Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell

by Michael Conniff

  January 3, 1981

  The bleached hair of The Tommies is growing out, the roots lengthening, darkening.

  January 9, 1981

  The stream is steady, unending. One mother after another leaves impregnated with my version of Cushing immortality.

  January 19, 1981

  Allyson, her hair half-black and half-bleach, wants out. I tell her there is no way out if she wants to grow up with her daughter because I made sure a long time ago that I have shared custody of all the Tomgirls. I don’t tell Allyson she is worth her weight in gold, that she is the Cushing goose who lays the golden eggs.

  February 21, 1981

  We have already captured the market for frozen embryos, such as it is, for little girls born of single mothers. Just like that. I order a new wing for the Lying-In. You can’t have too many Cushings.

  March 2, 1981

  Abigail Rickover asks if her geneticists can become Tommies. Only if Tommies can become geneticists, I tell her. “That takes years and years of training,” she says. I tell her it takes years to become a Tommie in thought, word, and deed.

  March 12, 1981

  Allyson complains she is not allowed to see her child often enough. And which one is yours? I ask. “Odette,” she says. I tell her I will do what I can. “Why do I have to ask to see my own child?” Allyson says.

  March 22, 1981

  “Our frozen embryos?” Abigail Rickover says. “The ones that will become boys? We can sell them for top dollar in Europe. For research, for more money than we make here in a month.” Waste not, want not, I tell her.

  April 1, 1981

  I take Dot Stewart under my wing but I wonder whether it’s possible to teach an outsider about our cause. We meet every Friday by the canal. I make sure she takes notes about Constance Briody and Molly O’Malley and the devilish Thomas Cushing. I want to lick the long bend of her neck.

  April 13, 1981

  I count the number of Cushings we are letting loose upon the world, hundreds and hundreds in all already. Give me a place to stand and I will move the world!

  May 3, 1981

  Sliv says there’s been men poking around the town again. He is as worried as I’ve ever seen him, like he’s seen a ghost.

  May 13, 1981

  Tom. Again. This time there’s a biography about him on the bestseller list, an exercise in adulation that my half-brother probably half-paid for, his story of how he took Father’s electrical fortune and grew it exponentially from his shrewd analysis of nuclear power. The book ends up with Tom selling Father’s patents, the writer wondering what this amazing man will do next. I hope he rots in hell.

  May 30, 1981

  Our first blessed event. Dot Stewart naturally produces a beautiful baby girl, a Cushing in all ways and by any measure, her skin the warm pink of a fresh-faced colleen-to-be. We toast at The Main Drag until everyone, even Abigail Rickover, is roasted. Mother and child and Tommies are all doing just fine.

  June 6, 1981

  I decide to actively recruit the new mothers at the Lying-In to our cause. There is safety in numbers.

  June 16, 1981

  All but the tips of Allyson’s hair are back to black, the little bits of blonde left on the end like exclamation points.

  July 1, 1981

  “What’s so special about Cushing genes?” Dot Stewart wants to know. It’s a long story, I tell her.

  July 7, 1981

  A professor at Columbia, a man, wants to talk to me about O’Kells and Cushings for some kind of oral history project. I have no interest in a man’s sanitized version of history.

  August 1, 1981

  What about the fertility drugs? “They’re working,” Abigail Rickover says. “We don’t know the long-term impact but we know they’re working.” Long-term? “I mean the health consequences for the mother of harvesting the eggs month after month.” Does it matter? I say. In the near-term we have just what we need.

  August 13, 1981

  Alone with me, Dot Stewart is magnificent, humming into my ear like a mad bumblebee, as if so much pleasure in one night might kill her by morning.

  August 31, 1981

  “I found her snooping around, Miss O’K,” Sliv says. “Out by the Cathedral. I thought she might be one of them spies.” Bring her in, I say. I am still looking down at my desk when Sliv pushes someone in front of me. “I wasn’t snooping,” she says. “I was lost. There are no signs in this town.” The voice is Nancy, an older and heavier Sister X, but it’s her. “I couldn’t let you have all the fun,” she says. I say I’ll be damned.

  September 1, 1981

  “I was like a homing pigeon,” Nancy says. “It was like I had to find you. I don’t know why.” We used to roll around on stone floors at the Convent, I say. I say I still have the welts. “I still have the bruises,” Nancy says, and then she laughs out loud. Do you hate me? I say. “I did, once, but once I fell in with Jane I guess I had it coming.” What I did to you and then to Jane wasn’t fair, I say, and I almost mean it. “All’s fair,” she says. Nancy means every word.

  September 5, 1981

  I still can’t believe Nancy is here, back in my life. We are talking all the while, going on our long walks up along the canal, as if one of us just came back from a long weekend, nothing more. What happened to Jane? I wonder. I have been waiting to ask, afraid to ask. “After we left the Order,” Nancy says, “she stayed behind. Out West. That’s all I know.” And that was the end of it? “That was all she wrote,” Nancy says.

  October 1, 1981

  The thing that surprises me most is I feel no anger toward Nancy. It’s as if I got my revenge years ago for what she did with Jane for reasons that no longer matter. I got mad. I got even. I got on with my life. I haven’t thought of making her crawl in years.

  October 11, 1981

  At night I find myself thinking of Nancy next door, right next to me in The Queen Mother. I don’t seem to want any of The Tommies any more. I only want her. Is this what love used to feel like?

  November 7, 1981

  “I think we have to consider a significant corollary business,” Abigail Rickover says. “There’s a market now to use the Cushing women themselves as carriers, for women who want to conceive but can’t carry the baby.” Stand-ins? “Surrrogates,” Abigail Rickover says. “We take a fertilized egg and implant it. But if we do that, then the Tommies won’t be able to produce their own eggs. They’ll be out of commission for a while.” For the right price, I say, we can lease them out as mobile homes.

  November 8, 1981

  Charles Evans calls from out of the blue. For years his presence in my life has come down to one sheet of paper every month with columns chronicling the relentless march of my assets heavenward. “O’Kell Consolidated’s going through the roof again,” he says. “Biotechnology. I had my doubts, but these investments by your brother are really paying off.” Genius steals, I say.

  November 12, 1981

  Dot Stewart is starting to whine. She wants me. She can’t have me but I can’t tell her why. I can’t tell her I’m saving myself for my soulmate.

  November 20, 1981

  Can you help me with something? I ask Nancy. “I thought you’d never ask,” she says. You remember Tom? My brother? “I remember you couldn’t stand him.” You do remember, I say. He’s been moving our money out of nuclear power and into biotechnology. The O’Kell money I mean. Biotechnology is a black hole for me. I don’t know anything about it. Can you help? “What about Abigail Rickover? She’s the expert.” I say I don’t want Abigail Rickover to know anything about my brother or my family. I need someone else, I tell Nancy, someone that I trust absolutely. I need you.

  November 27, 1981

  Thanksgiving. Nancy and I are back together again. A miracle. It somehow seems better now that we know so much about each other. Thanksgiving dinner is served by Sliv in our quarters, with just the two of us in front of a fire. Our talk is Morse Code, telepathy. We were rent asunder, but now we are as o
ne, as if this were the only way we could ever be. Our bones are healing stronger than ever. I ask Nancy if she’s had a chance to find out what Tom is doing in biotechnology. “I don’t know enough yet to know what I don’t know,” she says.

  December 21, 1981

  I want you to stay, I say to Nancy. I want you to stay for good. “I’m not going anywhere,” Nancy says.

  January 4, 1982

  How did you come to be here? I ask our new recruits. A woman, no more than 21 or 22, raises her hand. “How do you do it without men?” she asks. It’s like a deposit on a bottle, I tell them. They make their deposit, we give them a nickel back. No deposit, no return. Their sperm is all we need.

  January 20, 1982

  There are women who want us to suction out their eggs, to fertilize the eggs with sperm in a petri dish, and then to put them back inside their own bodies. I tell Abigail Rickover they will be better off with our donors and Cushing eggs. She agrees in the name of science, more easily than I expect. What our customers don’t know can only help us.

  January 24, 1982

  The Columbia professor keeps badgering me about coming down for a session about the O’Kells. Nancy tells me I should talk to him about my family. “If you don’t,” she says, “no one will ever know your truth.”

  February 13, 1982

  “There’s something I got to get off my chest, okay Miss O’K?” Sliv says. Of course, I say. “Your friend, Nancy?” Sliv says. “I’m worried about her. I am. I seen her looking around, snooping around the Lying-In and the lab. It just worries me is all. Something that don’t sit right.” Sliv? I say. I want her ‘snooping’ around. I want her to make herself at home. It’s okay. She’s one of my oldest friends. She’s one of us.”

  March 3, 1981

  “I am going to stay,” Nancy says. I say thank God.

  March 10, 1982

  Nancy and I have been chaste so far, virginal, as if we are afraid to cross the same line we crossed together so many years ago. We knew so little about ourselves that first time, about each other, about life. There was so much going against us, and too much to lose. Maybe that’s why it worked so well the first time, because we had no idea how wrong our love could go. Now we know, so we move slowly, like snails with all their belongings on their backs.

  March 19, 1982

  Allyson volunteers to be the first carrier. I think of the goose that lays the golden egg. “She’s sick of the needles,” Abigail Rickover says. “I can’t say I blame her. She needs a break.” You call having a baby a break? “For Allyson,” she says, “it would be.”

  April 6, 1982

  I touch the small of her back at the very bottom, the way I used to. “Don’t,” Nancy says, but I can see that she’s smiling.

  May 12, 1982

  It can be like before, I say. “But what will I do?” Nancy wonders. You can run things, I tell her. “If you need me to,” she says. “If you want me to.” I say I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.

  June 1, 1982

  Just like clockwork, Allyson is pregnant with a baby not her own, a first for The Good Egg. Now all we need is a fairy tale ending.

  July 3, 1982

  The same thing could happen to us as before, I say, or something much much better. “I’m scared,” Nancy says. I say I am too.

  July 13, 1982

  The deed is done over and over and over again. First Nancy to me, then me to her, first on the stone floor of the old Cathedral, then over and over again on the broken-down pew until we have the welts all over our body again without even the whisper of pain. It felt so good I thought I was going to die. I feel so good I want to live forever.

  August 1, 1982

  There is no reason any more for Nancy and me to sneak about, to hide in dark hallways, to make love upon the stone floor of a church. But today we do it again anyway, upstairs in what is left of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

  August 8, 1982

  Dot Stewart weeps all the time now because I don’t care about her any more. I can’t say that I care.

  August 22, 1982

  Nancy is a godsend. It doesn’t hurt to know how to run a hospital, and nobody knows how to do it better than the women formerly known as the Sisters of Currency. I can ramp up The Good Egg while she makes sure Abigail Rickover has everything she needs.

  September 19, 1982

  The leaves dance with my ankles as I walk in the morning sun down canal. Everything in my life seems so right. The Good Egg, the Tomgirls, Nancy. It’s as if everything has led me to this moment, to this life.

  October 1, 1982

  “It’s not about loving some movement,” Nancy says. “It’s about loving you.” I will re-make Nancy into a Tommie. I will re-shape her.

  October 13, 1982

  “I don’t know quite how to say this,” Heather says. “But the Tomgirls, they’re starting to think about boys.” They’re not even eight yet, I say. “They’re starting to think about it, Miss O’Kell,” she says. “Maybe we better start to think about it too.”

  November 24, 1982

  “I came here for you,” Nancy says. “Not for them.” But I am them, I say, and they are me. I tell Nancy to be a Tommie is to be that much closer to me. “I don’t see how I could be any closer,” she says.

  December 23, 1982

  Nancy convinces me the oral history at Columbia is the best way to tell my side of the O’Kell story. “What have you got to lose?” she says.

  December 25, 1982

  I light the Christmas tree. “Big Mother!” the Tomgirls shout. “We love you Big Mother!” They have been well-trained. They have been taught that all good things in the last town along the canal flow from me. They believe that I am the source of all Christmas joy. It’s more than enough truth to set them free.

  January 1, 1983

  Ours is a quieter love now, a gentler love. My world with Nancy is smaller, brighter, better.

  January 14, 1983

  Dot Stewart is ready to be a carrier, too. “I’m not doing anybody else any good,” she says. “I want to have another baby. At least I know I can have a baby.” She is crying now. “I want a baby. A big beautiful baby.” A beautiful Cushing baby, I say. A beautiful baby girl.

  February 9, 1983

  I am amazed at how easy it is to recruit the new mothers to the Lying-In. They come from everywhere, from all over the country, but they are missing real meaning in their lives. Meaning will come when they give birth to one of our girls.

  March 1, 1983

  I am going to Columbia to have my teeth pulled, historically speaking. A professor, a man masquerading as a feminist, wants me to tell him all about The Tommies and the O’Kells. Only in America.

  March 13, 1983

  That’s the last fucking interview I ever give to a man. Oral History project my ass. It’s always his story.

  March 22, 1983

  “O’Kell Consolidated is applying genetic engineering to medicine, to crops, to health,” Nancy says. “Their focus is much more global than ours.” So there’s no competition? “Not directly,” Nancy says. We’re not a grocery store, I say. Tom can feed the world for all I care. I just want to make Cushing babies.

  April 1, 1983

  Allyson, our first carrier, gives birth to Odette. Mother and child are resting comfortably.

  April 10, 1983

  Allyson doesn’t want to give the baby up. You don’t have a choice, I tell her. Odette may be a part of you, I say. But this baby is part of us.

  May 6, 1983

  I say there is nothing quite like the wanton cravings of older flesh for older flesh. “Waste not, want not,” Nancy says.

  June 2, 1983

  “We’re being cherry-picked,” Abigail Rickover says. Come again, I say. “Your brother Tom,” she says. “He’s trying to take our best geneticists by offering them more money than they’re ever going to see in their life. One of our scientists is leaving to go work for your brother. She’s the first one t
o ever leave us.” Son of a bitch, I say. Tom sneaks up on me every time I try to leave him behind.