Amy Rivera - Drop the Skirt

Born This Way

As the doctor walked toward my parents holding their newborn wrapped up like a stuffed burrito, my mother could tell something wasnt right by the expression on his face. He had a forced smile and an unsettled crack in his voice as he said, Congratulations. She dismissed the fear of something being wrong with her child as quickly as it popped into her head, thinking she was just overly tired and had the new-mommy jitters.

My mother gazed at her newborn, as any new parent would, but instead of being overwhelmed with joy, she saw something was wrong. The nurses stood in silence with looks of confusion on their faces as they desperately tried to process the situation without panicking my parents.

Whats wrong with my baby? my mother questioned everyone as she searched their eyes for answers. Whats wrong with my baby?

The doctor answered, diligently washing his hands with his back to my parents, She is a little swollen from the way you carried her in the womb. It will go away in a couple of days, nothing to be worried about. He walked over and pulled the blanket back, revealing the entire right side of my little body. She is just a little swollen, and it will all go away in a few days as things start to move. Like I said, nothing to be worried about. Congratulations. As any parent would, my mother clung to his words and trusted that the swelling would go down.

She couldnt have knownmost doctors in 1981 didnt have a clue, as I would later discoverthe swelling would go down, but it would never go away until I found out what was really going on with my body. Im two months old in the picture below. If you look close enough, you can see my little face was full of fluid.

I am two months old in this photograph, taken February 1981.

I tried to find a newborn picture of myself for this book, but to no avail. All I saw were pictures of me with a hospital blanket covering the right side of my body. (Only moments after my birth, the doctor had already begun a habit I would continue into adulthood: hiding my appearance from the world.) I was a bit confused about why my entire right side was covered and not just my right leg. I lived with a swollen leg my whole life, but the rest of my body wasnt swollen, so why was so much of my body covered by a blanket in these photos?

My mother told me that, when I was born, the whole right side of my body was twice the size of my left side. She said that I looked like two different infants, depending on what side you were viewing. The worst part of this was that she honestly thought she caused my swelling by the way she carried me in the womb. Ill give the doctor credit for one thing: Part of his guess was right. My swelling went down everywhere except in my leg.

We went to every doctor we could, from our family doctor to one specialist and then another specialist to another, all leaving us with zero answers. The medical field was unable to provide any diagnosis, treatment, or support. The burden of guilt weighed heavily on my mothers shoulders from the moment I entered this world.

As a parent, I cant imagine carrying the guilt of harming my child, even unintentionally. The psychological pain my mother went through was an ongoing nightmare for her. While my mother was going through her own mental anguish, I was trying to decipher what was wrong with me. I felt normal at home and around my family, but every time I went outside my home, I was quickly reminded just how different I was. The world wasnt kind to me. People stared and pointed at my leg as if I was some sideshow attraction. But why? What was wrong with my leg that people felt compelled to treat me differently? You can probably imagine how hard this was for me to understand as a child.

I recall the first warm day of spring in fourth grade. Everyone was excited to show off their new spring outfits! Everything was going well, but then it was time for P.E. I could feel my cheeks flush and my eyes well up as I worried about what the other kids would say about my leg.

I was standing against the wall waiting to be picked for kickball. I kept telling myself, Any minute now, they are going to call my name , as everyone else got picked for a team. Eventually, I was the last one standing.

The team leader shouted, I dont want the girl with the big leg on our team. She cant kick a ball!

I stood there feeling humiliated as tears ran down my face, and all my classmates started laughing and shouting, Elephant leg! It was evident there was a problem, but I couldnt understand why people were making fun of me. What made me so different? I never felt weird, fat, or gross, and yet I heard these things daily from my peers from that moment forward.

When I was at the zoo with my class, I found myself staring at the elephants, comparing my leg to theirs. I sat on the wooden bench, sobbing. That was the day I knew for a fact that something was wrong with me. Just as I was trying to gather myself, a group of girls walked by and laughed at me.

Shortly after that, the rumors started. One rumor that stays with me to this day was that my mother had sex with an elephant and that was why I was born with an elephant leg. Boys would stare, snicker, and whisper to one another as I would walk by in the hallway.

I wanted to be popular, but the few friends I had would only hang out with me in secret and barely speak to me at school. I once had a friend who would call me every day to talk to me about school. I tried to be a good friend and listen, but I finally asked her why she never talked to me in school. She changed the topic as I was midsentence. I soon realized that she wasnt a good friend. Years later, I ran into this friend, and she confessed that she was embarrassed to be my friend at school and apologized for her behavior. It looks like there were two of us who dwelled in the past.

Middle school was not so different from the rest of society: My peers believed how your body looks determines who you are as a person. Fat girls are undesirable, less attractive, and stupid. Skinny girls are the opposite: desirable, pretty, and smart. And because I was different and didnt fit in with either crowd, like Belle from Beauty and the Beast , I was truly an outsider, and my feelings of loneliness resonated as painful echoes within me.