When I was a 9 years old, I was invited to go to Morgan Hill. I think the family across the street felt sorry for my mom, who was heavily pregnant and grateful for a day of uninterrupted napping. They didn't know that we felt sorry for them.
Sabrina was 2 years younger than I was, and Tammy was 2 years older, so I wasn't really in sync with either of them, but we hung out together by default of proximity. Tammy had a claw, which pretty much made her a freak and a social outcast back then. She said her umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around her arm and she was born with a stump below her elbow. Her father Felix, seemed to resent her for it and treated her harshly - especially when he had been drinking - as if she had really fucked something up for him.
The affection he with held from Tammy, he lavished on Sabrina, and she quickly perfected the art of feminine manipulation, usually at the expense of her older sister. Tammy would try her hand - so to speak, but temper tantrums did not play well on her noble Aztec features. Sabrina was more fair and her European nose and thin lips turned pouts into weapons that crippled her father. At the time I had no comprehension of the complicated depths of human emotion, but it was clear that looking at Sabrina brought Felix great pleasure, whereas looking at Tammy caused him pain and angst and possibly regret. There was something viscerally disgusting about it too.
Tammy was strong and kind hearted and gentle, but I also felt sorry for her. However, I felt sorry for her because of her father, not because of her claw. I made it a point not to feel sorry for her because of her disability, because it seemed the right way to face something that you can't do anything about - but the truth is, I did. Kids were really, really mean to her in ways that adults forget are possible. I know she felt inadequate, self-conscious, and unwhole. Once, she qualified for a special research program and went away to some clinic for a week and came back with a new "pross-thee-sees" that looked like a real hand. It had a skin-like texture and worked in the same magic way as her claw, except instead of opening and closing a hook, the thumb and first two fingers made a pinching motion, while the others just hung there, waxy and stiff. I paid compliments to its subtlety, but I was more than a little spooked by it. The claw seemed more honest, somehow.
I assumed that I liked Tammy well enough, but I also got very annoyed with her, especially when she was throwing a temper tantrum when she wasn't getting her way. It struck me as a revelation that I could have negative feelings towards someone with a handicap. I assumed they got a pass. That they were allowed to be dicks on account of all the inconveniences they have to suffer. Yet, here I was disliking someone who ties her shoes with a hook. I thought it might make me a bad person, but that it required more research, so I agreed to accompany them to Morgan Hill to visit some cousin or uncle or someone that had just moved onto a small ranch, and we chased chickens and milked a cow and looked at some kittens that had just been born and we chewed on some hay and climbed on a pick up truck and played hide-and-go-seek in the cool musty barn.
