Holy Cross Hospital

couldn't stand to see these new young faces, these

children swollen as myself. my roommate, snotty,

bragging about how she didn't give a damn about the

kid and was going back to her boyfriend and be a

cheerleader in high school. could we ever "go back"?

would our bodies be the same? could we hide among the

childless? she always reminded me of a lady at the bridge

club in her mother's shoes, playing her mother's hand.

i tried to get along, be silent, stay in my own corner.

i only had a month to go—too short to get to know them.

but being drawn to the room down the hall, the t.v. room

where, at night, we sat in our cuddly cotton robes and

fleece-lined slippers—like college freshmen, joking

about the nuns and laughing about due dates—jailbirds

waiting to be sprung.

one girl, taller and older, twenty-six or twenty-seven, kept

to herself, talked with a funny accent, the pain on her face

seemed worse than ours. . .

and a lovely, gentle girl with flat small bones. the

great round hump seemed to carry her around! she never

said an unkind word to anyone, went to church every morning

with her rosary and prayed each night alone in her room.

she was seventeen, diabetic, fearful that she or the baby

or both would die in childbirth. she wanted the baby, yet

knew that to keep it would be wrong. but what if the child

did live? what if she gave it up and could never have another?

i couldn't believe the fear, the knowledge she had of

death walking with her. i never felt stronger, eating

right, doing my exercises. i was holding on to the core,

the center of strength; death seemed remote, i could not

imagine it walking in our midst, death in the midst of

all that blooming. she seemed sincere, but maybe she

was lying. . .

she went down two weeks late. induced. she had decided

to keep the baby. the night i went down, she had just

gone into labor so the girls had two of us to cheer about.

the next morning when i awoke, i went to see her. she

smiled from her hospital bed with tubes in her arms. it

had been a boy. her baby was dead in the womb for two

weeks. i remembered she had complained no kicking. we

had reassured her everything was fine.

meanwhile i worked in the laundry, folded the hospital

fresh sheets flat three hours a day. but never alone.

stepping off the elevator, going up, feeling something,

a spark catch. i would put my hand there and smile with

such a luminous smile, the whole world must be happy.

or out with those crazy girls, those teenagers, laughing,

on a christmas shopping spree, free (the only day they

let us out in two months), feet wet and cold from snow.

i felt pretty, body wide and still in black beatnik

leotards, washed out at night. my shapely legs and

young body like iron.

i ate well, wanted lamaze (painless childbirth)—i

didn't need a husband or a trained doctor—i'd do it

myself, book propped open on the floor, puffing and

counting while all the sixteen-year-old unwed children

smiled like i was crazy.

one day i got a letter from my cousin, said:

don't give your baby up—

you'll never be complete again

you'll always worry where and how it is

she knew! the people in my family knew! nobody died

of grief and shame!

i would keep the child. i was sturdy. would be a better

mother than my mother. i would still be a doctor,

study, finish school at night. when the time came, i

would not hurt like all those women who screamed and

took drugs. i would squat down and deliver just like the

peasants in the field, shift my baby to my back, and

continue

when my water broke, when i saw that stain of pink blood

on the toilet paper and felt the first thing i could not

feel, had no control of, dripping down my leg, i heard

them singing mitch miller xmas songs and came from the

bathroom in my own pink song—down the long hall, down

the long moment when no one knew but me. it was time.

all the girls were cheering when i went downstairs. i was

the one who told them to be tough, to stop believing

in their mother's pain, that poison. our minds were

like telescopes looking through fear. it wouldn't hurt

like we'd been told. birth was beautiful if we believed

that it was beautiful and right and good!

maternity—i had never seen inside those doors.

all night i pictured the girls up there, at first hanging

out of the windows, trying to get a glimpse of me. . .

when the pain was worst, i thought of their sleeping faces,

like the shining faces of children in the nursery. i held

onto that image of innocence like one light in the darkness.

Source: Natural Birth (Firebrand Books, 2000)