Hand (from the munich tales)

HAND
By Michael Kroetch

Her hand was made of wax. She didn´t let people know or tried not to. It had been so since she was a child. She had fallen into the ice while playing with friends on a frozen river. She had gone down into the icy darkness away from their laughter. At the river´s bottom she saw a beautiful doll trapped under a stump root. Pushing against the current, she had reached out for the doll in the murky shadows. Its eyes were so very blue and beautiful. It was right when she had touched the doll that she felt someone grab onto her legs and pull her back up through the ice to the surface into the dazzling light where everyone rushed toward her to see if she was all right. She had been all right. Or it had seemed that way at first. The hand which had touched the doll didn´t die completely right away. It took many weeks with her parents and everyone else growing more and more concerned until at last the decision was reached to cut off the dying hand. Even today, all these years later she can still feel her wax fingers tingle if they brush against something unexpectantly. She knows this is just a trick of her mind, but it doesn´t make the experience any less real or troubling. Likewise if the weather changes and gets too warm, she feels her hand getting sore as the wax softens and begins to lose its shape. When this happens her heart races and she goes straight for the freezer to get her hand in there as quickly as possible. Doctors have told her over the years that she does not need to suffer this way, that the wax hand can be replaced with something much more durable and mobile. She thinks the word they used in this context most recently was “titanium.” What an ugly word. What an ugly thought. To her this would be like somehow admitting she was not fully human. She thinks the wax is better because it is so delicate and vulnerable and also quite comforting to rub if she is nervous. She can´t imagine anything more vulgar than a titanic claw coming out of her sleeve. At night she looks over at her wax hand on the night stand and is happy to see it there so beautiful and pristine. The only thing she ever saw more beautiful than her hand was probably the eyes of that doll beneath the river. Those eyes had been irresistible. She would have done anything to be nearer to them and is still somewhat angry she was dragged away. Sometimes she feel them calling to her hand to come back to them once more.