The Year My Mother Came Back (11 page)

“I miss you, Julia. It's good to hear your voice.”

“You, too.”

“I should go to sleep.”

“I have miles to go before I sleep.”

Three weeks before I started college, we moved to a house on the other side of town, in Shore Acres, near the beach. My parents sold our old house on Wilbur Avenue to Charles Raymond, a well-known businessman in town. Charles owned The Record Shop, where Madeline had an after-school job in 1967, selling Joni Mitchell, Rolling Stones, Richie Havens, Simon and Garfunkel, and Joan Baez albums. He was the first black person to live in my old neighborhood. And the first mixed-race family—Charles's wife was Swedish. Their two young, beautiful children had light brown skin and kinky, golden hair.

There was ugly racial hostility toward the Raymonds in our blue-collar neighborhood. I heard through the grapevine that the neighbors had circulated a petition to keep them out.

The banks had rejected the Raymonds' loan application, even though Charles was a long-established local businessman. When my parents guaranteed the loan, the banks had no more excuse to reject him.

I was proud of my parents for helping Charles, especially after my mother's years of civil rights campaigning in our narrow-minded neighborhood. But I was worried about their kids—if the neighbors dumped garbage in our yard and slashed our bike tires for being Jewish, what indignities would they concoct for the Raymonds? On the other hand, the Raymonds kept their lawn tidily mowed.

I was surprised that my parents could afford to move to Shore Acres. I was having an identity crisis. What social class did we belong to, now that my parents were moving to a more affluent neighborhood, with other Jewish families around? I felt betrayed, and like a betrayer. Fitting in here made me feel alienated in a brand-new way. It was a simple ranch house, nothing fancy, but I had to admit it was nice to be able to walk to the beach, from an address that gave us beach privileges. (It was a guilty pleasure: I remembered Mom leading us on a low-tide trek across the beach in Martha's Vineyard, to fight for public waterfront access.)

Mom wasn't so angry anymore. She was happy about moving. And I think she was happy about me leaving home, even though we weren't fighting now—a tentative truce. She said she was proud of me.

“You'll love college, I just know it. Keep making art. Study what you're passionate about, that's paramount,” she told me at breakfast in the new dining room (our old house didn't have a dining room), with a picture window overlooking a gently sloping, neatly mowed lawn.

“But don't forget that you'll need to make a living when you graduate,” added my dad, enthusiastically slicing strawberries and peaches on his cornflakes and digging in with gusto.

My parents were still tense with each other. But Mom looked healthier, and she liked her new job, leading a seminar for nurses at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

“The nurses in my seminar are angry and frustrated because they have no power,” she told me, Jennifer, and Dad as she served dinner. While she continued her lecture, we feasted on peak-season corn on the cob, juicy beefsteak tomatoes, and velvety bib lettuce that Mom had bought at the local farm stand—she had an uncanny ability to choose perfect fruits and vegetables. “Doctors give their nurses huge responsibilities, but no respect. When a doctor makes a mistake, the nurse is often the one who saves the patient's life, but doctors resent the nurses who correct them. They're either ignored or punished for insubordination. And of course there's the disparity in pay. All these unwritten covenants of discrimination, the conspiracy of silent acceptance. The exciting thing is that, finally, these nurses aren't accepting the silence anymore. They insist on being heard.”

After dinner, Jennifer and I cleaned up, Dad practiced a Beethoven piano sonata, and Mom went into her study. She had the same old-fashioned typewriter, but she no longer had to type at the kitchen table. She finally had a room of her own.

When the dishes were done, I quietly entered Mom's study, a serene room overlooking a tidal marsh, habitat to a large variety of birds, which of course she loved. Redwing blackbirds flitted between cattails, a white egret moved in slow motion toward its prey, a great blue heron soared over the tall reeds, showing off his impressive wingspan.

She was still working on her sociology dissertation for Columbia University, trying to get her PhD so she could advance from her low-paid, underappreciated adjunct professor status: she was teaching a smattering of courses at City University, Pace College, and Columbia Teachers College, as well as the nursing seminar. I surmised that the nurses might be the topic of her doctoral dissertation. She typed and typed, tearing out pages, sorting them into mountains—rough drafts, edited drafts, carbon copies, rejects. Now that she had her own desk, she could spread out and make a mess. The precarious mountains of paper resembled volcanoes, loose pages cascading like lava down the slopes. Her fingers flew over the keys, trying to keep up with her ideas, but her ideas came faster. Her right hand reflexively hit the return at the end of every line, then pulled the finished page from the typewriter with a ratcheting sound.

“Mom—”

“Yes, Alice?”

“I'm . . . I think I'm going to miss you. When I'm at college.”

She stopped typing and looked at me, surprised, as if she had just heard the word
college
for the first time, as if my going to college were an entirely new concept. “I think I'm going to miss you, too, Sweetheart.”

FOUR

Flipping through magazines in the waiting room, I come across an article about the increased risk of breast cancer for women who took Hormone Replacement Therapy.
Blah!
I was on HRT for fourteen years. And that's just the latest chapter of my epic hormonal odyssey. I could write a book. My life, seen through estrogen-colored glasses:

PHARMACEUTICAL PHRANKENSTEIN MONSTER MASHUP

A memoir

by Alice Eve Cohen

Chapter 1: ITSY BITSY BABY (PART ONE)

Once upon a time, long, long ago (c. 1954), when I was but a wee little zygote, I was exposed to DES, the antimiscarriage drug my mother took when she became pregnant with me, after three miscarriages.

In the baby-booming fifties, the synthetic estrogen DES (diethylstibestrol) was routinely prescribed by doctors as the “pregnancy vitamin,” the silver bullet that would prevent miscarriage and ensure healthy, booming babies. Eli Lilly and the other drug companies soon discovered that DES was: (1) completely ineffective in preventing miscarriage,
and
(2) carcinogenic. But they hid the damning evidence and continued to promote the drug for two more decades, while DES wreaked havoc, causing birth defects, cancers in the reproductive organs, infertility, and increased risk of breast cancer—both in the mothers who took the drug (Exhibit A: Mom) and in their daughters (Exhibit B: me).

CHAPTER 2: BABY BOOMER ACTIVIST

When I was thirty, I joined a class-action lawsuit, which collectively attempted to sue Eli Lilly's ass (Lilly only experienced a small pinch.) I collected a small out-of-court settlement for my infertility. I wrote a play about DES. My cervix became world-famous—videotaped for medical students, because my weird cells illustrated the classic DES abnormalities.

CHAPTER 3: THE INFERTILE ERA

From age thirty to forty-four, I was prescribed HRT to treat low estrogen, which, as it turned out, I didn't need. (Exhibit C: my unexpected pregnancy with Eliana, fourteen years after being told that my estrogen was so low I could never, ever, ever,
ever,
EVER become pregnant.)

CHAPTER 4: ITSY BITSY BABY (PART TWO)

Once upon a time, long, long ago (c. 1999), when Eliana was but a wee zygote, she was exposed to the synthetic hormones I was taking, and continued to take for the first two trimesters.

Does this sound familiar?

Is this some kind of a family curse? Family legacy? Family joke?

Life-long exposure to synthetic hormones may have caused my breast cancer.

My mother's breast cancer may have been caused by DES.

These strange symmetries lead to strange asymmetries.

When my radiation treatment is over, I'll take an estrogen-blocker for five years, which is ironic, if not funny, if not
hysterical
—from the Greek,
hustera,
which means “womb,” which is etymologically ironic.

After a lifetime of being pumped with estrogen drugs, my natural estrogen is going to be
blocked
for the next five years with yet another synthetic estrogen. I am a magnet for medical ironies.

This makes me really mad. If I get any madder, I'll become a
madwoman.
I might become completely
husterical.
I bet I'm the only woman in history
(hystery)
to have sued for both infertility and fertility.

OH, GOD, HOW
I wish I hadn't inadvertently drugged and dragged Eliana into this, before she was born.

Oh, God, how my mother wished she hadn't inadvertently drugged and dragged me into this, before I was born.

Oh, God, how I wish my multigenerational maternal legacy didn't have such painful symmetries.

Oh, God, how I wish Eliana didn't have such painful asymmetry.

FIVE

In the Ramble this morning, I saw a red-tailed hawk capture and eat a squirrel. He sat in a tree, pinning the live squirrel to the branch with his talon, using his sharp beak to rip morsels of flesh from the dying animal, without apology or self-consciousness. Forever wild. This is the real thing, not an imitation of nature.

But the wild turkey is confused. He doesn't know his place in the natural world. He thinks he's a dog. He follows people in the Ramble, as if he were a pet. He prefers to follow men who are walking dogs. He stops when they stop, and sits tall, neck extended, facing straight ahead, imitating the dog. When dog and master start walking again, the turkey walks alongside them.

“WHEN IS JULIA
coming home?” Eliana asks at breakfast.

“Tuesday—”

“Yay!”

“For two days.”

“Aw, that's such a short time.”

“I know.”

I wonder what it will be like having Julia back home. We've acclimated to being a family of three. She's just across the river, but it seems like she's so far away. I wonder if she's been in touch with her birth mother. And if so, what's that like? Is their relationship like a mother and daughter? Does it change how Julia sees me? I'd like to talk to Zoe, too, but I'm not sure Julia would want me to. What's the etiquette here? I've always wanted to see Zoe again. I was at the birth, I was with her during labor, I just about fell in love with her. But that's not the point. This is about Julia getting to know her birth mother. Another mother. A second mother, who was her original mother. Can we have too many mothers?

THE RADIATION ROOM
is cool. The lights are dim.
Beep, beep, beep.

“Please stay very still for ten minutes.”

The labor room was cool. The lights were dim. Low, swooshing throb of Zoe's heartbeat, and quick liquid pulse of Baby's heart, whispered from the ultrasound heart monitor.

“Hey Alice, I'm really glad you're here,” said Zoe. She was propped up in bed, the blue hospital gown over her round belly not quite covering her hips.

“Me, too.” I was the only one in the room with her. Brad was in the waiting room. She had asked me to be her birth coach. I knew very little about childbirth, and I felt unprepared. An hour ago, we got the call from our social worker at the adoption agency, telling us that Zoe was in labor, and we cabbed down. The social worker bent the rules of the confidentiality agreement by telling us Zoe's last name, so that we could get into the hospital.

At the foot of Zoe's bed, a digital monitor displayed three wavy green lines.

“The top line is my contractions. It goes crazy when I'm in the middle of one. The second line is my heartbeat. The bottom line is the baby's heartbeat. Oh! Feel this.”

Zoe grabbed my hand and put it on her round belly. I felt the baby kick. Then she groaned, gripped my hand, and described her sensations. She had opted not to have an epidural. Each contraction was more intense than the one before.

“I'm gonna be sick.”

There was no nurse in sight. I grabbed a bucket. I was channeling my mother. I remembered Mom taking care of me when I was nauseous, feeding me crushed ice and ginger ale, propping me up, holding a bag for me to puke in, cleaning me up. I fed Zoe crushed ice from a paper cup. I held the plastic bucket for her. One time, Zoe missed the bucket and threw up on me. I cleaned up both of us. As the night wore on, as her contractions became more intense, I felt more and more like Zoe's mother, less and less like the baby's mother. Zoe was twenty, and she looked so young, it was confusing.

“Ready, Zoe?” asked the tall Jamaican midwife.

“I didn't know it would hurt this much. Can I have pain meds?”

“Too late for drugs. You can do it, girl. It's almost over,” said the midwife, as we wheeled Zoe into the delivery room, where Brad, in green scrubs, awaited us.

Zoe pushed and pushed, until baby Julia dove magnificently into the world.

“Look at Alice and Brad,” said Zoe, drenched in sweat but smiling. “They're crying because they're so happy.”

Zoe chose me to be Julia's mother. I hope I've lived up to her expectations.

“Of course you have. You're a fine mother,” says my mom.

“
Fine?
Fine isn't good enough.”

“What's good enough?” She sits on the stool by the radiation bed, running her fingers through her salt-and-pepper hair. I have a sideways view of her, with my left cheek pressed to the mattress.

“Oh, God, that's what I'm trying to figure out, Mom. I think about Zoe. I love that girl—I mean, she's not a girl anymore, she's thirty-eight. She gave birth to Julia and then, miracle of miracles, she
gave
her baby to me and Brad. Literally placed newborn Julia in our arms. The greatest gift imaginable. I've been thankful—
indebted
—to Zoe every day of Julia's life. But now I'm worried that Julia will choose her over me. And Zoe might welcome that. Why wouldn't she? So I wonder, is Zoe a good mother to Julia? Has she been a good mother all along? When she was twenty and single, she knew she wasn't prepared to raise a child, so she made a carefully considered plan for her newborn. She chose loving parents for Julia, and disappeared from her life forever—anyway, that was her intent at the time. Until now, when she says, “Wow, Julia, you found me! Cool—I'm here for you.” So all this time, while she was waiting in the wings, was Zoe an ideal mother, in her own way? I think maybe yes. But mixed with my gratitude, I also feel a tinge of resentment. I can't help thinking about
The Little Red Hen
.

On cue, Mom, now much younger—black hair, red lips, slim waist—sits beside my bed and reads from my dog-eared storybook like she used to. The hen on the cardboard cover wears a yellow sweater and straw hat and plunges a spade into the ground with her strong chicken toes.

“ ‘ “Who will help me plant the wheat?”
asks the Little Red Hen,
' ”
Mom recites, in her mellifluous bedtime-story voice.
“ ‘ “Not I,” say all the animals in the farmyard.” “Who will help me grind the wheat?” “Not I!”
'
And so forth, and so on, blah, blah, blah . . .” Mom says, flipping pages to the end.
“ ‘ “Who will help me bake the bread?” “Not I!” “And who will help me eat the bread?” “I will!” say all the animals.' ”

“Exactly. And I confess to feeling, ungraciously, like the Little Red Hen. I raised Julia for eighteen years, and now that the hard work of parenting is done, Zoe gets to—you know—eat the bread.”

My young mother laughs, her smile so pretty. “Or you could say that Zoe planted the seed and baked the bread, and you're the one enjoying the fruits of
her
labor—pun intended. Pregnancy and childbirth are hard work.”

“Well, yeah, point taken.”

“You don't know what Zoe's expectations are. Or Julia's. She's not dumping you, she just wants to meet her birth mother.”

“I know, I know. I'm ashamed of being so ungenerous.”

“Guess you're not perfect, huh?”

MICHAEL, ELIANA, AND
I went to Florida for the weekend, a quick visit with my dad and Jean, his wife of twenty-three years. Dad is ninety-three. (I have longevity and shortevity in my family.) He's slowing down. He has trouble walking, but he still plays piano every day, as well as he ever did, and he still has that charming, self-deprecating sense of humor. He even gets on a standing bike for ten minutes each morning, though he sometimes falls asleep in the middle of his workout. At ninety-three, he's more content than he has ever been. I'm happy that he's happy.

Dad is gradually letting go of things—sailing, walking, salty food, macho detachment, hearing in the upper range, stubborn self-sufficiency, short-term memory. He's replacing these old skills and habits with new ones—he's newly able to talk about feelings; he's learning to gracefully accept help; his memory keeps getting worse but it doesn't bother him much; he talks less, but he's more emotionally connected, more demonstrative; he cries easily. For the first time I can remember, he says, “I love you.”

Oh, and yesterday, Zoe friended me on Facebook!

JULIA IS HOME!
She got back at one in the morning. Night-owl Michael was still up. I got out of bed and sleepily joined the conversation, in a bit of a blur. “New friends . . . messy dorm room . . . math-obsessed roommate . . . phenomenal freshman seminar with the renowned Cornel West . . . rowing . . . a role in
Richard III.
” She's in her world. She's happy and wildly enthusiastic about Princeton. I'm in a different place than she is, fretting about radiation and about Eliana's surgery. Our worlds don't yet mesh.

I'm glad Julia's here, but I'm distracted. She'll sleep late today. This morning, Eliana woke up and climbed under the covers in Julia's bed, and they hugged for a while. She went back to sleep when Eliana and I left for school. I'll take her out to lunch when I get back home from radiation. I hope she and Eliana have some time to hang out together. This is such a short visit.

Right before my senior year in college, I was briefly back home from an idyllic summer job in Martha's Vineyard, where I was the director of art and theater programs at the Chilmark Community Center. I had spent the summer living with other college students in a rustic farmhouse at Bliss Pond, just as blissful as its name.

There was a palpable but mystifying tension in my parents' house. I didn't want to know why. Icy chill between Mom and Dad. I could guess, but I didn't want evidence—too much responsibility. I preferred to play dumb. I was selectively open to conversation with my parents. They were selectively revealing and withholding. We tacitly agreed to this balancing act.

Jennifer had transformed, post braces, from Ugly Duckling to Beautiful Swan. She was suddenly gorgeous! My parents' rules and curfews, which I had deviously circumvented when I was in high school, were apparently no longer in place. Or my parents had given up trying to enforce them. Madeline had followed the rules. I expended great effort surreptitiously breaking them. Jennifer made up her own.

On the desk of Mom's study, next to her old typewriter, was an imposing stack of feminist books.
Our Bodies, Our Selves
was on the bottom, the foundational tome.
Open Marriage
was conspicuously displayed on top of the pile.

I picked up the book and said, in the most raised-eyebrow, jokey tone I could muster, “So, are you and Dad into open marriage now?” which I immediately regretted, because she was going to respond as if it were a serious question.

She pushed her glasses up on her head, pursed her lips, tense and irritable, looked out the bay window at the great blue heron coming in for a landing on the salt marsh, and launched into a monologue.

“I wouldn't mind an open marriage,” she said, “as long as it's equal, but there is no equity in marriage. There's a history in our culture—as there is in every culture—of wives getting the short end of the stick in every imaginable way. Income and property, for starters. Women's status in marriage hasn't really advanced since the Middle Ages.”