If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

by Julia Sweeney

  But then I realized that she also wanted to reenact finding out that Santa was not real, too. We would drive around town and she’d say, “How can those reindeer fly?” I would come up with some semi-believable-sounding answer that we both knew was fabricated.

  Finally I got sick of it, and one day when she asked, “I mean, how can Santa, who is so fat, fit down the chimney?” I said, “Look, Mulan. If you want to believe in Santa, go ahead. But I think it’s a little like believing in God. You just have to do it and not ask a lot of questions. Otherwise you won’t be able to do it.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s not that fun.”

  “See, I don’t want you to believe in something that doesn’t make sense. So I have no incentive to keep answering these questions. Find someone who wants you to believe in Santa Claus and ask that person all your questions.”

  “Like who?” Mulan asked.

  “Well, how about Grandma?” I said, smiling.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pussy

  It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

  —Voltaire

  This is a story about two terminated pregnancies. I suppose I am surrendering certain moral ground by including this story in the death section of my book. But, like the pregnancies, the “Death Week” of this book was not planned.

  Here’s why I want to include it: to me being a mother is something that, thanks to science, women can choose to be or not. Choosing to be a mother implicitly implies another choice, a choice not to be a mother. These choices are significant, too. People don’t talk about them enough. As I write this, the right to a safe, legal abortion is part of the political discussion, and a woman’s right to have this option available to her is gradually being taken away in many of the United States.

  When my mother-in-law, Norma, and I decided to talk about parenting and record our conversation, I had no idea where the conversation would go. I didn’t expect to be sharing abortion stories. In any case, the discussion went where it went and I’m glad about that. Norma is eighty-five and now resides in my bungalow in Hollywood. She visits us in Wilmette regularly.

  Norma divorced Michael’s father, Al (who is now deceased), more than thirty years ago. She lived in Washington, D.C., for thirty-five years, and before that she and Al and their two boys lived in various places, including New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, and Mexico. She and Al met in Brooklyn, where Norma had grown up.

  My mother married when she was twenty-one and had me by the time she was twenty-two. She had five children. My mother is a practicing Catholic, as was my father. She expected and wanted to have many children, and birth control was not something openly talked about.

  Norma got married at twenty-one as well, but she didn’t have her first son—my husband—until she was twenty-eight.

  Here is a transcript of a part of our conversation. (It’s smoothed out somewhat for clarity.)

  Julia: Tell me about how you didn’t expect to have kids when you first got married. Were you going to use birth control?

  Norma: Well, when we first met each other, my husband told me he was sterile. But I’d heard that from other boys!

  Julia: Why would someone say that?

  Norma: Because they want to get in your pants. And we didn’t have really good birth control. Some girls had diaphragms. Most people did not have birth control, and yeah, I believed him. What did I know? I just sat there looking really sophisticated. If you’d seen me! But I knew nothing, really. I always looked, acted, like I knew so much, when really—I knew nothing. You know, in fourth grade, Charles Haracletis said to me, “Norma, you know everything. How does it happen?” I said, “What do you want to know?” And he said, “When a man pees up a woman, is that fucking?” Ha! In fourth grade! I said, “Oh Charles, what a childish question.” But the truth was, I had no idea. I had to tell my mother when I got home. My mother had a great laugh, and you could never tell about my mother, whether she was going to slap you for being insolent, or she was going to burst out laughing. But in this case, she laughed. Anyway, that’s what Al told me; he thought he was sterile. I didn’t question it. This fit into my plans exactly because I was going to be a career woman. My father encouraged that. After a while, I figured out that Al probably wasn’t sterile and I started using birth control, although I was very haphazard and lazy about it. It was all sort of vague. So there you are. Things don’t always work out the way you expect, but look at the luck.

  Julia: So how long were you married before you had Michael?

  Norma: Almost seven years. But Al and I were together for two years before we got married.

  Julia: What year did you get married?

  Norma: 1949. Michael was born in 1955.

  Julia: When you first got pregnant, how did you feel about it?

  Norma: I couldn’t believe it. We were living in the country then, in the woods in New Jersey. When my doctor told me I was pregnant, I got really upset. My doctor said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Well, I’m too young.” My doctor said, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re too old.” And that was true for that part of the world. When I had Michael, I was the oldest first-time mother in the maternity ward. There were two women in each room, and a common area with a couch and a coffee machine. Being in a maternity ward was an incredible experience because you would tell the person in the next bed things about yourself you really wouldn’t tell your best friend. And they’re telling you the same thing. You know, “My husband’s penis is too big.” You’d hear things like that; it was incredible. I shared my room with two girls—the first one was there when I got there, and halfway through she left and I spent the last half with another woman. The first one was twenty years old and she was having her fourth kid. She’d gotten married when she was fifteen; she’d gotten pregnant and ran off with her boyfriend to get married. She had her first baby when she was fifteen and a half. Her oldest child, a boy, would come in during visiting hours. He had a little sailor hat. It was . . . honestly, it was really weird. My next roommate was a woman who was in her forties and just had twins. Her oldest child, a daughter, was twenty-two years old. And this poor kid was humiliated that her mother was giving birth, because she was so old. Not only that, her father—the husband of the woman with the twins—had just left her for a younger woman. So this meant this woman was facing raising these twins by herself. I’ll never forget the last thing I heard the daughter say to her mother about the babies. She said, “Don’t worry mother, we’ll get used to it.” We’ll get used to it. With such sad resignation.

  Well, a little while after I had Michael I realized I hadn’t gotten my period in a couple of months. I was pregnant again less than a year later with Joel. My maternity clothes were still hanging on the back of my chair.

  Julia: How did Al handle having the kids?

  Norma: He was happy enough; he was crazy about the two kids, and he felt like that was a whole family. And I did, too. But Julia, I was overwhelmed with two babies in diapers. I also had four dogs and two cats! And I sort of had a job, very part-time, but still. A lot to deal with. And I was naturally incompetent at things like diapers and formula and managing everything. By then we’d moved to Washington, D.C. I was working for a publisher part-time, editing.

  So when I got pregnant a third time I was extremely upset and very, very worried. I decided I would get an abortion. Al didn’t dissuade me. You know, women who say there is nothing to getting an abortion. I’m here to attest to you, it’s not nothing. It’s something.

  Julia: Tell me. Tell me.

  Norma: So there I was pregnant again, the third time. I had a friend named Murray, who was an optometrist—and he was a connector-type person, he knew everybody and who everybody knew. And he was a very energetic, friendly guy. I mentioned to him that I thought I was pregnant, and I said meaningfully, “Do you know somebody?” He said, “No! What are you talking about? Know who?” We had a funny relationship, me and Murray, I said to him, “No, Murray, it’s ‘kno
w whom.’ ” And that was the end of the conversation.

  Two days later my phone rang, and this woman said, “My name is Tippy. Meet me in the lobby of the Woodner Hotel with two hundred dollars in cash and I will explain to you how we can solve your problem.” I said, “How will I know you?” She said, “I’ll know you . . . and I’ll be wearing a mink coat.” A mink coat! That made me laugh. It’s all such a sad memory, but also funny. Al came with me to meet Tippy. It was a big deal. We were meeting her after nine o’clock at night; we had to get a babysitter. There was Tippy, all of twenty-two years old, and wearing a mink coat. I’ll never forget her. We sat down and ordered drinks. She took the two hundred dollars and said to us, “You’re going to go for a pre-exam.” She took out a piece of paper and said, “Look at it, memorize this address.” There was no telephone number, no name, just an address. She wouldn’t let us write it down. Then she said, “They’ll tell you whether they’ll take you or not. If they do, you’ll give them nine hundred dollars.” Al asked, “Can we pay with a check?” She rolled her eyes and said, “No! It has to be in cash.” And then, I know this is a small detail, but when the bill came, Tippy handed it to us, so we could pay for the drinks.

  Julia: Ha, ha. That’s not a small detail, I’d never forget that part, either.

  Norma: I’ve never forgotten any of it.

  Julia: But Norma, that’s so much money, eleven hundred dollars. In 1960.

  Norma: Yes, it was a lot of money.

  Julia: Why did they not know if they would take you or not?

  Norma: Because if you were after a certain time along, they wouldn’t take you.

  Julia: So, what happened?

  Norma: Well, we went to this address. It was on a Monday at five-thirty P.M. You know, Washington is encircled by suburbs that tell you who you are and where you are. And this is one of those 1950s suburbs. . . . It’s not poverty stricken by any means. It was certainly not a slum. But it was depressing beyond belief: the houses are all alike and small, and there are chain link fences. It was hard to find this house, at first. But then we did find it—it was painted bright green with black shutters. We rang the bell and waited a really long time. A voice finally said, “Just a minute.” We waited longer. Finally the door opened and it was very dim inside, and decorated unlike the outside would lead you to expect—dark red with all these Oriental artifacts, lots of junk everywhere. There were hardly any lights on. A voice told us to come in further. We went in further. There stood this little guy, who looked just like Murray—he wasn’t Murray, of course, but he was short and wiry just like him. He said to me, “Pull up your skirt.”

  Julia: What?

  Norma: Yes, he says, “Pull up your skirt.” And I did. He felt around, which was—

  Julia: Creepy!

  Norma: Yes, very creepy. Then he said, “Yeah, you’re okay.” He went to a desk and picked up the phone and said to someone, “Hello, I have a delivery of snow tires. What date can you pick them up?” (For years after this, whenever I heard the words “snow tires” I thought of this moment.) Anyway, he got off the phone and said, “Go to this corner in Baltimore.” You know like on Wednesday at ten-thirty A.M. He showed us a piece of paper with the address. We gave him the nine hundred dollars and then he said to Al in a very brusque voice, “Don’t try to talk to the driver, and do not try to follow him and see where he’s going. He’ll bring your wife back to the exact same corner five hours later.” Then he said to me, “You will wait at the corner, and so they know who you are, you should carry a Reader’s Digest.” And what do you think I said to him?

  Julia: Knowing you, Norma, it was that you weren’t going to carry a Reader’s Digest.

  Norma: Yes! You’re right! That part was putting me over the edge.

  Julia: Oh God!

  Norma: I almost called the whole thing off right there. I said, “I agree to it all, but I’ll be carrying a Harper’s.”

  Julia: Oh my God. Norma, I can’t believe you had to go through this.

  Norma: Oh, there’s so much more. So we did go to this corner. Al had the kids in the car, we had a camp wagon then, and the two kids were in the back with their toys. I was crying in the front of the car, I was getting so worried. I was worked up and distraught.

  Julia: Oh, Norma.

  Norma: I got out of the van with my Harper’s. In a little while, a large black sedan drove up. And Julia, it was driven by Pussy, from The Sopranos. Of course, I didn’t know he was Pussy until I watched The Sopranos, but when I saw him on that show, I said to myself—I know that guy! He looked exactly like this guy who drove this car. Anyway, I get in the car. There were already two other women in the backseat, and they were blindfolded.

  Julia: What?

  Norma: Yes, he had blindfolded them! Pussy handed me a blindfold and said, “Put it on.” I did. We picked up two more women, so eventually we were five women, all blindfolded, in this car. The windows were all dark, so no one could look in.

  Julia: Weren’t you scared?

  Norma: Well, yes, I was terrified. I was so worried, what if I was orphaning my kids because I was having an abortion? I was so scared. I was out of my mind with fear. But, to be honest with you, I was also titillated. I already couldn’t wait to tell Al about it, because I knew I could never tell anyone else about this, ever. Not even my best friend. We drove for about an hour, and then the car stopped and Pussy let us take the blindfolds off. We were in an alley. But saying an alley, it makes it seem dark and sinister, but it wasn’t at all. It was an alley that was well lit and used by all the people who lived on this street to drive into their garages, just like you have now. We went into this house through the back door. We were taken into the living room, which was very small, and had five uncomfortable chairs. We all sat down and for the first time I looked at the other women, and we were such a motley assortment. One was older, she looked fifty! And one woman cried, sobbed, the entire time.

  Then, while we were sitting there waiting for our turn, this two-and-a-half-year-old baby of great adorability was wandering around saying, “Mama, Mama!” He belonged to the woman who owned the house. He was her kid, wandering around; so painful and surreal. We just sat there in silence, just the kid saying “Mama” and the one woman sobbing into her handkerchief. Some of us began talking to each other. The woman crying was forty-four, and she was in a relationship with a guy. They weren’t married and he didn’t want to have kids with her. She was too afraid to raise a child all by herself, but she was in anguish, because from her point of view it was her last chance to have a baby.

  They beckoned us, one by one. They called my name and I went upstairs. A nurse in a starched uniform handed me a gown. She said, “Go in there, take your clothes off; the opening of the gown is in front.” All the furniture had been taken out of one of the upstairs bedrooms, and it was made up like an operating room. The doctor said, “Lay down.” They gave you a mild anesthetic. I spread my legs and in two seconds, it was over. I was sort of sleepy. They took me to another room where I could lie down and rest.

  Then Pussy came and collected the five of us. We headed back into the city, but there was a lot of traffic, and by the time I got dropped off at my corner, many more than five hours had passed since I’d been picked up. Al wasn’t there. It turned out he was just driving around the block, over and over again, like forty times. And he was a wreck, he was in a real state—weeping. He said he was worried I was dead. He said, “I kept thinking how am I going to explain to her parents how she died? That she’d been dumped somewhere?”

  So, the point is, it was a horrible experience. It was unnecessarily traumatic, and not only for me, but for the other women, too. And there’s the class aspect, too—every one of those people, none of them looked like they could spare eleven hundred dollars. Even though this was a high-end abortion—this was about as good as you could get. Think of all the abortions performed on really poor women—the circumstances. I am, and have always been, a vociferous defender of the right to terminat
e a pregnancy. If having a kid doesn’t fit into your scheme of things, it doesn’t matter why, even if it means you can’t buy two lipsticks a week like you want to, I believe in a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body. No explanations needed. On the other hand, when emancipated women say to each other, “Oh there’s nothing to it,” that’s not right, either. There’s something to it. There’s a lot to it. But here’s the thing, Murray never mentioned it to me again and we were friends forever. He just died two years ago. We remained friends for years, and we never mentioned it. Once I made a joke with him, like, “Do you ever hear from Tippy?” And he looked me right in the eye and said, “Tippy who?”

  Julia: Wow. Wow.

  Norma: In fact, back then, I did learn a little more about Tippy. I came to realize that she worked as a dental hygienist, in the same big building as Murray. A dental hygienist, but with a mink coat.

  Julia: Ha! God, what a complicated scheme.

  Norma: Oh, there’s more. Afterwards, I developed an infection; I wasn’t getting better in the way you should. I had a very high fever. When I left the abortionist’s house, the doctor said, “You can’t get in touch with any of us ever again, but if you have a problem, call this number.” It was a number in another state, like Ohio, I think. One night, I was really bad, I had a fever. At three in the morning, Al did call the number. Some guy said to him, “What’s the nearest twenty-four-hour pharmacy near your house?” Al told him about one just down the street. And Al went there and got some antibiotic that this Ohio doctor had called in.

  Julia: Wow. What a harrowing story. I can’t believe you had to go through it.

  Norma: A lot of women did this.

  Julia: Well, I had an abortion, too. And I was also married when I had it.