Free Dear Digby by Carol Muske-Dukes Page A

gave him the karate chop. After I smelled the so-called vitamin serum. I wanted him to pay for what he did to me. Then I started thinking about how ridiculous he was, and helpless—helplessly in love with me. I just kicked him, maybe ten times, then I left him for the security people. But you must know about pursuit by men; you’re a pretty girl too, Willis. In fact, I think we look somewhat alike.”
    There was a pause. Each symmetrical eye of my own looked into a separately wandering one of hers.
    “We could be taken for sisters, nearly. Except perhaps for the eyes.”
    “The eyes.”
    “Yes. Mine are so chocolate brown and yours are green.”
    “Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s a significant resemblance otherwise.”
    “You know, Willis,” she said, “it’s difficult to be a beautiful woman in this world, don’t you think? I mean, for me, apart from this tiny handicap, my arm here, I’m a goddess. But I don’t want to complain too much about that difficulty, about the nagging thousands of would-be lovers, who I spurn because I just don’t want cheap physical love. I mean, I should remind myself how lucky I am, how fortunate. To have this kind of beauty, when others are so deprived.”
    “Do you mind if I ask you … how you lost your arm?”
    She closed both eyes; she looked as if she were about to “recite.”
    “Oh, no, of course not. It was an accident, a freak accident. I was a little girl, nine years old. My mother, my beautiful mother—her hair was bright red and she wore it in a French twist—had taken me to the park to get some ice cream. It was very hot, we wore thin sundresses and white shoes. I remember everything. I remember how cool Mother looked, even though it was scorching—and how she smelled: lily-of-the-valley talcum powder. We stood in line a long time at the ice cream truck—Mr. Yummy, it was. One of the ones that rolls up, opens a window, and serves the whole neighborhood. I remember the music-box chimes playing ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’ It was so hot in line that I started to complain, and my mother said, ‘Iris, don’t fret. It won’t help anything, won’t make it go faster if you fret, will it? Look,’ she said, ‘there’s a little boy who’s crippled and he’s not complaining at all, see? Don’t look right away, but see?’ And I was ashamed of myself, and then it was almost our turn, we were next, and I was thinking about whether I wanted a double-fudge nut or a peach Dreamsicle. I reached up with my right hand, my quarter in my right hand—see?—and looked at the ice-cream man’s face and … Then there was a noise so loud that you couldn’t hear it. You know what I mean? It was like being hit by an invisible semi, a fifty-ton truck going ninety miles an hour, hitting you head-on. And then I was flying through the air, and then I was on fire flying through the air, and then I felt something hit me in the air and smash right through my teeth, then suddenly I heard screams and shouts and my arm felt like a candle, like wax burning at my shoulder. But I kept thinking: Dreamsicle, Dreamsicle. My hair was burning, I smelled it, and I remember thinking how will I find my mother with my arm gone? And then I hit something very hard—and I was knocked out.
    “Well, there’d been an explosion. The ice-cream truck blew up. It blew up because it had a gas-powered generator that had a leak that ran down the gas line from the carburetor and dripped on the muffler and caught fire and blew up the truck’s gas tank. Four people were killed: my mother, the ice-cream man, a little girl, and the crippled boy. I think the crippled boy, but it may not be true. I woke up in the hospital—in a plastic tent, with a strange clear tube full of green liquid where my arm had been. Or maybe there was none. Just air. When I got a little better, the plastic surgeons started. Willis, they’re geniuses. I mean, they worked on me night and day, and look at this miracle —they saved my beauty and