Sunlight on My Shadow (18 page)

“Well, she was face-up instead of the usual face-down.” This must have been why I felt like I had the hot poker in my back. The back of the baby’s head, not the softer face tissue, had been pressing against my spine.

They wheeled me back to the recovery room and I slept for several hours. I woke up with a stabbing headache, but the nightmare was over. I had the baby. I did it. I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I wondered about the baby. Where was she and who was taking care of her? I hoped they gave her more attention than I got when I was in labor.

They brought me some water to drink, and a tray of pork chops and mashed potatoes. I ate every shred, then fell asleep.

Around 7:00 pm I woke and thought about calling Mom. I wanted to tell her it was all over. I asked the nurse if I could use the phone that was down the hall. The numbness was gone now. I could feel a very sore and tender bottom. My ribs ached, and my head felt like a saw was moving across my temples. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

“I feel like I’m going to pass out,” I said.

“Just sit for a minute,” the nurse said. “If you need to make a call, I can wheel you down there if you feel up to it.”

The phone hung too high for me to reach the rotary dial from the wheelchair, so the nurse dialed the number. Since Mom was up at the lake, I had to be careful about my choice of words. We were on a party line, which meant that anyone in Wascott could pick up the phone and listen to our conversation. I had to talk in code.

“Hello.” It sounded like Hugren.

“Can I talk to Ethel?” I asked. I didn’t know if Hugren recognized my voice, but I didn’t want her asking me any questions.

I waited and imagined Mom wheeling over to the phone to talk.

“Hi, Mom, it’s Judy. I just called to tell you that Sally had her baby.”

“Sally?” Mom sounded confused for a second. “Oh, my, that’s good,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. It was a hard birth: a baby girl, eight pounds, four ounces. Delivered by forceps. Everything’s fine, though, and it’s all over.”

“Oh, my,” Mom said. “When does she come home from the hospital?”

“I think in about a week.”

“OK, then. Thanks for letting me know. So everything is okay then?” Mom said.

“Yep, everything’s fine. I just wanted to let you know.”

Mom sounded tentative on the phone. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be calling her. Maybe that was up to the facility, to notify the parents. I suppose Mom was afraid of what I might say and who might be listening in. Maybe she had company over at the cabin and couldn’t ask any more questions. We hadn’t talked for several months.

I hung up with a lonely feeling: Mom was three hundred miles away. I knew she was disappointed in me, and I was saddened by her cool tone of voice. Maybe she acted like that just because she was on a party line. Still, I had lingering doubts about her love for me. I was glad she hadn’t seen me during those later months: me, so young and full with child. I was glad I didn’t have to see anyone while I was in that state. It was good I went away.

People have asked when they hear my story, “Well, where was your mom? Why wasn’t she there with you?” Since the story was that I had a contagious disease, it wouldn’t do for Mom to be coming up to visit me, and most of the time she wasn’t up to it. If the secret plan was to work, they couldn’t be taking trips up to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. I didn’t blame Mom. I couldn’t admit she had anything I needed. I was serving out my sentence for the wrongs I had committed. But today, I think, “How could she not know I needed her desperately?” She must have ached as much as I did to know that she had to stay away. I believe she did know I needed her, but she was adhering to the plan. Even if she was healthy and up to it and wanted to come, visitors were not allowed on the hospital floor or inside the home. It must have broken her heart to know that I was laboring alone and handing over my newborn child to strangers. We were both victims of the plan.

They told me that I could go to the nursery for visiting hours between 3:00 and 5:00 pm each day. The nursery was down the hall and around the corner from my hospital room. By the second day I was able to get up and walk around a little bit. This is when I decided to go see the baby. I stood outside the glass window, looking in. There were two cribs with babies. An attendant walked out and I asked, “Do you know if the one over there is mine?” as I pointed across the nursery room.

“Does the baby have a name?” she asked.

“Helen,” I said.

“Yes, that’s Baby Helen. You can come in and hold her if you want.”

“No, that’s okay.”

The baskets had clear sides, so I could see her even though I was peering through the glass across the room. Her beauty amazed me. I know all mothers think their child is exceptional, but compared to the wrinkled scrawny one next to her, she stood out like a rosebud in a field of weeds. There she was, a little cherub with a mop of hair and chubby cheeks. She had a big red mark on the side of her head and cheek. It must have been from the forceps. Poor thing. She was lying on her tummy, asleep in the bassinet. She looked healthy though. Her little square jaw reminded me of Mick; she looked so much like him with her dark hair. She had a perfect miniature nose. As my eyes moved over her, I swelled with pride, as if I had something to do with her beauty. I had seen newborns before, all wrinkled and squinty-eyed. But her skin was soft and plush, a perfect rosy cameo color. If it wasn’t for the bruises on the side of her head, she could have been a Gerber baby star.

My body yearned to walk inside the nursery and pick her up. I took a deep breath and remembered how Jackie’s babies smelled when they came home from the hospital and how I loved their aroma. It was that baby powder mix with their sweet milky breath. I remembered how they would arch their backs and put their fists up by their ears as they stretched and yawned. I could imagine what it would be like to hold my baby and nestle her peach-soft skin next to mine. After I got her in my arms, I would take everything in. I would smell her babyness and run my fingers over her tiny hands and touch her toes. I would feel the light weight of her against my body and hold her close to my heart so she could feel it beating, so she could feel the love I had for her.

I put my hands on the cold glass of the nursery window. I looked down the hall. No one was around, so I let myself cry. I wanted her so bad. I wondered if, maybe, I should go in there and hold her. They said I could. She was mine for now. No, I couldn’t do it. If I held her once, I just might not ever be able to let her go. That seemed like dabbling in fire. I could just see the frightful scene I might make, them telling me, “No, you can’t have her. You signed the papers. She belongs to her real parents,” and me clutching her next to my body, crying, “No, no, no,” unable to let her go.

No, holding her would not do. It wouldn’t be good for either of us; there was no future in it. It would rip my heart out to have to hand her over. I had to protect myself from that hurt. It was better to cut the ties right now. It was better to forget, to never feel the sweetness of her body close to mine. That way I wouldn’t know what I was missing. Yes, it was better for both of us to leave her be.

So I continued to watch, with tears in my eyes. I saw her yawn and turn her head. I watched her fall back asleep, then open her eyes and look around. She seemed content. She seemed to be doing fine. I didn’t want to disturb her serenity. After standing in front of the glass watching her for about a half hour, I went back to my room, lay down, and slept again.

At the end of the day I moved back up to my room on the third floor, but I still had the privilege to go to the hospital floor during the nursery visiting hours. On the third day after the delivery, I passed a new girl on the stairs. I hadn’t seen her before and her belly was small.

“Hi,” I said. “Did you just get here?”

“About three days ago. When are you due?” she asked.

“Oh, I already delivered.”

I was so proud to say it. I was hoping she would ask, smug in my knowing that she had no idea what was in store for her. Poor girl. She was just starting at the home. I felt aloof and cocky inside. I hoped she noticed I came out of the door on the second floor. I had access.

The next afternoon I went back to the nursery, but still I stayed on this side of the glass. One of the girls was inside holding her baby, but I just stood there and looked through the diamond-shaped, wire-mesh window. Baby Helen glowed with beauty, like stars on a moonless night. Her red marks were fading just a tiny bit.

On one of my visits, I watched the nurse hold her and feed her a bottle. I was relieved that they seemed to be taking good care of her. But one time when I got there she was crying and no one was around. I went to the nurses’ station and told them.

“Baby Helen is crying. Do you think she’s hungry?”

“We’ll be in there as soon as we can,” the nurse said.

I walked back and watched through the window as she cried for another ten minutes. It made me so nervous. “What does she want?” I wondered. “How can they let her lie there so hungry and needy?”

Finally, I watched the nurse walk in with a bottle. She picked her up and fed it to her. It was wrong that it wasn’t me feeding her. The sight of it sent a shock of longing through my heart. The nurse didn’t hold her close, just laid the baby on her lap and held the bottle so she could suck. She didn’t seem to care that much. I would have cared. I would have held her close when I fed her.

On the fourth visit, I wanted to hold her so badly and talk to her and tell her that I loved her. The ache was deepening, so I decided I wasn’t doing myself any good to be standing out there longing for her. I made the decision to make this my last visit. I went back to my room, lay on the bed, and put my face in the pillow. It was over. It was time to move on. But if it was over, why did I feel this hole in my heart? I felt worse than before I had the baby. I was supposed to be happy now. A new chapter of my life was starting, but I was having a hard time turning the page.

I would be leaving the home in two days. It was early July, but the weather didn’t know it. A north wind brought sheets of rain. I had just gotten up from my bed to peer out the window. My baby was now five days old. A bolus of grief sat in my throat and gripped me with a sorrow that only a mother can know. My baby was not in my belly. My baby was not in my arms. Something was very wrong.

I thought back to my early pregnant days when no one knew about my predicament, and I remembered how I wanted it out of me. How I prayed rosary after rosary that it would disengage and slip out, freeing me of the nightmare. I flashed back to the times I punched myself, just below the belly button. How could I have done that? How could I have been so naive to think it might work and to not consider that I might be harming a growing child within me? All I felt was a lump, a growing lump just above the pelvis. It was the bane of my existence. I hated myself for what I did. Thank God it never worked. Thank you. Thank you. Now that unwanted lump had turned into a perfectly gorgeous child. I hadn’t held her, yet my love for her ran deep.

The window was full of rain spatters, muting my view. I glanced out over the parking lot and saw a red Buick pull in and park just below my window. As I looked through the sheeting rain, I could tell by the red hair and the way she moved that it was Catherine Cavanaugh, my social worker. She was dressed in a full-length black trench coat, her arms wrapped around her body to keep the wind out. Her eyes were on the ground as she walked briskly to get out of the rain. She reached the building and went in the back door.

I stared out at the parking lot. It was empty except for the red Buick. The asphalt along the edge was broken into black chunks, maybe from the heat of the summer. Brown and green weeds sprouted through. The once-purple lilac bushes had lost their blossoms to summer.

Linda P. walked in the room.

“Judy, what are you doing?”

“It sure is gloomy out there, just like I feel.”

“Why should you be sad?” she said. “You had the baby and you’re going home. You’re so lucky. I’m stuck here for another month.”

“Yeah, I’m glad to be done with it,” I said. “But I thought I would be happy to be done with the birth and it’d be so easy to say good-bye. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so sad.” I turned away from the window to look at Linda.

“Well, I’d sure be happy if I was done with this whole thing,” she said.

“I feel bad about giving her away. She’s so beautiful. I signed the papers, but I still don’t know why I did it.”

Linda sat down on her bed. “Oh, she will have such a better life. Most of the girls here give their baby up. It’s just what you do when you get yourself into trouble. You’re doing her a favor. How would you take care of her, anyway, if you kept her?” I walked over and sat down on my bed, facing Linda.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I could. I suppose her life will be better with a family that can care for her.” I was engaged in the plan, but I felt like a fraud. When I signed those papers a month ago, I didn’t do it because I loved her and wanted the best for her. I did it because I didn’t want anyone to know I was pregnant. I didn’t want anyone to see the shame I held deep within, hiding the secret of my immoral behavior. It was a lousy reason, shallow and uncaring.

I got up again and stared out the window. My heart ached to hold the baby and kiss the baby and love her and change her diapers and feed her and care for her. But it was too late. It was a done deal. She was all set to go to a new family.

“Did you hold her?” Linda P. asked.

I turned away from the window to look at Linda.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. They said I could, but I thought that if I did I’d never be able to let go.”

I heard a shuffling below the window and turned my head to look out again. The rain was still falling and the sky was full of dark, low-lying clouds. Catherine Cavanaugh was walking to the car with a pink bundle in her arms. She walked fast and put the bundle in a bassinet in the backseat.

“I have a feeling that’s my baby,” I said. “She’s leaving now.” Catherine closed the door to the car and got in the front seat. The car started, and she backed out. I watched her pull away.

“I have to go check something out,” I said, and ran down to the second floor. I took the long hallway to the nursery. I peered through the triangular wire cross-hairs of the window. Sure enough, her little bed was empty. She was speeding away in Cavanaugh’s car. She was gone. I wouldn’t ever see her again.

I pressed my hands against the nursery window and pushed my cheek against the cold slick surface. My knees felt like noodles, and long hard sobs erupted from deep within my gut. My baby was gone. I let her go. I never held her. I signed the papers that gave her to some strange woman. They didn’t even tell me she was going today. Maybe I could have said good-bye.

I wondered who would be feeding my baby tonight. I took big chunks of my hair and pulled it slowly through my hands. Icy fingers of grief stabbed at my heart and gut. I feared I would never be okay again. I was drowning in hopeless sorrow.