(Dis)Ability: A Short Story Anthology

(Dis)Ability: A Short Story Anthology

Stories by:

Catherine Alexander

Jenny Andersen

Tracy Auerbach

Katrina Byrd

Ann Chiappetta

Sara Codair

Catherine Edmunds

Anita Goveas

Marilyn June Janson

Matthew B. Johnson

Jake Lovell

Christine Lucas

Ashleigh Meyer

Treva Obbard

Jon-Paul Reed

Jennifer Lee Rossman

Terry Sanville

Megan Seitz

Sophie Sparrow

Erica Verrillo

Compiled and Edited by Emily Dorffer

with help from Jon-Paul Reed

Copyright 2018 by Emily Dorffer

Smashwords Edition

This book is fictitious. All references to ancient, historical events, persons living or dead, locations and places are used in a fictitious manner. Any other names, characters, incidents and places are derived from the author’s own imagination. Similarities to persons living or dead, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Each story is owned by the original author and has been included in this anthology with their express permission. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Neural Plasticity by Anita Goveas

After First Contact by Terry Sanville

Thunder Carts by Sara Codair

Baby and House by Catherine Alexander

A Perfect Score by Jenny Andersen

Lessons Learned by Ann Chiappetta

Getting Unstuck by Marilyn June Janson

Change by Katrina Byrd

In the Smog by Catherine Edmunds

Conscious by Megan Seitz

A Rare Condition by Sophie Sparrow

A Pinch of Chaos by Christine Lucas

My Fight with Sam the Man by Tracy Auerbach

Oliver in Progress by Ashleigh Meyer

The Moth-Man by Jon-Paul Reed

The Karma Bug by Erica Verrillo

Foresight by Treva Obbard

Daisy by Jake Lovell

The Falling Marionette by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Wounded in Providence by Matthew B. Johnson

About the Authors

Permissions Acknowledgements

About the Editors

Foreword

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. Despite this, characters with disabilities are quite a rare sight in fiction. When they do appear, their representation often leaves much to be desired. It is distressingly common for characters with disabilities to be relegated to serving as little more than tools for the development of other characters. Whether they are portrayed as burdens other characters must take care of, saintly fountains of inspiration with all the personality of cardboard cutouts, or unhinged horror villains, characters with disabilities tend to get the short end of the stick.

Needless to say, this needs to change.

Like nondisabled people, we are dreamers, we are achievers, and, most importantly, we are people too. And we have our own stories to tell.

This anthology contains 20 short stories written by people with disabilities. Every story features a main character that has one or more disabilities. These stories aim not only to entertain you, but also to teach you more about various disabilities and the disabled community as a whole. In addition, I sincerely hope that this anthology will inspire more writers to include diverse casts of characters in their works. Even if you do not have a disability yourself, do not be afraid to write about characters with disabilities. As long as you do your research and think through the implications of what you write, you’ll do fine.

That’s enough soapboxing from me. Now, enjoy these stories!

Emily Dorffer

March 2018

Neural Plasticity

By Anita Goveas

It started when Vo Thi Mai was attacked by a giant hornet.

A bus approached Lovelace Gardens. Her watch beeped for 8:22, but there was a car parked close to the stop, obscuring the edge of the vehicle with its all-important identifying number. She stepped back as the bus stopped anyway and hugged her long, white cane to her chest to cause less disturbance. Then something from behind pushed up at her elbow, saying It's ok, I'll help you, and she was over the gap and on the bus.

A dark streak was talking at her in a husky, penetrating voice like the buzzing of a bee. Or a hornet. They're hard to tell apart. Loudly and slowly, the voice said, There's a seat just there. I can show you.

Then she was sitting down. Her knees slammed into a hard surface, confirming that she was in the disabled seats at the front. Her left elbow buried itself in soft fluffiness, hopefully someone's coat and not a meringue. A dark blue blob swam at the edge of her vision. Probably a coat.

Hornet-woman was still talking.

They're so brave, aren't they? I wouldn't leave the house! She must be going to the hospital. This isn't the quickest bus, but it gets there eventually.

The hospital was where she had visited Jason almost every week for four months, reading him Roddy Doyle and Kurt Vonnegut. Then, after the hemorrhage, playing Val McDermaid audiobooks and AC/DC after he woke up. Perhaps that was where it had started.

In a creamy high-pitched whisper, brushing past her wiry hair, meringue-person says

"Are you going to the hospital?"

She smells of newly budded geraniums, and her voice lilts like breeze-trapped trees.

No, I'm going to the university. I've got to meet my tutor, Mai whispers back, focused in conspiracy. Hornets become agitated by direct action.

I'm sorry, this is a K4, did you think it was a K3?

Unfortunately, hornet-woman has very good hearing. Oh dear, she thinks she's on the wrong bus. But this goes to the hospital anyway. I'm sure they won't mind if she's a bit late. They ought to make allowances.

The hospital is where Jason taught her the dirty poems he recited at the nurses when they came to change his catheter. The best way to lose your dignity is all at once, he said. The hospital is where she held his hand when they explained he would need intensive rehabilitation if he was ever going to walk again. The hospital is where she was rushed when the spreadsheet she was looking at filled with crimson streaks, and where she woke up with only outlines, no details. Perhaps this was where it started.

Meringue-person is shifting, sloth-like but with intent. The creamy voice steams out behind her, shifting the short hairs on her neck.

Listen, lady, we're just trying to chat here, sort out if there's a problem. Give us a minute?

Hornet-woman crackles, her coat or bag is leather. The whir of thwarted well-meaningness is audible to even those who aren't listening for it. The crackles move farther away.

Thank you, Mai says, unsure if she is grateful. Attention means questions means fractured narratives she can't fill. Her brain has supplied the gap in the meringue-person's blue edges with fluffy turquoise clouds. Where was her neural plasticity? She was a turtle that couldn't flip itself back over, even as the eagle approached.

Nah, couldn't hear myself think. It was no problem. This is kindness. Of that there is no doubt.

The bus jerks, about to stop. Mai could get off now and ring her mother who'd close her cafe immediately, drive to get her, and feed her refreshing iced coffee and savory pho. But the braille code and the Windows keystrokes and the six-week long course that taught her how to tap a cane for bat-like echolocation were about earning back her independence. That could be where it started, in the trail of insignificant activities that covered up the gaps. Falling back into her old life was easier than thinking about what was missing. Flowing with the expectations was simpler than starting with nothing.

Hornet-woman has not flown away. She has regrouped with new passengers who have not witnessed her rebuke. Her tale of helpfulness is swelling with the suspicion of ingratitude.

It's so sad. She's pretty. Such a waste. She thinks she's on the wrong bus, but I'll tell her when she's at the hospital. Mai is entangled in her certainty. Hornet-woman will never go away. She has latched on to Mai's yearning, her disquiet, her guilt and is feeding on the sticky mass.

This was where it started. When she was a person, not an object. Looked at, not overlooked. When her eyes worked, when she should have seen the truck before it hit them, before their car and her world flipped over. Jason taught her AC/DC lyrics and acceptance. She hasn't talked to him since the hospital, he might need to take the tiny steps back on his own, and she would weigh him down. But no one can teach you about all the ways you'll have to lose your dignity.

Mai breathes in, deep from her diaphragm, a brief sustaining gulp like a flying fish. She is Vo Thi Mai, trainee accountant, aquarium lover and part-time florist, daughter of Vo Tan Trai and Vuong Thi Han, optician and train driver, who started with nothing but themselves. Not all fish go with the flow. Some of them swim upstream. She pulls herself up to lean on the rail in front of her and turns toward the buzz.

When you lose your dignity, it's better to lose it all at once.

"There once was a barmaid named Gale

On whose breasts was the menu for ale

But since she was kind

For the sake of the blind

On her arse it was printed in Braille."

The buzzing stops. There's just the rumble of the engine, the growl of the traffic, the unabashed chuckling from her seat companion. In her hard-won quiet, she makes it to the bus driver, and asks if this is a K4 as she needs a bus that goes to the university. She says Yes, love, you can get off at the next stop and change.

As she makes her way to the doors, a blue blob swims at the edge of her vision.

Can I wait with you? That's the most fun I've ever had in the disabled seats. I usually get asked to move ‘cause they see my eyebrow piercing and not my heart condition. I'm Sheryl.

Thank you. I'm Mai. Dignity seems changeable, fluid, like tide surges and mercury. Jason will love this story.

After First Contact

By Terry Sanville

Dear Paul,

I have so much to tell you. It's hard to know where to begin. Typing this email on my laptop while the Number 6 rattles down Anacapa Street makes for slow going. But we have SOME time now . . . at least I hope we do. I'll start with when my life took its second major twist.

I was in the seventh grade then, and the kids called me Coffee Bean because my skin is dark, and they said I smelled funny. But I ran faster than most and was a scrappy little fighter, so they didn't say it to my face. Then I got sick, and they didn't call me anything. By the time Mom pulled me out of school, it was as if I'd already gone. Maybe I should back up.

I was on the junior high baseball team. Played center field. You should have seen me chasing down high flies, like Say-Hey Willie Mays, snatching the ball with a quick swipe of my glove. I could hustle, and that's when I first noticed it. I'd be running the bases when my right ankle would give out, and I'd slam face down into the dirt. Everybody laughed and called me a spaz. Coach ordered me to the bench to rest up and drink water. One day after practice, I was climbing the stairs to our tiny fourth-floor walkup on Valerio Street when my ankle failed. I grabbed for the railing, but my right hand wouldn't close. I bounced ass over teakettle down the stairs, breaking my arm and getting pretty banged up.

At the hospital, they put my arm in a lime-green cast. It became a big hit with my classmates. Then the tests began. Mom wouldn't leave it alone. She kept pestering the doctors to discover what was wrong; you know how she could get. I was content to stay ignorant. For the next month, I took the bus to Cottage Hospital and spent Thursday afternoons sitting alone in a drafty hallway, trying to do homework while waiting for the lab techs to draw my blood. The first time, this barely-out-of-high-school chick stuck me five times in the crook of my arm with what looked like a hollow nail. Finally, she gave up and called her supervisor. He jammed a syringe into the back of my hand. People stare at my hands now, not just because they're crooked but because my veins stand out like blue rivers, like ropes binding this strange-even-to-me body together.

When the test results came back, Mom took time off from waitressing, and we had a long talk with Dr. Spenoza. I can't remember much of the technical stuff. I do remember Mom crying on the drive home and snatches of his low monotone voice, the one they must practice in med school: . . . still lead a productive life . . . some cases progress slowly . . . new advances always being made. . . .

At least I wasn't a little tyke when I got muscular dystrophy — those kids don't make it past age 10. They said I could survive for decades. For a while, I didn't think that was necessarily something good. Mom blamed herself because Dr. Spenoza said MD is passed on through the mother's genes. How the hell could she have known? I was her first and last, was all she had.

After the initial shock and days of crying, she got stronger and charged forth on her last great crusade — making sure I could survive on my own. By the time I was diagnosed, I was lurching around junior high with a steel brace on my right leg. As I lost control of that side of my body, I had to learn to be a lefty. I couldn't write worth a damn, and my leg made getting around school hell. The Vice Principal insisted I leave and get special training at the Hidden Valley Academy. I remember playing against their baseball team in a practice game. They all seemed to have fun, but they were terrible players. They had retards and crips all mixed together. I was scared of becoming one of them, as if my weakness should make me content to sit drooling on some bus bench like the old men down at the Vets' Hall with their tin cups and sad eyes. (Sorry, didn’t mean to slam old guys. When I was a kid, they looked creepy. Now they seem, well, lucky.)

Depression hit me hard for a couple of years. Hey, I was way too young to accept a finite existence. I took it out on Mom. Seeing her at night in her soiled waitress uniform with her hair coming undone made my life seem desperate – and remembering you didn’t help. More than once I thought about blowing out our stove's pilot light, turning on the burners, and just fading away. I'm not sure what stopped me.

I couldn't climb stairs anymore, so we moved to a studio apartment in that rundown project on Modoc Road. It was full of families and single mothers with kids, some of them crippled like me. Mom said it was cheap, and with her wages and the SSI payments, we got by.

Hidden Valley Academy, now that was a weird-ass place. It seemed like half the students were MD, MS, or Polio sufferers whose bodies were falling apart but whose young minds were just coming alive. The other half never had minds, and were taught how to physically survive. I felt luckier than some. At least I could talk, although the right side of my mouth drooped, and I couldn't control the pitch of my voice.

I attended that school for seven years. They taught me the three Rs, how to use an electric typewriter, how to maneuver my wheelchair, how to set up our apartment so that essentials were within reach, and how to get around Santa Barbara on my own.

I was 24 when Mom died. The flowers you sent were beautiful, but you should have at least called. As usual, I was glued to the TV that whole day, soaking up the latest from Vietnam and watching whatever sports were airing. I hadn't noticed that Mom wasn't home at her regular time.