And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (5 page)

As I tried to soak all of this information in, it occurred to me that if time was so important, why weren't they going to exchange at once instead of the next morning? But who was I to question them?

We thanked the doctors. Visiting hours were over, so Frank had to leave. He promised to return early in the morning to be with me.

Once again I felt very alone. I had a roommate behind the curtain but we hadn't had a chance to talk. During the feeding hours no one had brought her baby to her, either.

“My baby was stillborn,” she said now, from behind the curtain.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

“The nurse told me they put you in here with me because they don't like to put a mother of a live baby in with a mother of a dead baby. I guess they don't figure your baby has much of a chance. But I guess you already know that.”

What a mean, bitter thing to say, I thought. It wounded me. But in a way she was right. I didn't feel like a mother. I hadn't seen or touched or nursed my baby. I had no feeling of her being alive. My body hurt; I felt bruised all over. But I didn't feel as if I'd given birth that morning. I just felt empty.

I tried to sleep that night but couldn't. I was awake in the middle of the night when the nurses were padding around out in the hall, bringing babies to their mothers for feeding. I felt like I didn't belong there. I wasn't a member of their club.

A nurse asked me to sign a paper in the morning, a standard form that gave the doctors permission to perform the blood exchange on Nancy. She left before I remembered to ask her if the release was legally binding, since I was still a minor.

Another nurse came in and said, “Would you like to see your baby before they take her to the O.R.?”

“Can I?” I begged.

“Sure, honey. You ought to see her. Just in case … well, just in case.”

She helped me out of bed and down the hall. I hadn't been up yet and was pretty wobbly. She propped me against the nursery window and went inside. A minute later she opened the curtain.

Nancy was wrapped in a pink blanket. The first thing that hit me was what a tiny, vulnerable human being she was. Her eyes were closed, her face was bright yellow, and she had an amazing amount of thick, dark hair on her head. The nurses had combed it into a little ponytail and put a pink ribbon around it.

I felt love and protectiveness for that tiny infant. I was a mother—that infant's mother.

I gestured to the nurse to unwrap the blanket. I wanted to make sure Nancy had all of her fingers and toes—my mother once told me she had counted mine. The nurse unwrapped the blanket and I duly performed the count. There were indeed ten fingers and ten toes. But each of her heels was covered by several gauze patches held on with tape.

I nodded to the nurse, and she wrapped Nancy back up in her blanket and closed the nursery curtain. A moment later she came out of the nursery to help me back to my bed.

“Those patches on her heels,” I said. “What are they?”

“That's where we take the blood in a newborn, honey,” she said. “We take it from the heel. She needed a lot of tests, the poor thing.”

Years later, when Nancy had become a heroin addict and I saw her for the first time with needle marks all over her arms, hands, ankles, and the backs of her knees, I remembered the first time I had seen her in the nursery with the gauze patches on her heels.

I got back into bed to wait. Frank was on his way, and the doctors had promised they'd come tell me what had happened when the procedure was over.

I tried to suppress my feelings for Nancy. I still hadn't touched her or nursed her. It would be more sensible if I didn't feel a lot for her, I decided, because she might very well die.

But I
couldn't
suppress my feelings. I had seen her. She existed. I was her mother, and I was going to do my best to give her a life of love, a life of quality—even if that life ended in an hour. This commitment meant I would now have to cope with a great deal of pain if I lost her; I knew that. But I still felt better than I had during the night.

Frank was by my side when the doctors came in at about eight. They were both grinning.

“That's some kind of fighter you have,” laughed the hematologist. “She screamed and kicked so much I had to tie her down. First time I've ever had to tie a baby down for that procedure.”

“Is she going to make it?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? If she was a boy I'd say you've got the future heavyweight champion of the world on your hands.”

He laughed. We all laughed, we were so relieved.

“Can we see her?” Frank asked.

“You bet.”

I looked for her through the nursery window. My eyes scanned one infant after another sleeping peacefully in a row. She wasn't one of them.

She was lying in a glass-enclosed isolette in the very back of the nursery, naked except for a patch over her navel, where the transfusion had been done. Her mouth was open and she was screaming hysterically. Her yellow body was thrashing about angrily. The fighter description was an apt one—she looked as if she were in the midst of a battle.

“Is she all right?” I asked the doctor, concerned.

“She doesn't feel any physical pain. Not to worry.”

But I did worry. I felt helpless. I wanted to hold her, which was impossible since they wouldn't let me in the nursery or her out.

A nurse removed her from the isolette to feed her and Nancy's little arms and legs flailed wildly. She kicked at the nurse with her tiny feet and screamed. Her minute fists began to beat on her own face. The nurse tried to calm her down but couldn't.

I thought it was a good sign that she was so active. It meant she was alive. But she was in pain. I was sure of it—with a mother's certainty.

We never knew for certain what effect Nancy's traumatic birth—the oxygen deprivation, the ABO incompatibility, the blood exchange—had on her later behavior. There were simply too many unknowns.

But we do know that children who face great life-threatening traumas at birth share many of the same personality characteristics. They spend much of their lives angry. Their behavior is often violent, much of it self-directed, like Nancy's was. I have seen some of these other children and talked to their parents. A common thread exists.

This syndrome is presently acknowledged by the medical community and is being dealt with. This was not so in 1958.

Her bilirubin stabilized after the first exchange, so no more transfusions were necessary. She was four days old when they finally let me hold her.

I heard a commotion outside my room in the hall. Then I heard the nice nurse, the one who'd let me see Nancy before the exchange, say, “I hope that poor girl is lying down because she just may faint.”

Then a gang of six or seven smiling doctors and nurses invaded my room. I saw the bundle in the pink blanket, with a shock of dark hair sticking out, and I gasped with surprise and joy.

I took her in my arms gingerly, afraid I was holding her wrong, but she seemed comfortable enough. I felt the warmth of her body, smelled the sweet baby smell, touched the silky skin of her cheeks, stroked her glossy hair.

Her eyes were open and she looked up at me. Her eyes were dark. The iris and pupil were the same color. There was a burning intensity in those eyes. They were like coals.

She wrapped her little fist around my finger. Her skin was still very yellow, but she was very much alive.

The nurses showed me how to nurse her. Nancy began to feed hungrily. I was so happy. I felt like a queen on a throne. My princess was at my breast, her entourage fanned about, watching with admiration.

At last I had my baby.

On the evening of our eighth day there the hematologist came to tell me we could go home in the morning.

“When do you want to see her again?” I asked.

“Don't need to,” he replied. “We checked her for central nervous system damage—she's A-one. Reflexes normal. She's gaining weight. As far as I can see, Nancy's a normal baby. Take her home and treat her like one.”

So we did. True, Nancy had had a rough beginning in life, but everything was going to be fine now. The baby we took home next morning was a certified healthy and normal baby girl. Almost pink.

Frank had set up a nursery in one of the upstairs bedrooms—my old bedroom, in fact. There was a crib with pink teddy bears on it, and a pink bathinette. My old chest of drawers was now painted white. The room was bright and spotless and beautiful.

I carried Nancy upstairs and laid her in her crib. Frank and I stood over her, beaming. She looked so sweet in her knitted bonnet and starched white baby dress. It was the same baby dress my mother had brought me home in when I was born. Nancy's eyes took in the new surroundings.

“You're home, Nancy,” I said. “You're
home
.”

Frank put his arm around me. We hugged. We were so happy. We were a family now. Nancy was the start of a whole new, wonderful life for us.

“Hello, Nanki-poo,” cooed Frank. He grabbed her tiny fingers one by one. “Look at that little Nanki-poo finger … and
that
Nanki-poo finger … and that one …”

I undressed her and put her in a pink nightgown. Then I picked her up carefully and sat down with her in the rocking chair Frank had moved in from our room. I began to nurse her. Frank stayed to watch, so filled with pride and love at seeing our child feed at my breast that tears formed in his eyes.

I had never taken care of a baby before. As a gift, Mother had paid a baby nurse to help me for the first two weeks. I was thrilled. This gave me a chance to get my energy back, catch up on my schoolwork, and learn how to bathe and diaper Nancy from an expert. Mrs. Taylor, a cheery black woman in her fifties, was indeed an expert. She had worked with babies her whole life. She was unbelievably relaxed around Nancy.

I wasn't. Especially when it was time for Mrs. Taylor to take her day off at the end of week one. It meant taking care of Nancy all by myself for the first time. I was terrified.

As soon as Mrs. Taylor walked out the door, Nancy began to cry. I went to her crib, picked her up carefully, and cradled her.

“There, there, Nancy. Don't cry,” I said. She didn't stop. “Mommy's here, Nancy. Mommy's here.”

That made her start screaming. I got frightened and called out to Frank downstairs.

He came up. “What's wrong?” he asked. “Why's she screaming?”

“She doesn't like me,” I replied as Nancy squirmed and screamed in my arms.

“Don't be silly. Maybe she's hungry.”

“I just fed her.”

“Maybe she's wet.”

“Mrs. Taylor diapered her before she left.”

“Well, something must be bothering her. Babies don't just cry for no reason. Do they?”

“She doesn't like me,” I repeated.

“Maybe you're holding her wrong.”

“This is the way Mrs. Taylor showed me.”

“Sure?”

“Of course I'm sure!”

“Okay, okay. Don't get upset. Here, let me try holding her.”

He cradled her tentatively, lowered his head to her, and made little kissing noises with his mouth. She kept screaming.

“Hello, Nanki-poo,” he cooed. “What's wrong with little Nanki-poo?”

She screamed louder.

“What the hell, I must be holding her wrong, too.” He handed her back to me.

By this time Mother had come in. “Why's she screaming?” she asked.

“We don't know,” Frank and I said in unison.

“Here, let me try,” she offered. She cradled Nancy and rocked
her back and forth. The bawling didn't let up.

“Maybe,” Mother ventured, “she doesn't
want
to be held.”

“That's possible,” Frank said. “Why don't we put her back in the crib?”

“She was
in
the crib when she started,” I said.

“You may as well try,” Mother said.

I put Nancy back in her crib. She didn't stop screaming and crying. She cried the whole day. She cried when I diapered her, bathed her, fed her. She screamed when I came in the room.

I took it very personally. I prided myself on doing things well. I was a good student. I had taught myself to be a good cook. But I was already a total failure as a mother.

She was still screaming when Frank and I went to bed. He was able to get to sleep anyway. I wasn't. I got up, wrapped her in her blanket, and carried her downstairs. I got my papers and books together, poured myself a glass of milk, and went to work on my senior thesis at the dining table, Nancy in one arm.

The sooner I finished my thesis, the sooner I'd get my diploma and become a full-time mother to my baby—a good mother.

After a while she stopped squirming and bawling and fell asleep. My arm began to ache, but I didn't put her down.

I saw the dawn, still writing, still holding Nancy, who was by now wide-awake and screaming again. She was crying when Mrs. Taylor finally arrived.