Read Online Replacement Child by Judy L. Mandel - Free Book Online

tables. My father took us down into the cellar when the storm got bad “just to be safe.”
    My mother made hot chocolate with little marshmallows. My father got candles and a flashlight so that we could play cards.
    Later, when the storm had truly been spent, my father went outside in the backyard to check on the damage while Linda and I watched out the kitchen window. It was a real mess. Branchesand leaves were all over the place. Our clothesline was lying clear across the yard, its metal arms at its side and lines tangled like long fingers.
    Then he saw a branch a little bigger than the others, with the roots still attached. He stopped to examine it closely, shook his head, and carried it into the garage.
    With the sun back out the next day, I followed my father outside to clean things up. He stood the clothesline back up and secured it into the ground. Then he brought that branch out from the garage and studied it for a moment. He looked up at me like he had a great idea.
    “Let’s plant it,” he said. “It will be our Donna tree—from Hurricane Donna. We’ll always remember, right, Juicy?”
    We walked the yard to pick just the right spot for the new tree.
    “We need to give it plenty of room,” he told me. “This is going to be the biggest tree in the yard someday. You’ll help me nurse it back to health.”
    It was that same year that Linda had the surgery where they broke both of her legs to set them right again. I remember hoping that afterward she’d be able to ride her bike with me, or go for a walk on the beach in the summer.
    Linda’s roommate in the hospital, Chi Chi, was from Brazil. Her leg was mangled in a motorcycle accident, and her mother brought her to New York in an attempt to save the leg. Chi Chi’s leg, however, was ultimately amputated.
    The mothers of the girls got them each a Spanish-English/ English-Spanish dictionary. The first word they looked up was pain, dolor.
    They made up their own sign language for important things like “change the TV channel,” “I’m hungry,” “It hurts,” and “When do we get out of this dump?”
    Between them, they had one good leg, Linda said. But they both used it. When Linda needed a bedpan quick, Chi Chi would hop over to get it for her.
    As the two mothers got to know each other, my mother learned that the trip from South America and the extended stay in the United States was a considerable hardship on her new friend. She was running out of funds and had nowhere to stay, so my mother brought her home for the remainder of Chi Chi’s hospitalization.
    “Another stray,” my father muttered when she broke the news. The time before it was their housekeeper who had run into hard times.
    Linda told me that no one had prepared her for the pain she had after this surgery—it was the worst she had ever had. She concocted her own method for dealing with it. With absolute quiet, she could increase her tolerance by closing her eyes and analyzing what she was feeling—exactly where the sharpest point was, how it intensified, and why it was happening. Was it less than yesterday? If it was, that meant it would be less tomorrow. Somehow, telling herself she could stand it helped more than trying to kid herself into believing it didn’t hurt. My mother used to try to distract her from the pain, but eventually she understood and gave her the quiet she needed to concentrate.
    I knew my eye surgery didn’t compare with anything Linda had been through. She was a scrappy foot soldier, and I was a turncoat running for cover from any hint of discomfort. She was valiant; I was a whiner.
    When they brought her home, the ambulance pulled up with its red lights on, and I ran to stand at the top of the stairs. I had on the nurse uniform that my mother got me especially to greet Linda. I loved the little white hat and the white dress with big pockets. I imagined waiting on Linda, carrying cookies for her in those pockets. A blue cape finished off the outfit, making