Woman with a Prosthetic Leg by Tom Bentley-Fisher

Bernice sits in her work clothes on the edge of the bed in her small bachelor apartment above Main Street not knowing what to do next. When she woke up that morning it all seemed so simple. Her manager asked her to do a window display in the Bargain Centre to show off the new running shoes that had been shipped in from Grand Forks, and just before she’d gone to sleep she’d had this terrific idea about using her dead husband’s prosthetic leg. Her plan was to hang the leg from the ceiling of the window and put one of the new running shoes on its foot, classy like, as if it was ready to power that leg straight to the Olympics. But to figure out how she needed the leg. And she’s frightened. She can’t bring herself to open the closet door.

When her husband died eighteen months ago he didn’t have his leg attached. After the funeral she wanted to give it to the Goodwill, but it seemed kind of disrespectful seeing as it was the only part of his body that didn’t have cancer. Besides, who’d want a dead man’s leg? Anyway, things work out because now there was a real need for it.

Bernice knows she should just pull the leg out of the closet and let that be the end of it. But somehow she can’t. It’s as if Stuart is still holding on. And there’s something kind of beautiful in that, a sort of dignity, which confuses the heck out of her because the bugger sure didn’t have any dignity in real life.

Bernice checks her watch and figures she has another few minutes before the store opens. She remembers the time she told Stuart she was thinking of buying a good pair of running shoes because she thought she might take up jogging seeing as how there was so much open space between the trailer court and nowhere at all. She remembers how he got all indignant-like and puffed himself up like a one-legged crow. “Stupid idea,” he said, “they were too close to the Indian Reservation – it was dangerous to be running back and forth along an Indian Reservation in an expensive pair of shoes.”

She looks intently at the closet door. Cheap bastard, she thinks, and what a stick in the mud. They never did anything out of the ordinary, never even been to the Reserve. It was only a few miles from the trailer court and they’d never been. Bernice had seen her share of Indians though. They came to town sometimes, although they didn’t come into the Bargain Centre much. She figured they probably drove all the way into Minot to that new fancy Walmart she heard so much about, driving down the new paved highway in their expensive cars. She’d heard they were all pretty loaded since they opened that casino. And not just with money, if you know what I mean.

No, never been to a casino either, Bernice sighs, just stayed in the trailer court until he goes and dies without any insurance and I have to sell the trailer to pay for the funeral. Oh well, at least he’s dead, maybe now I can get rid of his goddamn leg.

Bernice shudders with fear, a flush spreading across her face. What is my problem, she reprimands herself, his leg is still in the closet? Show a little respect woman, he’s family after all.

She stands up and sits down again, thinking maybe she can hear a rattling from the closet and thinking about that socket bit above the knee that never quite fit right because he was too cheap to get a technician, or whatever you call those leg people, to take a look at it. She checks the clock above the sink and knows she should be pulling herself together but she can’t. So she just sits, frozen in her loneliness, and thinks about this story Heidi once told her.

Heidi is this woman who started work the same time she did after this guy Gary came in from Grand Forks and fired everyone so he could hire all over again at minimum wage. She likes Heidi and if she had friends certainly would’ve counted Heidi as her best friend. Anyway, Heidi told her this thing about a couple of Indians out on the Reservation and about how they got rid of their human remains. Bernice found the story kind of tender, inspiring even.

I guess there was this old Indian guy who believed that when you die you have to have all your body parts buried together or you don’t get to go the hereafter or wherever you’re supposed to end up as a dead Indian. Now that wouldn’t usually be a problem but this old Indian fellah goes and gets cancer and the hospital wants to take his leg off, sort of like what happened to her husband (no, exactly what happened to my husband, thinks Bernice), so they amputate one night at the hospital in Minot. She thinks it was Minot. It might have been Bismarck. But wherever it was, it was a ways off. Anyway, this old guy has these sons like and they go into the hospital bold as brass because they want the leg. They want to bury it on some holy ground or something or other on the Rez. I guess they figure they can get the rest of the old man later when the rest of his body dies and join it up with his leg. But they’re not stupid these Indian boys. They know it’s not legal to walk off with body parts out of a hospital (unless maybe you got some of that fancy insurance which Bernice’s husband sure as heck didn’t have any of), so being resourceful young men they go and bribe one of the hospital garbage men or whatever you call them, (disorderlies or something), and sure enough some nice young man in a uniform hands over their father’s leg. Probably cost a pretty penny, although you can’t really put a price tag on a good leg can you? Anyway, they were from the Reserve so probably had enough to meet the going price.

Bernice begins to feel a bit calmer sitting on the edge of her bed. She likes thinking about those young men. If she’d had children, she’d have appreciated that kind of gesture, she’d have felt very loved indeed.

So anyway, they must have had plenty of cash because on the way back to the holy spot a police cruiser pulls them over for speeding. And this policeman fellow looks in the back seat and what does he see? He sees an Indian blanket. You know, the kind they sell at Powwows or whatever all that dancing stuff is. But it’s all bumpy. Like there’s something under it for sure. So after the cop whips out his gun and looks in the trunk for the rest of the body and checks ID and all the stuff you do when you pull someone over for carrying an illegal dead leg without a body, these sons of the leg hand over money for the second time that day. And they bury the leg.

But what do you know, two weeks after that, the rest of the old Indian goes and kicks the bucket, just two weeks after an expensive amputation. Two weeks! So the boys pick up the rest of their daddy’s body and dig up the hole where they buried the leg. Bernice can’t remember whether Heidi said anything about joining the leg with the rest of the body or anything, but at least it was all together in the same hole and the whole body got to go united to the other side.

Now that is a beautiful story about a real family, thinks Bernice, touching, a happy ending. Then she remembers the problem about her own leg. No happy ending for me, she thinks. I bet I meet the cheap bastard over on the other side, one leg and all. Probably have to carry his goddamn prosthesis through the Pearly Gates.

So she decides to forget the whole thing. Let him keep his goddamn leg, she thinks, never gave me anything when he was alive, why should I expect something now? I’ll think of something else to put in the window.

Bernice feels pretty good about her moment of clarity and decides to go to work, but just when she is about to head for the door she hears a rattling again coming from closet, and before she knows it she’s run over to the kitchen nook and grabbed a fork.

She counts to ten and begins to approach the closet door. When she catches a glimpse of herself on the side of her toaster she feels ashamed and begins to talk herself through it. She knows she’s acting like a scaredy-cat, it’s not like she’s in a horror movie or something, and even if she was, what was she supposed to do if things got out of hand? Prong the darn thing to death? It’s only a leg for goodness sake, it’s already dead. All she needs to do is pull it out of the closet. Besides, she could use the extra storage space; it’s only a bachelor apartment and there’s not much room in a bachelor apartment. It’d be perfect for family albums, she thinks to herself, if only she had a family.

She puts the fork between her teeth, opens the closet, reaches in behind the smart lavender dress she’d wear to church if she went to church, and feels around for the leg. When she finds the upper thigh she gives it a good tug, knocking over a box of underwear and socks. Then she drags it to the outside and hauls it over to the bed, throwing it onto the quilt.

Stepping back into her little kitchen nook, she examines the darn thing. Then she turns on the kitchen tap. Bernice doesn’t know why she turns on the tap, but she turns on the tap. Maybe because she doesn’t want her dead husband to hear her thoughts, she thinks. Then she takes the fork from her mouth and steps a little closer to the bed. What she’d really like to do is snap up the edge of the quilt, whip it across the bed, roll the leg into a neat bundle, and drag it into the car. Oh how she wishes she had a car.

But she doesn’t have a car. She has a suitcase. So she pulls an empty suitcase from under her bed and wraps the leg in the quilt, trying to bend the leg so it’ll fit into the suitcase, the knee socket springing up and down as if begging for its life. Finally, after managing to cram the leg inside, she sits on the suitcase and catches her breath, looking at the blank wall in her bachelor apartment above Main Street.

Bernice discovers that she likes sitting on her husband’s prosthetic leg. It makes her feel in control. Besides, if she gets off the bed the suitcase is likely to pop open again and it was such a struggle to get the darn thing inside in the first place. She feels trapped but strangely peaceful, enjoying the feeling of her weight pressing down on the case. She enjoys breathing into the lower quarters of her body, letting the muscles of her rear-end relax onto the lid of the case, giving over to the gravity that’s holding the leg beneath her. It’s her husband’s leg after all and she feels just fine sitting on it. It’s not like there’s a demand for the thing or anything like, it’s not like she’s expecting a couple of Indian boys to rush over in a big car and take the thing away. She’s here in the privacy of her own bachelor apartment and if she wants to sit on the leg then she’ll sit on the leg. 

Something’s happening to me, she thinks. I don’t know what it is but I feel it. I think I’m glad. I’m glad he’s dead.   

Bernice begins to feel a little guilty thinking her thoughts about a dead husband so starts to bounce. Little bounces at first, the springs of the bed pinging along with her, then a bit higher until she can feel the hard prosthesis below the surface of the suitcase. She enjoys the feeling of riding up and down on the leg and wouldn’t have minded one bit if she bounced so high the knee sprocket thing bust off completely. She knew she was being disrespectful, but heck, it was fun, the bed clapping against the linoleum, the springs moaning out loud, her big bum squashing the suitcase as her old man hangs on for the ride of his life. If he’d ever let her sing, she might have broke into song that very moment.

All of a sudden Bernice starts to feel afraid again. But this time it’s all mixed up with anger. And as she keeps bouncing, she listens to the rage running through her mind. What she’d really like to do is dismember his entire leg, or build a bonfire and cremate the bastard all over again right outside the Bargain Store, or take him across to the Catholic Church and have him dis-communicated. And then she starts thinking about how much it would actually cost to cremate a prosthetic leg and before she knows it she’s dragging the suitcase past her kitchen nook toward the front door.

Bernice does not stop to put on her coat. She opens the door and hauls the case down the narrow mildewed hallway to the stairs where she lifts and carries it down steep steps, careful to keep the bulky side of the shiny vinyl away from her thigh. She opens the door at the bottom of the stairs and steps into the sunlit street.

Bernice clenches her eyes against the sun and walks toward the highway at the end of town, picking up her pace as she closes in on the Bargain Centre. Passing the empty display window she catches the reflection of a young Native boy wearing a T-shirt advertising the new casino on the Reserve. When she glances at the sidewalk behind she can see he’s wearing a pair of brand new Reeboks. 

Bernice doesn’t know where she is going; she only knows she must get there. She hauls her suitcase down the street, the faint clatter of a loose knee sprocket keeping time with the rhythm of her gate.

***

Bernice kneels on the flat grassland at the Indian Reserve and puts the gardening trowel she’d bought at the convenience store on the side of the highway into her empty vinyl suitcase. She sees the lights of cars driving the side road and figures it’s well past ten; might even be closer to midnight.

She’d managed to dig a pretty fair trench kind of thing in the dirt. It was still the middle of summer and was pretty light even with the sun down, so she could see good enough. When it had started getting darker, she finally opened the suitcase and hauled the leg out. She straightened the bumpy knee bit so it looked sort of natural like and laid it beside the trench.

After a long while she placed it in the hole and sprinkled it with dirt. The hole wasn’t as deep as she’d have liked, but it was deep enough to sprinkle it with dirt. She didn’t say anything to the leg or nothing like that. She just watched it disappear.

Tom Bentley-Fisher

Image: See page for author, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. An old fashioned prosthetic leg with a leather harness to attach it to the stump.