Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

by Alix Shulman

  When I told Willy, he hit the roof. “Are you kidding? That’s insane! We’ll find a proper doctor to do it, thank you.”

  “But Roxanne’s done it three times,” I said exaggerating. “She says it’s easy.”

  “Just thinking about it makes me sick.”

  “Come on, Willy. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Not that way. I’m going to find you a doctor.”

  Roxanne knew an intern whom she got to do it at his apartment in the Bronx. He pulled all the blinds and locked the doors while she boiled up the instruments.

  “What a tight little twat you have,” he said as Roxanne directed a flashlight between my legs. Each leg hung over a kitchen chair instead of being fitted into stirrups. I was ashamed. “It’s a pleasure to work on you after the gaping smelly cunts that come into the hospital. If you could see them, you’d never want to have children.”

  “What do children have to do with it?”

  “Believe me, having babies wrecks your plumbing. Now hold still a second. I don’t want to hurt you if I can help it.”

  An instant of pain, and the catheter was in. “I wouldn’t want to have children even if it was good for my plumbing,” I said flatly.

  “Don’t you like kids?”

  “I love kids. Other people’s.”

  “Hey, will you relax? That’s better. Don’t you have any maternal instincts?”

  “I have an instinct of self-preservation.”

  “You’ll feel different when you fall in love. That’s when they all want their babies. Now hold very still one more sec. Here comes the water.”

  “But I am in love.”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  It was a familiar line, about love and babies. I’d been bucking it all my life. If it were true, as the scientists claimed, it would be smarter to live without love. The only power a woman had against a man was the possibility, never more than problematical, of leaving him; with babies even that defense vanished. No; plumbing aside, maternity was vulnerability itself, sentencing a woman at best to the plight of Mrs. Alport, and at worst to grubby isolation.

  Sensation without pain, I felt the liquid enter me. “When I’m in love,” I told him, “I rely on my convictions.”

  The very night I decided to try out my mother’s lubricating skin lotion (“What’s that godawful smell?” said Will as I got into bed. “Just some face lotion.” “Well for Christsake, Sasha, can’t you go and wash it off? You smell like a filling station!”)—it was that very night, sometime after midnight, that I awoke with unbearable cramps. I was exploding, coming apart at the seams. I rolled around and doubled up and moaned.

  “What’s the matter? Sash?” asked Willy in his sleep. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  I thought it was food poisoning or appendicitis. Then at last I felt I had to take an enormous crap.

  “Where are you, Sash?” called Willy, feeling me absent from the bed.

  I sat on the toilet and pushed and pushed. Then out it popped, my first baby.

  I looked down. It was suspended over the water in the toilet bowl, swinging from my body, its head down.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh Willy!” I cried. I covered my mouth and screamed.

  A nightmare. I looked again. It hung there like a corpse.

  “Willy, please! Come quickly! It’s a baby!”

  I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had thought at two or three months it would still be a fish with gills, or a tadpole. But it was a real baby, with a human head, only blue.

  “Oh God! It’s hanging here! Please help me.”

  “Now listen, Sasha,” Willy was saying softly, “you’ve got to pull it out of you.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a baby, Willy!”

  “I know honey, but you’ve still got to pull it out.”

  “Oh I can’t.” I was all atremble.

  “You’ve got to.”

  “I can’t.”

  It was too awful: the first baby I produced in this world I deposited like a piece of shit straight into the toilet.

  “Try darling. Pull it out. Trust me.”

  At last, I pulled it out of me and dropped it into the water. It had always lived in a liquid medium. I couldn’t look at it, my own child. I flushed the toilet. Then I dissolved on the bed in a shudder of tears and afterbirth.

  “It was a baby. I can’t believe it. It was a baby,” I moaned. Will stroked my back as I wept and bled.

  “Do you think you’ll be all right for a few minutes while I get the car? I’m going to take you to a hospital.”

  “I’m all right,” I sobbed. “I’ll get blood all over the car.”

  “Fuck the car,” said Willy.

  “I’m all right,” I repeated. “I don’t need to go to a hospital.”

  “Do as I tell you!” he shouted.

  When we got to the hospital, a doctor prescribed three kinds of pills and a bed in the maternity ward.

  “Don’t leave me here, Willy. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “Don’t worry, honey, I won’t leave you.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not permitted on the ward,” said the nurse. “You can visit tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to do to her?” Will asked the doctor. “Can’t you do something now so I can take her home?”

  “Can’t do anything till tomorrow,” said the doctor.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve ordered some pills to control the bleeding, and antibiotics and a tranquilizer. If she’ll stop with the hysterics there may be a chance we can save your baby.”

  “But there is no baby, doctor,” said Will. “She miscarried.”

  The doctor looked skeptical. “You surer he asked.”

  “Of course I’m sure. I saw the fetus myself.”

  “Did you bring it with your?”

  “Bring it? No!”

  The doctor shrugged and turned away.

  “It’s flushed down the toilet,” said Willy frantically.

  The doctor shook his head. “That’s really too bad,” he said. “If you’d brought it with you we might be able to clean her out tonight. But if she’s not hemorrhaging and there’s no fetus and I do a D-and-C at three A.M. with no one from the regular staff around, I could get into a lot of trouble. You understand. I wish I could help you out—”

  “Take an X ray,” said Willy desperately. “You’ll see there’s no baby inside her.”

  “We can’t take an X ray.”

  “Why not?”

  “An X ray might damage the fetus.”

  At the end of that winter my divorce came through. Though I had sometimes talked of staying single (“Why do we need the paper? We’ve got our love”), it wasn’t a week before I was carrying red roses to City Hall, already knowing the next step.

  Babies.

  Why? For the very reason I had refused them in the past: babies could bind.

  The abortion, though we seldom spoke of it, had exposed my bluff. I had demanded it in the name of independence, yet ostensibly I had renounced independence. If my commitment to Will were serious, the best way to prove it was by making a baby. Without a career, I no longer had a reason not to. Willy expected it, poets encouraged it, it was part of the package. And as a job, motherhood seemed to offer more possibilities of advancement than the Clayton Advertising Agency’s research library.

  “Make it a good wedding, won’t you?” said Will winking at the J. P. “The last one was just practice; this one is going to count.” We wanted all the cement we could get to make it stick. Flaunting our devotion, we proselytized for second marriages. I was twenty-seven: unless the rust of my life had wrecked my plumbing, I had three years left to change. And Willy, a ripe thirty-one, had the rest of his life to help me.

  We never celebrated our wedding anniversary, arbitrarily determined by the date of my final decree. Instead, at least till our second child was born, we celebrated the anniver
sary of that season we met, replaying those days like the album of a favorite show, complete with costumes.

  “Don’t ask questions, just try it on,” said Will, presenting me with a large box from Lord & Taylor. “I saw it in the window and had to buy it for you. It’s like the dress you were wearing at Hector’s party that first night in New York. You were so beautiful I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Go on. Try it on.”

  As usual, Willy was right. It was like, but better made than, the one I had bought for the party. It was perfect for the occasion. Starting with champagne on whatever liner was moored in the harbor (a fifty-cent donation to the Seaman’s Fund would get us on board), progressing to turkey and gherkin and Jimmy Witherspoon at Hector’s on the first Saturday night of each December (with me in a black silk dress), we repeated the steps of our marathon. Our first lunch together at the restaurant with the pommes soufflées (I in my off-white turtleneck), the American Beauty roses, our first champagne cocktail at the Monkey Bar (same sweater), our miraculous chance meeting at the Museum of Modern Art where, lunching in brown wool with Roxanne, I had spotted Will sitting alone across the room watching us. (“Is that him?” asked Roxanne. “Yes.” “He looks all right, but you’d better be sure.”) And then finally our first embrace at the Motel on the Mountain in Tarrytown, New York, in the other black dress that zipped up the back. Precisely three days before Christmas, only months after I had resigned myself to a life without love.

  “Goodnight, I love you,” said Willy every night, molding us into spoons. And though I had said the phrase to others out of courtesy or caution, now for the first time in my life without feeling sly or dirty or had, I too could affirm before closing my eyes, “Goodnight, I love you.”

  Eight

  Without daring to reconsider, we made Andrea in the new year and I bore her in the fall, entering the park world in the winter, bundled up. The books I had taken from the library in preparation proved, like The Questions Girls Ask and Girl Alive, to be mere parodies of life; but there was nothing else to go on. Child care was neither discussed in society nor taught in school. However contemptuous I’d been of the prospect of Spock, I was grateful for him now. He had the latest word and a good index.

  It would be good for every baby weighing 10 pounds or more to be outdoors, when it isn’t raining, for 2 or 3 hours a day, as long as the temperature is above freezing and the wind isn’t bitterly cold. (Dr. Spock, Baby and Child Care, Section 244.)

  The old lady who fed pigeons peered into the carriage, but otherwise I was alone on a deserted bench, paralyzed by the fragility of my overwhelming charge, afraid to move for fear of waking her, afraid to take my eyes off her lest she sleep and die. During her brief sleeps I studied her like a difficult text, trying to fathom each mysterious tremor and start, praying she would not wake too soon. When she did wake—always grievously ahead of schedule—I leaped to jiggle the carriage as I had seen the neighbors do, trying to shake the sobs from her throat and the knots from my gut.

  If you live in a city and have no yard to park the baby in, you can push him in a carriage. Long woolen underwear, slacks, woolen stockings, and galoshes make your life a lot more pleasant during this period.

  In summer it would be different. She would be older then and I would not fear her death so much as her life. But now each sob my Andy suffered was on my hands. In my breast lay the power to soothe or torment her, but also dangers. If ten minutes of jiggling the carriage didn’t get her back to sleep, that would be ten wasted minutes, six hundred useless sobs tearing at my raw conscience. It would take ten more minutes to get home from the park, and another ten to get the carriage up the stairs and our wraps and clothing off.

  What do you do if he wakes as soon as you put him to bed or a little later? I think it’s better to assume first that if he has nursed for 5 minutes he’s had enough to keep him satisfied for a couple of hours, and try not to feed him again right away. Let him fuss for a while if you can stand it. (Section 127.)

  The baby carriage turned out to be an unexpected aid in stopping traffic. “Pedestrians have the right of way!” I roared indignantly from the middle of Sixth Avenue, and for once even the long-distance haulage trucks stopped for me. But it was still a good half hour between whimper and feeding—a half hour that took months off my life and left yellow milk-stains on my nursing bras.

  It may start leaking from the breasts when you hear the baby beginning to cry in the next room. This shows how much feelings have to do with the formation and release of the milk. (Section 102.)

  If I had stayed home with her instead of going to the park I could have put her to suck the instant she woke, forgot the clock and the dangers.

  The treatment of fretfulness seems clear to me…. The baby should be allowed to nurse as often as every 2 hours, for 20 to 40 minutes. (Section 122.)

  But I so wanted everything to be right for her, and the park was the preferred milieu. Constant feeding was contraindicated. If my breasts were never more than partially emptied, which could result from putting her to suck too often, then they would not be properly stimulated to fill up again and I would dry up with no comfort for my helpless daughter.

  If the breast-milk supply is insufficient at all feedings, you will need a bottle at all feedings, whether you give the breast first or not. (Section 126.)

  I knew I shouldn’t be offering her bottles yet, but how could I risk starving her? Her life was in my hands. I nursed her around the clock every two hours for half an hour at least, watching her tiny fists clutch spasmodically at my long hair and her toes curl in the joy of sucking, until she fell asleep at my breast; then gingerly I tried to roll her onto her stomach without waking her.

  There are two disadvantages to a baby’s sleeping on his back. If he vomits, he’s more likely to choke on the vomitus. Also, he tends to keep his head turned toward the same side…. This may flatten that side of his head. It won’t hurt his brain, and the head will gradually straighten out, but it may take a couple of years. (Section 248.)

  During the mornings and late afternoons, when I had the diapers and laundry, the bottles and bedding to do, I let her sleep on our bed between feedings. Does a tree falling unobserved in the forest make a sound? Does my child live without me there to see her? I carefully slipped rubber padding between her diaper and our sheet, sometimes leaving her bottom bare to help her diaper rash. (“Jesus, Sasha, isn’t there anything else you can use on her diaper rash besides Desitin Ointment? It smells worse than shit; our bed stinks of it,” said Willy.) But at night, when I longed to share with her my brief interludes of sleep, I couldn’t risk keeping her in bed with me. Even if Willy hadn’t protested her little body coming between ours, it was a dangerous place for her. A carelessly flung arm could snuff out her fire like a breath a birthday candle; not to mention the

  chance that he may become dependent on this arrangement and be afraid and unwilling to sleep anywhere else (Section 250).

  No; better to follow (Section 251) the doctor’s

  sensible rule not to take a child into the parents’ bed for any reason (even as a treat when the father is away on a business trip);

  better to suffer now than pay later.

  The conspiracy of silence about motherhood was even wider than the one about sex. Philosophers ignored it and poets revered it, but no one dared describe it. The experts who wrote articles for magazines (“Ten Steps to Restore Muscle Tone”; “Before You Call Your Pediatrician”; “Take the Time to Stay Interesting: Six Shortcuts to Keeping Informed”) spoke in euphemisms; as to the real dangers, their best advice was to consult still other doctors. Why didn’t the women speak? Evidently they were too busy.

  “Roxanne!” I cried. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “But I did, Sasha. I told you everything. I honestly thought you knew.”

  By summertime Andy sat up unsupported and charmed us with her laugh.

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Girl.”

  “Oh. What’s her name?”
>
  “Andrea.”

  She purred and giggled as I suckled her. She had her preferences, did my daughter, and when something made her cry she broke my heart with her great stores of tears that flooded her enormous green eyes and overflowered their thick banks of black lash like swollen rivers. How, I wondered, could Willy bear to be away from us? Why did he leave us promptly every morning and return late every night?

  “Sasha,” called Willy, “she’s started crying again. I was just sitting here with her and she started screaming for no reason.

  I dropped the spatula and ran to the living room, oblivious of Spock’s warning to parents who

  always anxiously pick him up when he fusses: … the more they submit to his orders the more demanding he becomes (Section 282).

  “Give her to me, Willy, for God’s sake, don’t let her cry like that!”

  If your baby is sensitive about new people, new places, in the middle of his first year, I’d protect him from too much fright by making strangers keep at a little distance until he gets used to them, especially in new places. He’ll remember his father in a while. (Section 348.)

  I took my baby in my arms and walked her, patting her perfect back the way I had when she was a newborn. The sound of her crying was always absolutely unbearable to me.

  Many mothers get worn out and frantic listening to a baby cry, especially when it’s the first. You should make a great effort to get away from home and baby for a few hours at least twice a week—oftener if you can arrange it…. If you can’t get anyone to come in, let your husband stay home one or two evenings a week while you go out to visit or see a movie. (Section 278.)

  The trouble was, Willy didn’t get home most evenings till eight or so and couldn’t have helped me then if he’d wanted to. Oh, he was thoughtful in many little ways. He telephoned the Diaper Service from his office to yell at the delivery man for me when the fouled-up deliveries drove me to phone him, sobbing, at work; he was comforting in emergencies. But he too had changed when Andy was born. A family man now with responsibilities, he buckled down to work.