Story of a Cripple, Written by Himself

They will call you a cripple. You know this. You know this as surely as you know that there’s a “they”.

This is a prophecy and a history lesson. They will call you a cripple and you will laugh.

Freak shows hit their peak at the start of the 19th century. They were usually traveling, much like circuses, putting on their displays at taverns and fairgrounds. Some of the numbers included displays of talents (contortionists, animal tamers), but they were mostly exactly what it said on the tin: freaks. People who were deformed in some fascinating, hideous way would put on outfits to accentuate their bodies and exist. People who were lucky enough to be considered normal paid to stand by and try not to react. But how could you not? How could anyone look at a freak with a straight face?

It’s been two months since your accident and your leg is getting worse. The doctor doesn’t know what to do with you and he’s halfway to recommending cures for hysteria, but, while he offers to pray for you, you can’t walk around school or work anymore, so you buy a cane. So it begins. You’ve made a crucial mistake. The cane is a physical presence to prove what they could have ignored; it is a constant reminder to them that you are other. You’re broken.

They could have ignored your limp and your pain was easy to push aside, but a cane? A cane is permanent. They can’t ignore the cane. They trip over it time and again. The look they give it, the look they give you for a split second after they catch themselves, before they realize what it is, is full of confusion. They’re not expecting it. It doesn’t fit into their worldview.

It starts slowly, like a glacier gliding down towards the sea. Your friends start suggesting events for you to do as a group that you are no longer able to participate in. We could go ice skating, they say. Then, they see your cane. It is a reminder of the reality in front of them. They could ignore your pain. They can’t ignore a wooden stick.

So they lash out. You don’t make sense anymore, you’re ruining their plans with your leg, with your cane, with the way you make them feel stupid when they forget to accommodate for you. There is a way to make up for this feeling, for them. It is tried and true. Maybe they have been thinking it the whole time.

You hear someone mutter it as you pass by in the hall on your way to your English class. Cripple.

You stop and turn around to stare, eyebrows raised. You can’t believe your ears. You think you must have made a mistake. Who uses that word anymore? This is the modern age. No one is openly ableist now. Who still says that? What are you, some Victorian orphan hobbling around with a crutch?

You tell the story to your friends. If their laughter is strained, you ignore it.

People with disabilities were often presented as an undiscovered race of humans. Anyone with a visible deformation was fair game for a clever poster artist to claim their company had found a new brand of creature. After all, just look at them. They aren’t human. Not looking like that.

You don’t expect it from him. You knew some people would do it, you’ve heard other people do it,

| Thomas Malinovsky

but that was them. This is him. You trust him, don’t you?

You’ve been going out with him for two months now and he’s seen you break down over the looks you get. It’s either pity or disgust and confusion. The people always glance away by the time you spot them looking.

He calls you a cripple anyway. He calls you lame. He says that it’s a joke.

You don’t laugh.

It’s just a joke, he says. I don’t mean anything by it.

How could someone willingly put themself on display as a freak of nature? Many of the artists in freak shows simply had no other means of income. Coming from lower classes, some with families who had disowned them, they could not work in stable jobs due to either discrimination or physical disabilities. Freak shows, in a best case scenario, provided a sense of community and could even be run by the artists themselves to create a worker’s union and set wages. It was a communal living space and a way for marginalized groups to make money off of their oppression. But still, one cannot help but wonder. Did it feel like debasing themselves? When they wiped their makeup off at the end of the night, did they feel exhausted? Humiliated?

You start calling yourself a cripple. It is a victory and a surrender.

It comes with a thrill, like a swear. Like you’re a kid again. Your friends laugh. It feels good.

You ignore the knowledge, deep down, that their laughter is partly relief. They’re relieved you’re calling yourself that so they do not have to. They’re relieved you’re stating the obvious. They’re relieved you laughed at yourself before they had to.

Isn’t this better? Isn’t laughing at yourself better than others laughing at you? It isn’t exhausting. It isn’t humiliating.

It is only a little bit bitter.

Freak shows lost popularity after WWII. They were seen as having no place in a civilized society, such as the USA. Disabled people were looked at as pitiful or inspirational now. Yet, still, freak shows persist in some areas of the world. They advertise strange and abnormal people. They call themselves names. They are neither pitiful nor inspirational. They are bitter. They are loud. They make their audience uncomfortable. They make them scared. After all, they aren’t supposed to take control of the way they’re viewed. They’re supposed to be laughed at, pitied, and simply take it. They don’t. It’s terrifying.

Why do you call yourself that? they ask. It makes them uncomfortable. Why don’t you love yourself? You’re being so brave.

You could tell them they’re the reason why you do it. That they started it. But you know what they would say.

Oh no, not them. They’d never. Who says things like that, in this day and age? They’re accommodating. They were raised in good families, raised to open doors for you and carry your things for you and only think of you as lesser in their minds. They’re polite. They look away when you catch them staring. Isn’t that respectful of them?

You smile, wry. You make jokes. The laughter is still there, but it is nervous. They don’t know how to react to you. You’re not supposed to find this funny. You’re not supposed to make them feel bad. It’s supposed to be the other way around. You’re the victim, for them to pity or humiliate. What you are is supposed to be up to them.

When you wash off your makeup at the end of the day, you feel exhausted. You feel, sometimes, humiliated.

But, deep down, you feel a bitter kind of joy in owning what you are.