Replacement Child

by Judy L. Mandel

  “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.”

  chapter thirty-six

  JANUARY 22, 1952 (DAY OF THE CRASH)

  3:00 PM

  SELMA KURTZER, BEVERLY 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.”

  AT SCHOOL 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.

  chapter thirty-seven

  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 Jaco
b’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.

  “Can you get out tonight?” he whispered.

  “I have no idea. What do you mean?”

  “In an hour. Sneak out of your room and meet me by that oak tree at the top of the hill over there.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t want to let you go yet.”

  No one had ever said anything remotely like that to me before, and I wanted more. When I got back to my room and told my bunkmate, she said, “You have to go! I’ll help you.”

  So after lights-out, she helped me stuff my blanket and use one girl’s wig to make it look like I was in the bed when they came around to count heads. I snuck down the stairs with my shoes in my hand and out to the oak tree.

  Dean was waiting with a blanket spread out on the grass under the tree. It was a clear, cool, New England summer evening. The stars were in collusion with his plan, softly lighting our rendezvous. We talked for a while before Dean pulled me toward him and kissed me—the most kissing I’d ever done before. I tried to be nonchalant, like it was just another day in my glamorous life, but my heart was racing when I ran back to my room.

  That summer I found a new confidence in being Dean’s girl. It was the start of my looking to define myself through men who saw something special in me.

  chapter thirty-eight

  1968

  IN JUNIOR HIGH, when kids in my class were going steady for a week at a time and then moving on to the next, I collected ID bracelets from anyone who gave me a second look. Some of my girlfriends were more discerning and chose their steady guys with much more thought; some even passed on an invitation. I could never do that. I always felt that if I refused, it might be my very last chance. This, after ten or twelve boyfriends over a few months. Gratefully, going steady in seventh grade back then mostly entailed walking home from school together, letting the boy carry your books, and maybe partaking in some tentative closed-mouth kissing. Occasionally, there would be a school dance where you were expected to dance the slow dances with your steady. But by the end of the night, I had usually switched boyfriends anyway. The strobe lights and loud music made it surreal. Your life could change at one of those dances.

  Music had also become a way for me to infiltrate the maledominated garage band scene. There was only room for one girl singer in a band, even if I was grudgingly included to sing the Jefferson Airplane or Janis Joplin tunes they wanted to play. I liked being the only girl in the room at rehearsals. I could imitate Grace Slick pretty well, but the growl of Janis was something that eluded me—and got me kicked out of a few groups.

  In high school, I finagled my way into the band with a lead singer I had a crush on. I’d seen him in a play at school and was instantly in love. His band played lots of Crosby, Stills, and Nash tunes, and I knew I could help them out on the harmonies. But really it was Ray I was after. He was a senior and I was a freshman, but I didn’t think that should matter. He looked like a scruffy Robert Redford, with red-blonde shaggy hair and a drooping mustache that tickled when we kissed.

  Going out with him was a big topic in our house. My parents went ballistic the first time Ray pulled up in his bright yellow VW van with its white roof. My father shook his head and muttered; my mother worried her eyebrows into one big wrinkle. But when Ray came in and met them, he was very charming. I was just glad they didn’t look into the back of his van; Ray had taken all the seats out and put in a big mattress.

  Ray was very much a gentleman. No one would have believed it to look at him, or his van, but he always stopped short of getting really physical with me. He kept telling me I was too young, and when things would heat up, he would distract me with one of our philosophical discussions about whether the Beatles or Rolling Stones were the fathers of modern rock ’n’ roll. I knew nothing at all about sex, or even the preliminaries. If Ray had pressed me at all, I probably would have done anything to keep him around telling me how pretty and talented I was.

  One late afternoon, coming back from rehearsal and a little bit of a party, Ray and I pulled up to my house to find chaos. Two police cars flashed red over my front yard, the sound of their radios crackling.

  “Oh my God! The cops are here!” was all I could register in my brain as Ray pulled the van into the driveway. I sat paralyzed, thinking something had happened to my parents or Linda while I was out partying.

  “Let me just pull myself together before I get out,” I told Ray. I realized I was looking a little too disheveled to face my parents and the police. I wanted to get into the bathroom and brush my teeth, splash my face, and find something to cover the smell of the grass we’d been smoking.

  But Linda was running toward us, barefoot. She was never barefoot. She looked a mess, with her hair flying and her shirt hanging out of her pants.

  “Where the hell have you been? We got a call that said it was you, and you had been hit by a car. Did you call?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I’m right here!”

  “Well, you better go in and explain where you were. We couldn’t find you anywhere. Mom and Dad are frantic.” She gave Ray a dirty look.

  “Just let me get into the bathroom first, okay? Before I have to talk to anyone.”

  “Okay, I’ll cover for you.”

  It turned out it was a crank call. My mother couldn’t remember if they even said my name—just that it sounded like me. It was probably her imagination. Imagining the worst that could happen, as usual. Me, lying in a ditch bleeding, miraculously crawling to a pay phone, finding a dime to call her one last time before collapsing into a coma. The dangerous, random world sucking me in to a black hole.

  chapter thirty-nine

  2006

  I’M TRYING TO get organized. My office is a mess of newspapers, index cards, and photos. There have been various methods I’ve tried over the last year to do this. File folders, file boxes, a special binding system that lets you pull out pages and replace them easily. None has worked for me. Now, I’m trying my old method of using notebooks. For the news clippings, I’m using clear page protectors. So now comes the task of filtering through the stuff for the umpteenth time. Each time, though, I find another nugget that sparks a feeling, a story, or a memory.

  I find a headline that stops me cold in The Elizabeth Daily Journal, January 24, 1952—two days after the crash: “Funeral Rites Held for Mandel Girl.”

  The date of the article makes me realize that my mother would not have been able to attend her daughter’s funeral. She would have still been in the hospital recovering from her injuries. The burial could not be postponed, since Jewish law requires burial within twenty-four hours of death. Missing her last chance to say good-bye was undoubtedly one of many obstacles in my mother’s grieving process that may have explained why she never fully healed, if it is even possible to heal from the death of one’s child.

  My mother was denied all the usual paths for coping with grief. There was no way to go back to Donna’s room, reduced to ash, to look throug
h her things and remember. No photos survived as a record of their life together, until they could later gather some from relatives.

  Added to this, cremation is not recognized as a legitimate method of burial in the Jewish religion, though there was no choice where Donna was concerned.

  Arrangements for Donna’s funeral, I knew, were entirely in my father’s hands. He would have had only a day to find a plot and a pine box, according to Jewish tradition, and to secure the rabbi. He managed it all mechanically, like a sleepwalker.

  The morning of the funeral, I imagine my father went to the hospital with the rabbi to have the keria ribbons pinned on both himself and my mother. He would have taken her bandaged hand lightly in his as the rabbi said a short prayer and pinned them both with the black frayed ribbon. I can envision him leaning carefully over the bed and kissing my mother, their tears mingling.

  The scene takes shape in my mind. On the winding narrow road to the grave site, the line of dark cars split the white-on-gray landscape. Tires rolled across wet tarmac. Only the whip-suck-whip of windshield wipers broke the leaden quiet.

  The single plot nestled against a large oak tree, purchased in haste, was surrounded by deceased strangers, with no other Mandels nearby. My father told me the thought had never crossed his mind to buy cemetery plots for his young family.

  Teachers and parents from Donna’s school came to pay tribute at the funeral. Many neighbors, some who escaped the crash or ran from the flames, were there: girls from Battin High; Karl Reuling Jr., who lived upstairs; the St. Mary’s kids from the candy store; Jack and Florence Earlman, whose daughter Sheila was still in intensive care. Some officials were there, including the Elizabeth mayor, the chief of the fire department, and the principal of Woodrow Wilson School.

  It was unreal, unbelievable to my father that his precious girl was gone. Acting purely on autopilot, he was barely able to put one foot in front of the other and felt lost without my mother by his side.