Prairie Tale: A Memoir

by Melissa Gilbert

  I felt humiliated and embarrassed in front of all my friends and family.

  I finally located him at his friend’s house. He had gone on a bender. The next time my mother asked me about his whereabouts, something she had done repeatedly through the party, I thought the hell with it, and I told her and everyone at the shower exactly why my husband wasn’t there. There were gasps.

  “Huh?”

  “Just leave it,” I said.

  When he finally showed up later that night, we had a huge fight. At the end, he vowed to never do anything like that again. We took the train back to New York and were able to do a lot of healing and reconnecting during the cross-country trip.

  The last month of my pregnancy was pretty easy. I enjoyed my birthing classes, led by a cool-looking Jamaican woman with dreads, I shopped for blankets and onesies, and I studied the spectacle that my belly had grown into.

  As my April 20 due date neared, I put my family and friends on alert. It seemed like a false alarm, as that day came and went and other days ticked by without any signs of me going into labor. The phone rang all day with people asking if there was a baby yet.

  There wasn’t. The baby, who we knew was a boy, appeared content to stay where he was. If I hadn’t felt like I had an elephant inside me, I would have enjoyed having him there. It boggled my mind to think that a whole person was growing inside me. It was all the proof I needed to believe in miracles. I would watch my stomach in total amazement as an elbow moved or a foot pushed. I would talk to him, read to him, sing to him, and at night I would curse him out for getting the hiccups as soon as I tried to fall asleep. He was like clockwork. Except for when it came time to make an appearance.

  I was scheduled to see my doctor for a stress test on May 2. The day before, I started to nest like crazy. The urge hit me from out of nowhere. I cleaned and straightened my home as if every cell in my body had been reprogrammed. I was mystified by it, almost amused by my inability to control my behavior. I had forgotten that right before going into labor, a woman’s body often releases a hormone that makes her want to get things in order before the big change that’s about to occur.

  While lying in bed late that night, I heard a popping noise from within my body and a moment later I felt water. My stomach went down slightly. I told Bo that my water had broken. We called our mothers and my doctor and decided to wait until my contractions were five minutes apart before going to Beth Israel hospital. I was still energized at sunrise. Being the codependent that I was, I spent the morning preparing Bo snacks—sandwiches, yogurt, trail mix, juice boxes—all the stuff I knew he’d want while we were at the hospital. Every so often I would stop, hold on to the kitchen counter, and wince while having a contraction.

  Around nine in the morning my contractions were strong enough that Bo took me to the hospital, which was an Orthodox Jewish hospital. I heard a lot of “oy, oy, oy” coming from birthing rooms; I got there and filled my portion of the hallway with F-bombs. By late morning, my mother, Cordelia, my friend Kate, and my mother-in-law were taking turns in my room, trying to distract me from the pain. A few hours later, my contractions were so strong I grabbed Bo and yelled at him to get my daddy. My doctor was in the room and told Bo it was fine for him to get my father. Bo said, “You don’t understand. He’s been dead since she was eleven.” At that point, Dr. Essig leaned into me and said, “Melissa, you know the expression ‘crazy with pain’? That’s where you are now. I’d like to start the epidural.”

  Until that point I had wanted to deliver my baby without any pain medication. But as soon as he uttered the word “epidural,” I said, “Great! I don’t effing care. Just shoot me up. Now!” Sometime in the early evening, after I’d been in labor for twenty hours, and active labor for about twelve, my doctor informed me the baby still hadn’t dropped and was starting to have heart decelerations. Almost apologetically, he recommended a C-section.

  “I don’t care if you have to pull this thing out of my nose,” I said. “I want to see this kid. I’m ready. Just get him out of me.”

  I was awake but completely numb during the procedure. I could move my arms and hands, but nothing else. I was nervous I might fall off the operating table. I asked the doctor to tell me when he made the first cut, since I figured once I knew it didn’t hurt, I could relax. Then I smelled something burning.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m making the incision,” the doctor said.

  “What the hell are you using?”

  “I’m cauterizing as I’m cutting,” he said.

  “So that burning smell is me?”

  “Melissa,” he said, “will you please let me do my job and get this baby out?”

  Moments later, after some pushing and pulling, the room turned quiet and I heard the doctor say, “Here he is.” I couldn’t stand being unable to see him, especially after Bo exclaimed, “Oh my God,” and then I heard the baby cry for the first time.

  “Bring him to me,” I said. “He shouldn’t be crying like that.”

  “He’s fine,” the doctor assured me.

  We had already named him Dakota Paul, after Bo’s grandmother and my father, and he arrived weighing just shy of eight pounds. When the nurse held Dakota next to my face so I could finally see him, I was overwhelmed by something I hadn’t expected. “Oh my God,” I gasped. “He looks…like me.” I had developed the same mannerisms and expressions as my mother and my grandparents. But until that moment when Dakota was put in front of my eyes, I had never seen anyone who had the same physical characteristics as me. I didn’t know anything about my birth parents or have a clue what they looked like. But Dakota looked like me. It was mind-blowing.

  Well, he didn’t look exactly like me. He had hair like Don King, hair that was so black and tightly curled and sticking straight up that Bo said, “Who fathered this kid?” But Dakota looked like Bo, too. With perfect, pink skin, he was the most gorgeous thing I had seen in my life. Bo thought so, too. In the home video of us in the operating room, from behind the camera Bo says, “Honey, the baby is beautiful.” Then he adds, “But your stomach, whoa, it looks like the Holland Tunnel.”

  For the next two days, I nursed Dakota, spoke to him (“Hi, I’m the lady who has been talking to you for all these months”), and stared at him without sleeping. My mother and sister and Bo’s mom took turns holding him. My friend Howard brought Judd, who was the first person outside the family to hold Dakota. Each time someone took the baby, I asked for him back. I was totally entranced by this child. Every breath. Every sound. I didn’t want to miss a moment.

  Finally, after warning me that I could go crazy if I didn’t rest, the nurse gave me a sleeping pill. It put me out for three or four hours, half as long as they expected. They didn’t understand that when he was right in front of me, I felt more complete, perfect, and fulfilled than I ever had in my life. To this day, I’m happiest and most content when all of my kids are at home. I don’t care how chaotic it gets, who screams, or what breaks. I’m in my element. Everything in me relaxes, my shoulders drop, and I breathe easily. I first experienced that with Dakota. I entered what I call the baby bubble, and I was at peace even when the world around me began to fall apart.

  twenty

  NEWSFLASH: THIS PERSON DOESN’T YELL, “DO ME, DADDY”

  I wasn’t the only one fascinated by the changes new motherhood brought. About six weeks after bringing Dakota home, a time when I was consumed with nursing and pumping, keeping ledgers of Dakota’s eating habits, bathing him, dressing him, and watching every second of his extraordinary little life, Bo and I attended the New York City premiere of Great Balls of Fire, Dennis Quaid’s tour de force portrayal of the turbulent life of rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis.

  It was a beautiful June night, and I enjoyed getting dressed up for the first time in months. I couldn’t remember the last time Bo and I had gone out. I wore a sexy black strapless bustier dress, which was perfect for a red carpet event, but not so perfect, I realized, for a
nursing mom. My attitude? Tough. I stuck in a couple of round, absorbent breast pads so I didn’t leak and went to the gala.

  By the end of the movie, though, my boobs were enormous. Since this was my first time away from home, I hadn’t anticipated what would happen after my milk let down. At first I thought, okay, I can handle this. But it kept happening and they kept getting bigger. By the time we got to the after-party, they were enormous and rock-hard. If I hadn’t been enjoying myself, I would have gone home. But Bo was hammered and I wanted to visit with friends. Johnny Depp was sitting beside me; we’d known each other for a while at that point, and when I turned to say something to him, he leaned toward me and stared at my boobs with a stunned and innocent curiosity.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed and pulling back. “I’ve never seen anything like those in my life.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t know what to do about them.”

  “What’s happening with them?” he asked.

  “It’s milk,” I said.

  “Milk?”

  I gave Johnny a quick primer about being a nursing mother. He asked several questions, and finally he asked if he could touch them. I said, “Yeah, do whatever you want.” For the next two minutes, I sat there with Johnny Depp holding my breasts as I chatted away with other friends around the table.

  With Dakota making me happy to the core, my life in New York couldn’t have gotten any better—and it didn’t. One day as I was taking Dakota to a checkup, I was standing on Hudson Street, trying to hail a cab. I had the baby in a snuggly, a backpack on one shoulder, a portable stroller slung over the other, and a car seat in one hand. As I juggled all that stuff, I projected a few years forward and wondered what we were going to do when Dakota wanted to ride a bike or throw a baseball.

  I started to think about moving back to L.A. Bo had once lived there and hated it so much he swore he’d never live there again. I pushed the idea more seriously after a crack house sprung up in the midst of our family-oriented neighborhood and some of the mothers were being held up as they took their children to and from school.

  I also wanted more support from family. I didn’t have a nanny, and sometimes, as much as I loved my baby, Dakota pushed me to the edge of sanity.

  One night in particular, he cried for four straight hours, most likely from a bout of colic, which was unusual for him. His nonstop wailing was like torture, the new mother’s version of waterboarding. When I couldn’t find Bo to help me, I called Cordelia, who was going through a breakup with her boyfriend, and got her to come over and sit with Dakota while I took a much-needed walk around the block, during which even the crack-addicted muggers kept their distance from me.

  I had never felt as crazed, but the walk helped me to recenter myself. A few days later, though, I was even crazier.

  It was the Fourth of July, and we had friends over for a barbecue that was a perfect, all-American celebration. As Bo cleaned up the kitchen, I said good night, put the baby down, washed my face, and went to bed. Around three in the morning, I heard Dakota wake up, hungry. It was one of the rare occasions when I was simply too tired to nurse him, and with the baby in my arms, I went downstairs to get some pumped milk from the fridge.

  The first floor was all one giant space, with the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other, and the stairs were on the living room side. My eyes weren’t fully focused as I walked toward the kitchen. It was dark except for the TV, which was on, and the sofa was right in front of me. On it I saw Bo having sex with a woman.

  For a moment, I thought I was dreaming. I shook my head and blinked my eyes to make sure I was awake. Bo was indeed screwing another woman. He stopped and turned toward me.

  “What are you looking at?” he snarled.

  I didn’t know what to say. How does a person answer that question?

  I walked past him, got the milk out of the refrigerator, warmed it up, and went back upstairs as he continued to screw that woman on my sofa. In hindsight, I can’t believe that I didn’t grab him by the scruff of the neck and throw him out the door. But I didn’t know what to do. There’s not a chapter on that situation in What to Expect When You’re Expecting. As I fed the baby, I heard the front door open and close, then a stomp-stomp-stomp up the stairs. The bedroom door flung open and Bo stood at the foot of the bed like an angry bull.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to discuss it while I’m holding the baby,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  “No, we’re going to talk about it now.”

  “No,” I insisted. “Later.”

  After I had fed Dakota and tucked him back in his crib, we did have the conversation. I could see that Bo had been drinking heavily, and I was doubtful that talking would help. But I wanted to know how he thought what I’d seen was my fault. I couldn’t imagine what kind of convoluted, Bo-centric idiocy I was going to hear. He didn’t disappoint. Bo explained it was because I hadn’t had sex with him and he needed to get laid. I was dumbfounded. I pointed out that I’d had a C-section two months earlier and neither my body nor my mind was ready for an amorous romp.

  “Aside from the fact that this person”—I gestured at myself—“doesn’t yell, ‘Do me, Daddy,’ I just can’t imagine such a thing right now.”

  I explained my whole body’s purpose was to nurture and feed a newborn. My brain was hyperfocused on the purity and sanctity of motherhood. Sex was the last thing on my mind. The last thing I could imagine myself doing.

  Bo cried and said he was a terrible person. Maybe not terrible, I said, but what he did was pretty messed up. I had no idea how messed up until he offered to tell me exactly what had happened. According to Bo, after finishing the dishes, he was flipping through the TV channels when he began watching The Robin Byrd Show, a sex program hosted by the porn actress on public access. The show was filled with advertisements for 800 numbers to call to speak to hookers. He got so horny he called one.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You were screwing a hooker? In my house?”

  “Yeah,” he said angrily. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem?” I said. “Wait a minute. I’m going to make a phone call.”

  I don’t know what came over me or where I got the idea, but I called Bo’s mother in Texas and told her the situation: that her son thought I had a problem because I was upset after finding him having sex with a hooker on the sofa in our living room while I was upstairs with our two-month-old child. Then I handed the receiver to Bo, who was speechless.

  The middle-of-the-night drama was so absurd that I couldn’t even cry. In AA, they talk about moments of clarity and spiritual awakenings, moments when you realize that your life is out of control and you have to change it. Looking at Bo, I had one of those moments. I realized I had to get out of my marriage. I had to leave him. In fact, I never should have married him. I didn’t even like him anymore.

  I realized I had an even bigger problem when I went back upstairs and checked on Dakota. How could I leave Bo when we had this kid? I didn’t want my precious son growing up without his father the way I did when my parents divorced. I wasn’t going to do that to my child. Or if I did, I knew I was first going to try everything possible to avoid it.

  Although Bo begged for my forgiveness, I didn’t give it that night or the next. It took me a long time to get over what he’d done, and basically, the way I got over it was by telling him that I was done with New York. We were going to move back to L.A.

  We decompressed in Sun Valley, where we hooked up with my mother, who was vacationing there. During that stay, for the first time in my life, I asked her about my birth family. We had spoken about it in cursory ways when I was little. Then years passed when I never gave it a single thought. But now, inspired by Dakota’s resemblance to me, I was curious to know if there were any more people out there who looked like me. If there were, I wanted to meet them.

&n
bsp; Before returning to L.A., she gave me a last name for my birth father, Darlington, but professed to not know any other details. A few weeks later, after we had visited Bo’s family in Texas and arrived in L.A., where we rented a house on one of the “bird” streets in the Hollywood Hills, Bo hired a private investigator to search for more information. I was costarring with Scott Valentine in the TV movie Without Her Consent, the last project under my production company’s banner, when the PI unearthed a copy of my original birth certificate.

  Obviously I didn’t need confirmation that I existed. Nor was I looking to replace my mother or memories of my father; they would always be my parents. But I had never heard any details about my arrival in this world, none of the kinds of stories I would be able to tell my own child. I was eager to read that birth certificate for myself. I discovered that my father’s name was David Darlington and my mother’s name was Susan Alabaster. As for my name, it said “Baby Girl Darlington.” What kind of name was that? I tried to imagine the conversation between the nurse and my birth parents.

  “Do you have a name for her?”

  “No, just put down Baby Girl. We don’t want her.”

  Of course, such a conversation may not have occurred. Either way, I was good with Baby Girl, my name for the first twenty-four hours of my life. Rob had called me Baby Girl soon after we met. The other nicknames people had given me over the years included Half Pint, Mel, Merv, Smelly, Lissa, Lizard, Bunny, Mouse, Franchise, Wissy-do, Whisper, Gem, Fancy, Melodious, and Poopsidoodle. Baby Girl was one of the better ones.

  The PI wasn’t able to turn up any additional information on either Darlington or Alabaster, which we thought sounded like an assumed name (and we turned out to be correct), and Bo and I on our own would randomly call information in different parts of L.A. looking for David Darlington, to no avail. I don’t know why, but it never dawned on me to look beyond the city.