One of my first memories is staring into the face of a girl with one crooked eye and a twisted grimace. She was always mysterious to me. The others, who had straight smiles and round eyes, seemed to be easy to read. Her happiness or sadness could not be made clear by her expression, yet I learned to read her better than anyone in my family could.
Isabelle is four years older than me, but as an adult, when I think of that small difference in age it seems incredible that the difference in our age is so insignificant. As a child I thought Isabelle was a wise old sage. She seemed to be a grown up as she stared at me in curiosity at my apparent perfection of limb.
I was born after her, and even though she was a girl and I a little boy, I always wanted to hang with her. That was fine with her. Because of her condition not many people took time to see what was beneath her crooked face and slow speech. She had absolutely no friends, none other than our immediate family. Izzy's world was our family--school and church orbited around that.
I was the one that was looked at oddly. I orbited around Izzy, too. People called me fag or sissy because I became sensitized as I learned to look at the world through my sister's eyes. When we played Barbies it wasn't because I wanted to be a girl. What we played at was the idea of perfection; she was Barbie with her perfect face and her perfect body and I played the role of all those that would acknowledge that total perfection. As a result, my Dad, who is the manly Italian that you hear about or see in mafia movies, spent a lot of time playing catch with me or wrestling with me in an attempt to toughen me up. It was fine; I enjoyed it, but I always retreated to my games with my sister. You see, fully understanding the effects of my sister's disorders had already toughened me.
Once I asked Izzy why her face was crooked. I was probably three. I know that it sounds strange that Izzy and I could communicate even when I was that young but we could. That time is marked in my memory because it is when she gave me my first spelling lesson.
"I have C P." She said in her slurred manner of speaking.
"Sleepy?" Then she turned and went to find a piece of chalk to write on the small chalk board that we played with. She gripped the chalk tightly in her hand and very carefully wrote out a letter C and a letter P.
"C is like cat. P is like Paul. C P. It stands for cerebral palsy." I would later learn that the cause of my sister's cerebral palsy could not be determined. My mother did not suffer any illness during pregnancy, Izzy seemed normal at birth, as well as the first year after. Then one day Mom noticed that one of her eyes drooped and that she wasn't moving her left side.
At first they thought it was Bells Palsy because it affected only one half of her body but her symptoms worsened, her right side stiffened, her speech slurred and her pretty angelic face began to fall on one side; like a landside, a melting candle—paralyzed. Her muscles tightened causing her to limp; walking on tiptoe on one side, her arm drawn up protectively at her side.
But the right side of her body is perfect and untouched. Sometimes I will watch her sitting calmly as she contemplates some task. Her body does not tremble, or twist and jerk uncontrollably as happens when she becomes agitated. Drool does not spill from her lips. She looks like everyone else—and I am surprised. I have come to accept her twisted figure that when it's not evident I'm always shocked.
I'm not exactly sure why Izzy did not gravitate towards our younger siblings; both of which are females. I just know that as I watched them moving towards her, she stood still making no effort to move towards them. Soon their interest was with each other and I was happy that they didn't try to replace me.
I'm smart; at least that's what people say because I began reading well before I ever entered first grade. I have a penchant for learning but that's only because Isabelle and I played teacher and student. Her teacher taught her and then she came home pretending to be her teacher and she taught me. I got pushed up a grade because of it--which was my dream. It meant that I could be in the same place that she was. My parents placed Izzy in a normal school and since I was a loner and she a loner I figured we could be loners together.
But plans do not generally pan out that neatly, and when I began high school as a Junior and Isabelle as a senior, I found that the world is a very cruel place...
My sister is very smart. But people treat her like she's stupid, or they call her retarded because of the lack of control that she has over her movements. In school I found that even though she is in advanced classes and even though she is always on the Honor Roll, the other students, and sometimes even the teachers treat her like she is developmentally handicapped although it should be obvious by her grades that she is not.
The one and only fight that I've ever had was in school and it was because someone was picking on her. Here I am, thirteen years old, she's eighteen and two sixteen year olds are following her down the hall taunting her, calling her 'tard.
I feel like a big angry ball of red fire as I watch her limp become pronounced as she tries to move away from the boys. I may be quiet; a loner but I'm also big; maybe too big. At that time, some would say fat but I was also tall and I towered over those older kids. I went barreling down the hall and bowled them both over like they were pins in a bowling alley.
I don't remember much, just stomping and kicking and doing everything in my power to maim them. I was told later that I sounded like a wild animal, but I don't remember. I just remember that my Izzy was being taunted, my Izzy that had never intentionally hurt anyone. She was no one's easy target; she was my sister!
When I was finally pulled from those boys there was blood everywhere; busted noses, knocked out teeth, split lips, skulls bleeding from being cracked against the hard tile floor.
The only thing that saved me from getting expelled was the fact that Izzy had fallen in her attempts to pull me off the boys. She had seriously pulled one of her atrophied muscles and it was unclear whether the injury had taken place before or after the attack. Izzy and I played it as if that had set me off. And the parent's of the two boys were not anxious to have their son's garner a juvenile record for assaulting a girl with CP.
Things did not get better after I fought those boys. Everyone tried to test me; stupid things like calling out names about Izzy from across the room or during an assembly. They were trying to push me; to set me off. One day Isabelle sat me down and put things into a perspective for me.
"Paul, why do you let those people push your buttons?"
She was pacing in front of me, calmly. I would have expected her to be lurching back in forth in anger and annoyance at the behavior of our classmates. But she was very calm.
"Why aren't you angry?" My face was beet red.
"I don't care about them. They can't hurt me. Only people I give a shit about can hurt me."
I looked around quickly hoping Mom and Dad weren't listening. They didn't like us cursing and even though Izzy was technically an adult at eighteen, in their eyes she would always be a child. This is something I knew then as much as I know now.
Her voice was still calm but now her dark eyes flashed in anger. "When you let those idiots bug you, then that bugs me!"
I stood up and began pacing myself. "That's exactly how I feel when they say stuff about you."
She grabbed my arm and jerked me around. "I've heard it all of my life. I've always gone to normal schools and there have always been jerks." She took a deep breath, relaxing again. "I am made stronger by it, Paul, not weaker. Don't let those assholes turn you into a weakling. If you let them hurt you, then that will hurt me!"
I looked at her then, standing so straight despite the curve in her spine. I suppose that I always knew that I loved my sister, but it was in that second that I understood that I was deeply in love with her.
PT 2
I sat in the minivan watching as Isabelle headed towards me with her halting gait. She was grinning and even though I didn't know the reason I began to grin too. She paused momentarily to heft her book bag up over her shoulder. I hated to sit there and watch her carrying her bag but she hated for me to get out of the van to help her with things. She opened the passenger door and slid into her seat.
I picked her up from college practically every evening and either Mom or Dad took her to school each morning. I would do it if I could but I was in college myself and sometimes I left class early in order to pick her up. She would crack my skull if she knew I did that but I wanted to. I was eighteen now and Isabelle was twenty-three. We went to different schools...we both figured it was just better that way.
"Guess what?" She asked. She was obviously anxious, her head was jerking, causing her long black hair to fall into her eyes. I reached up and brushed the silken black strands back. Izzy had the blackest hair and the greenest eyes. All of my siblings did. Mine was long too. Since Izzy watched me when I would push my own hair back behind my ears out of my way, I figured she liked it long.
I'm bigger than ever now. My previous fat has been converted into muscle. No, I'm no body builder, I'm no jock either, but I like running and I do it as much as possible. I'm 6'3" now and suffice it to say, people don't push my buttons anymore.
"Why are you grinning?" I asked.
"Okay, remember that guy that transferred in from Iowa?"
My grin instantly fell away. Isabelle was studying business after several false starts in selecting a major. Her interests vary and has traversed the gauntlet from physical therapy to law. Now she's interested in business. Some guy recently joined some of her classes. He has a hair lip that hadn't been repaired very well. He's shy and barely talks.
Izzy will make comments about him almost every day; mostly stuff about how smart he is, how his answers are always spot on, or how she catches him peeking at her and then blushing furiously.
It takes all that I have not to make some disparaging remark about how he's only looking at her because he's one of those rude 'starers' that we hate so much. Then I feel bad because I'm the person that she turns to when she talks about her joys and her woes. But I didn't like how this guy was turning up in conversation all of the time.
So I replace the smile on my face. "Yeah, I remember."
"He talked to me today. Not just hi, not just mumbling, he actually talked!"
She was so happy that a boy had talked to her. My brow crinkled. "What did he say?"
She pulled her seatbelt over her slender form. "He said, 'I don't think Professor Morgan went over these equations." She chuckled. "And I said, 'These are ones he covered before you transferred in. I still have notes on them if you want them.' And he blushed turning so red, he looked like a tomato. But he said he'd appreciate that and maybe if I'm not too busy then maybe I could help him with it."
My stomach felt strange; empty or heavy, I'm not sure; hollow maybe. "Oh...what are you going to do?"
"He said he'd come over tonight to study!"
I started the car and checked my mirror carefully. "Cool, Isabelle." I pulled into traffic paying careful attention to what I was doing as she went on and on about her study date. I wanted to say that it wasn't a study 'date'. It was just studying. But she was so happy and I had no reason to be jealous. She was my sister, after all, and I couldn't hog her attention for myself forever!
