Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it your arm? Let’s see. Is it okay?”

She didn’t want to hurt his feelings by making him think he had hurt her. “Yes.”

“Can you bend it?”

She did not want him to go away and stop playing. She bent it. And asked for another airplane swing because he looked worried. She offered her right wrist this time and, too late, realized her mistake, for while the right arm was fine, the left one swung out; round and round it flew, unable to make its own way back to her side. She waited for the swing to end.

She did not cry.

“Want another one, sweetie?”

“No thanks, that was fun.”

Then they went swimming. The cold felt good. Like an injured dog, she hid the pain as though it were to do with shame. But by nightfall she could not conceal her need to support the arm by holding it against her body with the good one and her mother asked what she had been up to. “Nothing.”

The Bras d’Or lakes are not lakes at all, but an inland sea where fresh and salt water merge. The name means Arm of Gold.

The next day, her mother fashioned Mary Rose’s first sling from a colourful nylon scarf. It stopped hurting after a while and they forgot about it. Until the next sling.

The bone cysts were diagnosed in the nick of time thanks to another miracle. On the frozen waters of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, ten-year-old Mary Rose MacKinnon slipped and fell the first time. It was a fall that would eventually lead to a doctor, a diagnosis and cure. Our Lady made her break her arm.

It was during recess. She was in grade six, a good student, excelling at History, her ostracism now to do with high marks — no one could have suspected she used to be slow. She had one friend in class, a somewhat sinister bookish girl named Jocelyn Fish, but when it came to recess, it was more fun to play with the younger kids. She was among a group taking running slides on a strip of ice beside the yellow brick wall of the school, and was on her third turn when she fell and the burning broke out. It went swiftly from red to black, became V-shaped and loud. It grew bigger than she was, like a monster in a dream, until she was within a kind of enclosure looking out at the throbbing air; with something hard lodged in her arm, something that did not love her, something that did not know who she was or that she was anyone. She leaned against the wall and waited for it to stop. She held it by the wrist. The bell rang.

The arm was heavy, and after recess could not take itself out of her jacket on its own. She looked down at her hand, limp and yoked to the pain farther up. The hand looked worried. It looked rather ashamed too, for feeling fine — like a friend who is with you when you get run over. She sat at her desk but could not concentrate on the Boston Tea Party. When the hand moved, it made the pain wake up and scream, so it kept its head down. The pain would not go away. It made her have to go to the bathroom, pressed against her like a scary mentally retarded kid, getting heavier like a wet coat, getting darker, it gave her no choice but to go to the teacher and say, “I hurt my arm.”

The teacher knew her mother was away in Cape Breton visiting family, and she remarked to the new principal that Mary Rose was “just looking for some TLC.” Mary Rose did not know what the initials stood for, but smiled and nodded in order to make up for the bad manners of her arm, and the principal sent her home. “Tell your father you pulled a muscle.”

Sister O’Halloran might have called the doctor, but she had been transferred to Africa where they needed her more. The muscle refused to heal, despite the massages administered by her father, and by her older sister, Maureen, when he called her in to help, “Maureen, I need you.” There was a bit of a lump where the muscle was swollen, he gave it special attention. She stayed very still. This was what a pulled muscle felt like. She did not cry, sissies cry, crying feels like throwing up through your eyes.

“Thanks, Dad, that feels better now.”

He did not know how to tie a sling, so he used a length of duct tape to secure her arm to her side. “How’s that?”

“Way better.” And it was.

When her mother came home, she fashioned one from a nylon scarf — paisley this time — which made it feel even better because Mum, being a nurse, was an expert and Mary Rose got her second sling.

It was still tender a few weeks later when she fell again. It was now Christmas holidays. She tripped on the picks of her new skates — they had appeared under the tree, her first pair of “girl’s skates.” White, high-heeled and treacherous, figure skates nonetheless spared one the shame of being seen in “boy’s skates.” They were brand new and she had smiled hard to ward off the pathos occasioned by the thought of how sad her parents would be to see her disappointment. Andy-Patrick got a set of Hot Wheels complete with carrying case.

The “Waltz of the Blue Danube” was playing when she hit the ice face down at Kingston Memorial Arena. She was with a friend of sorts — a nice girl whose parents knew hers via the air force. She nearly threw up when she smacked to her stomach, but as long as you don’t cry, nothing will be wrong. Still, the darkness flared in her arm and she knew she had pulled the muscle again. She took the arm out of the sleeve, tucked it inside her fuzzy jacket and went to the friend’s home as planned. It was a two-storey house with a family room, in a subdivision on the other side of Kingston. They had a colour TV set.

By bedtime, the pain was cold and metallic like an aircraft wing, but quiet as long as she lay still. She felt very rude the next morning when she failed to eat the Lucky Charms and asked the friend’s mother if she could go home. It was inconvenient — the dad had not planned on driving her till after lunch. Mary Rose said, “I forgot, I’m supposed to go home for lunch.” She felt the disapproval of the mum and the annoyance of the dad. She could tell they thought she was lying — she was, but she was also at a loss to explain that she was not a liar. It did not occur to her to tell them her arm hurt.

She was not invited back. But she had known she had to go home at all costs. The friend’s kitchen was too bright. There were too many echoes, the ceiling was crooked. And the shape in her arm was a black triangle. Her mother was home this time.

But her father resumed first aid duties.

“I think I pulled the muscle again.”

She did not move during the massages. Get mad at it . Still, it seemed unfair that it should hurt more this time. After a while she said, “It’s okay, you can stop massaging now if you’re tired.”

“I’m not tired, sweetie.”

“You can stop now, Dad. It feels better.”

Another scarf, another sling. Her third. It did not get better.

“I guess I’ll call Dr. Ferry,” said her mother.

He came to the house. Mary Rose liked him, he always treated her as if she was a cool kid and it didn’t matter if she was a girl or a boy. Dr. Ferry examined her arm and said, “I thought I told you to quit jumping off the roof.” She grinned and felt better.

He took her mother aside in the front hall — they often joked together, both being medical types, but this time Mary Rose felt giddy as she heard his tone and caught some of the words, “… you telling me she’s … and you didn’t … till now? … what can happen? … what it could be?!” He was scolding her mother. No one did that — except, occasionally, her father, with a smack of his hand on the kitchen table, “That’s enough, now, Missus.”

An X-ray was ordered and it turned out she had bone cysts; her arm had been special all along, but too modest to boast. Her mother liked to tell the story. “Dr. Ferry really gave me what for. It turned out her arm was broken all along! But how could we know? She never cried, she never complained!” Mary Rose basked in the account of her own heroism, humbled before the majesty of her “high pain threshold,” so chose not to remind her mother that even Andy-Patrick knew about sorearm .