November 1962, Salt Lake City, Utah
In the Big Girls’ Ward, I sat on my bed with the green-striped spread, siderails up. The nurses of the Hospital for Crippled Children told us to stay on our beds until it was time for Thanksgiving. I wasn’t hungry, but I’d already learned to keep my mouth shut. At dinner, everyone was supposed to say what they were thankful for. My insides were a washing machine and I chewed on my fingernails.
Nobody knew how unthankful I was.
At hospital school, we’d made paper turkeys, horns of plenty and read about the First Thanksgiving. Sharon was thankful for her family, visiting from Pocatello. Paula bragged that she was thankful for her poem printed in the school newspaper. Beatrice said something in Spanish.
My surgery was only a week ago and my arm still ached. From my bed, I could see the cement-colored sky, hard and cold. The earth was white and still frozen from the snow.
I was a fourth grader from Yuma, Arizona, where nothing ever froze except stuff in the freezer. And, according to my grandma, I was also the luckiest girl on earth. Before I got here, Grams was a broken record. “Oh, we’re so grateful! The doctors are going to fix your arm,” she’d say in her music-teacher voice. “We’re just so thankful.” Every day it was the same thing: our whole entire family was thrilled, grateful and thankful. Wasn’t I thankful too?
Um, no.
But Grams couldn’t know my secret. Besides, why did everyone think I needed fixing, anyway? The popular girls at home never let me turn the double-dutch jump rope, and Barbara H. pointed at my arm and called me a cripple. But did I really need fixing? Was I like Frankenstein’s monster?
When even your grandma thinks you need fixing, being thankful tastes terrible. Sitting atop my bed, I thought about Grams, how her front teeth were edged in gold, how they caught the light just so and made me think her words came straight from heaven.
She wrote to me every week, reminding me to be thankful. You’re so lucky, she’d write. Jeez Louise. I hate being the kind of lucky that gets you stitches and hurts so bad that you can’t think.
Just then, head nurse’s aide Jensen squeaked into the ward. “Let’s head down to the basement for our Thanksgiving feast.” Nurses and aides helped get girls into their wheelchairs and carts. Kids like Sharon just rode their beds, pushed by huffing and puffing aides in yellow uniforms.
We crowded into the elevator. Beatrice, huddled in the corner, leaned on her crutches.
With so many girls packed in, the elevator smelled terrible—a cross between sweaty aides and stinky plaster casts. I whispered to Beatrice. “You OK?”
She shrugged.
“What’s wrong?” I hoped she wasn’t on bossy Paula’s side now. But Beatrice stared straight ahead. It was so noisy—I didn’t know if God could hear me pray for her.
The basement was a giant room with lots of long tables and a small stage at one end. I sat next to Beatrice—partly to keep away from Paula. Something awful happened to Beatrice. I just knew it.
While everyone stuffed themselves on turkey and dressing, I elbowed Beatrice. “You can tell me.”
She stopped pushing around her mashed potatoes.
“C’mon. I’ll tell you my secret if you’ll tell me yours.” She shook her head.
“Well. I’m not thankful for any of this.” I prayed no one else heard me.
Beatrice took a giant breath, then pulled out an envelope from her skirt pocket. We both looked around, but the coast seemed clear. She whispered. “Bad news,” she said. “Estoy muy triste.”
“Triste means sad, right?”
She nodded. I took a bite of cranberry sauce, but it landed on my white blouse. I hoped Jensen didn’t notice.
Beatrice went on. “Mi abuela—my grandma—she’s like a mama to me. I love her so much.”
I thought of Grams, her gold-edged teeth glinting.
Tears welled up in Beatrice’s eyes. “Mama says mi abuelita in big trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Beatrice’s lips quivered even as aides began passing out plates of pumpkin pie. But she sat up straighter, her jaw set. “She’ll be deported.”
I remembered a girl named Josefina from my class in Yuma. One day she was gone and never came back.
“I’m sorry.” Now my arm and my heart both ached.
As the thankfulness exercise got going, kids talked about how thankful they were for doctors and nurses. Some were thankful for steadier walking, straighter spines or repaired club feet. Beatrice mumbled “para mi amiga,” so nobody except me understood.
My turn. I was sure unthankful was written all over me. But somehow, my frozen heart had thawed. I knew if I have compassion for your hurt, your grief, your sadness, my own pain is soothed. I saw that in one way or another, we all need fixing, and that the more I love, the more love I have to give.
Sitting there with cranberry sauce staining my blouse, I blurted out, “I’m thankful for grandmas.” I squeezed Beatrice’s hand. “And for friends.”
Linda, your openness, honesty, and willingness to bare the very essence of yourself always resonates within me. Always.