Melanie at five and a half had long black hair and big brown eyes. She was of medium height and normal body shape, and her skin showed a light olive cast. She had a two year old brother who entertained her parents with his cuteness, and she had no friends of her age in her neighborhood. All the other girls were at least two years older or younger, and all the boys were wild. In the following year, the farm behind their house would be developed, and Melanie would attend first grade with a slew of girl peers, but from her neighborhood she went to kindergarten alone.

That’s not to say that she had no girl friend. Melanie idolized Barbara next door, who had naturally curly hair and a turned-up nose and the benefit of two more years of life experience. And Barbara was kind to Melanie. But Barbara was nearly eight years old, so it just wasn’t the same.

Melanie wasn’t completely alone for the kindergarten experience. She had a quasi-friend named Susie, who was enrolled in the classroom immediately next door. Susie and Melanie were quasi-friends because their mothers were actual friends. They’d always been expected to play well when their moms got together for coffee and cake, about twice a month. So even though Susie wasn’t a friend whose house you could walk to, she was someone to ride with in the car to and from the new school, and she was a familiar face on the playground.

A familiar face but not an attractive one. Susie had stringy brown hair around a big round head atop a very round body. She was uncoordinated for her age, freckled in a comic way, too large to be cute. She was a nice placid girl; she exasperated Melanie with her slow amiability. And Susie had ugly teeth. They were too small and too widely spaced and they were so yellow they were almost orange. Melanie had to restrain her expressions, facial and verbal, when she first met Susie at age four. Later her mother explained. “A birth defect,” Melanie’s mom murmured on their way home, “from taking Tetraclycine.”

Of course Melanie asked what that meant. “Who took Tetra-what?” Her mother explained that Susie’s mom had gotten sick while pregnant with Susie, and the doctor prescribed a medicine that had the side effect of possibly wrecking your teeth, but in this case the medicine wrecked the baby’s teeth instead of the mom’s. “So Susie was born with this defect in her teeth. That’s why it’s called a birth defect.” Her mom pushed the lever next to the steering wheel that made the signal blink, and then she turned the car into their driveway. “Emily has a birth defect too.”

Melanie knew what her mother was talking about. No one who met Emily wouldn’t know. Emily was one year older than Melanie and lived two blocks away. Their families met through the neighborhood association. And Emily was missing some fingers. She had thumbs, but where there should be four fingers on each hand she had just two. She could bring their tips together kind of like claws. “Thalidomide,” Melanie’s mother pronounced. And Melanie loved the way the word rolled out of the mouth. “Thal-í-do-mide.” Her mother was wrong about Emily, but her mother was wrong about a lot of things.