Miss Fortune

by Lauren Weedman

  Dirty Laundry

  I’m nine months pregnant, sitting in Dr. Addis’s office listening to him make arrangements with Cedars-Sinai to do an emergency C-section for seven thirty tonight.

  According to Dr. Addis I have a medical condition that pregnant ladies can get called “preeclampsia,” which means I have crazy-high blood pressure, and if the baby doesn’t get out of me soon awful things could happen. I could have a seizure. Or explode. That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Dr. Addis is insisting we “call a mother” to set up some help for after we get home with the baby.

  “You’ll be recovering from a major surgery; you’re going to need help,” Dr. Addis tells us as he’s writing down instructions to get to the hospital. “I’d offer to come over and help but I’m playing golf next week with one of my patients’ husbands.”

  No, no, no. We don’t need any help. David and I are old; we can handle it. I don’t want any family members around those first few days we’re back home. Not even my favorite ones. Those first few days at home as a new little family are going to be so intimate.

  There’s going to be a lot of snuggling on the couch with baby Leo, taking turns singing “You Are My Sunshine” to him, and kissing each other as tears of joy rain down on Leo’s new little mushy head. As a Glamour-magazine-diagnosed codependent, I’m not a good host in the best of circumstances. You throw a baby in the mix and the first time one of our mothers is wading around in ankle-deep dirty bathwater because our drain doesn’t work, I’ll be a wreck.

  To be honest, I’m not convinced that I even have preeclampsia. I don’t feel sick at all. It is true that when I take my socks off it looks like the bottom part of my leg has been sewn on. I like to say I look swollen up like an abandoned dead body, but that bothers most people and I’m trying to replace it with “bloated with the blessing of a baby.”

  I wouldn’t be surprised if what I was really suffering from was a condition called “My Beverly Hills gyno has a dinner reservation at Nobu for eight P.M. so let’s get this going.” On the bright side, I’m going to have a baby tonight. David grabs my hand and I try to smile at him, but my face is so bloated I have to put my fingers in the sides of my mouth and pull up.

  Nobody is more excited about my C-section than Ronda, my surgery prep nurse from Saint Louis. “You are going to love a C-section. Keeps your vagina nice and tight.” I love Ronda. She’s an older African American lady with long gray braids who laughs without smiling and walks so slowly it’s like she’s standing still. Ronda’s hooking me up to a magnesium drip telling me a story about how she walked in on her aunt giving her uncle a blow job when she was a little kid. “It really messed me up for a long time. She was the churchgoing auntie, you know what I’m saying?” Sure, I know what she’s saying, but what’s the magnesium for?

  “So you don’t have a seizure, honey.”

  Oh god, this birth is all medical-emergency-like. I really was hoping for it to be more born-in-a-tub-with-dolphins-like. At first I’d been high-fiving Ronda about getting to skip out on missing labor—but now as my insides are starting to feel like they are on fire from the magnesium, I can’t believe I’m never going to experience what it’s like to go through labor. If I don’t go through the excruciating pain of childbirth, how will I increase my capacity for suffering? Labor serves a purpose. It’s nature’s way of preparing you for motherhood and learning how to shit the bed in front of people.

  Rhonda thinks I’m crazy for feeling this. “How you get that baby here has nothing to do with the kind of mother you’re going to be—and I’m telling you, you’re gonna be cracking walnuts with that vagina.”

  At seven thirty P.M., curtain time for theater lovers, Dr. Addis sliced me open, and a license plate, a stripper shoe, and a baby boy fell out. Leo is here. The bliss I feel is unreal and perfect.

  I’m no longer in the cute little maternity recovery room with rocking chairs and comfy flowered-print couches for the visiting family members. I’m in a straight-up hospital room with Leo lying in an Ikea-looking container next to me and David sitting on the single metal chair in the corner. A nurse who looks like she’s fourteen years old but is wearing a lot of makeup to pass as nineteen walks in and mumbles something about “getting me to the bathroom.”

  This getting-to-the-bathroom thing is not as much fun as she made it sound. I try to stand up but I can’t remain on my feet without holding on to her for dear life. In the bathroom she lowers me down onto the toilet, tells me to “let her know when I’m all done,” and turns around and faces the bathroom wall to give me a sense of privacy even though she is standing right next to me.

  I pretend to knock on an imaginary door to alert the nurse that I’m done peeing. “Knock-knock-knock!” She grabs a spray bottle that’s on the sink, turns around, and without any warning she aims it between my legs and starts aggressively squirting at me with this “I’m gonna get it!” focus. Like it was bug spray and she’d just seen a wolf spider.

  She pulls a pair of gauze medical underwear on me, and I start crying for all the people in the world who have to have their crotches spray-bottled clean. For the morbidly obese, Thai sex workers, and the elderly.

  She drags me back to the bed and I start sobbing on her shoulder.

  Back in my bed with Leo finally on my chest, there’s one thing I am certain of—there’s no way David and I will be able to handle taking care of Leo with just the two of us. Dr. Addis was right. We are going to have to ask one of our mothers to fly out and help us before David’s milk starts coming in.

  The problem is that I’m adopted, so I have two mothers and that means I have to choose which one to ask. If I ask my birth mother first, and she says yes, which she may, I worry that my adopted mother will think that I asked my birth mother first—because I will have. I’ve known Diane, my birth mother, since I was nineteen years old. My adopted mother actually did the search to find her, yet I still find myself trying not to show too much enthusiasm for Diane. Whenever my mother asks me how Diane is doing, I say something like, “Well, you know, give that lady a baked good, a Long Island iced tea, and a dog pillow to pass out on, and she’s happy.” And my mom will laugh and shake her head, like, “Oh, that’s Diane.”

  Diane helped take care of three of her grandchildren who were born this year. Or maybe she just brought Chanel lipstick to the mothers right after they had their babies. I can’t remember what form her post-birth care took.

  But I can’t ask Diane because my mother is the first mother, like Queen Elizabeth, and must be consulted first.

  I make the call to tell my mother that she won the help-me-to-the-bathroom sweepstakes, but it turns out that she can’t come because, sadly, she hurt her knee. I’m fairly certain that after I’ve regaled her with tales of medical underwear, spray-bottle cleaning, and the challenge of inverted-nipple breastfeedings, she picked up a letter opener and stabbed herself in the kneecap.

  So, the real winner is Diane, who might turn out to be the better match anyway. Once she gets past her maternal urge to shove the baby in a pile of dirty laundry and go out dancing (I assume that’s what she did the day after I was born), she’ll have a much easier time staying in our tiny apartment because she, unlike mother number one, doesn’t mind sleeping on couches. Actually, she’s probably the best choice since her other three are grown and have all been having babies recently.

  David wants to know why we’re not even considering his mother, who lives in Brooklyn, but then agrees that she tends to choke a lot and that could be nerve-racking. Whenever I bring up her choking habit, David tells me how beautiful she used to be and how refined and well-bred she is, as if this explains it, like she was bred with a small, ladylike esophagus that makes eating a whole lamb chop unimaginable. Besides, the F train doesn’t stop in LA so she’s off the list.

  One call to Diane and it’s set; she’s going to fly out and help us for a week after we get home.
“I vacuum and I do laundry,” she said. I didn’t care if all she did was fluff pillows. I needed her to spritz me clean once in a while and give me her emotional support. I wanted someone I didn’t have to fake new parental bliss around, and Diane was perfect; she didn’t fake anything. In fact, the last time she flew across the country to see one of my solo shows, she came backstage afterward, walked right past me, collapsed on a couch, and announced, “Man, that was tough to stay awake through.” Later she apologized and blamed the pitcher of margaritas she’d had before the show.

  • • •

  My friend Gay Jay (I don’t actually call him Gay Jay anymore after Chinese Lesbian Kristin yelled at me to stop) has stopped by the hospital under the guise of seeing the new baby, but I’ve known him since seventh grade. What’s really brought him here is the opportunity to see me vulnerable. He would have paid good money to catch the breakdown-in-the-bathroom scene. He’s being patient, though, and diligently oohing and aahing over Leo, though I can tell it’s boring for him. He tries to get some action started by poking me about motherhood (“Are you excited about being humorless, sincere, and chasing cars you think drive too fast with a rolling pin?”), but I’m too worn-out to take the bait. He asks me to save my Percocets and is about to leave when I mention Diane’s visit.

  “Oh my god! You are going to ask the woman who gave you up as a baby to come and help you with your baby? When she sees Leo she’s going to see the face of the baby she gave away and have a major flashback. This is beyond profound.”

  “Should I hire a documentary film crew?” I ask, knowing that Diane is not going to have painful emotional flashbacks about my birth.

  She’s a probation officer by trade, and though she tends to talk in a baby voice, say words like “otay,” and dress in pink overalls and bright purple clogs like a giant toddler or Rosie O’Donnell playing a handi-capable adult, she’s tough. She’s moved past the moments of my birth and giving me up long ago. She’s not what I would call unemotional. She’s empathetic, easy to talk to—has all the traits of a good person—but she doesn’t indulge emotions or wallow in regrets. Years after we first met we were picking up some dinner, a box of white zin and American cheese, at a Denver Safeway when she spotted a giant salami in the meat section. She picked it up, waved it wistfully in front of her face—“Oh man, I knew this guy. I miss him”—and threw it back on the stack. That was as close to expressing regret as I ever saw her.

  The lactation specialist shows up. Jay can’t get out of the room fast enough. He tells me how he hopes I don’t plan on losing the eighty pounds I’ve gained because he’s never seen me looking so radiant and dewy, shields his eyes, and runs out, but not before letting me know that he thinks I’m being incredibly naïve about Diane. “Just get ready.”

  • • •

  Diane and I have known each other since I was nineteen. Our reunion, though life changing, wasn’t the hysterical emotional scene I’d been led to believe it would be from all the dramatic reunions I’d been watching on Oprah since seventh grade. When there is a reunion on the talk shows, adults run to their long-lost mothers or grandmothers or kindergarten teachers like they are hostages that have just been freed after thirty years of captivity.

  There was one Oprah where a middle-aged, somewhat odd woman—let’s just call her “Florida Cracky”—had been separated from her twin sister through the magic of the Florida foster care system and hadn’t seen her since she was three years old. I didn’t even like the woman. But when her sister came onstage and they saw each other for the first time I was howling with sobs on the couch. It turned out, of course, that even though they hadn’t been raised with each other, they were exactly alike, the only difference being one drew her eyebrows on with a Sharpie and the other one went natural. It didn’t matter what the details were about the people or the situations—it could be a father meeting a daughter for the first time, a fireman meeting the toddler he freed from a sewer, or the cast of Happy Days—any reunion of any type left me sobbing.

  Yet when it came time for me to meet Diane, the last thing I wanted was a big dramatic scene. On the plane from Indianapolis to Denver, sitting next to my mother, Sharon, I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a show where the long-lost child calmly walked up to his or her birth parent and just shook hands. “Hello.” “Hello.”

  I knew that when it came to life’s big moments you could never predict how you were going to act, much less how others would. My adoptive mother is an ex-ballerina who is obsessed with table manners and tucked-in shirts. She’s not one for big displays of emotion. My worry was that she would think that Diane expected a big show and she’d turn all Liza Minnelli on me, with manic hand gestures, tears, and fake laughter.

  The entire flight I was shoving doughnuts in my mouth but was completely unable to swallow them. Crumbs just went flying out of my mouth like I was Cookie Monster. Right before we landed, I was complaining of starving and then I threw up. At nineteen years old I couldn’t identify that I was overwhelmed with nerves. When I couldn’t find my seat belt and my mother pointed out that I was sitting on it, I screamed, “No, you are!”

  My biggest fear had been that Diane would be a seven-hundred-pound shut-in covered in dirty washcloths who collected Cabbage Patch dolls that she gave the same name she’d given me after I was born—Tammy Lisa. Now that I was walking off the airplane about to see for the first time the woman who birthed me, my fear was that she’d sob into my hair or give me a long, lingering hug. And it would be in front of my mother and all the strangers in the airport and I was sure that everyone would be watching to see how I reacted, waiting for me to crumble. Thanks to the Thorazine that my body seems to naturally produce to help me survive, I shuffled off the plane and then stood there, stone-faced, as my mother and Diane hugged and cried.

  Diane was nothing like I’d pictured. Five foot three inches. Short brown shiny hair, sparkly green eyes, and a huge toothy grin. I watched her and my mother whisper to each other, both giddy with nerves but without any big hand gestures or fainting spells, and I realized that I’d never expected her to be so young, pretty, and happy looking. I guess I’d thought that the loss of me would have left her blind in one eye or at least a little grumpy. After Diane and my mother had their moment, Diane turned to me, smiled, and with a quick squeeze of my arm, said, “We’ll have a lot of time to catch up.” Then she turned around, and I watched my butt walk to the baggage claim.

  Since the big reunion, I’d visited Diane every year or so and even went so far as moving to Colorado to be closer to her for a time. Diane seemed to instinctually get who I was and how I was feeling without any words being exchanged. She always happened to be there for major life events. Well, she missed that one, but otherwise. We went through 9/11 together. She was in New York for the September 10 Off-Broadway premiere of Homecoming, the play I wrote about my mom’s search for Diane after she had adopted me. “Kind of makes you want to drop acid and have sex with strangers” was the first thing she said after we found each other the afternoon of 9/11 on the Upper West Side. I saw Diane and her kids every year and sometimes more if she flew out to see me in New York or Los Angeles. In the final moment of Homecoming, the Lauren character hears the sound of her birth mother’s voice on the phone for the first time, Aretha Franklin’s “Think” fades up, and the lights go to black. Audiences would leave the theater happy that I’d found my African American mother. The reason I didn’t bring Diane into the play as a character was because she was so perfect and fun it didn’t seem fair to other adopted folks whose reunions ended in tears and gunshots in front of Cinnabon. Over the years, I’ve seen her foibles, but ultimately she’s been my Aretha Franklin fantasy birth mama.

  David has just arrived at our apartment with Diane after picking her up from the airport.

  Diane flops down on the couch next to me.

  “Man, those C-sections are the way to go,” she says, looking at Leo’s head. “He�
��s not as ugly as some of my other grandkids were when they were first born. Don’t tell the others I said that.”

  Diane has decided that her grandma name is going to be Bubs. “He’s a heroin addict turned police informant on The Wire. He’s my favorite character. Full disclosure, his real name is Bubbles but that sounds like a stripper name. And since my breast reduction surgery I can’t in good conscience call myself that.”

  She leans over Leo’s face and shouts at him like he’s deaf.

  “Hey, Buddy! Check it out! Bubs is here! I’m your Bubs!”

  David laughs and I nod and open my mouth like I’m laughing, but no sound comes out.

  I am trying to hide my tears. She’s the first family member to meet Leo. She didn’t have to run in slow motion with her arms outstretched and tears streaming down her face, but I would have liked the moment to have a teeny bit more emotional weight to it.

  Now Diane’s wandering around the apartment in a flowing paisley print dress and a cheerful pair of ankle socks covered in rainbow horses that she loves but rarely gets to wear because her judge won’t let her wear them in court. She’s “here to help” and is looking for any cloth surface that can be vacuumed or laundered as she tells me stories about her job.

  “Well, my murderer is having a hard time because he murdered again.”

  As a probation officer, Diane can’t walk through a Walmart in southern Indiana without having to nod at someone or give a little shout of encouragement. “Hey, Jeanie, you’re not getting your foot caught in air-conditioner vents anymore, I hope. Watch out for those.”