Field Notes: The Woman at the Gym [Story #21]

The woman with no legs is on the treadmill. Her prosthetic limbs click slightly as she power walks up the steep incline. Sweat drips down her wide back and along her neck, but she keeps going.

I’m behind her in the gym, powering through one of my elliptical machine workouts. Round and round, go the legs. Forward and back, go the arms. Moving. Going nowhere.

I almost didn’t come to the gym today. My mind was lazy; my limbs felt knotted, like twists in wrought iron railing bars. But I dragged myself out the door and, once you’re out the door, half the battle is won.

I’d seen the woman with no legs before. She startled me when I walked into the locker room. There she was—legless, clad in a bathing suit as she rested on the floor on her stubs and backside. Her dark skin hung in folds around her body, like a curtain protecting her from outside oglers. People like me.

I pulled my eyes away from the woman and zeroed in on my locker. I wanted to look. So badly, I wanted to look. I wanted to kneel to the floor and ask her a thousand questions, but I resisted. No one likes to be harassed at the gym.

The woman is still in front of me now, pounding away at the treadmill. I can see the time counter on her screen: one hour and seventeen minutes. She’s in it for the long haul. A marathon treadmill session. I feel a pang of guilt slice through me as I remember my reluctance that morning to walk out the door and head to the gym. It’s not a hard thing for me to do. I dress myself; I walk to the car; I push go. Not so for the woman at the gym.

She has a caregiver-type. A grandmother, maybe. The older woman helps her snap her prosthetic legs into place. Helps her wriggle into her clothing. The grandmother works out too; they climb their treadmills side-by-side. I marvel at how young the legless woman is. Not more than twenty-five, I’m sure. Winnie-the-Pooh stickers dot her prosthetics and I wonder how long they have adhered to the plastic. What have they seen? Where have they traveled? Can they feel her sadness and joy and hunger and outrage seep through the plastic and into their sticker brains?

I can. I am a sticker on her side. A hair on the back of her neck.

I follow her home, sit with her as she watches T.V., writes in her journal, cries. She cries, not because she is missing both her legs, but because of the nasty people she meets every day. People who stare, jeer, jibe. She retreats into the folds of her skin. Sinking away from the ugly parts of the world.

I want to reach inside her chest and cradle her heart, but when I try to do it, I realize I’m not needed. Or wanted. Her heart is strong. And she’s making it stronger every day. It pumps as she sends herself up the treadmill’s incline. It throbs against her chest as she paddles in the pool.

She doesn’t need to be coddled and hugged. She needs to be told she is strong.

But not by me. I’m just an ogler at the gym.