and a brunette, out joyriding. Guys on the street whistled when we stopped at a light; from other cars, some men blew us kisses, while others made lewd remarks—the kind of behavior women in consciousness-raising groups around the country were calling offensive and demeaning.
Not us. Audrey and I soaked in every lustful look. We savored every obscene word.
I thought we were just having fun. But then Audrey would say, “All I have to do is park, get the chair out, and they’ll run the other way so fast! We’re both beautiful… we could have it all. Why do we have to be handicapped?”
I didn’t have an answer to that question, but I don’t think she expected one. She went on: “I don’t want to live as a handicapped woman. I want to be a real woman; I want a real life; I want happiness. Don’t you?” She did expect an answer to that.
I didn’t know how to argue with her. I nodded in sad agreement. Of course I wanted a real life. Of course I wanted happiness.
“Why do we have to be handicapped?” Audrey asked again. And sometimes she sighed and said, “We’d be better off dead.”
Whenever people said “better off dead” when talking about disability, I tried to shield myself by pretending I didn’t hear. But I couldn’t with Audrey.
“I hate when you say that! I don’t like the way we’re treated, but I don’t want us to be dead. That’s really scary!”
“Chicken!” Audrey muttered.
I got my own car when I started college. It was a brown secondhand Mercury, the best my father could afford. Audrey still came by on weekends, or on days when neither one of us had classes, to take me for a ride.
“My car is the kind people look at, and when they look at the car, they see us,” she said.
I was glad my car wasn’t the kind people looked at. I didn’t want to be distracted by people’s looks. I wanted to fully enjoy the freedom I experienced behind the wheel. It was the same sensation I experienced when rolling in my wheelchair, multiplied ten times, a hundred times. In my car, I was completely independent. There were no steps, no stairs, no barriers on the road. Once in the car, I never needed anyone’s help, never needed to be pushed or lifted. I was equal to every other driver in every other car. I could go anywhere, go everywhere. With nothing to stop me. On my own. On my way.
In college, I began to understand what Audrey had been going through trying to fit into “the real world.” There was no “handicapped homeroom” at St. John’s. If there were disabled students, I didn’t see them.
I was eager to make friends. But none of the college students seemed interested in me. The guys ignored me. The girls were nice enough, smiled and asked how I was or if I needed help. Sometimes I sat in the lounge with girls I knew from my classes and listened to them talking about their boyfriends. They never tried to include me in those conversations. Sometimes they looked at me, as if suddenly realizing I was there, looked at one another, and stopped talking. Just like the neighbor girls back in Sicily.
I spent the long breaks between classes in the ladies’ room, or sitting in my parked car if the weather was good. I’d started smoking, thinking it would help me fit in. But I never liked it. I lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, and put it out.
I was exhausted all the time. Since the campus was not very accessible, I left my wheelchair in the car and walked with my braces and crutches. I struggled up and down steps. I walked slowly in the long corridors, praying I wouldn’t get knocked down by a student hurrying to get to class. I fell at times, nearly dying of embarrassment. Halfway through the semester, I fell going up the steps to the library and hurt more than my pride. I broke my knee and ended up in a hospital in Queens.
This hospital was nothing like HSS. There were no children or teenagers. I was the only girl on the floor. The men there—the orderlies, the janitors, the interns, and some of the patients—all seemed quite appreciative of my youth and prettiness. I mentioned that to Audrey when I called her to tell her what had happened.
“Of course, they don’t know you’re handicapped; they think you just have a broken leg.”
I didn’t care what they thought. After being ignored by the college men at St. John’s, it felt good to get some male attention. I flirted shamelessly.
I was in the hospital for just five days. The last night I was there, I woke up from a deep sleep, to see a man standing at my bedside. He had pulled the curtain halfway around my bed. But the light coming in from the open door was enough for me to recognize the good-looking orderly I’d flirted with in the evening. His penis was out of his pants. It seemed huge. He was holding it in one hand and his other hand was at his mouth, his index finger pressing against his tightly closed lips.
I was too shocked to utter a word. He smiled at me when he realized I was going to keep quiet, but he kept his index finger in front of his lips. He was stroking his penis faster now. I watched, not sure whether to be frightened or fascinated. Then he grabbed his penis with both hands, arched his back, and semen squirted over my bed.
Oh no! How was I going to explain the sticky sheet to the nurses? He smiled as he put his shrunken penis back in his pants, pulled up his zipper, and went out the door.
I was discharged the next morning. The bed was left unmade. No one noticed the spots on the sheet. I called Audrey as soon as I got home.
“He didn’t make you take it in your mouth?”
“No!”
“Or even in your hand?”
“No!”
“Would you have done it?”
“Audrey! Of course not! I didn’t want him to do what he did!”
“But you didn’t scream. You could have screamed.”
She was right. Why hadn’t I screamed? Had I liked watching him? Would I have taken his penis in my hand had he asked? I had flirted with him, after all.
“That’s true; I could have screamed.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to feel guilty on top of it.” Audrey’s voice was suddenly soft and comforting. “It’s okay. Men usually don’t even see us. They don’t think of us as women because we’re handicapped. So we have to be glad for any attention we get.”
I went back to St. John’s in my wheelchair, with a cast on my leg. I needed help getting the chair in and out of the car. I waited by many doors, sometimes in rain and snow, for someone to get me up the steps. Certain buildings I just couldn’t get into. I couldn’t use many of the rest rooms. But at least I could zoom up and down the corridors and didn’t have to be afraid of getting knocked over.
Because I wasn’t exhausted all the time, I was able to try harder at making friends. I became more outgoing. I didn’t wait to be included in conversations, but joined in at the right moment with an appropriate remark. Men weren’t standing in line to ask me out on a date, but they seemed to notice me now. I didn’t have to wait long before someone volunteered to get me up or down steps.
One guy often appeared at the right time, when I needed help. I figured we had the same schedule. He was nice-looking, with dark hair and brown eyes. His name was Paul.
“Ready to earn
