooden crutches to get herself from room to room, never knowing what mood she’d find her mother in. Her mother was many mothers that summer. Now that Hannah’s father was gone and Nina couldn’t fight with him, she fought with herself. She’d say something one day and the very next day she’d contradict it.

  She was angry and impatient, unreasonable, and quick to shout.