Oct. 1, 2023
Audio
Disabled Child at the Community Pool
By Johnson Cheu
View full text below.
Disabled Child at the Community Pool
By Johnson Cheu
This is how it begins: ten fingers, ten toes,
or earlier: fetus, womb,
earlier still: sperm, egg,
even earlier: eyes, then lips, then…
Regardless, what matters is not how, when,
but, in the end, what emerges, whole.
They look to verify the expectation of whole:
ten fingers, ten toes.
If no, they wonder, the damage occurred, when?
A fall while in the womb?
She thinks, if I hadn’t, then…
Fetuses are fragile, brittle as the shell of an egg.
Parents’ voices heated, crackle like a frying egg.
For a time, everything breaks, unable to be whole.
Life becomes, if only this hadn’t, then…
Reeling, unable to grasp, grip, as their child does with toes,
they desire retreat, if not back to the womb,
then to a time when babies were simply a question of when.
Instead, the question becomes what to do, not when.
How to fashion the life that emerged from the egg,
how to protect him, as though he were still in the womb,
yet, let him live, free, and somehow, whole.
A firm foundation to plant feet, toes,
so he doesn’t think, if only I hadn’t been born, then…
So the child is here, a who is, not an if, then…
He splashes in the pool, oblivious to when
closing time is. He floats, and peaking above the surface, toes.
Mother packs their leftovers: sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg.
Father wades in to pull him out, his body, un-whole, yet whole.
Unheeding, he floats in the middle; the pool — his womb.
Of course, it’s not possible to stay in the womb,
to avoid the gawkers’ eyes saying, if not for God’s grace, then…
assuming their lives are more whole.
For him, his parents, life’s become a succession of when,
though wounds still may crack open, raw as an uncooked egg,
as others, staring, silently say, ten fingers, ten toes.
But this moment isn’t about fingers, toes, womb.
Toweled off, the child bites into the egg, inquires, after home, then…
fashioning his own expectations of when, his world already whole.
————————————————-
Citation
Cheu, J. (2008). “Disabled Child at the Community Pool.” Disability Studies Quarterly, 28(2).
Johnson Cheu
Johnson Cheu is a poet and assistant professor in the department of writing, rhetoric, and American cultures at Michigan State University. Cheu served as the inaugural fiction/poetry editor of Disability Studies Quarterly. His poetry has appeared widely in periodicals such as North American Review and Rattle, as well as anthologies such as Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. He is also the editor of scholarly film collections on Disney, Tim Burton, and Robin Williams.
Image description: Johnson Cheu is seated in his wheelchair attired in a black mock turtleneck.