I was born with a wooden toe.  The nurses attempted to conceal its hardy composition by swathing me in a white cotton blanket, but the moment my mother laid her hands on me she counted my fingers and toes.  You can imagine her disappointment.

As soon as I could stand, my mother bought me Straight Last shoes in an effort to conform the toe.  They were stiff and lacing, a far cry from patent leather Mary Janes.  I wore the orthopedic shoes every day for months and years, and still I walked funny.  My left foot continued to curve inwardly due to the weight of the wooden toe.  I became aware of gravity at a terribly young age.  At Whittling Class the other kids threatened me with knives, asked to see my stub.  Alone at night I would carve a beautiful cuticle into my toe, make the nail long and paint it red to match the others.

There were plenty of nuisances: splinters in my lace socks and pain from the wood’s persistent chafing of skin at the base of my toe.  It seemed I always had a fever and infections from the cuts.  My other toes were envious of the wooden toe for being such a troublemaker.  I know what you’re thinking— that was a damn lucky toe.

Then came the day when my mother brought me to the specialist and told him the Straight Last shoes didn’t work, that I still walked funny and was teased by other children.  My mother relayed this information as though I were not present in the room.  It was only then that I cried for the first time about my toe.  The specialist recommended a surgical implant, a prosthetic nub.  He said already as I got bigger, my toe was remaining the same size, and it appeared disproportionately small.  I ran out of his office and into the stairwell, and it was then I realized my disproportionate love.  I loved the splinters and infections.  I loved my Straight Last shoes.  I decided to spend the rest of my childhood living in the stairwell like a troll, spinning and singing and trailing the line.  I performed a tap dance on the echoing steps, and my wood toe clucked in derision.

This is the part of the story where you expect me to say that my mother came and found me in the stairwell and offered me ice cream, or a new sander, or something else enticing.  Well, it didn’t happen that way, and this is why my story is so tragic.  The truth is, my mother never came to look for me.  You have to understand, it’s difficult to raise a child with a wooden toe.  You can’t blame her for abandoning me in the stairwell.  It was my choice to run away.

In fact, no one found me because no one used the stairwell.  The building had a seductive elevator with mirrors and a man in a velvet suit who pressed the buttons.  It wasn’t until the building caught fire that I experienced human contact again.  I had survived all this time on a diet of bugs and cobwebs, and when the occupants charged out through the stairwell to escape the fire, they couldn’t even see me.  I had grown pale and thin.  I know this is making you sad, because I too am sad when I read this.  They marched over me and stomped my wooden toe.  Never mind that the rest of my body was frail and flattened like a doormat.  As I lay there on the ground, a fragment of molten ash landed on my toe, and it was then that I wished my whole body were composed of wood.  I watched my toe catch fire and burn off.  That’s when the specialist tramped through, recognized me, and saw that I was in flames.  He lifted me up and folded me over his shoulder.

Outside the sun was ablaze too and my eyes singed with clarity.  It had been so long since I’d seen the light.  Once again, the specialist offered me a prosthetic toe.  What could I do?  At this point, I asked him for a prosthetic body and a prosthetic mind.

Now, years later, there are times when I still grieve for my wooden toe, when I pass by an unfinished pine furniture store and the nostalgia sets in.  But mostly I am pleased with the results.  I have a daughter with a wooden pinky.  Together we read Pinnochio.  Often my husband will joke about his wood, but not in front of the child.  He says, “See, we are all hard somewhere.”  However, my hardness remains in the heart, yoked to youth, cruel as the difference that can claim an artery. 

– Alexandra Wagman