 |
Claire LeBrint Metzger at age 80,
the age of fictional Claire, narrator of the book
Twists and Turns There Once Was a Dream |
I was born with webbed fingers.
I write this
frightful six-word sentence and identify my condition the way they did in 1914
when I was born. Today in 1994, close to the end of the twentieth century, now
that I have reached the august age of 80 years old, I announce publicly this
deformity as my own. The medical term for this birth condition is syndactyly, a
term I learned somewhere along the way. It is used to identify when a child is
born with two or more fingers and/or toes connected by skin, fused one to the
next.
I was the
fourth child born to my young immigrant mother in six years. Her eldest two
daughters, Mary, four years old and Rose, three, were finally able to watch out
for each other. But her only son George was not yet two.
I was born at
home, in our cold-water flat in Chicago’s Jewish West side. The midwife must
have announced, “It’s a girl!” My mother was probably disappointed that I
wasn’t a second son and might have been thinking, What do I need another girl for, I already have two, and this girl now,
so soon after George?
But at least I
was healthy, wasn’t I?
The midwife
must have done the customary counting of fingers and toes. My tiny hands might
have been closed into fists and if so, the midwife would have gently opened
them and seen webbed fingers on both hands. Even if the midwife was familiar
with this condition, she most likely would not have said it out loud to my
exhausted mother. I imagine that the midwife quickly washed me, wrapped me up
in a blanket and handed me to my mother and figured that the awful truth would
come out soon enough.
Of course, it
must have come out when my mother held me for the first time, looked me over
and saw for herself. On my left hand in place of a pinky finger was a tiny
round nub of skin and then three tiny fused fingers. On my right hand, all four
fingers were fused. Did she wrap her hands around my little deformed hands to
hide them from her sight, only to start shuddering at the feel of all those
bones connected by skin where my fingers should have been? As I write these
words, I shudder imagining what it might feel like if I were the one instead of
her holding my poor little hands.
My earliest
memories are from age four and by then my fingers were separated and the only
thing that seemed strange to me was the little round nub on my left hand. I
didn’t think anything much about it. Neither did my siblings and the
neighborhood kids. We were too busy playing and fighting and running and taking
care of our many brothers and sisters, and staying out of the way of our
overworked parents. Important stuff like that.
I was a bright
little girl with older siblings and at age four I already knew how to count to
five, which was an important number on the day that Ma took me aside. That day
I felt special – I was one of five children by then and never got time alone
with Ma. She pointed to her fingers and then to mine. I looked closely and saw
that on each hand Ma had a thumb and four fingers, five all together. On one of
my hands (the left one) I counted out loud three fingers. I didn’t count the pinky
nub. Ma then pointed to my other hand and I counted five, a thumb and four
fingers, just like she had.
The fingers on
my right hand are funny looking: four crooked fingers, all of them shorter than
normal and two do not have finger nails. But at my young age, I didn’t know
what Ma was showing me. I could tell she was upset, angry and sad when she
pointed once more at my fingers and told me that the evil eye gave her a child
like me to punish her, because as she said, “I left my dearest most loved
mother, your grandmother, in the old country to come to America. I didn’t want
to leave her all alone. She cried and I cried buckets of tears but she insisted
I must go to get away from the pogroms.”
I looked at my
fingers more closely. They looked normal except for the pinky nub. I didn’t
understand “evil eye.” The whole concept of evil was beyond me and I didn’t
know the word “pogroms,” but I remember to this day the bad feeling I got that
somehow I was to blame.
Eventually as I
grew older and learned more, I understood that the “evil eye” was a
superstition Ma brought with her from the old country, and came to appreciate
why my grandmother insisted Ma go to America to get away from the danger and
death caused by the pogroms perpetrated by the Russian Cossacks and the Russian
peasants who joined in.
My parents
never talked about when my fingers were separated, and I never asked. Why would
I? During my childhood my fingers worked fine, so there was nothing to ask. At
some point (I don’t remember when), I understood that the reason my fingers
looked the way they did was that they had been fused when I was born. But even
as an adult I never asked Ma or Pa about this because I knew it would open up
old wounds and sad memories
Surprisingly as
early as 1902, doctors performed surgery to separate conjoined fingers and toes
and they determined it was best to do the surgery on children between six
months and two years old. Most likely my surgery was done before age two.
However, before then I imagine Ma being reminded of her punishment every day when
she bathed me and had to open my little deformed hands to wash them and when I
perhaps learned to hold a bottle awkwardly or not at all. I imagine her horror,
shame, sadness, and anger. And though she may have had women friends to go with
her when I had the surgery, I’m sure during that time she missed her mother
horribly, dreadfully. Ma’s closest female cousins lived in Philadelphia, too
far away to be with her and I’m sure Pa was working extra hours to pay for the
surgery. No health insurance in 1914-1915.
Surgery was
done, my fingers worked okay and Ma never mentioned them again after that one
time. Maybe I’m making this up, but it seems to me that during my entire life,
Ma treated me differently partly because of my fingers. Or maybe it was me. I
tried always to be somewhat removed from her, not interacting if I could get
away with it, even during the many years as an adult when I lived with her and
Pa and my younger sister Perle. I can say this now after years of pondering my
place in our family that I was trying to keep away the feeling that I was at
fault for Ma’s sadness and anger.
END OF CHAPTER 1
DID YOU LIKE CHAPTER 1 of Betsy Fuchs' imagined memoir, Twists and Turns There Once Was a Dream, which is based on the life of Betsy's aunt Claire LeBrint Metzger? You can buy the book and learn what happens next to this most interesting woman.
Paperback and Kindle versions are available
from Amazon.com. Search in Amazon by entering book title: Twists and
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