She drove, trying unsuccessfully to hold back tears. The traffic was becoming a blur, and her two small children were buckled in the backseat of her Toyota.
Her mind kept returning to the cold orange and white hospital waiting rooms she had just left. She remembered how the stocky little lab technician had sauntered in, breaking the hospital rules: ”Congratulations! You`re pregnant!”
”Damn!” Her exclamation hit him with the force of a slap. ”You don`t want to be?” he asked. Then: ”Listen, I wasn`t supposed to give you the results. Please don`t tell your doctor I told you.” He disappeared down a narrow hallway.
”Mommy! Mommy! What`s `a matter?” She bent down, scooped up her 4-year- old daughter and grasped her son`s tiny hand.
”How could I be so stupid?” she silently wailed. ”That part of my life is over forever. There must be some mistake.” But there was no mistake, and she understood the futility of her denials. This pregenancy was like the first two, an ill-timed ”accident.”
”I don`t control my life,” she cried, ”it just happens to me.”
After four specialists and too many tests, she had calmly accepted that she could not have children. She wasn`t greatly disappointed though; the effort had mainly been for her husband`s sake. She had had no real childhood of her own; she had been responsible for her younger brother and sisters most of her young life.
Then had come the great surprise of her first pregnancy. She marveled at the intense joy she felt, but this quickly dissolved as the pregnancy turned her body swollen and toxic.
The joy she discovered upon the birth of her son soon faded into the misery of profound exhaustion. Richie never seemed able to sleep; he had to be constantly walked or rocked. Moments of peace were as strained as they were few. The exhaustion and frustration was compounded by a second pregnancy;
Richie was barely 5 months old when she learned of her second pregnancy.
She and her husband banded together and helped each other through those exhausting years. Their marriage alternately suffered and strengthened depending upon the current crisis; somehow, they managed to get through the worst of the never-ending battles of bringing up two exceptionally lively toddlers.
Their children and their lives were just beginning to settle down to a pleasant calm. In a few weeks Richie would be starting kindergarten, and with Betsey only a year behind, she would again know the joy of time for herself.
Now, with this third pregnancy, she would be forced to start over again. She had recently given away the cribs, highchairs and toys. No sign of her children as babies or toddlers was left.
”How will we ever be able to afford a baby now?” she wondered. Soon, she hoped, they would be moving into a new home for which they had willingly planned to make many financial sacrifices.
They were presently living in a rented house because there had been so many unexpected delays in the building of their new home. Nothing went smoothly. So as this nerve-wracking summer dragged on they were still living out of half-packed boxes in a house that was without a working stove.
As the tension and frustration of building the house had mounted, she had let the house become the focus of their lives. Nothing, it seemed, mattered anymore but getting the house built. Everything would be safe and sane when they were safely in their new home.
Now the importance of the new house paled; the future seemed to consist wholly of upaid bills and work and the loss of hard-won freedom. This baby would be the end of personal growth for her forever. Although she was already 33 years old, she had only recently begun college–and only part time in the evenings when she had time. A college degree had always symbolized all the things she could have done, and it was just now becoming a real possibility. She felt she was still young enough to finish college and embark on a career
–if she did not lose more time.
She eagerly anticipated becoming a full-time student as soon as Richie and Betsey were ”full-time” grammar school students. But by the time this baby entered kindergarten, she would be 39 years old–too old to try starting again.
She had never been mothered herself and found herself uncomfortable and inadequate in the role. She and her brother and sisters were not treasured;
rather they were almost regarded as burdens. They had prevented their mother from doing everything she wanted to do.
Although her own mother had worked ever since she could remember, it wasn`t until late in life that her mother found a way ”out.” At 48 she attended a travel agency school and later opened her own travel agency. At long last, at age 54, her mother had found happiness.
She remembered talking of college with her mother when she was 17; she remembered how discouraging her mother had been. Her mother had wanted her, the first born, to be the first out, hoping the others would follow. They did. But three years ago, when she had told her mother of her plans to start college, her mother had been enthusiastic.
Her husband was an unusually easy-going and accepting sort of man; when he took the attitude that she had somehow purposely betrayed him and their future, she was wounded. They fought. ”It`s not your body!” she would scream. ”Can`t you see how much worse it is for me? Your life will go on more or less the same as it always has.”
No one could make her feel better; the once joyfully anticipated future was now an awful specter of dirty diapers, bottles and a demanding baby. Her friends, though well-intentioned, were of no help. Her dearest friend, who was herself an only child and well into her fourth pregnancy, could not understand why she was not overjoyed. Another close friend, who was well on her way to a lucrative career, could not understand why she did not immediately head for the nearest abortionist.
Even so, as the weeks passed she become accustomed to the idea of being pregnant. Slowly, secretly, she began to anticipate her baby`s birth. As with her first two pregnancies, she developed a keen desire to meet the little person she was so close to but could not see or touch.
As she suspected her mother was more than a little disappointed in her. Her pregnancy seemed to anger her mother; and when she was not ignoring it, she was chiding her about her carelessness. Her mother was her best friend
–she could discuss anything and everything with her–and she needed the support her mother was withholding.
Finally, they moved into their new home. More things were wrong than they imagined. Life became a never-ending procession of workmen who, when they did show up on the appointed day and time, either made horrible messes or stunk up the house with varnishes and caulks and seam sealer. The delays stretched over months.
As if all this wasn`t enough, her husband`s company was undergoing a major upheaval. A man who once thrived on his work, he was almost unable to drag himself from bed each day.
One afternoon as she sat resting her sore back and swollen feet the phone rang. It was an ominous ring, coming at a time of day when calls never came.
”It`s always darkest before it gets totally black,” she told herself. She picked up the receiver, and as soon as she heard her mother`s dull ”Hell-o,” she knew the twisted cliche was going to hold true.
Her mother, an unusually robust and energetic woman, had not been feeling well lately–some indigestion, fatigue and occasional backaches.
”The doctor says I have liver cancer,” her mother said in a toneless voice. The rest of the conversation blurred as quickly as it took place. There was some talk of fighting it, beating it; her mother seemed unware of the seriousness of her condition. Her mother thought that once her cancer was under control, her liver would somehow repair itself. Her daughter knew better.
The doctor advised her mother not to cancel a long-anticipated trip to Hawaii; the chemotherapy and tests could wait a couple weeks, he said. He would give painkillers, and she would be fine, certainly able to enjoy this vacation.
When at last she put the receiver back in place, she was acutely aware of one thing: Her mother was not aware that she was dying.
The trip to Hawaii proceeded as planned, but her parents stayed only three days before the pain became intolerable. The painkillers only made her mother feel worse.
As unnecessary operations and an admitted overdose of chemotherapy were endured, the family was subjected to the evasiveness of one doctor and abrupt cruelty of another. It became a time of pain and confusion.
The baby and the house and even her husband`s troubles at work were all but forgotten; put in this larger perspective, they seemed almost
inconsequential.
As she drove to the hospital each day, she would deny that all this was happening. She could not accept the possibility that her mother would die before her baby was born.
As the days dragged on, she would sit in the antiseptic-smelling hospital room holding on, as if she would never let go, to her mother`s once-strong, capable hand. Day by day, the nails of that hand thickened and gnarled; the skin became thin and translucent; her mother`s hand was losing its definition. And as she would hold her dying mother`s hand, her baby would bounce inside her.
She began to draw more and more solace from the baby within her. How she needed this once-unwanted baby, for it would see her through the worst time of her life.
”Mama,” she said one day when her mother was particularly coherent,
”this baby is a girl–I can feel it. I`m going to name her after you.” It was her last gift to her mother; one that made them both happier than any other. Her mother quietly yet joyously whispered the news to everyone who entered the room that day. It was the last time she would see a semblance of her mother as her old self.
The five unendurable weeks from diagnosis to death ended abruptly early one rainy, cold morning. Her phone rang out at 5 a.m., but it did not awaken her; she was already sitting up in bed. As she picked up the receiver she knew she would be hurt by what she was about to hear: ”Mama`s gone,” her father whispered. ”She died just a few minutes ago in my arms.”
But she already knew. ”I know, Daddy,” she said. ”She woke me up to say goodbye.” And Katie nudged her, letting her know she still was not alone.
