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proud?'
I glanced at my mother. She didn't answer, but gave a small, encouraging smile, her gnarled hands curled in her lap.
'She could be anything,' she said.
I held my lips together tightly. Of course I couldn't be anything. I wasn't a child, and I was a cripple. Did she think I still believed her? I opened my mouth to argue with her, but my father spoke again.
'Just until you marry, of course,' he said.
I frowned at him. Marry? Who would marry me, with my heavy black boots, one built an inch higher than the other, and my noisy, dragging limp? 'No. I don't want to work in a sewing factory or be a secretary or telephone operator.'
'What is it you might like, then? Don't you have some dream? All young people should have a dream. Leprechauns, castles, good luck and laughter; lullabies, dreams, and love ever after ,' he quoted. He had so many clichés about life, so many useless Irish sayings.
I said nothing, picking up Cinnabar and burying my face in the thick coppery fur of her neck.
What was my dream?
'You don't have an excuse now, Sidonie,' he said, and I lifted my face from Cinnabar's neck and stared at him. 'Even though not like before, you can now get yourself about. There's no reason for you to go no further than the yard. I know Alice Ann is having a party tonight. As I came home I saw all the young people on her porch, laughing and talking. It's not too late. Why don't you go, Sidonie? I'll walk over with you. It's not right, you sitting in the house with your paints and books.'
Of course I wasn't invited to Alice Ann's; I hadn't spoken to her since those uncomfortable visits almost two years ago. But even if I had been asked, I was deeply embarrassed of the way I had to swing my legs into position with each step. The braces announced my arrival with a loud clanging. The crutches sometimes hit furniture or slipped on uncarpeted floor. And I felt oddly out of touch; I didn't know how to talk to people any more. I couldn't imagine being at a party. Suddenly I felt older than my parents. How could I ever again be interested in silly jokes and gossip?
'I just don't want to, Dad,' I said, turning away.
'Don't live with regret nailed to your shoulder, my girl,' he said, then. 'There's a lot worse off than you. A lot. You've been given a new chance. Don't waste it.'
'I know,' I said, steeling myself, certain he would launch into his old story about the famine in Ireland, and the corpses piled like logs, of boiling the last of their own rags, all they had left to cover them, and eating them just to have something to chew. 'I know,' I repeated, and, still holding Cinnabar, went out into the back yard, where I sat on the old swing with the cat in my lap, idly kicking myself back and forth with my stronger leg. I remembered the dizziness of swinging high into the air. Now there was no dizziness; I simply swung a few inches back and forth.
I put my head back to watch the evening stars come out. The fall night was cool, and the stars, emerging in the evening sky, were like points of a knife, hard and sharp.
It was the beginning of the many arguments I would have with my father over the next few years.
'You should go out into the world, Sidonie,' he told me, more than once. 'It's no life for a young girl, living with her old mam and da.'
'I like it here, Dad,' I told him, and by this time I truly meant it. After a time I had been able to walk without dragging my legs. I was slow and awkward, still using the crutches, leaning forward a tiny bit at the waist, my legs stiffened by the braces. I eventually exchanged the hated crutches for canes. And then, after wearing the full leg braces for two more years, my legs growing stronger all the time, I exchanged them for small metal ankle braces, which could be almost hidden by the high leather boots. My left leg was now quite sturdy, but I was unable to walk without dragging my right leg in a limping gait.
I knew that earlier I had felt sorry for myself, embarrassed at my affliction and,