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use the sewing machine, telling her I could help her with the piecework when she was tired. Her mouth trembled, and she put her hand over it, the fingers so twisted. I suddenly saw that her hair was now completely white; when had this happened?
I took up my paintbrushes again, and had my mother bring books on gardens and botanicals from the library.
And within a few months I had learned something valuable: that at some unseen moment, what starts out as a forced behaviour may become an involuntary one.
Now I found myself singing along with my mother as we sat together at the kitchen table. I did all the sewing, as her hands caused her such torment, and yet the income generated from the piecework afforded us small extras. She always sat with me, watching my left hand push the fabric under the needle, my right hand turning the wheel, and sometimes now it was she who read to me.
We talked of the Great War, our boys sent over, and she told me news of those I knew from school — which ones had already left in the first waves.
By the end of that second year, I proved the doctor — and Sister Marie-Gregory — wrong. It may have been a combination of reasons: one exhausted doctor's quick prognosis, my body's own strength and resilience, coupled with my mother's endless work on my legs, my determination to rise from the hated chair, and perhaps, I told myself, just perhaps, all the praying.
I was fitted with heavy metal braces from ankle to thigh. They bit into my skin, but they kept my legs from buckling. And with the aid of crutches, I was able to pull myself out of my chair. At first I did little more than drag my legs behind me, my arms growing tight and muscled, my armpits callused from bearing my weight on the crutches, but eventually I was able to swing my legs from the hips, putting pressure on the bottom of my feet. My right leg was now shorter than the left, and so sturdy boots with one built-up sole were made for me. It was only a parody of walking, but I was once again upright, and able to move about, although very slowly.
I stood, I walked. My prayers had been answered. But the cold voice that had taken root within me stayed. In body I was more like the old Sidonie. But inwardly she was gone.
And life was altered in another way. I didn't want to leave the yard. I never resumed my old friendships, for by now, over two years later, and approaching my nineteenth birthday — all the girls I had gone to school with had left Holy Jesus and Mary. Although neither Margaret or Alice Ann had gone to New York as we'd once planned, Margaret was in training to be a teacher, I heard, and Alice Ann had a job selling hats in a fancy shop. Other girls were learning the skills to be nurses or typists; a few were already married. The Great War was over, and some of the young men returned to Albany. Some didn't.
Although I now found great pleasure in my painting, spending hours every day executing botanicals, I hadn't finished my final year of school, although the teachers offered to bring the exams and supervise while I wrote them. I simply lost interest in doing the school assignments. Besides, I told myself, what difference would it make? I would never go out into the world — or even into the main streets of Albany.
My father had been aghast when I told him I didn't care about achieving a high-school diploma.
'I didn't come to this country — nearly dying on the journey in the hold of that stinking, cholera-infected ship — to have my own child refuse the education handed to her. What I would have given to have your opportunity . . . don't you want to be something, Sidonie? You could learn to use a typewriter, and work in an office. Or become a telephone operator. Or, Lord knows, you could work in a sewing factory. You're already a top-rate machine operator. There are many jobs where you don't have to walk or stand for long periods. You would make your mother proud, learning, a trade. Wouldn't she, Mother? Wouldn't she make you