Leggy Blonde: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 untilmy 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