What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir (9 page)

I feel the baby kicking and put my hand on my belly. Yolanda is the only other pregnant woman I’ve talked to since finding out that I’m pregnant—but she’s not a woman, she’s a girl. It’s hard not to blurt out my story.

“You must think I’m an idiot, right? A stupid, pregnant teenager.”

“I think you’re a very smart and talented girl, with difficult decisions to make.”

“I’m sorry I screwed up your magazine.”

“You didn’t screw it up, don’t worry about it. Good luck with everything.”

I wonder what Yolanda will decide, knowing I’ll never hear from her again.

The fall issue of
Play by Play
is printed in a larger-than-usual font, with lots of photos.

It’s late October. I haven’t seen fall foliage. On my way back home from my East Side appointment with Dr. Rosenbloom one late afternoon, I ask the cabdriver to take Central Park Drive and circle the park so I can see the fall leaves. He laughs and warns me it will double the cost of the trip. There are some red and gold leaves, but most are brown and many have fallen. Outdoors, the season passes quickly, while in my bedroom, lying on my left side, time is interminable.

Joy, the birth coach from New York Hospital, makes home visits. She comes Tuesday nights to tutor me and Michael in Lamaze technique and give us tips on preparing for childbirth. She sets up a flip chart in the living room. We sit on the sofa and watch the show. Joy’s a very funny lady who moonlights as a stand-up comic.

“One of my patients recently asked me, ‘Is it okay to have children after forty?’ And I said, ‘No, I think forty children is quite enough.’
Ba-Dum Ching!
So where are you guys from?” Joy shows us how to breathe, gives me some relaxation techniques, and shows Michael how to massage me. He practices his massage technique later, in bed. Nice.

On Sasha the social worker’s second visit, she brings a photo album of hopeful adoptive couples, which she leaves with us. “Look this over. When I come back next week, tell me if there’s a couple you’re interested in placing your baby with.”

After Julia is asleep, we look through the album together. Self-portraits of seven childless couples. His arm is always around her shoulder, in their suburban ranch home, their apartment, their condo, their golden retriever running on the lawn, or their cat on the windowsill. Accompanying each picture is a personal statement, typed or handwritten to an unknown birth mother, promising a loving home, a religious foundation, a solid education.

Eleven years earlier, Brad and I had a page of this scrapbook. We didn’t have a dog or cat or lawn, but we had the photo with Brad’s arm draped around my shoulder, and the personal statement trying to win over an anonymous pregnant woman. We tried to spin our freelance orchestra conductor and performance artist careers in the most positive light, so we’d be competitive with the equally childless but more financially stable stockbrokers in the album. Lucky for us, Zoe wanted her baby to be raised by artists, and chose us from a Spence-Chapin album just like the one Michael and I are flipping through right now.

Michael and I are casting agents, auditioning these couples for the roles of Best Mommy and Daddy. We read their sentimental statements, look at their affectionate smiles. They look like nice people. But this job of shopping for parents by catalog seems insane.

Michael asks, “Which couple do you think would be the best parents?”

There are teachers, investment bankers, gardeners, and homemakers. They are homely, attractive, fat, thin. They are good writers and terrible writers. They all desperately want a baby. I turn the pages of the album again, pausing at each portrait to imagine the couple holding this baby inside me.

“We are,” I say.

“Yes!” Michael groans in relief.

“These people don’t know how to raise a lesbian athlete,” I say. “We do.”

“Exactly!”

This is suddenly all too ridiculous. I feel bad for the childless couples. I hope Spence-Chapin shows their snapshots to the right pregnant casting agents and they all land dream roles as mommies and daddies. Michael and I laugh till we’re falling over each other on the sofa, like we’re drunk. We’re laughing and kissing, and I’m crying at the same time. My peals of laughter sound an awful lot like screaming, because, damn it, that’s just the way I am these days. Julia wakes up and staggers into the living room with bleary eyes, wanting to know what’s making us laugh like maniacs.

This is the first moment since showing Michael the sonogram image of the baby that I feel like we’re together in this journey again. We’ve got each other. Michael and I can raise this child together. Julia will have a little sister. Michael and I will get married and we’ll be a family. Maybe I’m even a little bit happy. That scares me.

“We’re the best parents,
unless
the baby is sick or handicapped,” I say to Michael, after Julia is back in bed. “That’s the deal breaker. Then we’ll give the baby up for adoption, to special needs adoption.”

Now we’re both good and unhappy again, and safely out of range of the Evil Eye.

Michael hears me but doesn’t say anything. He nods. I interpret his nod as an agreement that we will give up the baby for adoption if it’s handicapped or sick. I’ve probably misinterpreted his nod. It’s more likely that he’s angry with me, but he’s in no mood to talk about it.

I call Spence-Chapin to tell them my decision. Sasha the social worker knows about birth mothers. She tells me I might change my mind, even if the baby is healthy. The agency can place the newborn baby with foster parents while I decide. But that’s crazy, I think. How can I decide, if the baby is with someone else? How can I nurse the baby if the baby is with foster parents? We’re going to keep the baby. She accepts my decision as conditional, assures us that my file is active and that I can change my mind at any time before or after the baby is born.

“Do you want to have a contingency plan in place in case the baby is handicapped?” she asks. I don’t know. Maybe. They are prepared to place the baby in a foster home, find an adoptive family, if I change my mind. They will, if I need, pay for my prenatal care, my food and rent. They will pay for baby clothes and doctors bills if I need.

Wow! I am overwhelmed by the abundance of their offerings, and realize that Zoe benefited from their professional generosity nine years ago. I don’t feel I deserve it. I’m a grown-up, not a pregnant teenager; I have a home and health insurance—albeit crappy health insurance—a family who cares for me. I have Michael. I thank her, but decline. I decide to contribute money to Spence-Chapin when I have a regular income again.

“So a lady says to me, ‘After my baby is born, is there anything I should seek to avoid?’ And I say, ‘Yes—pregnancy.’ So . . . Michael and Alice, you’re going to have a baby!” Joy teaches us Lamaze breathing technique. She explains what an Apgar score is—the report card for the newborn, a number from zero (very bad) to ten (very good) that indicates the infant’s general health at birth.

“Here’s a tip for you, Michael. Fathers always try to be helpful in the delivery room, but don’t take it personally when she treats you horrible during labor. You won’t recognize her. She’ll insult you. I’m not kidding, she’ll act like you’re not there, she’ll call you horrible things, she’ll talk like a sailor. Remember, she’s not Alice anymore, she’s a woman in labor. Hang in there. Now I want you to watch this videotape together before my next visit. So long, you guys.”

Since I’m grounded for three months, Joy’s entertaining visits to our living room are like date nights for me and Michael. Tonight we get a double feature—Joy’s comedy act followed by a movie. We watch it while Julia sleeps. It’s pure propaganda. Three women give birth, with supportive husbands nearby, and without much pain. One woman is low-key with long wavy blond hair, one woman is perky and has a black Afro, one is shy and has curly red hair. At least there are some contrasts in hair-style. The low-key blond gives birth as if she’s in a yoga class. Her meditative state is amped up with heavy breathing when she’s pushing, like she’s demonstrating Kundalini Breath of Fire. When the black lady gives birth, it sounds like she’s having a fabulous orgasm. The red-haired lady calmly narrates her fears throughout the process, and tells the camera in an even-tone voice, “This hurts a great deal.” Lamaze technique wins the day—Hurrah!

My students are beginning to perform their solos for the class.

Jeremiah: “I remember Alabama summers. Yearning to patty cake with the sun. Uncle raped my sister at twelve in the front seat of the ’76 Mustang.”

Bella: “He holds the guitar quiet like water.”

Kayla: “I remember walking through the projects in my Corpus Christi uniform, my Uncle Tom Uniform. I’m twelve years old. My friend can’t sleep over because I live in the projects.”

Dani Athena, the forty-something choreographer and high school dance teacher, works without text. She arranges clumps of moss and dirt as her stage set, turns off the overhead lights, and lights a candle. In the dark she performs a mysterious dance and monologue that we collectively understand is about dying.

After class, Dani asks if I can meet for a few minutes. “I want to talk to you about my piece, but I don’t want to share this with the class. It will be useful for you to know, as my teacher, that . . . I have rectal cancer, and I just found out this week that it’s metastasized to my liver. I’ve decided not to do chemo or radiation, because it will just prolong my life a few months, but it would really diminish my quality of life. My doctor thinks I have less than a year left. I don’t want the class to know, but I want you to know so you can help me finish this piece.”

“How can I support you in class? What would be most valuable to you?”

“Just coming here, being with this group, showing new material every week, knowing that you know what the piece is about and that you’ll help me shape it. That’s enough.”

She hugs me. Her flexible dancer’s body accommodates to my pregnant roundness. I wrap my arms around her thin back. Her angular face rests on my soft cheek. We breathe together, and I think I feel three hearts beating—mine and Dani’s, beating side-by-side in unison, and the faster heartbeat of my mysterious daughter, waiting with surprising patience to be born, Dani Athena so filled with life I think hers can’t be extinguished.

“What’s the most frightening thing for you?”

“I’m scared of physical pain. I’m scared of running out of time. I’m not afraid of dying.”

Dani Athena is the most generous person in the room. She is awed by the work of the other students, and they light up when she gives them feedback. Her own performances frighten, hypnotize, and ignite the class. Her mysterious choreography and props, imported from the natural world, transforms the ordinariness of the sterile classroom. Following her lead, the other students risk making solo works that they don’t immediately understand.

I am humbled by Dani, by our parallel secrets. I’m expecting a baby, and I’m terrified. She is dying, but she’s not scared. She embraces this journey toward death as an adventure. She keeps looking for opportunities to give and give and give, before she runs out of time. I want to be more like Dani. I pay careful attention to her, to her optimism and her generosity, the way the class lights up when she talks to them, when she performs. Emulating her makes me a better teacher. I carefully prepare my classes with the needs of each student in mind. The class is doing remarkable work. I help Dani shape her piece.

I cab home from The New School each Monday and crawl back into bed. I close my eyes and try to preserve in me, for as long as I can, the connection I feel to my students. I savor Dani Athena’s life-affirming generosity. I sleep. When I awake there’s the old pessimism.

“I saved the best for last,” says Joy on her final Tuesday night visit. “Drumroll, please—The disaster scenarios! I always say to expectant moms, this lesson could save your life, okay? So listen up.”

Joy has spent the first thirty minutes of the lesson leading us through a practice session of Lamaze breathing and relaxation technique. We stop relaxing as Joy sets up her flip chart and turns to the page showing all the things that can go wrong—disastrously, fatally wrong, at the last moment.

“You are a prime candidate,” she cheerfully assures me, “for the most dangerous of these complications—hemorrhaging. Why do you think all those pioneer women died in childbirth? They bled to death! You think that doesn’t happen anymore? Wrong! They’d like you to think it doesn’t happen, not in this day and age, right? Dying in childbirth only happens in third world countries, right? Not! Happens all the time. Right here, New York City, even in New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center. I’m a nurse in the neonatal unit. You wouldn’t believe what I see. Just last week—I probably shouldn’t tell you this—but anyway, just last week, a pregnant lady starts to bleed, so she calls an ambulance, and she’s heading over in the ambulance but they can’t stop the bleeding and by the time they get to the hospital—I really shouldn’t tell you this—she’s dead on arrival. And they can’t save the baby.