Jonathan's Leg

When Jonathan returns home to Queens at the end of World War II, he is missing a leg. Then he meets Johanna, the teen next door.

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When the soldier next door came home, he arrived without his lower right leg. His name was Jonathan.

Johanna watched as he emerged from the car. He had crutches, and his right pant leg was pinned up. She wondered why he didn't just let the pants cascade down to the ground. Maybe he would trip, since he had no right foot either.

The houses on their street in Queens were all crowded together, and even if they didn't know their neighbors, Johanna and her family were able to watch from the enclosed front porch and see the comings and the goings of their neighbors. It was easy to sit in one of the chairs while reading a book and then, when someone emerged from a car or walked by, it was also easy to watch their movements and imagine what other people were doing.

On summer days Johanna and her family could also hear their neighbors' arguments, sometimes mild, sometimes ferocious. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that no one would knock on anyone else's door to say hello, to borrow a cup of sugar, or to complain about noise. They all endured the arguments and spent their time watching. Watching as well as waiting for something interesting to relieve their boredom.

Jonathan's missing leg was not boring. It was, in fact, quite interesting to Johanna, who imagined taking care of the wounded soldier. There must be other wounded soldiers in the neighborhood. It was, after all, 1945.

Johanna was sixteen. For four long years she had heard about the war, heard the planes fly overhead as they went to and from the airport that in later years would be named LaGuardia

Airport after her city's famous mayor. During the long conflict, Johanna had her own ration book, as did her parents and her little brother, so they could walk to Queens Boulevard and the big grocery store where they could pick up needed food and supplies.

On her street, Johanna realized that there were no young men. "Gone to war," her father would mutter, "gone to war again, just the way we did twenty years ago."

Sometimes there were blackouts, and they would have to close the blinds and pull down the shades and turn off all the lights until everything was pitch black. Johanna was sometimes scared of the blackouts, but at least she could hear her parents and her little brother and she could talk to them. No enemy would be able to hear them from a noisy plane in the sky.

And then the long years of rationing and blackouts and bad news on the radio were only memories. The war was over, but reminders about it kept surfacing. Only one block away a little banner with a gold star hung in a window. Johanna saw it one day when she and her mother were walking to the grocery store. "Look, Mommy, what a pretty banner!"

Her mother had stopped for a moment. "A Gold Star Mother lives there." Soon they were walking again. "What does that mean, Mommy?"

"It means that a young man in that family died in the war."

"Oh. That's so sad. Are there Gold Star Fathers, as well?"

"I suppose. But you don't hear much about them. Mothers are the ones who suffer the most, I guess. It has to be very hard to bring a child into the world and then see him go off to war and then never see him again.. Or see him come back wounded, missing an arm or a leg, or wounded in ways that can't be seen."

Johanna never forgot that conversation, and when she would pass the window with the gold star banner she would give it a quick sideways glance and say nothing, to her mother or her friend Alice or to herself.

But now the war was over. On V-J Day in August Johanna had gone down to Queens Boulevard to bang on pots and pans and make lots of noise with other residents who stood on the brick islands that created the many lanes of the boulevard. She wondered how so many people knew that's what they were supposed to do: grab metal pots and metal spoons and make as much noise as possible.

And now everyone was happy and busy, and soon Johanna would be going back to school. But there was a young man next door without a leg. She often wondered what it would be like to lose a leg. How much had he lost? Judging from the pinned-up pants, the boy next door still had his thigh, but she wasn't sure about his knee. And she was certain that he didn't have a right foot.

Somehow his disability made him romantic, but Johanna wasn't sure why. She liked to sit in the driveway where the closeness of the house next door created some shade. Then one day she decided to sit in the sunny and hot backyard, just in case her soldier would appear. And he did.

Slowly he hobbled down the back stairs of his parents' home and then sat in a chair. He was not many feet from Johanna.

"Hello. I'm Johanna."

He had been unfolding a newspaper and stopped. "Oh, hello. I'm Jonathan."

"Wow."

"What do you mean?"

"Our names are alike. Johanna and Jonathan."

"Thought maybe you were talking about my leg when you said, 'Wow.'"

"Your leg? What leg?"

Jonathan started to laugh. "You're right. What leg? The one that's missing, not the one I still have. That's not anything to exclaim about."

She was staring at him.

"I like that you can stare at me. Most people look somewhere else when they notice I don't have a leg. They look everywhere else, up, down, wherever, anywhere but directly at me. Guess they feel sorry for me."

Johanna just stared. "I'm sixteen. I'll be back in school soon."

Jonathan looked back at her. "I'm twenty. I'm not going anywhere."

"You mean you'll just sit here for the rest of your life?"

"I'll go inside when it rains. And when it snows."

Johanna didn't know what to say or do. Should she go inside the house? Should she go back to reading her book? Or should she say something? She had to say something. But what? She began by just thinking out loud.

"Jonathan, you are too young to give up. That's what you seem to be doing. Yes, you lost a leg, but I've read about the war and heard about it and listened to the news on the radio. In my way I even lived through it. At least you came back. and you didn't lose your entire leg, did you?"

"Have you been looking at my pants, young lady?"

Johanna blushed. "Just a little. I admit that. So you have everything--your head, your arms, your body, your other leg, and your life--and all you are missing is part of your leg. Can't they give you something so that you can walk like the rest of us? How about a peg leg like a pirate?"

Jonathan started to laugh.

"OK, OK, you're not a pirate, and peg legs are probably no longer in fashion. Don't they have something you could attach to your thigh or your knee and then you could walk like the rest of us? I mean, you wear pants anyway, so the contraption wouldn't be visible."

"Yes. I guess they do have contraptions like that."

The two were silent. Then Johanna spoke again. "So they have something that could help you to walk, but you would rather sit in the backyard and feel sorry for yourself?"

Silence again. "Yes. That's right. You're pretty smart for your age."

"Smart enough to know when someone is acting stupid."

Jonathan started to look angry, then relaxed and smiled at her.

"You're right. Thanks. I'll make a phone call. I'll get an artificial leg, if it's possible. And when I do, I want to walk around the block. With you, Johanna."

"Oh, I'm too young for you, Jonathan. You're four years older."

"But in four years I won't be too old for you."

"You won't?"

"No. Just wait. Wait and see."

By Anita G. Gorman

From: United States

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