White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  Everything was normal. “Do you want to know the sex?”

  My eyes stung with tears. It had been eleven weeks, and still I could not fathom that I was actually pregnant, holding life inside me. Nearly a year after my ectopic, a year of infertility and continued symptoms, a scan revealed that only one of my tubes worked—if that. My otherwise patient reproductive endocrinologist had advised that at my age, there was no point waiting. I had nightmares about IVF ripping open my stomach, my body once again pulled apart in a fertility attempt, and it was with much hesitation that I agreed to review the forms and contracts, all the while my gut telling me that perhaps my gut wasn’t getting pregnant for a reason and I should leave it be. Zelda was enrolled in school; our lives were once again organized, structured. Even my mother’s condition seemed to have plateaued, and though she was not leaving her house at all, she was generally in a calmer mood. Perhaps I could move on. Perhaps not. I transferred my files to the IVF ward and made my intro appointments.

  Then, the test. This time, it was a home test, digital. I left the bathroom, unable to watch it work. Zelda was asleep. Jon was out of town. I paced. I texted him. Then I went back to the bathroom. No two parallel lines.

  Instead, a flashing “YES.”

  Shaking, I threw the stick in the air.

  I texted Jon the picture. MAZEL TOV, I whispered to myself.

  (Then I called ten times until he woke up. It was five a.m. in the Midwest.)

  A mad week passed until doctors could confirm the pregnancy was in the uterus. I giddily joked: My Jewterus saw the prices of those fertility treatments and said forget it, I’ll do it myself! My hormone levels skyrocketed. I’d spent the better part of the past six weeks on the sofa, binge eating toast, gaining ludicrous amounts of weight, suffering searing headaches, bitter nausea, faintness, palpitations. An eyebrow fell off. Where the first pregnancy had been a complicated surprise, this one had been badly wanted. Where the first pregnancy had been all emotional turmoil, this one had been all physical turmoil. I’d promised myself I was going to enjoy pregnancy if it ever happened to me again, and instead, I felt horrific and lived in constant fear of a miscarriage, bracing myself for the sight of blood every single time I went to pee (which was twenty times a day).

  The difference in symptoms, I was certain, meant it was a boy. Besides, there were so few girls in Jon’s and my family—we had loads of uncles, no biological aunts at all. Jon and I had even, against all superstitious wisdom, picked out a boy’s name. I envisioned a family like mine, older sister, younger brother.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to know the sex.”

  The nurse was chipper. “Girl.”

  My hands felt fuzzy. I almost dropped the phone. “Another girl?” A girl. A girl? A girl! No way had I expected this, imagined this, being part of an estrogen team, living in a gaggle of gals. I’ll never have a son, rang through my head. I won’t re-create my childhood family. But that thought was quickly replaced with: another daughter. As different a person as my first. A new line, this one lateral. I’d have a clan, a team, a whole nexus of relationships. I’d have another chance to redo the mother-daughter bond.

  More love. More dynamics. More family. More work. More healing. Eventually, more sassy teenage daughters. More. More. More.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT, I dreamt that my pregnant friend Emily and I were looking for shelter, and we entered a building for intellectually handicapped children. The floor was quiet, white. Hushed murmurs peppered the background. I suggested we get into the elevator and go upstairs. The lift moved slowly, carefully, like liquid oozing up a syringe, until it didn’t. Suddenly, the elevator completely veered off course, routing us right up through the building as if shooting up a roller coaster and jetting us out into the sky, turning the entire building’s roof into a shambles of tiles and shards that crashed around us, my heart in my throat along with my stomach, my lower half tingling in midair.

  I woke up, my chest palpitating, drenched. More. More. More. More mess.

  I went into the den to where Jon had been banished with the child monitor and shook him awake. “Where are we going to put her?” I thought of friends who had two children, of their houses strewn with plastic toys and pasta.

  “Hmm,” he said this time. “Do you have to keep waking me up for this stuff?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But yes.” Strollers. Carriers. Teethers and pacifiers. Stacks of molded tuna cans.

  “Well, at least this time, in our two-bedroom, it is a good point.”

  Buried alive. “Shit.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You won’t lose your makeshift office.”

  But as I retreated to our room, my stomach bloated and in-between—no kicking yet, but not just-me either—I realized that there were solutions. The girls (the girls!) could share a room. Or the baby could go in the den. Or, I could move my desk to my room, or place it near the bookcase. My brain was with me, transportable, permanent; I would not lose it. The transition to motherhood had been made; this was just an administrative challenge. I knew that there would be moments of calm, and ones of sheer exhausted chaos. I would be on top of some things, and way beneath others. There would be mess and order, progression and regression, panic and peace. Everything would seem slow, easy, even boring, and then take a bender, shoot me through the roof.

  Plus, we already owned the equipment. There was nothing new to buy, no need to add to the “hoard.” The nursery already had color, even blue pen marks on the white walls where Zelda had once scribbled, and I had survived. It took me thirty years to feel independent, and three years to feel like a mom. I knew already that I’d go through all the anxiety again, relearn lessons; only this time, I hoped, I’d do it a touch more quickly.

  Now my mind reeled with a squillion plans. We’d move the changing table to the den, the bassinet to the living room, the soft toys from storage. We’d be at the preschool for six years; Zelda would enter kindergarten as baby would begin. Then again, I reminded myself, touching my tummy, who knew who this new creature would be, what she would be like, how our home would evolve, and what walls we’d have to build—maybe even new partitions?

  I’ll work it out in time, I thought, carefully getting into bed. Or maybe, I considered, the baby could sleep with me for a while. No walls at all. Zelda had shown me that there was so much space in my cleared home, in my heart. I could fit worlds inside without suffocating or bursting open.

  I turned over to find a comfortable position and looked up to see my ceiling hovering high above me. I’d make room for us all.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The act of writing memoir is an act of cleaning up: one creates, rather than finds, clear narrative strands that run through the messy material that comprises a life. No wonder I’ve always been drawn to this form that seeks answers, developments, straight lines. In sculpting this narrative—which is, needless to say, told from my singular perspective and one that continues to change as I grow—I’ve had to make tricky choices. Consciously, I’ve obscured names, dates, and identifying characteristics of certain people and events portrayed in this book for literary cohesion and to protect privacy. Subconsciously, as I’ve attempted to convey experiences from decades back, I’m certain I’ve made changes as well. Memory is fluid, flexible like pregnant ligaments, bending unexpectedly to suit unusual poses. It is difficult for me to recall past scenes without my knowledge of present ones, of current diagnoses, of how the story turned out. I did the best I could to authentically portray my recollections.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDITS

  It takes a village to raise a child, but it took an urban megalopolis to nurture this book. Thank you:

  To the editors and producers at New York Times Motherlode, Salon, Anderson Live, Jerusalem Post Magazine, Nerve, Babble, Tablet, and Jewish Telegraphic Agency who first enabled me to share bits of my story.

  To my most incred
ible and savvy book team (dare I say, book mothers): Tracy Bernstein, for wisdom, wit and kindness, for diligence down to the detail, and for tremendous patience with this terrible hoarder of words; Lauren Burnstein for ardor and acumen; and Alia Hanna Habib, for believing in my voice, and consistently reminding me to follow it.

  To Sarah Mlynowski and Leigh McMullan Abramson, for such generous, gentle care and commentary in the final stages of book labor. To Kimberlee Auerbach Berlin for cheering me on at conception. To Amy Klein, Susan Shapiro, Melissa Johnson, Trey Sager, Nicole Bokat, Abby Sher, Sue’s Thursday group, Columbia University workshops, and all the writers and teachers who’ve helped heal and shape me on the page, and in life. To Erin Edmison, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, and Iris Glaser for auxiliary help along the way.

  To friends and family, doctors and therapists, colleagues and ex-boyfriends who did not choose to be memorialized in a published work; I hope I’ve done your representations justice. You feature in my story only because of the tremendous impact you’ve had on my journey to love.

  And to Jon, for being crazy enough to choose to marry a memoirist, and optimistic enough to have taken a second chance on an obnoxious thirty-year-old (that’s thirty).

  Parts of chapter nine first appeared in the Jerusalem Post Magazine.

  Parts of chapter twelve first appeared in Nerve.

  Parts of chapters thirteen and fourteen first appeared in Salon, a Web site located at http://www.salon.com.

  Parts of chapter twenty-four first appeared in Tablet.

  Parts of chapter twenty-four first appeared in JTA.

  Portions of the article “A Hoarder’s Daughter Yields to a (Little) Mess” by Judy Batalion originally appeared in the New York Times on 4 January 2013 and are used here by permission. Portions of the series “Preschool Admissions Diary” by Judy Batalion originally appeared in the New York Times from 11 February to 29 April 2014 and are used here by permission.

  Photo by Sharon Perlman

  Judy Batalion has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, the Forward and many other publications. She grew up in Montreal, worked as an art curator and comedian in London, and now lives in New York with her husband and two daughters.

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