Two Hands Are Better Than Four, by Nathaniel Tower
My son was born with four hands. I suppose it would’ve been okay if he had four arms, but he’s only got two, so there’s two hands coming out of each. It looks more than a little odd.
He’s starting to preschool next week. We’ve kept him sheltered for the first four years of his life, but now my wife thinks it’s time for him to become part of the world. When he learns about ten fingers and ten toes, he’ll wonder why he has ten on each arm when nobody else does. My wife tells me that it means he’ll be better at counting than the other children, but I think he’ll become too dependent on those extra fingers. It’s like he’s got a built-in abacus. Not that anyone uses one of those anymore.
We named him Deuce. We had the name picked out before he was born. When he came out and I saw his four hands, the first thing I said to my wife was that we had to change his name right away. She said we couldn’t because her sister had made a quilt with ‘Deuce’ stitched on it. She used some fancy stitching that couldn’t be undone. I said that fancy isn’t always sensible. We also had a big white ‘D’ hanging up on the wall of the baby’s room, right smack in the center of the powder blue wall. I said we could always give him another name that started with ‘D’ but she said that wouldn’t solve the quilt problem. Couldn’t Deuce be a nickname I wondered. That would just be cruel she told me.
I thought about putting something else on the birth certificate, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was funny to watch the kid latch on to his mother’s breast. With all those hands swinging around, it looked like my wife was in some sort of horror film. Or a really sick porno.
I asked the doctor if there was anything we could do about those extra appendages. He said it’d be best to leave them. Might they fall off eventually I asked. No, they’d have to be surgically removed. But he didn’t advise it. He thought it best to let things play their course. I wish we had used a different doctor, but insurance wouldn’t’ve paid for the surgery anyway. It was just cosmetic they told us on the phone. I told them that they’d hum a different tune if they had four hands. They told me that a pair of extra hands can often come in handy.
I was embarrassed to take Deuce home. I could tell that all of the nurses and doctors at the hospital were whispering about us as we walked out of the hospital. Not one of them told us about how cute he was. I can’t blame them. Even without the extra hands he probably wasn’t that cute.
Whenever we took Deuce to meet anyone, we made sure his hands were hidden. At first, we always swaddled him, but some people started to question us when we were swaddling our two year old. They told us it was dangerous. And weird. Imagine what they would’ve said if they had known the kid had four hands.
The first person to notice that he had four hands was our neighbor. She asked if we couldn’t get that fixed. We told her what the doctor and the insurance company said. She said it was a shame that people weren’t more understanding. I think she meant that the insurance company should have understood what we were going through, but maybe she meant that people should be more understanding of people’s differences. It didn’t really matter though. I could tell she thought the kid was a freak.
My wife had to quit her job to stay home with Deuce. It hadn’t been part of the plan, but you can’t very well find good childcare for a four-handed infant. They’d probably want to charge us double anyway. I could just imagine the jokes about how Deuce was such a handful.
I begged her to home school Deuce. She said he was weird enough and didn’t need to be more of a social outcast. He had to learn to deal with his malformity at some point. I could see her point but I also think she was just tired of dealing with all those hands all day.
On the first day of preschool I took the morning off work to accompany Deuce and my wife. We hadn’t told the school about Deuce’s extra hands. There wasn’t any good place on the enrollment form to indicate such a thing. We didn’t really view it as a special need. I thought about writing that he needs to wash his hands a little extra but my wife thought that might be misleading. The less information the better she said. We didn’t want them to turn away our kid after all.
We showed up very early so as to beat all the other children there. We were there at least fifteen minutes before start time. Unfortunately, since it was the first day, everyone else showed up very early, so we were the last ones there. So much for our sly introduction.
I could hear the whispers as we led Deuce through the hallway. We decided it best not to cover his hands. We would hang it all out there and let whatever happened happen. I wished his hands had been more discreet, like maybe one on top of the other instead of having them side by side. I decided I would try to tape them that way when we got home, and I cursed myself for not thinking about it earlier.
“Who do we have here?” the overly excited teacher asked Deuce when we entered his classroom.
Deuce looked at us. We nodded our approval and then he told her his name was Deuce. She told him that it was an interesting name and that he was the only Deuce she had ever met and that she was happy to work with him. She didn’t even look at his hands, but I did notice a bit of hesitation before she reached out her own to shake his. Deuce managed to return the handshake quite well. His second right hand really didn’t get in the way of things at all. For the first time in my life, I was proud of Deuce and thought that maybe things would be okay.
With a lot of reluctance we left Deuce behind and went about our daily lives. On the way home my wife and I discussed how things seemed to be going well and we wondered what they would do in class that day. Then I went to work and I even thought about telling one of my coworkers about the morning. A few asked about Deuce’s first day and I just told them that he seemed to be adjusting well. They asked if I wasn’t super excited about his first day of school and I told them that I had been a little nervous but everything was fine. But I didn’t tell them about the hands.
My wife picked up Deuce on her own before I got home from work so I didn’t get to hear the firsthand account of his first day. When I got home she had tears in her eyes. I asked what was wrong and she told me nothing, that everything was perfect. I asked what she meant secretly hoping that Deuce’s extra hands had fallen off during the day. I looked at the kid expecting to see a normal two-handed boy, but there he was sitting on the floor playing with his toy trucks, one in each of his four hands. The hands and trucks seemed to be everywhere. The sight almost made me sick.
Then she showed me. Deuce’s finger painting picture had been voted the best in the class. I looked at it and was pretty impressed myself. I don’t remember what my first finger painting looked like, but I’m sure it wasn’t half this good. For the first time in my life, I was proud of my son. I went over and ruffled his hair and then picked him up. I asked if I could play with one of the trucks. He handed me both of the ones from his left hands. One was a fire truck and one was a dump truck. They were the most beautiful trucks I had ever held.
