The Saffron Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

been before polio. Before my polio.
Don't you see? I wanted to shout at them. How can you pretend that nothing is changed? How can you sit there, talking and eating as if it were a normal day?
My life would never again be the same. I would never run down our quiet road, my hair blowing out behind me. I would never sit on my old childhood swing in the back yard and pump myself high into the air, feeling the satisfying rush of air and delightful dizziness when I closed my eyes and put my head back. I would never pirouette before a mirror in a pair of pretty high-heeled shoes. I would never stroll down a busy street with my girlfriends, stopping to look in store windows as we planned our lives. I would never again dance encircled in a boy's arms.
I would never live a normal life, and yet my father and mother pretended they weren't thinking about it. They pretended they were ignoring the fact that I sat like a propped-up doll in the corner of the kitchen, and for this I was angry with them.
I knew they loved me, and did all they could to make my life as pleasant as it could be. And yet I had no one else to be angry with, I couldn't be angry with God; I needed Him on my side. And so I was quietly angry with them, every time they laughed, every time they looked over at me, smiling. Every time my mother showed me a pattern, asking if I'd like her to make me a new dress. Every time my father held one of my paintings near a window, shaking his head and saying he didn't know where my talent had come from.
And not even that — the painting — gave me pleasure now. I had grown to love the feel of the brush in my hand, the way the soft colours bled on to the thick paper, the way I could create shadow and brightness with a subtle shift of pressure: I loved the sense of accomplishment I felt as an image moved from my mind to my hand, emerging on the blank paper.
The only small satisfaction I took now was in stroking Cinnabar, whispering to her and holding her against my chest as though she were a baby, and I her mother. Yet another of the you could have beens. I would never cradle my own child.
By the end of that first year I became the new Sidonie, the one who put away all hopes and dreams. I saw them as bright, pulsing lights, with the lid of a wooden box closing on them. The lid was rigid and hard, unmovable.
     

 
THREE

T he second year passed, and slowly, changes came about. I was finally able to sit up without assistance, and I moved from the bed into a wheeled chair. This gave me a certain freedom; after many attempts and many falls I learned to pull and swing myself from my bed into the chair without help. I no longer had to wait for my mother to come and assist me in bringing the pan or washing myself; I could wheel myself to the bathroom and into the kitchen. I could eat at the table with my parents. If my father or mother pushed the chair over the high doorway sill, I could sit on the porch in pleasant weather.
With this my spirits rose. On the porch one warm evening, I laughed at Cinnabar, seeing her leap straight into the air, frightened by a large cricket that hopped over her paws. My parents came to the doorway, and I told them about Cinnabar and the cricket.
My father opened the door and walked to me, standing behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it. 'It's the first we've heard you laugh since . . .' he said, and then stopped, turning away abruptly and going into the house.
In that instant I understood how much my parents had wanted — and waited — for that most simple and human response: my laughter. I understood how they waited for me to smile, to talk about ordinary things, to paint with passion. They wanted me to be happy:
I knew how much they had done for me. I was now past seventeen. Even if I would never accept what fate had handed me, I could pretend, for their sakes, that I still found pleasure in life. I owed them this, at the very least.
The next day I asked my mother to teach me how to