Leggy Blonde: A Memoir (4 page)

Not that any of this mattered to a six-year-old. I just wanted to be a regular kid. I daydreamed about candy and wanted to run around outside in my favorite OshKosh overalls. My parents were ready for normalcy to return as well. But it wasn’t instantaneous. I was still weak, and frighteningly pale. I’d gone from staring at the four walls in my old hospital room to being boxed in by the freshly painted white walls of our new apartment. My stuffed animals and I had just moved from one bed to another.

My mom started taking me out in my wheelchair to Central Park. One day we came around a curve in the path, and there was my dad. He was waiting for us, holding a leash with a beautiful, soft, caramel-colored puppy, a sheltie. He handed me her leash. She jumped into my lap, and I hugged her tight. I fell in love in a heartbeat. My parents wouldn’t let my brother and me have a pet at our old apartment. I actually recall thinking at the time:
I had to lose the foot to gain a dog?
Not that it mattered. I was so thrilled with her I thought she was worth it. I named my new puppy Clever. We were inseparable from that moment forward.

In late summer, my parents drove me to Roslyn, New York, forty-five minutes away on Long Island, to Lehneis Prosthetics. I was going to get an artificial leg that had a big name attached to it—“prosthesis.” The prosthetist, my first of
many,
made a plaster cast of my stump by laying warm wet strips of plaster cloth on my leg. It tickled and my first thought was,
I love this!
Until it dried . . . then the doctor came at me with an electric saw to cut off the cast. When I saw and heard the saw, I had a complete panic attack. I flashed back to the day of the accident for the first time. It’s strange, but I hadn’t thought of it once in all that time. Meanwhile, the saw itself was tiny and harmless. As soon as the teeth touched skin, it shut off
automatically. But the noise triggered the memory. I was traumatized and hysterical. Once again, Mom had to deal with pandemonium and she handled it with that soothing combination of strength and reassurance that had by now become her hallmark.

Summer was coming to an end and I would have to leave the safety of home and return to school without a foot. The prosthesis wasn’t ready in September. I was entering second grade, and I’d have to do it on crutches with an exposed stump.

I
went to Ethical Culture, a small private elementary school at 33 Central Park West. I had to wear a sock over my stump and use crutches. I hated it. I didn’t want my friends and classmates to gawk at my leg all day. I felt conspicuous and uncomfortable. I just wanted to be one of them, not the freak everyone stared at. The teachers and administrators at Ethical Culture—chiefly, Allan Shedlin, the headmaster—really lived up to the school’s name. They handled the situation brilliantly, and any success on my part I owe to the school’s community and administration.

In those prehandicap law days, there were no wheelchair-accessible ramps or lifts. The only way into the building was a set of doors at the top of a hundred steps. Scaling those steps on crutches was like climbing Mount Everest. Mom insisted on carrying me at first. I couldn’t stand that. But she couldn’t stand
not
to do it. It was too painful for her to watch.

My teacher that year, Mr. G, had shaggy hair and round John Lennon glasses, a real urban hippy. Most of the teachers had a similar look. It was a progressive Manhattan school, after all. But Mr. G was a standout. He made the rest of the Kumbaya crew look like Gerald Ford. On the first day of the year, he had all the students in my class sit cross-legged on the floor.

“Let’s go around the circle and tell a story about our summer,” said Mr. G. “Aviva, why don’t you start? Will you tell everyone what happened to you?”

Five seconds into the day, Mr. G dove in—foot first. It was exactly the right thing to do. By putting my stump front and center, the curiosity and questions would be dealt with immediately. I was on the spot, but relieved to get it out in the open. My parents had been in charge of telling the story to doctors and nurses, their friends, and my friends’ parents all summer long. This was the first time I’d been responsible for telling the story.

“I was sleeping over a friend’s house. We went into a barn and my foot got caught in a machine. I got an infection and had a bunch of surgeries. And now I’m missing part of my foot,” I said. I was missing the
entire
foot above the ankle. But I thought it’d be easier for my friends to take the news if they thought I was closer to whole. “I have my leg all the way down to here,” I added, touching the end of my stump. “It’s all okay. I’m okay.”

Intuitively, I knew it was my job to make everyone else feel comfortable. To do that, I had to act like I was completely at ease, like the amputation was no biggie. That was the only way I’d ever be treated like a normal kid.

Mr. G said, “Thank you, Aviva. Who’s next?”

And then another kid took his turn to share. The spotlight moved away from me for the first time in months. I had been dreading the
first day back, but now that I was sitting in that circle on the floor like every other child in my class, the relief I felt was indescribable.

There was an elevator in the building, the old-fashioned kind with a gate door inside that had to be pulled open and closed manually. The operator was an older black woman and she made it her mission to keep track of my movements. Whenever she saw me, she’d snatch me out of line, bring me to the elevator, and transport me to the cafeteria or art class. She was acting out of kindness. But by singling me out, she foiled my plan. Every time I rode the elevator, everyone was reminded about my foot. I just wanted to take the stairs like the other kids, to keep my place in line. I blamed the crutches as much as the operator’s kindness. How could I blend in if I was hobbling around with those damn clunky poles?

My best friend was Joanna. She also lived on Central Park West. Compared to mine, her house was totally traditional. My mom spoke with a German accent, and wouldn’t leave the house without perfect clothes, makeup, nails, and hair. My father was constantly cursing, and wore flashy Charvet shirts from Paris and a gold chain with three heads, our names engraved on the back. (You can take the guy out of Brooklyn, but . . . well, you know.) We had a Spanish nanny, a French piano teacher, and German relatives visiting constantly. You’d hear three languages in our kitchen any day of the week.

Joanna’s mom, on the other hand, lived in L.L.Bean turtlenecks, jeans, and sneakers, and wore not a drop of makeup. Her hair was short and natural gray. Joanna’s dad was a maritime lawyer. He had a mustache and wore khaki pants and navy blazers. My family was ostentatious; Joanna’s was understated. I really appreciated the calm at her place, and hung out there a lot.

One afternoon right after the start of school, Joanna and I were playing catch with Slime when some of it got stuck in my hair. As Joanna’s
mom washed it out, I stood at the sink on my one leg, hopping around and acting goofy. Joanna and her mom cracked up. It was the first time I’d used my leg to make people laugh. Our friendship was sealed. Joanna and I stayed close throughout high school. I have always felt so grateful to her and her mom for making me feel not just normal, but like myself.

“It’s here,” said Mom when I got home from school one day in November. The prosthesis had finally arrived. I’d gone back and forth to Long Island for fittings several times, but each time, minor adjustments had to be made before I could take it home.

I opened the shipping package, peeled back the wrapping, and there it was. A leg in a box. Well, half a leg. It was a glorious sight, much more exciting than getting a new toy at Christmas. The prosthesis itself wasn’t so pretty to look at and certainly didn’t resemble an actual human leg. It was a hard, shiny plastic shell in two pieces in an industrial shade of pink. The two pieces opened and closed and fastened with two Velcro straps, one at the top by the knee and one at the bottom by the ankle. The ankle part was as big as an elephant’s, as it had to fit over my own bulbous ankle/stump. The “foot” attached at the bottom was a pink Styrofoam oval that looked like an enlarged platypus snout. No toes, no foot shape. Just a rubbery chunk that fit into a shoe. Even in a sock, the foot was weird looking.

The prosthesis wouldn’t fool anyone. Even under long pants, the ankle was noticeably large. But it was better than crutches.

I sat right down on the floor and took it out of the box to try it on. With a thick wool sock on my stump, I opened up the two pieces and stuck my leg in. The weight-bearing screws were at the knee, so it was tight there. It was pretty tight all over, actually. I closed the straps and pulled my jeans down over it. I stood up. My balance was off. I favored my good leg, and almost stumbled when I put weight
on the fake one. With practice, I’d get used to it. I’d pass for normal.

“You still have to use the crutches with the leg, darling,” said Mom, bursting my bubble.

“No, I don’t need them.”

“Oh, yes you do! If you don’t use the crutches, you’ll fall down and hurt yourself!”

That was her position. I took the opposing view. I begged and battled with my parents about those hateful crutches. Mom and I had never fought before—feeling angry with her was disturbing enough. Fighting was not our family’s style. This was Dad’s second marriage. He’d done enough yelling and screaming the first time around. Dad might’ve been attracted to Mom for her gentle ways and soft voice. They hardly ever disagreed, even during that awful period of our lives.

A lot of people have asked me over the years how the accident affected my parents’ relationship. That kind of stress could, and often did, destroy marriages. And they certainly faced down powerful emotions.

Instead of directing their anger at each other, they blamed the Morgans, and sued. I was aware of the lawsuit, but it wasn’t openly discussed at home. However, if they had guilt about not being able to protect me or stop my pain, my mother and father didn’t dwell on it. They were united in their effort to help me, and shored each other up when treatments failed. Their relationship was strong enough to carry the heavy weight of the accident. As a couple, they were solid. As individuals, however, my mother took it hard. She plastered on her beautiful game face for my sake. Her facade would crack, though, and not before long.

“When you came out of my womb, the first thing I saw were your long, long legs,” she used to say when telling the story of my birth.
“They put you on my chest, and I counted your fingers and toes.” I imagined her pride and relief that her newborn daughter was intact, and shared some of her physical attributes—long legs, blond hair. Mom relied on her beauty to help her survive. It helped her get out of Germany. It enabled her to become a model and a flight attendant and it caught my father’s eye. She associated beauty with security and comfort.

When one of my long legs was cut short, my mother worried about my future. Would men want me? Would they look at my altered body and find beauty? What would I wear? Would I go to school dances? Could I travel or have a career? Could I even hail a cab? I overheard my mom ask Dad one night, “How will she get up in the middle of the night when her baby cries? Will she ever be able to have children?” (I’d been given so many drugs because of the gangrene, my mother was afraid I wouldn’t be able to conceive.)

She struggled with anxiety and Dad grappled with anger. He seethed about the accident having been allowed to happen. I hobbled into the kitchen one morning and found Dad at the table, lost in thought, rubbing his head with enough force to leave marks. I asked, “Dad, are you okay?”

“Fine, great,” he said, snapping back to real time, acting upbeat. But I knew he’d been in the black hole. He didn’t talk about his silent rages, at least not to me. But even at six, I understood their worry and anger. It would have been pathological if they hadn’t had those feelings. The only emotion I had was a longing to be just like the other kids. So when Mom gave me a hard time about using my crutches with the prosthesis, I was pissed.

I had to prove her wrong, and spent every moment at home getting used to the prosthesis, clomping up and down the hall until
my gait was smooth. Some mornings, I would get to the front door and yell, “Gotta go, good-bye!” as if I were in a hurry and “forget” the crutches. I tried a few times to stick them in the coat closet and sneak into the elevator without them, but I always got caught. It was as bad as getting caught stealing as far as my mom’s reaction went. I also complained about Mom’s taking me to school every day. Other kids took the bus or walked themselves.

Dad could tell how important all this was for me, and helped convince Mom to loosen the reins. Two against one, we wore her down. Finally, she said, “Okay. You can leave the crutches at home under one condition: Mack will drive you to school, and park outside the building until you get in safely.”

Mack was our driver, and a sweet, gregarious ex-con. Imagine a cross between Robert De Niro and Burgess Meredith in
Rocky
. Mack drove our stretch limo. Talk about conspicuous and totally mortifying! I wasn’t going to blend in if I was dropped off in a limo. Worse than being thought of as “peg-leg girl” was being tagged a “poor little rich girl.” The next morning, I begged Mack to drop me off a few blocks from school. He had clear instructions to take me all the way to school, but I pleaded with him. We compromised. He let me out a block away, and kept an eye on me from the curb. Tight-lipped and determined, I walked to the building by myself and up those one hundred steps. It was exhausting. I had to stop a few times. But I didn’t fall down and break my good leg. I made it through the doors in one piece (two, counting the prosthesis).

Victory came at a price. The prosthesis was a step up, but it was functionally flawed. My skin graft at the bottom of my leg was thin, and right on top of the bone. No matter what padding I used—like superthick socks—or how much extra space was built into the lower
part of the prosthesis, my skin graft chafed with each step. The first hour in the prosthesis, my graft was abraded raw. In two hours, it was bleeding and open. Often, bone was exposed. But I didn’t tell anyone.