What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir
Page 5
She told me to cancel all of my performances and avoid any physical exertion and to let her know of my decision.
“You’ll do whatever you want to do. Let me know what you decide,” says Michael, assaulting his suitcase with neatly folded business suits, costumes, and props. “If you abort this baby, I guess I’ll move somewhere in the middle of the country and work at a 7-Eleven or something.” He picks up his bags and leaves for the airport for a week in Cleveland.
My sisters Madeline and Jennifer stay close by me for the next few days. They don’t want me to make this decision alone. They both advise me not to have an abortion. They won’t go with me to Wichita, for practical reasons, they say—too short notice, busy at work—but they’re protesting this abortion. Madeline and Jennifer are both staunch advocates of abortion rights, and I’m surprised not to have their support.
“You’re too far into the pregnancy now,” said Madeline.
“Michael will be such a great father,” said Jennifer.
“I hope you have the baby. I have a feeling everything will work out,” said Madeline.
I don’t want to lose Michael.
I don’t want to have a baby.
But my baby has already waved at me, so I guess she thinks it’s a deal.
“You’re such a mommy,” said Jennifer. “You love children so much. Think about how much you love Julia. If you abort this baby, for the rest of your life you won’t know if you did the right thing.”
And if I don’t abort this baby, for the rest of my life, I won’t know if I did the right thing.
It’s Monday, the last day of summer. I’ve booked a flight to Wichita tomorrow. I would have to go out alone. I am terrified of the physical procedure. I’m afraid of the angry mob of Kansans. I’m scared of what will happen to me physically, psychologically. I’m terrified of being in Wichita by myself for this horrific ordeal. I’m terrified of what will happen physically, the dismembering and—the killing of the fetus. The killing. The killing of what might be a viable baby. Not knowing for the rest of my life if I did the right thing.
I cancel my flight to Wichita and my appointment at the Women’s Health Center.
I hang up.
My mind is racing, projecting a rapid-fire slide show of everything that’s happened in the last six months. I start to hyperventilate, try to calm myself.
I close my eyes and talk myself into breathing slowly.
I lift my shirt and run my hands over my belly, the skin stretched tight over the newly globe-shaped center of my life, which rises and falls with each long inhale and exhale. Then something new. A small tremor, directly under my right hand and also deep inside. It’s subtle. . . . Another. . . . I feel the baby kicking.
The phone rings. It’s Michael in Cleveland.
“Please don’t go to Wichita.”
“I’ve already decided not to go.”
“Thank God!”
He cries for a while. Then we’re both quiet. Then he says, “Last night, my friend Beverly said, ‘There’s a reason God makes human gestation take nine months. It takes that long to get used to the idea of having a baby. You guys missed out on the first six months.’ ”
“Yeah, we did.”
“We’ll catch up.”
“I hope so.”
“I love you. I have to go. I perform in ten minutes.”
I’m having a baby.
I don’t know what will happen after that.
I buy three pairs of maternity pants, with elastic stomach panels.
The next morning I walked Julia to school. It was the second week of school. None of the other parents, many of whom were friends, knew I was pregnant. Even at six and a half months I was barely showing, so nobody asked.
Julia’s school was only two blocks from our apartment. As we crossed Broadway, holding hands, I had a contraction and was doubled over in pain in the middle of the street. I made it to the median and told Julia I would watch her walk to school from there. She nodded seriously, carefully looked both ways, and crossed the street. It was the first time Julia had ever crossed a street by herself. When she reached the sidewalk, she turned around and waved, looking for encouragement. I waved back and blew her a kiss. She ran down the long block and I held my breath as she waited for the crossing guard to help her cross Amsterdam Avenue, even more treacherous than Broadway, a thunderous river of trucks and cabs.
Scene 4
My Left Side
Dr. Rosenbloom prescribed bed rest for the duration of the pregnancy. “Drink at least two quarts of Gatorade a day. Keep hydrated to prevent contractions. No sex. Only get out of bed to go to the bathroom, have a meal, or go to an appointment that is essential for your health.”
“What about editing my theater journal? I can’t afford to lose this job.”
“Edit it in bed on your left side.”
“What about teaching my college course on Monday nights?”
“Only if it’s essential for your health.”
“It’s essential for my mental health.”
“Then cab to and from your class. Take elevators, not stairs. Sit the whole time. Line up a sub and tell your class you probably won’t complete the semester.
“Another thing, Alice. You know I don’t accept your insurance plan. I’d like to keep you as a patient, but I understand if you prefer to see a doctor in-network. I can try to find somebody good for you. But frankly, I don’t know anybody who accepts Oxford Liberty.”
“I don’t want to change doctors.”
I canceled all my performances through the end of the year. Canceling twenty-five public library performances in South Jersey wasn’t too painful, except for the lost income, which was alarming. The call to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center was really hard. I’d loved performing at TBPAC three years earlier, and the theater had contracted me to perform my new solo play in their experimental theater, and one of my family shows on the main stage.
Having divested most of my responsibilities and ambitions in the world outside of my apartment, I lay down in bed on my left side.
It was a relief to lie down, to give myself over to sleep. I had been feeling sick for six months. Now that my exhaustion was validated, I lay in a stupor, in and out of sleep. I wanted to be unconscious until the pregnancy was over, but my sleep was fractured and incomplete.
It was not a good bed, not a real bed, more of an improvised sleeping arrangement you might find in a college dorm. Michael’s queen-size futon from his college life lay on a large sheet of plywood, supported by twelve of the wooden milk crates Brad found on the street twenty years before, when he was a penniless Juilliard student and his apartment was furnished entirely with milk crates. The futon was hard, and my left arm and leg kept falling asleep. Sue’s friend Erica gave me the body-length pregnancy pillow she’d used when she was pregnant with twins. It helped. I draped my finally huge belly, my right leg and right arm over the body pillow, and dozed and woke and drank Gatorade and dozed and woke.
When I woke, I thought about this baby who would be disabled by prematurity, and by all the terrible things it had been subjected to for six months. I wished I could end the pregnancy, to save her. Killing myself would be one way of aborting the baby. It might be the most humane thing.
But I had too many responsibilities. I couldn’t get the December issue of Play by Play out on time if I killed myself.
I couldn’t kill myself because I needed and wanted to be there for Julia, whom I loved, whom I had always loved, since two months before she was born, when Zoe chose us.
I couldn’t kill myself because I was in love with Michael, and, remarkably, he was still in love with me.
I couldn’t kill myself because I had to take care of this baby inside me. I felt less like its mother than its intensive care unit. A barely mobile ICU, lying on its left side, to be loaded into a taxi and delivered to a hospital when baby was ready to be born. Thinking of myself as an ICU gave me a sense of purpose, a reason not to kill myself.
I called my supervisor, a friend and colleague of many years, told her in confidence about my pregnancy and made a request. “I don’t have access to an adequate insurance plan, and the baby might have special needs. Since I’ve worked for the organization for five years, do you think management might consider putting me on payroll, as an employee with benefits?”
“Gosh, Alice, this is just the wrong time to ask. The climate is all about belt-tightening, and benefits are a huge expense. I’m sorry, I just know what’s up with management right now.”
Julia missed me. She wished I could walk her to school and pick her up from school like I used to, but she was acting cheerful for me. She had her own key now. My friend Janet, mother of Julia’s best friend, Emily, took Julia to and from school on days when Michael was out of town. Julia ran upstairs by herself, unlocked the door, climbed in bed under the covers with me, woke me with a kiss on my cheek, and told me about her day. Then she ran to the kitchen, ate a snack, and climbed back under the covers with me to do her homework.
This was my favorite time of the day. I loved having Julia close to me. She finished her homework under my covers, and got up to eat another snack. She was eating a lot these days. I thought she might be depressed, but I was so depressed I was sure I’d make her feel worse if I asked her about it. When he was in town, Michael made dinner—quesadillas, mac and cheese, pasta—and they ate in the kitchen together while I lay in bed listening to their conversations.
Michael was patient, nurturing, and consistent. He shopped for food. He cooked. When he wasn’t touring his shows, he woke up in time to make Julia breakfast and walk her to school. He helped Julia with her homework. He went to the parent-teacher conference and the fourth-grade publishing party. He took her to Hebrew lessons. He coached her soccer team and spent most Saturday mornings with the West Side Soccer League. He listened patiently to my vacillating feelings of hope and hopelessness.
Michael behaved like a total grown-up. Like a saint. Fucking perfect. Who the hell was this guy? I didn’t recognize him. I missed real Michael. Michael the trickster. The irrepressible, irresponsible, overgrown college kid who disappeared to play guitar and write songs and sleep crazy hours, and came back out of his cave when he was ready to be in a family again, when he was ready to make love again. Michael didn’t have time to be himself. He was too busy taking care of me and Julia. He and I had both lost our selves to this pregnancy.
I was humiliated by being an invalid. Humiliated by Michael’s ability to love this unborn baby when I could not. Overwhelmed by his generosity. Indebted to him. Jealous of his not having to lie in bed on his left side drinking Gatorade, which I found detestable no matter what flavor or color Julia picked out for me. I resented him for changing into someone else, someone who was unrecognizably patient and perfect and reliable and predictable and selfless and mature. Envied him for wanting this baby so instantly and completely. And of course I despised myself even more for having these contemptible feelings.
Three weeks ago I found out that I am pregnant.
Two weeks ago, I contemplated and rejected a late-term abortion.
One week ago I was put on bed rest.
I accepted my role as a miniature hospital, protecting a fragile life by lying on my left side and drinking Gatorade.
I told a few more people that I was pregnant. Congratulations from everyone I spoke to. Even when I judiciously divulged—to close acquaintances, to women I thought of as feminists—that I was unhappy, that this was terrifying, they laughed and teased and congratulated me again. “Lucky you! You thought you were infertile all these years, and you just had to find the right guy, and you didn’t even have to take fertility drugs.”
I could talk to my sisters and a few close friends who neither judged nor congratulated me.
Michael bought me a book of 1,500 baby names from Barnes and Noble. I read it and asked him to get me another book. “Isn’t there one name in fifteen hundred you like?” He got me a baby name book with 2,739 names. This was great reading for an expectant mother who has to lie in bed all day. It had stories and history and etymology for every name. Each name conjured up a different child for me, so I got this idea that I could determine who this kid would be by naming her. Julia and I looked through the name book together under the covers after school. We only considered girls’ names. With or without a penis, this baby was a girl. We made a list. Kate, Miranda, Anna, Louise, Helena . . . and Eliana, a Hebrew name. “Eliana’s a pretty name,” said Julia.
The translation of Eliana was “My God has answered me.”
I wondered who Eliana might be, what question or prayer was answered.
I had way too much time, lying on my left side, to think, and I thought about this name and this baby.
Scene 5
Under the Radar
Eliana.
She wants to be born. She doesn’t know she wants it. Against all odds, she is determined. And so she slips under the radar. She makes it into the Book of Life, just in time. Just as God is closing the Book at the end of Yom Kippur, she glides unseen between the covers and onto the page where her mother’s and father’s and sister’s fates are also inscribed.
This is the reason for the name Eliana. “My God has answered me,” the Hebrew translation. But from whose point of view? Whose God? Which “me”?
I think it’s the baby’s point of view, the baby’s question, the baby’s God. This baby wanted so much to be born that she slipped under the radar. Hid until it was too late to turn back, until she was ensured safe passage.
But it’s generally assumed that it’s my God who answered me, the fulfillment of my dream of fertility. The universal quest of barren, fairy-tale couples.
“The fisherman and his wife had long prayed for a child.”
“The old couple, well past childbearing years, found a beautiful little girl in the open petals of a rose.
“... in a seashell on the beach;
“... in a basket on the doorway;
“... the Old Farmer’s Wife had always longed for a child. She drank the milk from a magic coconut and gave birth to a frog, and raised him as though he were a regular little boy.”
“The barren witch stole baby Rapunzel and raised her in a tower.”
“Lonely old Rumpelstiltskin demanded the first-born baby in exchange for weaving straw into gold.”
What woman does not yearn for fertility?
“Congratulations!” is the only proper greeting to the pregnant woman, whatever her age or circumstances, but especially if she had been considered infertile, and her pregnancy is considered a miracle.
“Congratulations! When are you due?”
And if she’s older, “Congratulations!” can be accompanied by laughter and teasing, with sexual innuendo.
“God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarah your wife, I will give you a son by her.’ . . . Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? GetOutaHere, Lord! My old wife?’ said Abraham, rolling on the ground in paroxysms of laughter.”
Or was God answering me?
This might have been the answer to my question at age thirty, when I longed for a child. If so, God is fourteen years late. Past the statute of limitations.
Tell me, Baby, was God answering you?
“Yes, Mama. I, miniscule trickster, pulled this one off, without benefit of consciousness, without benefit of breath or brain or lungs, with only the shadowy precursor of a beating heart. My first game of hide-and-seek. I hid for six months in the smaller horn of your two-horned uterus, staying as small and quiet and tucked in as I could, and tricked you into thinking I wasn’t there. Every time you looked for me, I flipped to the other side of your womb,
fooled you into not looking for me anymore, and then showed up unannounced on a TV screen—BOO!—Trick or treat, trick or treat! Give me something good to eat!
I’m a Hermaphrodite trickster,
Between and betwixter!
I’m waving at you, Mama.
I am Eliana! Eliana!”
I don’t remember wishing for a baby. My wishes of recent years have more to do with slowing down, simplifying, streamlining, relaxing the demands of parenting, lowering the wattage on the challenges of survival, and returning to my creative work, now that my adopted daughter is finally big and strong and happy.
I try every day to want a baby.
At age forty-five, 75 percent of pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriages. I reread the twelve pages of small print in the ERT prescription patient information insert. “Not for use during pregnancy. . . .” The abnormally high level of estrogen might have relaxed the muscles of my uterus, preventing the contractions that would likely have ended the pregnancy in miscarriage. This miracle pregnancy may be the result not of prayer, but of chemicals—the pregnant horse estrogen in my uterus. Nay! Neigh!
Riddles
I call my father to tell him I’m pregnant.
“Congratulations! You’ll finally know what it’s like to be a mother.”
“I’m already a mother!”
“You know what I mean. Julia’s adopted. Now you’ll be a real mother.”
I miss my own mother.
When is a mother not a real mother?
What makes a mother real?
Biology?
Unconditional love?
Can a real mother’s love be conditional?