Dance of the Crippled Angel

“Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy.”

There was never any such thing as a nice, warm sunny day of summer in my collective memory of my childhood. For each day brought me pain and suffering. I knew not the carefree whims of any day, night or seasons. Instead, each was marked by a different scar, some which penetrated my flesh. Others which sunk into my heart.

My mother was chasing me and my sister Elaine outside. I’m not sure why or what had happened before hand, but I remember running as fast as my little feet would take me, I was on the heels of my sister. We ran through the living room past the fire place, into the kitchen heading for the back door which led to the breezeway. Elaine was in front of me and she reached the door first. As she flew threw that door, I saw it coming back at me fast. I put out my hands to avoid it slamming into my face. It was a plate glass window. I went right through it! The only thing I can remember was lying on the floor of the breezeway outside of the house. Elaine was screaming, “Mom!! Diane is dying!!” I’m not sure how he got there, but my dad was suddenly picking me up and carrying me. Behind him was my mother with a pile of white bath towels. My father wrapped about eight of them around my arm, they were all quickly soaked in my red blood. When we arrived in the emergency room I was immediately put on a gurney and rolled into a large room with big lights hanging from the ceiling. I was scared to death being surrounded by all these people dressed in white yelling at each other what to do.

This is when I started to scream and go crazy. I was absolutely petrified! They kept yelling at me to stop screaming and lay down. But I refused. After trying to get me to calm down, and loosing this battle, I was put in this cloth contraption. The easiest way I can describe it was it looked like a big sleeping bag. It came all the way up to my neck, with my left hand wrapped and strapped down to my side. So my head stuck out and my entire right arm was also sticking out of the sleeping bag like a cocoon. I couldn’t kick or move anymore. And my right arm was now exposed and strapped down securely.
I was wide awake and looked over at my right arm, which had taken the brunt of the damage. My skin was torn open clear to my arm pit. I could actually see my bones and
these different sized sparkling pieces of glass throughout the pink flesh inside of my entire arm. I watched as the doctor took these long tweezers and picked out pieces of
glass from the deep cuts in my flesh. It seemed to take a life time, as he tried to keep any of the glass from cutting my veins and arteries. He repeated the same procedure for both
of my hands.

I watched in complete silence and listened carefully as he kept telling me that I must remain completely still as he fished out the glass, otherwise, I could get hurt even more. I did exactly what he told me to do because he had promised to buy me a baby doll. You must realize I was only a girl of seven years old, and hearing I would get the reward of a new baby doll for being completely still and quiet, was like a trip to heaven. He told me
the next room over, where I could clearly see the door from the table I was laying on, was filled with shelves of all different kinds of baby dolls. I was so excited thinking of the prospect of being able to pick out any doll I wanted when he was all done with me.

You see, as a small girl, I had no toys. No books to read, no coloring books or crayons. I wanted my own baby doll to play with, to mother, to love. I imagined all the different
kinds of baby dolls in that room. Ones with black hair, blonde hair, brown hair. Blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes. Little ones and big ones. You can’t imagine what I envisioned behind that door. Silly little girl.

As I was being rolled out to see my parents after the surgeon was done with me, I tried desperately to see what was in the room with the baby dolls. We approached the door to
that room and I began to tell the nurses that the doctor told me I could have a special baby doll from that room. I asked them to please stop moving the table and roll me in there to pick one out. They just looked at me and laughed.

One of the nurses told me there’s no dolls in that room, he just said that so you would be quiet. She even went further and opened the door so that I could see there were no dolls in that room. I can remember feeling absolutely betrayed by them all.

I started to cry again, only I wasn’t screaming, I was crying very quietly. Deep inside I started to believe that all big people were nothing more than liars.