What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir (10 page)

“Human women are very poorly designed for childbirth. There’s not enough room. Okay, look at this chart: female anatomy. Stupid design. What was God thinking when he gave women such a narrow pelvis? Did you ever see a horse give birth? The mare breezes through it, vroom, kaboom, ten minutes and the colt is out of there. Because a horse’s pelvis is wider, proportionally, than ours. Jeez, a horse! Just think about that. Think about a colt with its long knobby legs, and she just pushes it out. But no-oo, God wanted humans to stand on two legs, right? so he streamlined us for walking, and consequently our hips are too narrow, and Alice you’ve got really narrow hips, relative to, well, relative to the size of a baby.

“And let’s talk about age. Whew!! I’m sure you’ve heard the term
advanced maternal age
. You’ll be forty-five, right? You don’t get much more advanced than that, and if you do, you’re on the front page of the tabloids. If this were a hundred years ago and you were pregnant at forty-five . . . well, a hundred years ago, if you were forty-five, you’d be dead! Nature didn’t intend the human body to be pregnant or even alive at forty-five, you see, so this is not a normal thing. And of course advanced maternal age increases the risk of hemorrhaging. A lot!

“Plus, you’re a DES daughter, and that increases the risk of hemorrhaging even more. And you’ve got a double uterus, right? That’s terrible.

“And the position of your baby, I’m afraid,
placenta pre-via
—Whoa, Nellie, couldn’t be worse. That’s the worst. The! Worst! The baby could just pull away from the placenta and—BOOM!—there you are, bleeding uncontrollably, like that lady in the ambulance I told you about. You’ve got every possible risk factor. You’re like the perfect storm! So listen up, if you start bleeding, call an ambulance! Don’t wait to see if the bleeding stops, just call instantly. Promise me that.

“C’mon, don’t look so worried. You’ll be fine. You know me, I’m a performer like you, remember? At least I got your attention, right? Cheer her up, Michael, I gotta go. Nice meeting you guys.”

Scene 8

I’m the only woman in America who’s about to die in childbirth. I know this fear is inflated but it takes hold. It’s a genuine phobia.

“You’re not going to die in childbirth,” says Michael. “Joy likes to get a reaction from her audience and she succeeded. You’re going to be fine. The baby will be fine.”

“I know,” I say, but I don’t believe it.

My fear of bleeding to death shouts louder in my head than my fear that I won’t be able to love this baby, so my new phobia gives me some relief from my worst fear.

I’m more despondent than ever. I want to give up the baby for adoption again.

“No, Alice,” said Michael. “We’re not giving the baby up for adoption.”

“I don’t think I can be a good parent if the baby is sick or deformed. I can’t do it, Michael.”

“Of course you can.”

“We don’t make enough money to raise a baby with special needs. We barely make ends meet as it is, even when I’m not on bed rest. I don’t want to do it.”

Michael, his superhuman patience finally at its limit, looks at me with a cross of pity and disdain. He ignores this outburst. He is accustomed to the perpetually changing mind and fluctuating emotions of his pregnant fiancée.

 

 

I’m in a litigious mood. We’re going to need money to raise this baby, whether it’s sick or not, whether I die in childbirth or not. There was clearly medical malpractice. Can I sue Robin? She insisted I was in menopause, even after doing an internal exam when I was five months pregnant. She’s a good person, I’ve always liked her. But she screwed up. I call a lawyer I know from Julia’s school. She gives me a list of medical malpractice lawyers she knows. Lying in bed on my left side, between naps, editing, drinking blue Gatorade, I call lawyers.

“These cases never amount to anything,” says the first guy I called. “I took one of them before, worked on it for two years, and lost a bundle of money. Good luck to you and your baby, but I never take these cases anymore.”

A second lawyer says the same thing.

The third lawyer tells me to call back after the baby is born, when I know what damages, if any, I will be suing for. “Meanwhile,” she advises, “keep careful notes.”

Scene 9

It’s December 1. My birthday was a week ago. I’m forty-five. Julia and Michael baked a cake for me. My due date is December 25, or December 11 or 29 or January 1 or 7. It’s hard to get an accurate due date in the twenty-sixth week of pregnancy, but I’ve certainly passed the important pregnancy landmark of thirty-two weeks. I’ve been lying on my left side for two and a half months. Remarkably, I haven’t given birth prematurely. It would be safe to give birth now, at eight months or so. The lungs are developed, and the heart is strong. I’m going to have a baby soon.

There’s been a constant talk on the radio about the dreaded, ticking clock of Y2K. The industrial and digital world will grind to a halt at midnight, on December 31, 1999, as it rolls over to Year 2000, because the world’s computer infrastructure is predicated on twentieth-century numeration, and will not compute the change to the twenty-first century. Given my luck, I’ll go into labor on December 31, the power will go out at midnight, and I’ll need an emergency C-section, by candlelight, in an unheated hospital room in the middle of winter, while I bleed to death.

My sisters ask me if I want to have a baby shower.

This is a trick question. I don’t want to have a baby, so I don’t want a baby shower. I don’t want anyone to know I’m having a baby, because then it’s really happening, so I don’t want a baby shower. I might be giving up the baby for adoption, so I don’t want a baby shower—cause, heck, what’s the etiquette? Who gets to keep the presents? Do I send the rattles and board books and stuffed animals to the adoptive parents?

And do the guests bring pink or blue gifts? The baby might be a girl with a penis, or a boy with two X chromosomes. She might have her penis turned into a clitoris with her mile-long sexual nerve neatly folded up and tucked away in her little jewel bag, or he might grow up to be a radical lesbian hermaphrodite transgender lobbyist athlete. She might have to be raced to the emergency room to get her enzyme treatment so she doesn’t turn into a pillar of salt, or a salt-wasted pillow?

I’m having a baby. I’m not having an abortion. I’m not going to give birth prematurely. I’m not going to give this baby up for adoption, unless . . . oh, never mind. I’m having a baby. It’s not going to stay inside of me forever. I think I’m going to have the baby very soon. It makes me lonely. For me. For the baby. Hardly anybody knows about it. I’ve been indoors on my left side since I found out I was pregnant, so hardly anyone has seen me pregnant. Strangers on the street haven’t asked me when I’m due. My mother isn’t alive, my father lives far away. I haven’t been taking prenatal exercise classes with other expectant moms. I have been too depressed and too indecisive and too horrified and too guilty about my feelings to call anybody. I’ve isolated myself. I’ve asked my few friends who know I’m pregnant to keep it a secret. I’ll have to come out of the closet sooner or later, either as a new mother with a new baby, or as a new mother who has given away her new baby.

Yes, I do want to have a baby shower.

My new friend Susan Feiner, mother of Julia’s friend Sophie from Hebrew class, will host the shower at her beautiful Upper West Side apartment. I give my sisters a list of my women friends. Most of them will be surprised to hear that I’m pregnant. Madeline wants to postpone the party till later in December, because of her busy work schedule, but my body is telling me I’m going to have this baby really, really soon, so I persuade my sisters to schedule it for next week, the second Saturday in December.

My students liberate one another from the literal. Dani’s radical performance imagery has raised the stakes for the class. She has inspired them. I have inspired them. They are moved by our parallel secrets—the invisible, imminent life and the invisible, imminent death in the room.

“Finding the story you want to tell is only the beginning,” I tell them. “There are countless ways to tell a story. You have to find the way to tell your story. If you’re lucky, your story will guide you.”

Bella: “I ran away when I was two. I’m Lizard. Are you my grandma?”

Dani: “Put your head on this moss. You are my song.”

Miriam: “Tea has been ready for almost thirty years. Grandma has wrinkles you could swim in.”

Michael’s mother tells the story this way. “It’s a miracle baby. It’s God’s miracle. Thank you, Jesus Christ.”

Julia tells it this way. “My parents adopted me because my mom’s doctor said she could never get pregnant. But her doctor was wrong, and now I’m going to have a baby sister or brother!”

Michael tells it this way. “I didn’t expect to have a child with Alice. I’m so happy we are.”

The neighborhood gossip version. “She couldn’t get pregnant with her first husband, but Michael has really good aim.”

My dad’s version. “Now you’ll finally know what it’s like to be a real mother.”

Or Dylan’s version. “I can tell from your sexual glow that you’re pregnant.”

A dozen doctors’ divergent versions: This is the story of . . .

 

 

your infertility
your early menopause
your underwire bra
your middle-aged loss of muscle tone
your atrophied bladder
your large tumor
your emergency CAT scan
the story of “we found something in you; we found a baby”
the story of the girl with a penis
the girl without a penis
the girl whose penis I can carve and mold into a clitoris
the girl who would grow up to be a lesbian, athletic, transgender
activist, enraged that her penis had been mutilated to resemble
a clitoris
the story of . . .
the late term abortion
being stoned by right-to-life protesters in Wichita
a five-day labor to deliver a dead, dismembered fetus
the healthy baby who was given up for adoption to the corpulent
couple on Long Island with the golden retriever in the front
yard
the sick baby who was given up for adoption to an evangelical
Christian family in Salt Lake City
the ten-page story I wrote to persuade a medical malpractice
lawyer to take my case.

The morning of the baby shower, I go stark raving mad.

That’s what they say in fairy tales, when the evil kings and queens and lonely witches and demons and Rumpelstiltskins become the story’s losers.

 

 

I wake up in the dark with a panic attack, sweating and hyper-ventilating. The baby shower is today. I have to face my women friends, and have them see me for the first time. My pregnancy was hidden from me for the first six months. For the last three months, I’ve hidden my pregnancy from the outside world. They don’t know that I neglected the baby, that I subjected it to terrible things, that I’ve wanted to abort the baby, give it away. All that sturm und drang has taken place in a hermetically sealed world that includes only my immediate family, a slew of doctors, a hyperactive birthing coach, an adoption social worker, and a receptionist at the Wichita Women’s Health Center.

 

 

My belly is now huge.

I am going to the gallows.

They’ll laugh at me for being so foolish.

They’ll pity me for being so miserable.

They’ll stone me for being so hateful.

Worst of all, there will be no turning back.

Showing up at my baby shower is signing a contract to be this baby’s mother.

At six in the morning I go stark raving mad. I wake up hyperventilating and then screaming and shaking. Michael holds me.

 

 

Then it stopped as suddenly as it started.

It was time to go to a party.

I got dressed in the black, Indian cotton shirt my writer friend Patty gave me. She would be there.

I put on the necklace my sisters Madeline and Jennifer gave me. They would be there.

I helped Julia get dressed in her blue party dress.

It was a great party.

I was finally coming out as a pregnant woman. I had to cram nine months of pregnancy into one afternoon. What was I thinking for the past three months? Why hadn’t I called on my friends? Here they were, happy for me, for my family. It was the most natural thing. I was having a baby, and my friends and family were there to celebrate with me.