LYNN KAUFMAN by Lois Walden
Naughty. I was naughty. I am still naughty. Dale, my sister, was nice; a nice, respectable older sister. She is still a nice, respectable older sister. She has children. Two children; a boy and a girl. They are not nearly as respectable as my sister. They are part of the story, but she is the pivotal player in my childhood. My sister has three grandchildren. She loves them. They are lovely. They will be fucked up. It is guaranteed. Inevitably, all human beings are fucked up. Not my sister. Everyone loves my sister. She was voted “most popular” in her senior year at Mamaroneck High School. That award meant a great deal to her. She cared about that award. She cares about peer acceptance. She had many friends. Lynn Kaufman was my sister’s best friend. They were inseparable. I liked Lynn Kaufman. Lynn treated me as if she and I were the same age. I liked that.
My sister was the perfect student. She got straight A’s in high school, received 700’s and 800’s on her SAT scores, and attended the University of Michigan where she received her bachelor of arts degree. After receiving that degree she received four masters degrees in topics as diverse as deaf education, art history, and arts finance.
My sister was five grades ahead of me, which means I was and always would be five grades behind her. We have never attended the same school. It worked out that way because my mother, who will be discussed quite often in this memoir, miscarried a baby boy two years after my sister’s birth. After that miscarriage I was carried to term, and finally born at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. I was small, sickly, asthmatic and adorable. I had a weak anal sphincter muscle. My mother’s index finger was up my ass daily; clue number one to a very complex mother-daughter relationship. I had a deep bond with my mother and her index finger. I liked being sickly. I had my mother’s undivided attention.
My father and sister did not make much of an impression upon me; not in my early years. My father, Lester, was the disciplinarian. I was his challenge. He was my enemy.
During the first eleven months of life we, the Greenwald family, lived in the Bronx. I spent my early childhood nights rocking my hand-me-down crib on wheels across the uncarpeted wooden bedroom floor. Rocking. Was I an unhappy baby? I do not remember. I was a restless baby. I yearned for the other wall. Wherever my crib was, I wanted to travel then touch the other wall. I still yearn for the other wall. Wherever I am, I want to touch, tamper with and tear down the other wall, the other wall on the other side.
The downstairs neighbors complained. Unless and until I rectified my nightly crib travels, my parents were warned that the neighbors demanded we vacate the Bronx apartment. Instead of locking the wheels, we vacated. Until many years later, I had no idea that I was responsible for our move to the suburbs. At that early age, even if I were conscious, I doubt I would have or could have changed my behavior. Since the day I was born, demanding constant attention has been my greatest talent. Rocking is but one example of an attention-getting device used for self-regulation during pre-verbal personal crises.
We moved. We moved to Larchmont. Larchmont was and still is a bedroom community to Manhattan. Larchmont is on the Long Island Sound. Larchmont Yacht Club is a famous yacht club. People love sailing in Larchmont. Larchmont is in Westchester County. Larchmont was and still is filled with wealthy philandering men (my father fit that description, perfectly), unhappy, unfulfilled women (my mother fit that description, perfectly), and children of privilege wanting for nothing. My sister and I fit that description, only I wanted more than the Larchmont life. Even though I was young, I wanted a world filled with drama, music and sex. My sister wanted good grades, an unblemished face and good friends. She had low expectations. I had dreams of conquering the world with my charm, my blue eyes and blonde hair.
Larchmont; there was the perfect back yard. There was a swing set. We lived at #1 Cambridge Court in a big white house with green shutters. There was a large oak tree in the front yard (an important character in this early story). There was green grass. There were no weeds. There were gardeners. There were maids. There were problems. I was the biggest problem. I wanted to play baseball, climb trees, fuck boys or touch girls. My sister, on the other hand, studied Latin until the wee hours of the morning. While my sister was studying Latin, I was either masturbating, reading movie magazines, or playing flashlight follies under the blue blanket with Neil, my stuffed animal, a brown St. Bernard with an ink stain on his rear right leg. I had spent hours crafting that ink stain. One lucky day I broke through Neil’s outer shell with the tip of the pen. The tip of the pen hit stuffing. I threw the stuffing around the bedroom pretending Neil and I were stranded in an Arctic snowstorm. The next morning Kaky, the maid, cleaned up the snowstorm. Nobody but Kaky knew I had broken through Neil’s shell. Maybe my sister knew, but she never squealed. She knew I would have made her life miserable.
School did not pique my interest until ninth grade; ninth grade is when I started acting, singing and playing with boys of any age. I am getting ahead of myself. I often get ahead of myself. I want to catch up with my older sister. This catching up will never happen. If you are the naughty younger sister, for the rest of your life you will be the naughty younger sister. You cannot catch up, emotionally. You cannot catch up no matter how hard you try. I did not try. How could I ever catch up with my perfect sister? My sister was steeped in reality. I ask myself, “What is reality?” When anyone chooses reality over fantasy, they are unhappy. Nobody enjoys balancing a checkbook, nobody likes sitting through a PowerPoint presentation, nobody likes running for a 7 AM train, nobody likes taking care of the details involved in burying someone who dies suddenly. Reality destroys fantasy. Fantasy is the ideal survival mechanism for a younger child who abhors reality.
Story. Survival. Death. Summer. Adolescence. Help! I am eleven years and six months old. My sister is sixteen almost seventeen. We are on a summer vacation from hell. Imagine an all-girls summer camp. I am miserable. My sister is having the time of her life. She has breasts, small but she has breasts, breasts like a normal sixteen-year-old. She has friends. I have no friends or breasts. The girls in my cabin have humongous breasts: melons, balloons, dirigibles. I have a cork board with nipples. I am without a mother. There is no way out of this summer camp. I will try, anyway. I write letters. I beg, I plead. “I hate it here. Please rescue me from this hell called summer camp, from this horrible all-girls summer camp. Camp Kearsarge is killing me.”
One cold afternoon my sister meets me on the top of the hill at the badminton court. “Stop writing letters. Mother is upset. Grow up. You are so spoiled.”
“I hate it here.” I pull hard on the badminton net.
“Stop pulling the net.” My perfect sister is angry.
For the first time in my life I hate my sister. “I’m going home!”
“You are not going anywhere.”
“Nobody likes me. I don’t have breasts.”
“Who cares about breasts at your age?”
“The girls make fun of me. They spend a lot of time looking at themselves in hand mirrors. I don’t own a hand mirror.”
“You don’t need a hand mirror. You need to grow up.”
“You are such a goodie-goodie. If it weren’t for you, we would be at a co‑ed camp. I like boys. Girls are stupid.”
My sister places her hands on her hips like a grown‑up. “You are too young to think about boys. Mother ruined you.”
“You’re boring.” I rip the net with my index fingers.
My sister hits me. She yanks my hands away from the net. “I wish you weren’t here. You are insane.”
“Don’t you ever say that to me!” I run away. I know she is right. I am insane.
“I didn’t mean it!” she yells. She runs after me.
I run faster than the gale-force northern New Hampshire wind. I scream over my right shoulder. “I hate you!” I run toward the freezing lake. I yank off my blue Keds sneakers. I throw them behind me. I roll up my grass-stained khaki pants, step into the lake. “Fuck! I hate this lake! I hate it here!” I dunk my body in the freezing cold lake. “Even if it kills me, I am going to get out of this place. I’ll give myself pneumonia.” I cry. I look at the clouds. The clouds slowly drift by. Life, like clouds, moves slowly at an all-girls camp, when you have no tits, and your mother isn’t there with her latex glove, working those atrophied muscles, helping you through the hot summer months, the months where you, of all people, are invisible, where no one notices your uniqueness. I have no tits. I am nothing but a skinny creature in an all-girls nightmare in northern New Hampshire. I run into cabin number six. The eleven other girls in the cabin are laughing. Are they laughing at me? They do not see me. They are busy looking at themselves in their hand mirrors. They play with their breasts. They play with each other’s breasts. I am alone without tits, without a mother’s touch. I will die here. I do not make the best of things. I make the worst of things. I write one letter, another letter, and another, and another and another. I send hysterical requests to my mother. “Get me out of here! Get me out of here, or else I’ll die!”
Two days later: My sister sends a message to cabin #6. “Meet me at the top of the hill next to the lake.” She has forgiven me. I rush out the cabin door. I see my sister. She is a speck in the distance. She runs. She runs up the steep hill by the lake. I run up the other side of the steep hill by the lake. We meet on the hilltop. We look down at the freezing lake. My sister cries. This is unusual behavior for my perfect older sister. Her eyes are red. She is terribly upset. She is inconsolable. She is miscast. She cannot play that part. That role was cast years ago. “Lynn Kaufman is dead.” I love Lynn Kaufman. Lynn Kaufman is my sister’s best friend. She is my friend too. She can’t be dead. She is too young for dead. And, I am too young for her death. “She fell off a mountain on her teen tour. The rope broke. Lynn Kaufman is dead.”
“Lynn Kaufman isn’t dead! Why would you tell me she’s dead?”
“She is. Look at me. Look at me.” I look at my sister. “Do you hear what I am saying? Lynn Kaufman fell . . . off a mountain . . . my best friend . . .” My sister trembles. I touch her hand. She holds my hand. Her hand is much bigger than my hand. She looks up at the sky. I look up at the sky. The sky is alive with clouds. Maybe, Lynn Kaufman is in the sky. I hug my sister. We cry. For the first time since I was born we cry together about the same thing: Lynn Kaufman.
Death is everywhere. It is in the grass, the lake, the trees, the branches of the trees. Death is under my feet, over my head, to the right to the left of me. Mostly, death is in front of me. The rest of my life will be informed by Lynn Kaufman’s death. Food. Why eat? I will die no matter what or if I eat. I stop eating. I go on a hunger strike. Food will poison me. The night waits for me. She waits for me to fall asleep. She will suffocate me in her darkness. I stop sleeping. The girls in cabin six laugh at me. I stop talking. I stop writing letters. I stop. If I stop functioning, time stops. Time is the killer. Death waits. When you know there is an unfortunate end, that you will inevitably fall from some infinite cliff into a chasm, an inexplicable chasm, death becomes your shadow.
“She does not eat. She does not sleep.” My fat lesbian counselor has me admitted into the camp infirmary. In the adjacent room another miserable camper pukes and pukes. The sound makes me sad.
She has a puking disease. “Bulimia.” The nurse names the disorder. I am eleven years old. I do not care about her disorder. I have my own disorders. Death is about disorder, isn’t it?
My sister visits me in the infirmary. “You have to eat,” she says. “Have some potato chips.”
I turn my back. I face the wall. “No food.”
“You have to eat. Mom and Dad are worried.”
“I don’t care.”
“The head counselor called them. They are coming to get you.”
“Lynn Kaufman is dead.”
“Lynn Kaufman’s death has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”
“I’m afraid.” The girl next door pukes. “Listen to her.”
“She has eating disorders.” My sister shakes her head in disgust. “You’re behaving badly.”
“I don’t care.”
“Lynn loved you. You can’t lose any more weight. You’ll be as thin as a twig.”
“Fall.” I turn. I look at my sister. “Everything dies in the fall.”
“Please stop this act of yours. It all started because you don’t have tits.”
“Maybe.” I rock.
“Please stop rocking. It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Then leave.” I continue rocking.
“When they get here, our father is going to kill you.”
“I’ll be dead by the time they get here.”
“Don’t be stupid, stupid.”
“Look out the window.” My sister walks over to the four-paned cracked beveled window. “See that tree?”
“The oak tree?”
“The big slanting tree. It’s about to fall on the infirmary. We will be dead in moments. If you want to get out alive, you’d better leave.”
My sister looks at the ceiling. “This time you have gone too far.” She leaves.
Forty-eight hours later my parents arrive. My father does not look at me. My mother cries. “Don’t worry. You are going to be fine. Oh dear. You have gotten as thin as a rail. Kaky will feed you. I’ll take care of you.” My father lights his pipe. “Lester. Please don’t do that.”
“For God’s sake.” He leans against the blue Chrysler sedan, raises his left foot, knocks the burning ashes from his pipe on his heel, places the pipe in his tobacco pouch, shoves the pouch in his pants pocket. “For God’s sake. Let’s get the hell out of here. Where’s Dale?”
I hold onto my mother’s pink dress. “She will meet us at the entrance, dear. Let’s not make a big deal of this.”
“For God’s sake. You ruined her.” My father glares at me. “Get in the car, kiddo.”
My mother opens the rear door. I sit in the back seat. My mother sits in the front seat. She reaches for my hand. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see. When you get home, you will feel like a different person.”
My father starts the car. “Let’s hope so.”
My sister meets us at the camp entrance. I jump out of the car. She scoops me up in her arms. “I love you. I’ll be home in three weeks. Behave yourself. Eat something.”
“I will.”
My father guns the engine. “Come on, girls. Let’s make a clean break from Alcatraz.” He laughs.
My mother gives my father a dirty look. She wrings her hands. She bites her lip. “Dale.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Thank you for taking care of your younger sister.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more about this, Mom.”
“It just couldn’t be helped what with Lynn Kaufman’s . . . horrible . . . horrible.”
My father yells. “What parent in their right mind lets their sixteen-year-old daughter climb a mountain? Her father’s an idiot.” I burst out crying. “Enough back there. Enough!”
“Lester!” My mother rests her hand on my father’s shoulder.
He looks at me. “I don’t get it. She didn’t die, for Christ sake!”
I scream. “I wish I had!”
“Stop it! Both of you! I can’t stand the friction. It’s bad for my nerves.” My mother’s body stiffens.
My father turns. He purses his thin lips. “You have embarrassed our entire family.”
And then the ride home; four unbearable hours of pipe-smoking, crying, screaming, deadly pauses, falling pine trees on all sides, pine trees falling on top of the 1957 blue Chrysler sedan, crashing through the roof, killing me and my parents. Fortunately, my sister stays at Camp Kearsarge for another three weeks without any idea that her days are numbered.
When she returns, I am catatonic. I am in therapy three days a week; very expensive therapy, therapy in Manhattan with a highly recommended child psychologist whose name is Dr. Schick. Her office is directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After my sessions, before I train back to Larchmont, I cross Fifth Avenue. I visit the Egyptian exhibit. The tombs fascinate me. I am a great queen. Maybe, I am Nefertiti. I am buried alive in Egypt. Three times a week I am buried alive just like Lynn Kaufman and maybe Nefertiti.
When I am home, I sit under the huge oak tree in the front yard. I wait. It will fall and kill me by the time I am twelve. I know the grass will turn a different color in another month or so. I know the snow will fall. I do not know whether I will return to school. I will be dead before the middle of September. For sure I will be dead by then.
My father does not look me in the eye. Kaky tries feeding me. I do not want food. I want to disappear. I nearly disappear, but instead of absolute extinction I imagine the cold hand of death squeezing my heart. Nobody knows about my obsession, not even Dr. Schick. I keep secrets from the doctor. She is on death’s side. She is one of them. Nobody saves anybody from twilight’s inevitable passage of time.
In the month of August 1957 my mother becomes sick with some obscure condition. She begins her slow descent toward the chasm beneath her. I am too busy dying to notice the telltale signs of her chronic mental condition. The seams of our family unravel during that summer; the summer Lynn Kaufman fell off the mountain, when I had my first emotional breakdown, when my mother revealed her fragile inner mental disorder, when my father shut down, when my sister held us together until she left for college one year later.
Lois Walden is the author of two novels, Afterworld (Arcadia, 2013) and One More Stop (Arcadia, 2010). “Lynn Kaufman” is her first creative nonfiction publication.