Thalidomide Boy

Our first few months in Egypt we stay at the Cairo Hilton, where the scrambled eggs are always watery and gooey, no matter how many times you beg or send them back. And then we live in a rented flat for a month or two. My six year-old Self as well as my ancient, already aged Inner Child is most impressed by a cripple on the street nearby, rolling along on a board with wheels. He must be a Thalidomide baby. He has no limbs at all, just one flipper that he uses to propel himself. A cigarette hangs almost sexily from his mouth. I love that. He is a poor, deformed mess, but he still has the insouciance to smoke.

I suffer through watery eggs every day. I want my mother. I imagine what it is like to have flippers instead of arms and legs. Powerless. Cursed. At least, I think, the Thalidomide Man is free. He is able to wear his True Self on his outsides. (I am probably very wrong about that. Now I think his True Self, the one in his heart, probably has legs, arms, hands...) But as repelled and scared as I am by him, I am also enthralled. And at least he can smoke in peace.

This is our first overseas trip with our new step-mother, Laura. Her pigtails, braces, and peasant blouses make her seem prepubescent. The hair under her arms does not. She is barely of legal age. I don't know why I'm being so snide about her since she is kind and deeply concerned about the three boys that have been dumped in her lap, me and my brothers Aaron and Gary. Laura later tells me about ongoing incidents where I disappear for hours at a time, rocking, eyes blank, like an autistic person, an idiot if not a savant. She says she takes me in her arms and holds me tight, desperately trying to will me into coming back, but that I am always reluctant to return. She worries one day I will disappear forever. I like that idea.