Replacement Child (19 page)

I pick up a photo of me at age thirteen at my Bat Mitzvah from the pile next to my desk. Linda and I both went to religious school and were part of the first generation of women to go through the coming-of-age ritual. It was meant to acknowledge us as equal partners before God and to raise up our worth in our clan.

I studied for the ceremony for a year. The Hebrew was difficult, but once I got the melodies in my head, it was just like learning new songs. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in code. For me, it was a performance. My father listened to me practice, since he knew Hebrew.

Our learning Hebrew was important to my mother, especially since she never did. She often said to me, “I want my girls to be able to say the Kaddish for me after I die. I could never say it for my parents.” She could never say it for Donna.

My mother sewed remnants from my Bat Mitzvah dress to create a near-perfect mini-me on top of my celebration cake. The photo shows me sitting in front of the cake with my tiny twin perched on top of white icing, yellow roses at her feet, the navy blue background of our dresses punctuated by white dots and outlined in yellow ribbon at the neck and hem. The yellow bow in my own hair matches the one on my replica on the cake. I imagined myself that perfect girl, morphing to womanhood on cue and committing to the God that saved one and let the other go.

My mother and I shopped for my dress for the ceremony, just the two of us, at Bamberger’s. My mother went there a lot, so she knew right where everything was. Junior girls on the second floor toward the back on the right, the tailored clothes I liked in one small section on the left.

The shopping trip was a sparring match. She found several dresses on the rack that she insisted “would look so cute on you” and piled them on her arm for me to try. We lugged two armfuls of clothes into the dressing room. Once I had my clothes off, I was her prisoner, and she brought me all the dresses she liked best.

She waited outside as I tried them on. I pulled the curtain closed behind me; the rings on top of the flimsy drape clinked like coins across the metal bar. Safely inside alone, I shrugged at myself in the mirror.

“Come out and show me what you put on,” she begged me.

With Linda, it was different. My mother focused on finding her just the right dress, just the right skirt or blouse that coincided
with all the rules around her clothes. Nothing sleeveless showing the tight red scarring on her upper arms. No low necklines revealing the scars on her neck and chest. Longer skirts to cover the scars on her legs.

On shopping trips with Linda, I’d go in a dressing room across the hallway to try on something and come out wearing it for my mother to see.

“Judy, just a minute, your sister is trying on this dress. I’ll be right there.”

“It’s easy for you. You look good in everything,” Linda would say.

My parents invited every relative to the party at our house after the services at Temple. We opened up the French doors onto the patio to fit them all. All the relatives remembered the accident, and this party was like a celebration of the survival of our family. My Bat Mitzvah seemed like a bargaining chip with God for my protection.

The party had a carnival feel. A kind of wild abandon. Aunts and uncles pinched my cheeks red.

Linda’s Bat Mitzvah had been different. That day, I remember the hugs were deep and tears were on the verge of spilling. Whiffs of memories from a time they didn’t think Linda would make it to her third birthday, let alone this milestone.

Back in my office now, digging underneath the stack of photos, I find one of Justin at his Bar Mitzvah that my mother carried with her. My parents and Linda, her husband, and one of her daughters had been able to take the trip from Florida to Connecticut for his ceremony. The continuity of our family was
in sharp relief that day. It all seemed a miracle that any of us was there.

Justin performed his part of the service flawlessly and made us all very proud. I stood for photos with him and his father and then with my husband and his three boys as well. Justin dutifully danced the first dance with me, the top of his head only reaching my shoulders. I recognized a heady lightness,
kvelled
with pride and love, and thanked our God for this borrowed life.

My father was visibly moved when he handed down his well-worn tallis to Justin, the first male child in our family. Birthing a boy was one of my few achievements that solicited praise from my father.

Now, I am blasted out of my memories by Justin bursting into the house and pouncing on the piano to practice for his gig this weekend. He’s playing one of my favorites: “Someday, My Prince Will Come.”

JANUARY 22, 1952
(DAY OF THE CRASH)

3:00
PM

S
ELMA
K
URTZER
, B
EVERLY
Chessler, and Leona Lewis rang my mother’s doorbell. They had signed up at Temple Beth El to be in the skit that my mother was organizing for that night’s event.

“Come on in, girls!”

“Linden couldn’t come—her mom wanted her to go straight home,” Selma told my mother while they took off their wet coats.

“Well, I don’t blame her in this weather. I think we should make it a quick rehearsal. The weather is so bad, you should get home before it starts getting dark.”

“We’ve got the music you wanted, Mrs. Mandel,” Leona said, and handed her the sheet music.

She took out a pitch pipe to help them practice, since there was no piano at the apartment.

“Okay, girls, I’ll give you a C, and you take it from there.”

A
T
S
CHOOL
19, Donna looked out the window.

“Why don’t we finish up the project at my house—you can come over,” Donna said to her friend Sheila. “It’s so yucky out, I don’t want to walk home in the dark.”

Sheila agreed, and they headed for home.

1967

I
ABSOLUTELY HAD TO
get out of that house. They still treated me like a kid even though I was thirteen. So, one Sunday, I begged my father to buy
The New York Times
and look through the summer camp section with me. The sleepover section. My plan was to offer up my life’s savings, saved from birthday presents, to pay for it.

I wanted a music and theater camp, to have a chance to be in a real production. Mostly, to be somewhere I could be just me, and not my mother’s daughter. Or my sister’s sister.

Somehow, I talked my parents into letting me go to Camp Tomoka, sight unseen. My duffle bag was packed with everything on the camp list: four pairs of shorts, two bathing suits, six pairs of socks, sneakers, sandals, four T-shirts, a pair of jeans, towels, and toiletries. It was my first trip away from home. I was excited but also a little scared on the four-hour drive up to the camp in Becket, Massachusetts.

To be able to truly re-create myself at camp, I didn’t tell anyone about my family tragedy. I would leave the dead sister and the hurt sister behind. They didn’t need to know, and I could be
seen without that excess baggage coloring their definition of me. There would be no sympathy—which I didn’t feel I deserved— and no questions about Linda. This was my first experiment with being just Judy. It was a way of passing for a regular person.

It also felt like my first big adventure. I’d be out on my own with no one to tell me when to brush my teeth or make my bed and no one to point out every danger that might be lurking if I took a hike or a boat ride.

When we got there, I was shocked at the old house where I’d be sleeping. It was not the rustic log cabin in the woods in the ad, but a run-down old gray colonial in need of a paint job. A few shingles were missing on the roof, and some slats of siding were hanging at angles on the side of the house. There were six of us girls in a room, in bunk beds, with one shared bathroom.

And bugs. Nobody mentioned bugs. Caterpillars, ants, spiders. I planned to sleep in my clothes all summer.

We were told that all of us were expected to clean the place every day as part of our activities. I didn’t count on scrubbing floors that summer. I sent my parents a letter telling them to pick me up, but when I hadn’t heard from them three days later, I ran away.

The vast green open space of the countryside made me dizzy. I aimed for the main road we came in on. Surely there would be a town. After walking about a mile, I came to a combination store and post office that had a pay phone outside that promised freedom. I scrounged in my pocket for my leather money pouch that held few dollars in change.

When I got through to my mother, I was indignant. Didn’t she get my letter? Didn’t she know how awful this place was? Weren’t they coming to get me?

“Why don’t you give it a little time, sweetheart,” my mother said softly. “You just got there. Maybe you’ll get used to it. It might be fun if you stick it out.”

I hung up in disbelief. Abandoned. Alone. Desolate. I walked slowly back to camp. Resigned to my fate, I got into the routine, made some friends, and even landed the lead in the musical. I was one of the better singers that session. By the end of the first week, I was having a great time and had to admit, as much as I hated to, that my mother was right.

I got my first real boyfriend that summer. Dean was a counselor at the boys’ camp across the lake that came over on weekends for bonfires, singing, marshmallows, and popcorn. I was sitting on the ground near the fire when he sat down next to me, pushing aside another boy that was cozying up to me.

“What’s your name?”

I told him.

“Do you like it here?”

“Kind of,” I said. I liked it more already.

Dean had the most soulful brown eyes I’d ever seen, and when he looked at me, I felt re-created. He was sixteen to my thirteen and seemed very worldly, funny, and smart. But what struck me most was that he liked me. It was unbelievable to me, and it turned out that was the only aphrodisiac I needed.

“What brings you to this camp?” he asked me. He handed me the marshmallow he had melted on a branch in the fire, a simple
gesture that signaled his interest in me to the other boys around the fire. His attention made me feel important.

“I sing.”

“That’s cool. Lots of the girls here are dancers, going over to Jacob’s Pillow for classes. I don’t understand dancers.”

“Me neither. It seems so hard, so much work. And they have lots of pains after they practice. I am not into pain.”

He laughed. I made him laugh.

It was a challenge to hear our conversation above the fireside songs, and Dean grabbed my hand and motioned for me to follow him to a clearing away from the bonfire and the crowd. He put his arm around me. I began to feel almost beautiful.

“There, now we can hear each other,” he said.

Dean told me he was there for his last summer as a counselor. Next year he’d get a real job. He went to a prep school in Scarsdale. He told me all about himself, but I couldn’t really concentrate on his words with his arm around me. My stomach fluttered each time he smiled. It was a new sensation for me, and I was nearly drunk on it.

He didn’t snicker or even smirk when I told him I wanted to be an actress and a singer.

When the counselors said to pack it in for the night, Dean and I had only just begun to get to know each other.