#793 The Virgin of Monte Ramon- Mia Alvar
Danny Willson, Jr. was born with deformed legs. His mother told him they were the honorable legacy from his hero grandfather, an American solider that lost his legs while helping to liberate the town from the Japanese. He was satisfied with this answer and satisfied with his old fashioned wheelchair that was an “heirloom” from the same grandfather.
Whether created by legacy or a doctor’s mistake was something he wouldn’t discover for some time. What he did know was that his deformity caused him to be mocked by his classmates. This derision he took well, but wished above anything that it would stop. Enter a new girl in his class, Annalise. She was a native, poor servant girl that helps her mother clean Danny’s house sometimes. She was different, and began being a new target for the childish sneers.
“I had longed for the day when my schoolmates would find a new target, a victim other than me. Now that she was here—a girl, who seem unfazed by the teasing—I felt none of the relief I’d expected. I felt only shame at my own school-yard weakness and a deep curiosity about this girl they called the Negrita.”
They were serendipitously paired for the coming festival dance, one they wouldn’t actually be able to take part in. She also had health problems, and this helped them become much closer. They were both imperfect and broken, but to each other that made them the same. Their friendship did not go unnoticed by his mother who was a snob without cause: “Another outcast only the Messiah of Monte Ramon can love.”
The truth about his defective legs came to light and changed his perspective on a great many things. But he still doted on Annalise.
“It seemed possible for the first time that the defects of our bodies—mine, Annalise’s, anyone’s—were errors of nature. Caused and cured by science, nothing more.”
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