Gertrude Read Free Page A

tight to me, and, as we set off, I felt her clasp me and cross her hands on my chest. I wanted to shout something back to her but I could no longer do so. The slope was so steep that I felt as if we were hurtling through the air. I immediately tried to put both feet on the ground in order to pull up or even overturn, for suddenly I was terribly worried about Liddy. However, it was too late. The toboggan whizzed uncontrollably down the hill. I was aware of a cold, biting mass of churned-up snow in my face. I heard Liddy cry out anxiously—then no more. There was a tremendous blow on my head as if from a sledgehammer; somewhere there was a severe pain. My last feeling was of being cold.
    With this brief and frenzied toboggan ride, I atoned for all my youthful overexuberance and foolhardiness. After it was over, among many other things my love of Liddy had also evaporated.
    I was spared the tumult and agitation which took place after the accident. For the others it was a painful time. They had heard Liddy shout out and they laughed and teased from above in the darkness. Finally, they realized that something was wrong and climbed laboriously down to us. It took a little while for them to calm down and really understand the true situation. Liddy was pale and half unconscious, but quite unharmed; only her gloves were torn and her delicate white hands were a little bruised and bleeding. They carried me away thinking I was dead. At a later date I looked in vain for the apple or pear tree into which the toboggan had crashed and broken my bones.
    It was thought that I had a serious concussion but matters were not quite so bad. My head and brain were indeed affected and it was a long time before I regained consciousness in the hospital, but the wound healed and my brain was unharmed. On the other hand, my left leg, which was broken in several places, did not fully heal. Since that time I have been a cripple who can only walk with a limp, who cannot stride along or even run and dance. My youth was thus unexpectedly directed along a path to quieter regions, along which I traveled not without a feeling of shame and resistance. But I did go along it and sometimes it seems to me that I would not willingly have missed that toboggan ride and its effect on my life.
    I confess that I think less about the broken leg than about the other consequences of the accident, which were far happier. Whether it can be attributed to the accident, the shock and the glimpse into darkness, or the long period of lying in bed, being quiet for months and thinking things over, the course of treatment proved beneficial to me.
    The beginning of that long period of lying in bed—say, the first week—has quite vanished from my memory. I was unconscious a great part of the time, and even when I finally recovered full consciousness, I was weak and listless. My mother arrived and every day sat faithfully beside my bed in the hospital. When I looked at her and spoke a few words, she seemed calm and almost cheerful, although I learned later that she was very worried about me, not for my life but for my reason. Sometimes we chatted for a long time in the quiet little hospital room. Yet our relationship had never been very warm. I had always been closer to my father. Sympathy on her part and gratitude on mine made us more understanding and inclined to draw closer, but we had both waited too long and had become too accustomed to a mutual laisser faire for awakening affection to show itself in our conversation. We were glad to be together and left some things unspoken. She was again my mother who saw me lying ill and could care for me, and I saw her once again through a boy’s eyes and for a time forgot everything else. To be sure, the old relationship was resumed later and we used to avoid talking much about this period of sickness, for it embarrassed us both.
    Gradually I began to realize my position, and as I had recovered from the fever and seemed peaceful,