I can’t remember ever not wanting to be a mother. The lullaby to first tuck itself into my memory was Rock-a-Bye Baby. I might’ve heard it from my mom, or maybe it was wrapped under the soft hum of a nursery school teacher ushering us little ones off to nap. I carry a hazy memory of sitting criss-cross-applesauce on a padded mat. I’m cradling a half-frocked, dingy-outfitted baby doll. All of us girls are eager to mother her, despite her constant state of dishevelment from being handled too much by too many little hands. My heart swells as I hold her and quietly sing. Angst catches in my throat when I get to: …and down will come baby, cradle and all. There’s something about the baby tumbling, falling, that scares me.
Of course back then I knew nothing about what it meant to be a mother. But years later, I’d form a better understanding from watching the mothers in my Bronx neighborhood.
Having a child came with non-negotiable duties like: feeding; clothing; caring; sacrificing. Protecting. Because that’s what good mothers do. Women labeled bad mothers were shamed, reviled, shunned, sometimes banished from the very communities that once held them close. They were the mothers whose own mothers acted as surrogates to their children because the worst of the world had gotten ahold of them and wouldn’t let go. Mothers who had too many kids by too many men. Mothers helped by Uncle Sam instead of a husband’s hand. Mothers left single by either a deadbeat or a dead man. All mothers I vowed never to be. Because to be considered a bad mother was to shoulder a heavy weight of dishonor. To be considered a bad Black mother—an existence undeserving of grace or mercy.
***
I’m laid back, legs are up, knees spread wide. She gives my calf a soft squeeze, urging me to stay calm. Relax she says. I stretch my neck to meet her eyes around the thickness of my thighs. A typhoon spirals in the pit of my belly. My mind suspends somewhere between fanatical prayer and terror. Her voice echoes as she rattles off obstetrical reason after obstetrical reason why I’m suddenly bleeding at twenty weeks. But also why I shouldn’t think the worst. I dismiss each except the one her mouth won’t, but eyes say.
I’m losing my baby.
The day unfolds like any other. Except on this one, I’m rushing off campus where I work as a professor. A security officer yells after me to drive safely and take care of that baby. In less than an hour, I’m quickly unraveling in a bathroom at the doctor’s office. Streaks of candy cane pinkish-red blood mix with a gooey grey mucous making a mess where a mess shouldn’t be. My face is slick; jaw and hands uncontrollable in their tremble. I’m pleading to God to stop whatever this is that’s happening.
In the exam room, my eyes fix on the salt and pepper roots sprouting from the nurse practitioner’s head. I hear the tiny voice that whispers to me whenever I’m in trouble. You’re in trouble. Her rubber-gloved fingers open me, making way for a cool burst of air. Her brows furrow as worry sweeps over her lagoonish blue eyes. She knows I’m watching, but avoids my stare. She doesn’t want me to see in them what I already have.
“How far along are you?”
“Twenty weeks.”
“Any cramping before today?”
“No.”
She pushes my knees shut.
“We have to get you to labor and delivery.”
“Am I losing my baby?”
“I can’t say for sure. Is there anyone we can call for you?”
The tiny voice in my head tells me she’s sure. “I’ll text my husband.”
I still refer to him as my husband because legally he is. But, for some time, he’s been anything but.
@ doctor. Bleeding. sending me to hosp. hurry.
what happened? leaving now.
I drop my phone in my bag, and get back to bargaining with God.
***
My whimpers cascade into sobs as I imagine my baby separating from my womb with each bump the ambulance meets. I prayer lock my fingers over my belly willing her to stay safely in place.
“Mama you have to calm down.”
I take in the EMT. A beauty of a Latina she is. Just my husband’s type. Even in this moment, I can’t help but notice.
“You have kids?” I ask.
“Two.”
Our eyes hold each other. We both know, I could be losing my one.
When she squeezes my hand, I return my gaze to hers. She wants to be there for me, not just as an EMT, but as a woman with children, pulling for another who may soon be without. For the rest of the ride, we say nothing. She continues to hold my hand, I continue to weep.
At the hospital, she and another EMT wheel me to triage. She forces a half-smile.
“Good luck.”
I nod. We both know I’ll need it.
Behind a drawn curtain, I lie under a blanket and wait to be transported to Labor and Delivery.
“Hi Honey,” my mothers chirps into the phone.
“Mom, don’t get excited. I’m at the hosp—”
“What?”
“They sent me here from the doctor’s. I’m bleeding.”
“Let me book a flight.”
“No mom. She may come early, but I haven’t lost her.”
I say this as if I’m more sure than unsure, and to keep her from barreling out of Florida. But more so, I say these words for me. To not say them means I’ve forfeited the first of many battles my daughter and I are bound to fight together.
“Are you sure? I hate you being alone.”
“I’m sure.”
“Where is he?”
“Coming.”
Silence settles between us as it does whenever my husband comes up.
“He’ll stay there with you?” she asks confident that he won’t.
“They’re here mom. Pray.”
As the orderly helps me off of the gurney, a nurse enters. She tells me that the doctor will be in shortly, and to disrobe. I loosen my pants, and instantly regret that my body hasn’t yet graduated to maternity wear. When I peel off my bra, achy breasts fall, full of expectancy. A car zooming across the TV screen reminds that mine is still in the parking lot of the doctor’s office. I text my no-matter-what-I’m-coming friend Chas. She and her husband will go get my car. I copy and paste the same message to my supervisor minus the part about the car. She urges me not to worry. Tells me that God will place a hedge of protection around me and my baby.
Please keep praying for us I text back. She’s a more consistent child of God than I. Hopefully, He’ll hear her if he refuses to hear me.
A nurse and two doctors enter my room. They’re polite, pleasant, but all of their faces are devoid of hope. As they introduce themselves, my husband strolls in. His eyes are shielded by sunglasses, the scent of cologne trails behind him. Confusion flashes across their faces as he whisks past them. He shoves the blanket covering my legs to the side to make room for himself on the edge of my bed. I catch their what-the-fuck expressions, but time nor urgency will allow for distraction.
“So this is where we are,” one doctor begins.
My body shifts. Not from physical discomfort, but at being called by my marital name. Rarely do I use it. Never quite felt the wifely right.
The doctor continues. “It appears you have an Incompetent Cervix.”
Incompetent assaults me. Incompetent as in: Doesn’t work. Can’t work. Defective. Bungled. Botched. Useless. Broken-bodied. Unwomanly. All of the times I’d heard someone refer to someone else as incompetent rush to mind. Always, one of the worst of insults no matter the circumstance. Always, the person for whom the word is intended, reduced to nothingness.
“As your baby grows,” he continues, “pressure is placed on your cervix which causes it to open.”
I can’t access words. The doctor mistakes my silence for incomprehension. An inclination of many white doctors. My Blackness ever inviting wrong assumptions. Questions are breezed past, explanations shortened, statements punctuated with “Does that make sense?” I, in turn, look for the openings: to mention that I graduated from the same college as Barbara Walters; have a law degree; worked for the federal government; am a professor. All in the hope of being seen, heard. But in this moment, I care to do none of that. He can ride his wave of supremacy. Just save my baby.
“The cervix is like a pouch secured by a drawstring. That drawstring should remain tightly pulled throughout pregnancy. Yours is opening which it shouldn’t at twenty weeks.”
“And the baby?” my husband interrupts. Usually, I hate his candor. This time, I’m grateful.
“She’s at risk of going into preterm labor.”
The doctor plants himself at the foot of my bed. When he raises his head, inevitability blankets his face. My husband and I lock eyes. It’s a rare moment where it feels like we’re on the same team hoping for the same win.
The doctor continues. “In a few cases, we’ve been able to stave off labor by placing the patient in traction, head down pelvis up.”
I agree. Anything to keep my baby in me. With me.
As the doctors and nurse file out, the nurse says to my husband, “You’re welcome to stay for the night.”
I glance at him, hoping he’ll finally take off his jacket, rest it at the foot of the companion bed. Maybe squeeze himself onto mine.
But he says nothing. We both know, he won’t be staying.
We’re alone. His pacing is like the raising of a flame under an already simmering pot. He vacillates between not believing what’s happening to assuring me that everything will be fine. I’m almost convinced. That is until he plants himself at the foot of my bed, back turned to my propped-up body, and loses himself in his phone. Like at home, I’m invisible.
This is the husband I’ve come know. The husband who spends hours in the gym crafting his body into a sculpted figure for all to behold. The husband who whispers behind shut bathroom doors deep into the night. The husband whose gaze I once noticed lingered on my friend’s bikini-clad vacation pic a little too long. The husband whose Facebook inbox I hungrily mined, once finding a reply message: But your wife is pregnant. The husband who’s made me unrecognizable even to myself. This is the husband I’ve come to see in technicolor, from every dimension. The one I know I’ll get away from. But getting away from him means getting away from my dream of becoming a mother—a good mother. I’m not done with that dream yet. And this he knows is his superpower. He’s the husband I’ll one day leave. But today is not that day.
***
All of the bodies in my room radiate their energies, while my own weakens like a battery losing its charge. My friend Chas sits perched on her husband’s lap in the chair across from me. They try to distract me from any impending doom by reframing random thoughts as big news, and feigning hilarity at mildly funny commercials. Their care and company make way for my husband’s departure. He announces he’s leaving. My friend and her husband’s scrutiny is not lost on him. He saunters over to my bedside, leans in, and pecks me on the lips. Exits on, “Love you.” As the door closes behind him, I wonder, whose bed he’ll sleep in.
Alone that night, I think about what’s true. My husband and I married because we both wanted other things more than each other. Years later, when we’re on the brink of total collapse, he’ll reveal that. Gratitude will fill his mouth as he recounts all of the times I was there for him when no one else was. He’ll tell me that he knows one day I’ll be a good mother because I nurtured him in ways his own mother, only nineteen years his senior, couldn’t. His words will singe when he says girls like me from broken homes, never break up their own homes if lucky enough to have them. To him, I’ll make no confessions. But to myself, I’ll admit that becoming a wife, his wife, was a secret barter I was willing to make in exchange for the child, the respectability of married motherhood I so desperately wanted. When the day comes that no words can fill the canyon between us, his eyes will tell me, he knows this too.
***
Morning brings a blank-faced sonographer who rolls a wand up, down, and all around my stomach. As she robotically taps away at buttons, the female doctor from the day before surveys the screen over her shoulder. “We have to deliver your baby. Today.”
My face burns white hot.
“How long will she need to stay in the NICU?
“She likely won’t. Her lungs are not developed enough. A week or two more, she’d have significantly better chances. Twenty weeks is just too soon.”
I call my mother. She again insists on flying in. I insist more that she not. I can’t manage her emotions and mine. When I call my husband, he answers on the third ring groggy with sleep.
“I have to deliver the baby. Lungs are not developed enough. She won’t make it.”
“What are the doctors saying?”
“What I just said.”
My tone is fiery. He knows to question no further.
***
We sit in silence occasionally exchanging words of comfort, but mostly navigate the beckoning hours on our own. For some time, we’ve known no other way but to take care of ourselves. Losing our child won’t mend hurts or right wrongs. When the door opens, I feel like I’m facing my executioners: the doctor, nurse, my husband. The entire lot of them. The doctor explains the delivery process. Tells me how I can expect to feel physically, offers nothing on the emotional part. My bargaining with God is done.
My body writhes from the contractions’ growing intensity. Through squinty eyes, I see my husband posted at the foot of my bed. His attention is seized by all that’s happening between my legs. The doctor, perched on a stool in front of him, is equally focused. The nurse at my side, quietly encourages me to squeeze her hand as hard and for as long as I need.
“On three, you’re going to push as hard as you can.” The doctor counts down then tells me to push. To keep pushing. And keep pushing.
I squeeze my eyes tightly picturing me and my baby twenty more weeks along. She’ll unleash a wail of arrival before I feel the warmth of her cheek against the beat of my heart. Days later, we’ll roll out of the hospital and into the balm of a fall morning. But every breath, every tightening, stretching, and loosening of my body reminds none of that will happen.
“Here she is,” the doctor announces.
I stifle my cries to hear hers. There’s nothing. Only hushed voices amidst swooshing fabric from bodies moving urgently about. The doctor asks my husband if he’d like to cut the umbilical cord. He says yes. Emptied, I think what gives him the right. Before I’m able to lay eyes on my daughter, the nurse scoops her up and wraps her in a striped receiving blanket.
“We’re going to clean and dress her before you see her.”
They want to lend dignity to tragedy. I surrender to that too.
***
That evening, I lie alongside my baby girl for what will be the only time. Covered in a white satin gown trimmed with delicate lace and tiny faux pearls, she looks like an unfinished miniature mahogany doll. I cocoon her in the bend of my arm, handle her with deliberate tenderness and care. She’s been through enough. I plant a flurry of kisses on her cheeks disregarding their glacial feel. Smooth every perceptible wrinkle in her gown. This will be my only chance to tidy her. To mother her. I beg her forgiveness for my body’s failings. For my inability to protect her when the stakes were highest. I thank her for choosing me as safe harbor before this devastating storm.
In the stillness of our moonlit room, I bring my lips to her ear and recite the Lord’s Prayer. She’ll need that on her journey. I kiss her budding lips, then lift and cradle her teensy form. Study all of her until she is etched in my heart and mind.
I force my thumb down onto the call button.
“Ready” I say.
Though I wasn’t. How could I ever be?
************
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