When I was fourteen, I found a book on anxiety at a bookstore and finally had a name for what I’d experienced: panic attacks. I wasn’t alone. Other people also had episodes of sudden terror. I was so thrilled! I searched the book for a cause . . . say, for example, a gruesome accident as a young child. The best conclusion I could draw at the time was that I was probably born with a predisposition to anxiety and the accident lowered my baseline. My hospital and surgical history brought on hypochondria. Anxiety and hypochondria fed off each other. I became fearful that something would go horribly wrong with my body and mind. An unexplained bruise had to be leukemia. A headache had to be a brain tumor. I believed that any tiny symptom meant I was dying. Mom’s mysterious illness, and Dad’s obsession with weird food and healers, only reinforced my fears.
My mortality had been violently challenged. Most people believe in their own immortality until their early thirties. They do reckless stupid things—drive drunk, smoke, party heavily, do drugs, and have unprotected sex—without worrying about the consequences. When they said, “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” they meant it. I never had that kind of blind faith. For every kid who was warned, “You’ll lose an eye!” how many actually lost the eye? One in a hundred thousand? One in five hundred thousand? How about the kids who were told, “You’ll lose a foot!” How many actually lost the foot? One in a million?
Something bad did happen to me. I was convinced, If something else bad is going to happen, it’ll happen to me.
Having your foot chewed off as a child affects a person.
My parents sent me to a shrink to talk about it when I was seven or eight. The therapist asked me to draw the barn and the barn cleaner. Crayons were going to cure me. The shrink badgered me to talk about the accident. I hated the sessions, and complained until my parents let me quit. People have suggested that my anxiety was the result of not dealing emotionally with the accident. My response to that is: bullshit. Unless you’ve walked a mile in my shoe, you can’t judge my behavior.
All I wanted was to move forward with my life. I never grieved for the girl I might’ve been. I never mourned for the lost part of myself—nor will I. I don’t do self-pity.
I was, am, determined to have a great life. Not “a great life, considering.” I decided very early on that I could do it all. I could go anywhere and be anything. I wouldn’t get mystical or romantic about the tragedy. The accident was not “a blessing in disguise.” It was an accident, period. It didn’t change the essential me. I loved running around, dressing up, and feeling pretty, on one foot or two. The accident didn’t make me philosophical or morose. As a teenager, my biggest annoyance about having one foot was that I couldn’t wear high heels, miniskirts, or short shorts to get boys’ attention. Some might think that was shallow. I think it made me a normal, healthy girl in New York, which was all I wanted to be.
• • •
In seventh grade, I switched to the Fieldston School (the same middle/upper school that followed Ethical Culture). The campus was located in Riverdale, the Bronx. I started taking the bus there with older kids. Greg, an eleventh-grader, was a football player with a tender side. There was something wounded and irresistible about him. He talked to me in the halls. The tiniest attention made me fall madly in love. I planned my life around bumping into him. I’d layer on the eyeliner in the bathroom and giggle with my friends about him. He seemed to enjoy my crush, but it went nowhere.
My next serious crush hit in ninth grade. Mike was a year younger than me, but he looked like he was a grown man. He had dark hair everywhere—arms, legs, back, chest. I was fascinated by his pelts. My celebrity fantasy boyfriend back then was Sylvester Stallone (don’t laugh!). Mike was the closest I’d seen to that kind of animal masculinity.
Joanna’s parents went away for the weekend once and I convinced her to throw a big football game party at her house. The whole team was coming over, including Mike. I tried on dozens of outfits, my hair tousled, with full makeup. He showed up with his friends. An hour later, Mike was in Joanna’s parents’ bedroom, making out with the hottest girl in the school. Not me. Her name was Justine. Her parents were best friends with my parents, and I always liked her. They lived in the San Remo, the building next door to ours (home to Dustin Hoffman, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Diane Keaton, Steve Martin, and Mary Tyler Moore). I had no reason to, but I felt betrayed. After that night, Justine was my sworn enemy.
I was devastated. I vowed never to forgive Mike, ever. But a few months later, he asked me out. We went to Pig Heaven, a famous Chinese restaurant on Second Avenue. Just being near him and all his manliness set me atwitter. I reached for my Coke, and it went flying across the table, all over the spare ribs, and into (gasp) his lap. My face flamed bright red. I was mortified. Mike was cool about it, though. Imagine if he had made fun of me instead?
You’d think jealous girls would have whispered behind my back, saying something along the lines of, “Why does he want her? She only has one foot.” If they did, I wasn’t aware of it. In fact, in the high school jungle of survival of the fittest, my leg just wasn’t a factor. I wasn’t teased or bullied. My attitude was that I wouldn’t let my leg stop me from doing or being who I wanted to be. I sent a loud and clear “no biggie” message to my friends and classmates. They picked up on it, and believed it. If they wanted to backstab or gossip about me, they had other reasons to do it. But the leg didn’t come up.
It could have gone the other way, though. Kids can be cruel. I give a lot of credit to the Fieldston community. The educators and parents were good people. In Manhattan private school circles, Fieldston was an earthy type of place that nurtured tolerance, acceptance, and diversity. They had a course on ethics that taught compassionate behavior. I certainly reaped the benefits of the high ethical standard there.
For Mike’s part, he didn’t make me feel self-conscious about my leg—except for one time. Before we’d even kissed, Mike asked Joanna, “Does Aviva take off the fake leg when she sleeps? What about in the shower?” Joanna hesitatingly came to me with his list of questions. She knew I would be mortified. I didn’t blame him for idle curiosity. But I hoped he was thinking more about my boobs, and whether I was a good kisser. He soon found out, and must have been pleased. Mike and I wound up staying together for all of high school. I wore his football jacket and felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
I lost my virginity to him at Joanna’s house, in her parents’ bed. No offense to Mike, but losing it was an all-around unpleasant, crummy experience. We’d fooled around five thousand times by then, and had come close to the act itself. Actually doing it was almost a technicality—a very painful technicality. Mike used a condom. When he took it off, he put it on this little wooden statue behind Joanna’s parents’ bed. We completely forgot about it and went back to our respective homes. On Sunday evening, Joanna called me.
“My parents came home. I’m standing in their room talking to them. And then I see this used condom on their statue!” she said. One can only guess how Joanna dealt with that one.
It took a while for her to forgive me about that.
By the way, I kept my leg on.
Mike didn’t ask to see my stump and I didn’t volunteer to show him. With the exception of Joanna, I kept the prosthesis on at sleepovers with my girlfriends, too. It was cumbersome, like wearing a boot, which wasn’t comfortable in bed. But I felt very self-conscious when I took it off. With Mike, my whole life centered around feeling and looking pretty for him. No way would I disturb that by revealing my most vulnerable and unattractive part.
• • •
Senior year, I was in love and drove myself to school every day with my new driver’s license. Anxiety was a hibernating bear all winter and into spring. I got accepted to Vassar College and all academic pressure lifted. I got a bad case of senioritis, nonfatal, and slacked off heavily. The prom was coming up and Mike was taking me. I had a beautiful, chic black sleeveless dress picked out and a pair of suede boots to match. Life was g
reat.
Famous last words.
One day in June, I had to drag myself to gym class. I usually was fine about gym, but that day, I was dreading it for no particular reason. In retrospect, I might’ve been having a psychic moment. We were playing softball and I was in the outfield standing way, way back there, spacing out. I turned my face up to the sun and closed my eyes.
A ball hit me in my cheek and knocked me off my feet.
I was rushed to the nurse’s office, and someone fetched my friend Sarah, who remains one of my best friends to this day. She drove me to the city and we went to the hospital. At the ER, an oral surgeon told me my jaw was broken, and that I’d have to have surgery that night. Here we go again. . . .
Surgery Number Four: Jaw Wired Shut
Now, you tell me: Was it really that ridiculous for me to think, If something weird, random, and freaky is going to happen, it’ll happen to me?
It’s not paranoia if it’s true, right?
My jaw was wired shut for eight weeks, right through graduation and prom. (When I saw Mean Girls, I died when Regina George had to wear a neck and shoulder brace at prom.) I had to drink and eat through a straw. I was already too skinny to begin with, and I lost more weight. I looked like a skeleton in my graduation and prom photos. I could barely speak, and mumbled when necessary. If I had to choose, I’d say not talking was worse than not eating, although I missed both, a lot. It was definitely worse than wearing a prosthesis. Mike put up with a lot during those two months. I can only imagine the jokes in the locker room about how his girlfriend couldn’t use her mouth.
My friend Rob calls me “clumsy and long.” The irony is that 90 percent of my klutz moments have nothing to do with my prosthesis. And unfortunately I didn’t leave my clumsiness behind with adolescence either. On The Real Housewives of New York City, there was a scene at my fifth anniversary party when I fell down a short flight of stairs. I stumbled on my good foot. Who goes on national TV trying to show the world that she can do whatever everyone else can, and then tumbles down three steps on camera? Luckily, in typical form, Reid literally and metaphorically saved me from that fall.
In my own defense, a photographer said, “Aviva! Look up,” right before it happened. I wasn’t watching my steps. I tried to recover as gracefully as possible, but I felt foolish. I wound up having to wear a bootie on my right foot—prosthesis on the left—for two weeks. (They should have filmed me walking around like that!) For the rest of the party, my ankle was throbbing. I had to take a seat. I wasn’t going to limp into a taxi and leave. The cameras were rolling.
I did take the edge off with a glass of Ramona Singer’s Pinot Grigio. I drank it in one gulp. And you know what? It tasted pretty good.
• CHAPTER THREE •
Passage in India
This summer,” said Dad, “we’re going to see a messenger sent by God to save the world. His name is Sai Baba, the modern-day Jesus Christ. We’re going to his ashram in India and he’s going to grow Aviva’s foot back.” It was 1985. I was fifteen.
My mother sat next to Dad on the couch in the den while he made this stunning announcement. She’d been sober for three years. If she had any objections to Dad’s summer plans, she didn’t voice them. She loved him deeply and followed his lead.
Andre, then eleven, said, “Wow, India. Sounds cool.” He was a passive follower of my dad’s ideas and plans, no matter how kooky.
I was too shocked to speak. I glanced at Mom to make sure I’d heard correctly. She nodded at me. The Jesus Christ of India was going to make my foot grow back? Would it appear in a puff of smoke, or would he pull it out of a hat?
“Don’t give me that look, Aviva. Sai Baba is a bona fide miracle worker. It’s been documented,” said Dad. His eyes glowed with the certainty of a recent convert.
Mom confirmed it. “It’s true,” she said. “He’s the avatar of a healing spirit.”
My parents had gone completely off their rockers.
“How long will we be there?” I asked, thinking I could tolerate one of Dad’s bizarre schemes for a week, ten days tops.
He said, “A month.”
“I don’t . . . this sounds kind of . . . I think I’ll pass.” Go to India and live at an ashram? I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but India in July sounded hotter than the furnace of hell. My summer plans had been to hang out with my boyfriend, Mike, in the city or Jamaica. Mike and I were madly, deeply, and passionately in love, as only teenagers could be. The thought of being apart was like tearing off another limb.
“It’s not open to discussion. We’re going to India to meet Sai Baba,” said Dad.
Then came the hard sell. According to what Dad had heard and read, Sathya Sai Baba could:
1. Revive the dead.
2. Cure the sick.
3. Materialize objects like gold rings, precious jewels, statues of Krishna, and a “sacred ash” called vibhuti, a holy healing substance made by burning cow dung (as if I needed more cow shit in my life).
4. Spit up a golden “lingam,” an egg-shaped symbol of the divine.
5. Be in two places at the same time.
6. Conjure his likeness in fire or in the sky.
7. Create energy clouds.
Dad truly believed that Sai Baba wasn’t just a messenger from God, he was God. He had a legend and a history of incredible stunts. Allegedly, he’d suffered a heart attack and stroke that paralyzed him, and then he cured himself right on stage before a throng of devotees, in classic “I can walk! It’s a miracle!” fashion. His ashram in Puttaparthi attracted hundreds of thousands of people a year just to catch a glimpse of the living god.
Dad showed me a photo. It was the mid-eighties, the height of Big Hair. Sai Baba’s afro was the highest and bushiest I’d ever seen. It would have looked great on a Harlem Globetrotter or one of the Jackson Five. He had brown skin, a broad nose, and bulging crazy black eyes. He wore a crossing-guard-orange caftan, buttoned up to his neck and flowing down to his feet. If I saw him hanging out in Central Park, waving his arms around and coughing up golden eggs, I’d think he was on drugs.
“He’s got millions of followers from all over the world,” said Dad. “Doctors and politicians. Not just the needy and uneducated.” That was true. The prime minister of India, scientists, and intellectuals from around the globe swore by his divinity.
The description of this ashram—thousands of sick, desperate Kool-Aid drinkers crammed into a remote village in a Third World country—triggered an instant panic attack. I was convinced the trip would kill me.
By no means was I averse to exotic locales. My parents were travel junkies and took my brother and me on trips through Europe. We rode the Orient Express, and went on safari in Africa. Elephants charged at us at top speed, almost squashing our Jeep. We watched a python catch, kill, and swallow a gazelle whole. The Masai Mara people were fascinated by my leg. They cut me to see if I had human blood in my veins. I loved exploring foreign lands and cultures and was grateful my parents had taken me to the far corners of the world.
But this trip to India wasn’t a holiday or a wild adventure. It seemed like the desperate plotting of a delusional man who was forcing me to go along with him against my will. I staged a protest and refused to leave New York. My father put a ton of pressure on me. He made me feel like I had no choice. When I left Mike for the airport, I honestly believed I’d never see him again.
My parents, brother, and I flew seven hours to Paris. My anxiety spiked for the entire flight. By the time we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I felt wrung out. We would spend the night in Paris and then continue to India.
For dinner, we went to a restaurant near Sacré-Coeur. I was on the edge of my emotional control and couldn’t eat. Mom tried to force food on me, but I was nauseated. I felt light-headed. My chest was tight. Suddenly, the room went dark.
“I’m going blind!” I screamed.
“For Christ’s sake, Aviva, they just dimmed the lights,” said Dad.
“What is wrong
with her?” Mom added.
It was like that the entire trip. Any twinge meant the worst-case scenario.
The next day, we flew to Bombay. The flight was ten turbulent hours in a jam-packed plane. We landed in a place of abject poverty and human suffering like I’d never imagined. Beggars and garbage everywhere. The smells were indescribable. And this was an industrialized city. This was civilization.
Dad said, “We’re almost there!”
We then flew to Bangalore, a vacation spot for Indian residents. From there, we drove deeper into the subcontinent in a rickety, overcrowded bus, down hundreds of miles of patchy “road.” Hours went by. It was like driving to the end of the world. Finally, we arrived in Puttaparthi, the village that had been built up around Sai Baba’s ashram to cater to the seeking masses. Our bus was one of dozens to arrive that day disgorging the faithful, the needy, and the sick, of all races and ages. The hundreds joined the thousands roaming around the place with a glazed expression, like they’d been hit on the back of the head and weren’t sure who they were.
“I can’t believe we’re here!” my parents said to each other. They were excited, and eager to find our rented apartment and settle in. My brother was nonplussed.
I was miserable, of course.
“Change your attitude, Aviva,” Mom said sternly.
“Or it might not work,” Dad chimed in.
“It” was the spontaneous regeneration of human flesh. What the best doctors in New York City could not do with state-of-the-art technology, a self-proclaimed god with a Jimi Hendrix ’fro in India would accomplish with cow dung ash. But only if I changed my attitude. Skepticism would jinx it.
I felt like the only sane person for thousands of miles.
Dad rented the finest accommodations available: a single prison cell–like room with a cement floor and one small window. It had four cots and a private bathroom with a toilet and a sink with running water. We brought our own toilet paper. This was the luxury package. In 90 percent of the dorms at the compound, the devotees did their business in a hole in the ground and cleaned their hands in the dirt.
Leggy Blonde: A Memoir Page 5