"History of a Half-Arm" is a piece of creative nonfiction that utilizes fragmentary, often chaotic narrative structures in order to explore the author's experience of living with and without a left-arm prosthetic. The author was born with what the medical community terms a "congenital abnormality of the left forearm" and was first fitted for a prosthetic at 3-months old. "History of a Half-Arm" captures the speaker's daily experience of navigating the world as a physically disabled person who has chosen not to utilize prosthetic technology.
i.
I am reading about sod houses again, looking at Solomon Butcher. The roots of the earth in a wall.
I'm hooked to my prosthetic, my one-armed friend tells me. I want to know how you got rid of yours. She smiles. I don't want to take mine off because…You understand? My friend and I were both given prosthetics as children––my first at three months old. I have stopped wearing mine, but my friend has not. The prosthetic clings to our bodies the way the sod house clings to the earth. The roots of our bodies in the wall of the artificial arm. But what if the roots don't hold? What if you want to rip the house apart?
I understand, I tell her. I want to write a history of our bodies––my body, her body, each stitched to the prosthetic; stitched like the sod house is stitched.
My first prosthetic was a metal hook, like how on Halloween the school kids would dress up as Captain Hook with tinfoil curved to their fingers, and I would hide beneath a sheet. I wanted to be a ghost because a ghost has no arms. I stopped wearing my prosthetic at 13, though I'd been trying to avoid wearing it for as long as I can remember. For some members of the disability community, prosthetics are innovative technologies that are welcomed by the wearer. For others, the prosthetic is a traumatic attachment that works against the functionality of the non-normative body. For me, most daily acts—like getting dressed, tying my shoes, typing, even carrying things—were easier without my prosthetic. More than that, from an early age, I wanted to embrace who I was and not what the prosthetic wanted me to be: a two-armed girl. This is the story of a decomposing house; the chronology of a null, a half-arm.
I understand, I tell her, but you have to . . . A prosthetic walks into a bar. No, wait, a one-armed woman walks into a party. The inconvenience of holding things. A prosthetic and a one-armed woman walk into a bar. The prosthetic is a hook. I could unhook you, I want to say to my friend, I could get rid of it for you. A one-armed woman walks into a party. No, really, a one-armed woman walks into a party and a self-announced neighbor from the building where the party's being held sits down beside her. Where is your prosthetic? he demands. The one-armed woman doesn't know this man. She doesn't want to respond but now the whole room is looking at her for a response. The question they'd all been waiting for. I left it at home, she almost says but realizes she doesn't want to lie. No, that's not funny. It's exasperating, once again, to answer the demanding question of difference. She doesn't have a prosthetic, she wants to tell them, and has no idea how to use one. She wants to make a joke. A prosthetic walks into a bar . . . This is the story of a decomposing house.
ii.
I collected onion sprouts when I was a kid, gathered them from my parents' front yard and chopped them up with my sisters to feed our cabbage patch dolls. Each onion stew was different. Sometimes more dirt than onion. Sometimes half an earth-worm pulled from the grass, its body leaking sideways into the ground because we had cut it in half. This was the slow growing: half an earth-worm in the thin and unwashed tin pot, the cut onion grass. My body leaning sideways into the blank of the yard. The prosthetic and my body. The prosthetic was not of my body.
iii.
In Manhattan, sitting at 125th street, I watch the water hug the coast of New Jersey. The helicopters circle the sky like mice. There is a bottom to the river. There is a mud floor, a silt canopy––dirty with muck, sprinkled with fish but mostly PCBs and mercury. There is the West Side Highway swelling along the edge of the island. There is the water. There is a bottom to the water. The chronology of slow. The prosthetic is about slowness, too. The slowness of growing into the plastic, the metal. I think again about the sod houses; the slow growth of the earth into a house. But the prosthetic is never that natural, that aligned. I look back to the river. My broken body is a mark. The river is better than a mirror I realize because I am more disperse. In a mirror I do not dare to look at my body. I do not want to see the undone idea of me. The river sees me how I want to be seen––the shred of a landscape.
iv.
A one-armed girl walks down a hall in eighth grade. Freak, he says and doesn't look at her. If only she could melt, at least the body would be one even puddle. Why is it so hot in this school, she thinks. How she hates short things, wants a long sweater to gobble her up, the way a cumulous cloud gobbles all vertices. A one-armed woman walks into a coffee shop. Once I couldn't use my pointer finger and it was awful, the man watching her says. She reaches for the cream. Do you have only one hand and would you like me to put that lid on for you? he says. She dumps sugar into her cup.
When she does not wear the prosthetic, she loses her body like the worm lost its body. It's cut in half, missing, to the man in the coffee shop and the kids in the hallway. Without the prosthetic, her half-arm leaks out. Her body confuses them.
She remembers how it took years to shed the creak of that first metal hook, the lifeless plastic frame from her stump. Had she ever really seen it before? The nearly scrunched and false flesh, the way a peony poorly impersonates rose petals and leaves? Even after the separation, it came back orbital.
v.
No one smiles in Butcher's photographs. The smile doesn't emerge in American photography until 1920, beginning with amateur photography and trickling up to formal portraits.
I'm hooked, she says, and smiles.
The prosthetic was a disguise for misalignment.
Burn the empire down, I tell her. This is the long walk of going away. The trick is to build, to build the sod house without concern for symmetry. You come back, but only horizontal. I want to know how you got rid of yours. I am in a grocery store, lit up beneath the halogen lights. A child stares at me. The cartography of falling. He is scared. He turns to his mom, asks Where is her arm, mommy? The cartography of a fall. SSHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! the mother says, and walks away, past the frozen beef patties. The microaggression. Where is your prosthetic, he demands. I don't know this man. I do not look at myself in the freezer glass. I pass myself over. I am more disappeared again. The child asks, What is the grass? And Whitman answers. I see myself as I want to be seen, unseen––the shred of a planet. The child asks, What is a body?
A one-armed woman walks out of a grocery store. The long walk of going away.
I have done nothing today other than try to survive in this body. The aggression of my body before you in the grocery store. At a party. In a photograph. In a bikini. The history of a half-arm, a null. Look in the mirror. Do not look in the mirror.
vi.
The metal factory in New Jersey. I go there, dive into the wreck. The ruin is a type of wreck, an unmanageable body. Like how my body is unmanageable for you. Like how you grab your elbow and stare at me there while you talk. Like how you sshhhhhhhh your child when they ask. It is June at the metal factory––smells of petroleum. The wreck of the factory against the wreck of my body, amber shells of milkweed by the barrels in the yard. I am the one-armed woman who walks into a metal factory. Where is her arm, mommy? The question's unasked here, unmasked. There is no arm and it is not missing. The microaggression of my body. I'm hooked to my prosthetic, my one-armed friend tells me. I don't want to take mine off because…You understand? I understand, I tell her, but you have to enter the wreck of the body.
In 1955, Ronson Metals, a manufacturer of specialty metal products for lighter flints and strikers, began production of metal at Manufacturers Place in Newark, NJ. Their manufacturing uses a volatile organic compound called trichloroethene (TCE). In 1989, Ronson Metals closes its location at Manufacturers Place. Subsequently, TCE soil and groundwater contamination is found around the site. Ronson remediates the soil contamination, but not the groundwater. In 1999, 19 homes and 5 industrial complexes are built on the former Ronson Metals site. In 2012, records show that TCE was detected in groundwater monitoring wells from 1995 to 1997. After visiting the site, NJDEP discovers that portions of the site have been redeveloped as residential space. NJDEP begins a vapor intrusion investigation. TCE can cause "birth defects."
The child asks, What is the body?
vii.
Introducing the world's most advanced artificial hand. Designed to look as real as possible. The disappearance of me in the freezer glass, at the party, in a coffee shop, on a sidewalk. Handle almost anything. Unlike any other hand. Almost anything. The fruity smell of grief in the rosebush, the deformity of me. Natural appearance. Natural. Real. The inconvenience of holding things.
A prosthetic and a one-armed woman walk into a bar.
Most artificial. The defect of me. Help to perform. I am missing something I cannot name. Designed to look as real as possible. Almost anything. The project of my body is a photochemical smog. The trick is to build. The trick is to build the sod house without concern for symmetry.
