A Girl Named Maple

When I was four years old I knew a girl named Maple who could pull off her left arm. It wasn’t a prosthetic or anything; she could actually yank her arm off. She had some kind of disease or something, I think. A disorder maybe. Sometimes she’d pull it off and let me play with it. She could make the fingers wiggle from across the room.

Once, a bully called Squash stole Maple’s arm and climbed a tree. He crouched up there like an ape, holding Maple’s arm over his head, laughing. The whole thing was so mean. Maple was crying, pleading with him to give it back. Squash’s mom finally came out and yelled at him to come down and return Maple’s arm.

He handed it to her and then took off. I watched her reconnect her arm. The part where it connected to her shoulder secreted this sticky white slime that smelled like maple syrup. I guess that’s what let her stick it back on. Maybe it healed it back to her shoulder or something. I don’t know.

     

 Anyway, that’s probably where she got her name.

     

 Or maybe this was all a dream.

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