Small Sacrifices (18 page)

Steve took Danny willingly when the doctor handed him

over. Soon Steve adored Danny.

It had never occurred to Diane that Steve Downs might love her enough that he was willing to forgive, forget, and accept this tiny man-child as his own. Steve's feelings for Danny were perhaps the closest thing to the pure love that Diane sought always. She did not recognize it.

Steven Daniel Downs was born on Saturday, December 29, 1979. Diane left the hospital on Sunday and was back at work at the

post office on Monday: New Year's Eve. She'd carried Danny triumphantly through massive hemorrhaging, worked all along, anu delivered him easily. If there was one area where she never siled, it was giving birth. Being pregnant figuratively--and ^erally--replaced the emptiness Diane felt. A baby in her womb ^chored the floating hollow core inside.

If she could have chosen it, she would have been pregnant Instantly. 118 ANN RULE

Diane nursed Danny for only two weeks; her nipples cracked and bled. She was not nearly as adept at nurturing her young as she was at bearing them. Danny was a frail infant; photos show a little bird of a baby with no fat on his bones. His eyes dominated his face. Diane didn't worry about him, and she proved to be right. Danny became a robust, almost chubby toddler. He was a

cheerful baby, like Christie, and his personality shone, attracting everyone who saw him. Russ Phillips was crazy about his son, but Diane only allowed him to see Danny when she needed a babysitter.

Diane had built herself her wall of love.

Diane's and Steve's combined income was $20,000 a year. They had three healthy children, and that was about all. Their home had become an armed camp. Her worst suspicions confirmed, Diane had come to view her husband just as she had her father--as her punisher, her captor. They fought, physically, far into the night.

Her depression returned full force, and she sobbed impotently. One night, she remembers forcing herself to go limp and

stop sobbing. "I quit crying. That spoiled things for him. He'd fed on my crying--it gave him strength. I quit crying, and I just lay there, oblivious of everything."

Oblivion had been her safety valve since childhood: the

blanking-out preceding the blacking out, a hiding place in the dark of her own mind.

Pushed to the wall, Diane suddenly hit back--hard. She relished punching her husband. The capped volcano of rage, repressed for almost twenty years, spewed forth. She had only

skimmed small portions off her anger before, and she had flung them at the most vulnerable of victims: her own children. A pinch on the shoulder that left blue fingermarks, hair-pulling, spanking, screaming at frightened little faces. She had borne those babies to provide herself with perfect love, and she was devastated when they failed her.

She forgot that they were only human. They were only babies.

"I'd usually grab them by the shoulders, scream, and make them sit down. They were quiet because they didn't know what Mom would do. I pulled Cheryl's hair ... I was mad [at Steve]

anyway. Cher knocked curtains off the wall in the bedroom. She saw the look on my face. She tried to run past me, and I grabbed

for her shoulder ... got her hair instead, and she fell on her little bottom ... I was sorry later."

Cheryl always got the worst of it. "If something broke, Cheryl broke it," Diane says. "She was always hanging on something--or falling off something--or jumping on the furniture." Diane had slipped easily into her father's pattern of discipline. But the kids made so much noise, and they were always in her way, always breaking things. And they didn't love her nearly as much as they should have. She screamed at them until her throat was hoarse. They tried to duck the blows and run away, but Diane was fast. She could snake an arm out and catch them easily.

Christie and Cheryl were confused. Sometimes their mother played with them, got them pets, dressed them up to take their pictures. And then, without warning, she was angry at them. It was hard for them to tell what they were doing wrong.

Steve and Diane were in a tug of war and Christie and Cheryl and Danny were tender fibers of a rope, pulled tauter and tauter between them, damaged whoever won.

nf

In April of 1980 Diane watched the "Donahue Show"; the subject of the day was surrogate parenting. Enthralled, Diane heard a woman on the panel of guests explain that she was barren, although her husband was fertile. His sperm could be used for

artificial insemination. They wanted a child desperately, a baby who would be at least half their own genetically. The woman said she would be more than willing to let another woman bear her husband's baby.

If only such a woman could be found.

Diane watched, cuddling baby Danny in her arms. God, she could empathize. She remembered the years she'd begged Steve to have his vasectomy reversed; she just knew what the woman was going through. And then, she thought of something! Why couldn't she carry a baby for that woman on the "Donahue Show"? J

Diane jotted down the address of the surrogate parenting clinic in Kentucky as it flashed across the screen. If there had ever been a way for her to gain a handhold out of the pit she was in, this was it. And, of course, she would be doing a kindness too. Diane wrote to Kentucky the next morning:

April 30, 1980

Dear Doctor:

I saw your show about surrogate parenting on

"Donahue" yesterday. I am writing this letter to tell you q that I would like to be a surrogate mother for a couple

§81 who is unable to have a child through natural means. I had heard of couples who could not have children

for one reason or another and I felt sympathy for them,

but I wasn't aware that there was a way a person like

myself could help. I think surrogate parenting is a great idea--especially when I see someone like Mrs. Anderson.

I have three children of my own and I know the joy

that a child brings to a mother. It just seems so unfair " that some women will never experience that happiness.

So ... I would like to help by carrying a child for a

couple who really wants a completely fulfilled family life. My husband and I have discussed this matter and he

is in agreement with me.

I am not exactly sure what you need to know about

me, so I will tell you what seems important to me.

I am 24 years old and I am in good health. I am 5' 5'/2

inches tall and I weigh 123 pounds. I have blonde hair

and green eyes. I have had three children (2 girls and 1

boy.) All three pregnancies were normal and all three

deliveries were uncomplicated. All three children are

physically and mentally normal. I do not smoke cigarettes, and I have never abused alchohol. [sic] I have

never used illegal drugs (including marijuana.) My husband has had a vasectomy, because we had decided 3

children are enough to support nowdays. My blood type

is 0+.I am of mixed heritage, including Danish, English, French, and Irish. I know there is much more that

you need to know and I hope to hear from you shortly.

She enclosed her address and phone number.

There were little evasions, small omissions--and downright lies. Diane's pregnancy with Danny could hardly be termed nor1

mal, not with the massive bleeding. She had smoked pot. She'd been known to take a drink. Her marriage was on its last legs; her own children were driving her nuts.

Diane's letter reached Kentucky and was quickly processed. On paper, she sounded like a prime candidate, good maternal soil.

,Jhe standard Surrogate Parenting Associates, Inc. preliminary I form was mailed to Diane on May 6, 1980. She returned it to Louisville on May 23.

She had vacillated over some of her answers. She chose to call came " a miscarriage. She denied ever having an abortion. She

^ew all her conception dates, and that baby had been conceived

°n March 3, 1976. The "miscarriage" had occurred on June 17th. lane had not aborted a six-week-old embryo as she had always Binied; the fetus would have been closer to eleven or twelve

122 ANN RULE

weeks, and she might well have felt life. That could explain her obsession to recreate the "murdered" baby.

Diane gave her religion as "Christian (Baptist)." Beneath this entry she printed, "It is important to me that the parents be Christians."

She enclosed some pictures of herself and her children, apologizing because she looked "overweight and tired" in the photo taken a month after Danny's birth. She added another photo just to be sure, "Picture of husband and myself, taken in October 1979. This is how I really look."

She might have enclosed many other pictures. In each, she looked so different; she might well have been a mirror reflecting the fleeting images of many women. A chameleon.

Question number sixty-seven was the last and most important: Reason for applying for surrogate procedure?

"I look at my own children and they make me so happy, I just think it's unfair that a couple wouldn't experience that joy

without this procedure. And the child would be living with its natural father."

Despite Diane's protestations that the pictures didn't flatter her, it was obvious to clinic screeners that she was a most attractive young woman. But there was so much more involved, so

many barriers to clear. If natural parents required as much genetic screening, a good percentage of the population would be deemed

unfit to have babies.

Breathlessly, Diane waited for the next step in the selection process. Her own life dulled in comparison. She was positive Steve was seeing other women. It barely mattered to her. Russ kept begging her to marry him. Diane left Steve in September, 1980. and moved in with Russ. Steve threw up his hands and shouted, "Fine! Go!"

It only lasted a week. Diane felt she needed the stability and status of a married woman to qualify as a surrogate, but the marriage was a balloon where each new breath threatened destruction. Diane and Steve had lived in many little towns clustered around Phoenix; the watershed point of their relationship was destined to take place in Chandler.

Chandler, Arizona, founded 1912, population: 13,763. Except for tropical vegetation, it looks like any small town in America. Like Eugene, Chandler nestles in valley land caught between

distant mountain ridges. Old Chandler has neat little houses with yards lushly overgrown with cacti, palm trees, eucalyptus, mimosa.

South of town, on the way to Casa Grande, there are miles of cotton fields. Merino sheep and quarter horse ranches, and the desert. Out there, the shoulders of the road dance with light, the sun reflecting off millions of fragments of beer and whiskey bottles tossed there over time.

Radiating from the core of Chandler, there is near-frenzied construction of houses along new streets with freshly coined fancy southwestern names. Condos, townhouses, apartment buildings, and single-family residences by the thousands--all of them brown or beige or off-white to appease the desert gods. Most of them are empty, waiting for families to spread "lawns" of plum and amethyst crushed stone. Grass costs too much to water. Diane and Steve purchased a $60,000 rambler on one of the newest streets: Palomino. Even knowing that the marriage was about to blow apart, Diane was determined to have the model home at 813 Palomino. It was nicer than any house she'd ever lived in, with a beige stucco exterior and semimansard roof. It wasn't Diane's dreamhouse yet but it was a definite step up. Diane worked every Saturday and extra days on call as a

substitute letter carrier at the Chandler post office. It eased the

$600-a-month mortgage pressure but strained the explosive marriage even further when Steve's best buddy, Stan Post, moved in with them to share expenses.

"We kinda made a bond to make a go of it," Steve Downs recalls of the marriage, once again completely misreading his wife.

If Diane had made a bond, her fingers were crossed. She was merely biding her time. She had discovered that surrogate mothers were paid $10,000!

It would not be paid up front. First, she would be required to sign a contract with the natural father and the clinic. Then if she passed all the tests required to certify her as a worthy candidate for impregnation, she would be inseminated. The money would be Paid nine months later when she delivered.

Ten thousand dollars would, at last, set her free!

Diane studied the contract. "Whereas, the Natural Father is a married individual over-the age of eighteen years who is desirous

°f fathering a child who is biologically related to him; and whereas, me Surrogate is over the age of eighteen and is desirous of taking

124 ANN RULE

part in the surrogate parenting procedure ... the parties mutually agree as follows ..."

And that was only the first clause! The contract was eight pages long and rife with clauses to protect the privacy of both the natural father and the surrogate mother. Every eventuality had been foreseen. In addition to the $10,000 fee, Diane would receive free lodging, transportation, and medical care.

She signed her copy of the contract with a flourish. She and Steve were scheduled to appear in the office of a Kentucky psychiatrist on December 9. Conceiving, carrying, bearing a child-and then walking away, never to see it again--would demand much of any woman.

That first psychiatrist had grave doubts about Diane. "There is considerable neurotic interplay, both in this marriage and in this woman's total adjustment to life," he wrote in his report. "This would not necessarily incapacitate her as a surrogate mother--but I would like to see a psychological report."

Steve and Diane had been unable to hide the widening fissures in their marriage; the psychiatrist saw instantly beyond the loving facade. More than that, he caught a glimpse of something

in Diane herself that disturbed him enough to request further testing.

There was a second joint interview with a clinical psychologist, mainly to determine if Diane really had her husband's permission for the insemination procedure. Steve appeared sincere in his support of the project, although the marriage again came off a bit strained.