“You call me this early just to tell me to take an early morning leak.  How sweet!”  she says jokingly.  Then her voice gets serious as she continues: “That fucking sick bastard!  I would cut his balls off and deep-fry his dick and let my dog eat them.  My dog would enjoy such a delicious meal occasionally.  If his father, mother, sister, brother, wife, or any relative of his were sexually abused by people working in a nursing home, I wonder how would that sick bastard feel about it?  We got to stop this kind of sick people.  This ADAPT event really moves me and I can feel their desire to be free and become independent.  For you, you have got to write something about this event, Jian.  To have a voice for them.  If we don’t speak out, those sick people think we are dead.  But we are not dead yet as long as we have one fucking breath left!  You understand?”

“Okay, Joan,” I interrupt after hearing the woman at the Southwest terminal counter say the snowstorm in Kansas City has died down.  “I need to go now.  I’ll mail you the documentary film of the ADAPT event when I get back to Berkeley.  Miss you.  Bye.”

I board the plane without a second glance at the airport. . . .

“Mr. Hong,” a female voice says on the other end of the phone.

“Yes,” I say.

“We have a guest room at Embassy Suites for a nonsmoker.  The hotel is about ten minutes away from Nashville airport.”

“Is the guest room wheelchair accessible?”

“Yes.”

“Do you provide free shuttle service?”

“Yes. We have a van that can pick you up.”

“Is the van wheelchair accessible?”

She puts me on hold for a minute, and after a minute or so, says: “Yes.  When you arrive at the airport, just give us a call.”      

“Sounds good.  Okay.  I want that guest room.”

I am glad that I can book a room.  I am excited to attend the ADAPT conference in Nashville.  I consider it would be a good idea to do my final project for my English class that focuses on disability issues.  ADAPT (action, equality, and power) is a national organization.  ADAPT of Tennessee helps people with disabilities fight for dignity, pride, and power.  Tennessee ADAPT demands its state to “stop the illegal segregation of people with disabilities into nursing homes” as their final resting places—because their dignity has been stripped away.  Tennessee is the worst state that caters to “the subsidized nursing home industry.”

I have decided to bring a digital camcorder to capture the ADAPT event so that I can make a documentary film about disability.  This film can contribute to our understanding of people with disabilities: and it can open up the mind’s eye of the “able-bodied” to see how they would deal with their problems if they were in the shoes of the disabled.  To do this project, I will have to travel by myself.  My two classmates have decided not to go to Nashville with me.  It is a last minute-thing.  That is fine with me, I tell myself.  It is a great opportunity to get out of California for a couple of days.  I haven’t been out of California since my car accident in 1997.  It is a good idea to take a trip that is far away from home so that I can refresh my spirit. 

I remember what my mom said when I transferred to Berkeley: “How are you going to take care of yourself, huh?” 

“I want to become more independent so I don’t have to rely on you guys so much.  You gotta let me go somehow, mom,” I said as I saw tears falling from the corners of her eyes.  I had already thought of what my future would be like if I relied on my family too much.  Because they couldn’t look after me forever, I had to have my own life.  I just couldn’t depend on them for the rest of my life; my parents would die someday.  Not that I wanted them to die.   But I had to be on my own now rather than later: The umbilical cord had to be detached.  Despite the fact that I hadn’t been to Berkeley before, I had to go there: and I had to risk it.  A new place: A new beginning.    

A week later.

“Have a good day.  Welcome to Nashville,” says the female flight attendant.   

We are there already, I say silently.  That is fast.  Opening my eyes, I see people getting ready to get off the plane, overhead compartments opening and closing noisily.  Within fifteen minutes, I wheel out of this plane.  A tripod on my lap and a digital camcorder slung over my shoulder, I struggle and breathe rapidly while pushing my wheelchair toward the airport parking lot.  I stop and rest for ten seconds, then continue pushing until I reach the waiting room.  There I call the hotel to pick me up.  Delighted to see a colorful sign with musical notes that says COUNTRY MUSIC on the side of a taxi-van parking by the drop-off curb, I park my wheelchair outside the waiting room.  So far I haven’t seen any wheelchair-accessible hotel shuttles. 

A hotel van pulls up minutes later.  On its left side is the “E” symbol.  Below the symbol is EMBASSY SUITES.  The pudgy driver, in a black Embassy Suites uniform with a protruding belly, steps out of the van, fumbling in his pocket with one hand, slamming the door with the other.  He stumbles and looks at me as I wheel toward him.  He says hello, opening the sliding door, and I just nod.  How am I going to get inside this van?  I ask myself.  The van is not wheelchair accessible: there is no lift in it.  This must be a mistake.  The woman who booked my room told me that the shuttle is wheelchair accessible.  If I brought my electric wheelchair, I would get stuck here for a while.  I look at the van again.  There is one way to get inside, so relief comes over me.  He is big enough and seems like a strong guy. 

I say, calculating the height of the front passenger seat from my wheelchair: “You can help me get in.”

“How can I help you, sir?” his country voice asks.  His hand opens the front passenger door as wide as it can go. 

“Hold my pant belt from behind.”  I push my wheelchair against the running board in a 45-degree angle.  The height of my seat to the passenger seat is two feet.  The distance between them is more than three feet.  I place my left leg on the edge of the curb, my right leg resting on the footrest of my wheelchair.  My left hand trying to find a firm spot on the seat, my other hand gripping the right side of the wheelchair armrest, I leap forward, moving my butt toward the wheelchair-cushion edge.  I count: one, two, three.  Then, taking a deep breath, I lift myself to the passenger seat, his hand pulling my pant belt up toward the seat.  I hear him breathing hard and see his face turning salmon-red.  My stomach tightens.  As soon as I push and let go of the armrest, my butt wobbles and struggles to get up onto the seat.  My left hand shaking, my other hand swings over and slaps the seatbelt cover.  My spastic legs move back and forth, hitting the squeaking door.  Inching toward the center of the seat in a sitting position, with my right arm under both knees, I scoop them up inside the van.  I feel exhausted because I haven’t eaten anything since this morning.  He stood there watching.  Just watching.

Exactly a ten-minute drive from the airport to the hotel.  After checking in, I speed to my room.  Without putting my belongings down, I go straight to the bathroom, not to use it, but to see whether it is wheelchair accessible.  Circling around inside the spacious bathroom freely with my wheelchair on the glinting light-brown tiled floor, I see something missing.  There is a white tub with a shower curtain; three metallic bars, one meter above the tub; a L-shaped metallic bar between the porcelain bowl and the tub; a hand-held showerhead.  But I see no shower chair, so I immediately go to the front desk to request one.  The receptionist tells me that someone will take care of it in about fifteen minutes. 

Back in my room, I wait for that person.  With my hands behind my head, I lie supine in bed, thinking that I’m going to take a shower later after someone brings me a shower chair.  There is a knock on my door after I almost fall asleep.  Quickly getting out of my bed, I wheel toward the door.  I fumble with the doorknob, then open the door. 

An African American woman says: “You need to clean your carpet, sir?” 

“No.  I need a shower chair,” I say, wheeling backward a few feet. 

She steps in and, looking at the carpet, says: “I think someone is using it now.  We have only one shower chair in this hotel.  Let me go check and I’ll get back to you.”    

“Okay.  Thanks.”  I close and lock the door quietly, then go back to bed.  Three hours go by and I still haven’t heard anything from that woman.  Maybe she is busy and has forgotten to bring me the shower chair, I whisper, listening to the heater noise and feeling the warm air breathing on my face.  The rest of the night I sleep without taking a shower.

The next day, March 19, 2006, I head out to the ADAPT event around seven in the morning.  The hotel receptionist told me yesterday evening that providing transportation services for disabled people was not available around this area.  My only option today is to get a taxi that has no lift in it to go to the event.  It seems to me that the Embassy Suites employees here are unaware of the transportation services providing for the disabled.  Disappointed, I wait outside in the chilly, sunny weather for a taxi that the receptionist called for me ten minutes ago.   In less than five minutes a taxi-van arrives.  I get in the same way I got in the hotel shuttle at the airport yesterday.  

The taxi drops me off at the Hilton Nashville Downtown hotel.  On my way to the Volunteer Ballroom on the second floor, where the ADAPT event is going to be held, I see three people in wheelchairs moving about by the two elevators.  They smile and pass me while, nodding at them, I wait for an elevator.  Once inside the conference room, I set up the camcorder at the back of the room to capture the event.  In the front of this room hangs a big piece of vanilla cloth, a few inches below the ceiling, that says REAL PEOPLE – REAL VOICES in black.  In the middle of the poster is a cartoon of a disabled character in a wheelchair whose hands with broken manacles above head.  Below that disabled is NO MORE STOLEN LIVES!  in red.  Another poster in the back of the room says FREE OUR PEOPLE.  Suddenly the sound of a wheelchair moving about draws my attention from the poster to the entrance.

In about fifteen minutes before the conference starts, in single-file, many disabled people enter the room, like an army.  Many of these disabled use electric wheelchairs, which come in different sizes and shapes, such as 3-wheel scooters, 4-wheel scooters with a shopping basket in the front, foldable power chairs, compact rear-wheel-drive power chairs, and heavy-duty power chairs.  Only few use a manual wheelchair.  Less than five people use a walker.  All of these people are here to fight for their rights.  They want to tell their stories because they feel that their dignity has been robbed after living in nursing homes, developmental disability facilities, and mental institutions. 

As the ADAPT event starts I begin recording.  Hours go by and one particular story captures my attention.  A woman in a green shirt with a Mao-Jao-Don-alike cap drives her electric wheelchair up to the platform.  Wearing glasses, she introduces herself and begins her story:  “. . . How did the people get in the nursing home in the first place? I don’t know how I can tell you all of them.  But for me, it just took one doctor signature. . . . And I was naïve and I didn’t know what to expect there and huh . . . First of all, I couldn’t take a shower every day like I took it at home.  I was scheduled one every Friday.  One Friday I asked her (the nurse) in the afternoon: ‘When do I get my shower?’  And she said, ‘You don’t get to take one for today.  You have to wait until Monday.’ . . .  So by this time I was under heavy antibiotic and on other medications.  They gave me diarrhea.  I was so uncomfortable.  I have another five days or six days to get a shower. . . . And then the food.  One day we had a, huh, probably like a stew in a bowl but I could not eat it.  One thing.  I could not identify.  One piece, a potato.  That is all we can eat. . . .  It was two o’clock and I could not eat it.  I lost 30 pounds in seven weeks. . . .  One day it was so bad I was so sick in the morning I had to take antibiotic. They gave me the medication.  I had an empty stomach.  I had a doctor appointment at nine o’clock, so I left and came back around twelve o’clock. . . . Oh, yeah.  After I took the medication I threw up.  And I came back at twelve o’clock and there sitting a bowl with my vomits on my table.  Suddenly I could not go back to my bed after I was in the bathroom because they did not have enough linen to change my bed.  I was sitting in the chair for five hours.  I could not get back into the bed. And then first thing I experienced.  One night I woke up.  A young male attendant takes his hand under my cover.  A hand was under my cover.  I don’t know how long, but I woke up and I said, ‘What are you doing?  And he said, ‘I just checked if you need a sheet or diaper.’  And I said, ‘I don’t have a diaper but I have a catheter.’  And the catheter just hanging out (on the side) and he knew that.  What did his hand doing under my cover?  I feel so sorry after this experience, feel so sorry again for the people who have who have to be there all their lives for years and years and years.  And I tell you just seven weeks were stolen from my life. . . . And I never will go to rehab and into the nursing home again.” 

After she ends her speech her audience applauds, some voicing out loudly: “Free our people!  No more stolen lives!  Free our people!”  Even though I am not shouting along with them, I still feel their anger and their lively spirits traveling from one person to another in the room.  I continue to capture the rest of the untold stories of these individuals until six in the evening.

By the time I come back to the hotel, it is already nighttime, around seven o’clock.  And I am exhausted, not only because I have been sitting in my wheelchair for the entire day and skipped lunch but also because traveling has been wearing me out.  But it is worth coming here to attend the event.  In the bathroom of my room, wheeling around several times, I stare at the showerhead, thinking about the shower chair again.  Stop looking for it, I murmur, my hands hitting the rubber tires of my wheelchair.  How come the shower chair is not here yet?  I can’t take a shower without a shower chair.  I can’t go home like this tomorrow, touching my armpits.  A little moist under them.  I need to take a shower.  How am I going to take a shower without that chair?  Use a white cloth to wipe yourself instead.  No matter how independent I am now, I can’t take a shower.  Purchasing a shower chair doesn’t cost much: a cheap but durable plastic costs around $20.  It will last for years.  I’ve been using a sturdy shower chair for almost ten years now, and it is still in good condition.  This is fucking bullshit!  I voice out, hitting my rubber tires with both palms.  What kind of service is this?  Staying here for a night costs me over $130.  And the hotel cannot afford an extra fucking shower chair for the disabled!  This is ridiculous!  There are lots of rooms in this hotel.  Twenty dollars does not mean anything to this hotel.  Even a meal costs more than that.  If my guest room is “wheelchair accessible,” perhaps Embassy Suites defines this phrase literally.   

The services that the hotel provides are different from what the woman told me when she booked my room.  I am not going to ask for a shower chair again: If I do, it seems like I’m begging.  Coming here makes me realize how much I have missed Berkeley.  Now, I know that how friendly the city of Berkeley is to many disabled people; there is a sense of belonging to the Berkeley community.  If I did not come here I would never know what is beyond my comfort zone.  I can see that all those disabled people at the event were fighting for their rights to raise public awareness of how they had been mistreated and deprived of their daily needs.  Such a simple ADA accommodation that Embassy Suites cannot provide for me!  I feel that I have been tricked into coming to this strange place.  The whole night I dream of taking a shower while sleeping, tossing and turning.

The next morning finally arrives.  Ready to leave Nashville, where I had a taste of unwelcoming for the disabled, I go to the airport around five in the early morning, without eating breakfast at the hotel: I don’t want to spend another dime there again.  It is a chilly, quiet morning and it is still dark outside.  The traffic is light.  Before daybreak I arrive at the airport.  This airport is not only big but also very clean.  Two days ago I was unaware of this when I arrived here, perhaps because I was thinking about the ADAPT event.  But now I see that this place is kept in a very good condition. 

On my way to the Southwest terminal to check in, I feel an urge to empty my bladder.  There is a blue wheelchair-accessible sign above the restroom close to the terminal.  As I go inside the restroom, a janitor pushes a yellow bucket of water against a wall and walks out.  He nods at me.  My wheelchair almost knocks off a wet-floor sign on my right.  Wow, I say, rubbing my chin.  I could dance here if could walk again.  This restroom is spacious and very clean.  It smells like jasmine.  All the urinals and the tiled floor are extremely shinny.  That janitor must have polished them.  I can see my own shadow behind me on the gleaming floor while wheeling in circles, waiting for an available stall.  In the middle of this restroom between the urinals are three green stalls.  They sure take care of this place, I mumble, glancing at the stalls and seeing people come and go.  The urinals and toilets flushing. 

After a man steps out of one of the stalls, I go inside, but realize that my wheelchair barely fits in.  My fingers very weak, I struggle in there for about five minutes just to close the door.  This damn door is not closing, I grumble, my right fatigue elbow pushing against the door.  This fucking lock does not lock!  Sweating, I pause for a few seconds.  After giving another try I finally lock the door.  I feel relieved, then quickly relieve myself using a catheter.  The waiting line to check in must be long now, I say in an undertone.  I must hurry.  In less than two minutes I get out of the stall and wash my hands.  Realizing that paper towels are not within my reach, I shake my hands dry.  Some water sprinkles on my face.  It feels good to be awakened: A fresh start.  

At the check-in desk the young woman in a blue shirt tells me that my plane has been delayed for departure because of a heavy snowstorm in Kansas City, which is my next stop.  I feel sad because I can’t go home on time to tell my friend Joan about the ADAPT event.  In her fifties, she has been using a wheelchair for more than two years and on chemotherapy.  I don’t know when the snowstorm will die down.  It is such an obstacle.

I am waiting. 

We all are waiting.