I

by Toi Derricotte

  scattered bones

  & you hear something

  pecking trying

  to get out of there.

  you are afraid to believe

  it is still alive.

  afraid that even if it is

  in being freed, it will die.

  still,

  slowly,

  you go about freeing the bird.

  you scrape away the grave

  which in some mysterious way

  has not suffocated her.

  you free her scrawny head,

  her dangling wing.

  you keep thinking her body

  must be broken beyond healing.

  you keep thinking the delicate

  instruments of flight

  will never pull again,

  still,

  you free her.

  feed her from the tip of your finger.

  teach her the cup of your hand.

  you breathe on her.

  one day,

  you open up your hand

  & show her sky.

  Natural Birth

  • • •

  Introduction

  Writing Natural Birth

  I wrote Natural Birth when my son was sixteen years old.

  I had told no one of the story of his birth in a home for unwed mothers, not even my best friend, and especially not my son.

  What if my baby knew I was such an imperfect mother? That he wasn’t wanted from the moment he was conceived, that he hadn’t been planned for, that it was not like a Hallmark card? For much of my pregnancy I had felt nothing but shame, guilt, anger, and depression. At the birth I felt numb, disconnected. If my son knew, would he feel unloved, unworthy? Would he feel it was his fault?

  By showing one woman’s experience, which so diverged from the ideal, which I believe does testify to the power of nature and love, I hoped to revise the ideas of a painless “natural birth”—birth without the use of drugs—that had been published in the fifties and sixties. I wanted my natural birth to hold on to the mystery and power of that singular rite of passage, at the same time that it stripped away the romantic and ideal. I wanted to imply that every creative act, whether it is giving birth to a child, a work of art, or the self, is unique, arduous, and awe-full.

  please, god, make it easy,

  i said it would be easy.

  i don’t want a shot. i

  want it to be beautiful

  like it’s supposed to be . . .

  In my seventh month, I traveled to a maternity home in another city.

  When I arrived, there was no room until December. I was placed with

  the Reynolds family until space was available.

  november

  nun meets me at the station. first month with carol and

  dick reynolds. set the table. clean the kitchen. vacuum.

  thank god she didn’t ask me to take care of the children.

  i dry dishes in the afternoon. watch her can apples from

  the backyard, put them in the cellar dark to save for winter.

  why is everything so quiet? why does the man come home

  from school everyday at 3:30 and read the paper? why a

  different casserole on the table every night and everyone

  eats one portion and one portion only? why is there always

  enough, but never too much . . .

  try to understand this quiet, busy woman. is she content?

  what are her reasons to can, to cook, to have three children

  and a pregnant girl in her house? try to be close, lie

  next to their quiet ticking bedroom and hear no sound,

  night after night, except soft conversation. in the morning,

  before light, i hear the baby’s first cry. i picture her

  in there with her bra unhooked and her heavy white breast

  like cream on the cheek of that baby.

  inside i wonder what she thinks, feels, who she is. and

  every night it gets dark earlier, stays dark later. i don’t

  want to wake up smiling at cereal. dark overshadows snow,

  and a fear comes into my cold heart: i am alone.

  one afternoon, drying dishes, her cutting apples by the

  sink, i ask her about college. i picture her so easily

  in penny loafers, peck and peck collar, socks, and a plaid

  skirt on her skinny still unchilded body. here she is today

  with hips and breasts, a woman thirty who had taught school—

  she must have some thoughts, some arguments and passions

  hidden in this kitchen.

  finally, she tells me her favorite book is the stranger.

  we go and find it on the living room shelf. i wonder,

  though she never says, what she understands about

  being a stranger.

  i meet her mother. all the same—they treat me all

  the same: human. i am accepted, never question who

  i am or why. never make me feel unwanted or afraid.

  but always human love and never passion, never clutching

  need, lopsided devouring want, never, not one minute,

  extending those boundaries to enclose me . . .

  oh soul,

  i feel

  cold and unused to such space as breath and eternity

  around me.

  so much room in silence . . .

  how will my house ever run on silence, when in me there

  is such noise, such hatred for peeling apples, canning,

  and waking to feed baby, and alarm clocks in the soul, and

  in the skin of baby, in the rind of oranges, apples, peels

  in the garbage, and paper saved because it is cheaper to

  save and wrap and wash and use everything again. and clean,

  no screaming in that house, no tears, one helping at dinner,

  and no lovemaking noises like broken squeaky beds. where is

  that part i cannot touch no matter where or how i tum,

  that part that wants to cry: SISTER, and make us touch . . .

  she is kind. though i never understand such kindness.

  cannot understand the inner heart of how and why she

  loves: i am the stranger.

  somewhere in the back of my mind, they are either fools

  or the holy family, the way we all should be if we lived

  in a perfect world and didn’t have to strive to be loved,

  but went about our quiet business, never raising our voices,

  never questioning if we are loved, or

  whether what we do is what we want to do, or worth it.

  and if they are fools who don’t have hearts or brains

  or cords in their necks to speak, then why have they

  asked for me? why am i in their house? why are they

  doing this?

  one night in my round black coat and leotards, i dress

  up warm against the constellations, go down the snowy

  block alone in time. i am only going to the drugstore,

  but for some reason, the way i feel, pregnantly beautiful

  walking into the bright fluorescent drugstore, it is

  the most vivid night in my mind in the whole darkening

  november.

  In my ninth month, I entered a maternity ward set up for the care of

  unwed girls and women in Holy Cross Hospital.

  holy cross hospital

  couldn’t stand to see these new young faces, these

  children swollen as myself. my roommate, snotty,

  bragging about how she didn’t give a damn about the

  kid and was going back to her boyfriend and be a

  cheerleader in high school. could we ever “go back”?

  would our bodies be the same? could we hide among the

  childless? she always reminded me of a lady at the bridge

  club in her mother’s shoes, playing her mother’s hand.
<
br />   i tried to get along, be silent, stay in my own corner.

  i only had a month to go—too short to get to know them.

  but being drawn to the room down the hall, the t.v. room

  where, at night, we sat in our cuddly cotton robes and

  fleece-lined slippers—like college freshmen, joking

  about the nuns and laughing about due dates—jailbirds

  waiting to be sprung.

  one girl, taller and older, twenty-six or twenty-seven, kept

  to herself, talked with a funny accent. the pain on her face

  seemed worse than ours . . .

  and a lovely, gentle girl with flat small bones. the

  great round hump seemed to carry her around! she never

  said an unkind word to anyone, went to church every morning

  with her rosary and prayed each night alone in her room.

  she was seventeen, diabetic, fearful that she or the baby

  or both would die in childbirth. she wanted the baby, yet

  knew that to keep it would be wrong. but what if the child

  did live? what if she gave it up and could never have another?

  i couldn’t believe the fear, the knowledge she had of

  death walking with her. i never felt stronger, eating

  right, doing my exercises. i was holding on to the core,

  the center of strength; death seemed remote, i could not

  imagine it walking in our midst, death in the midst of

  all that blooming. she seemed sincere, but maybe she

  was lying . . .

  she went down two weeks late. induced. she had decided

  to keep the baby. the night i went down, she had just

  gone into labor so the girls had two of us to cheer about.

  the next morning when i awoke, i went to see her. she

  smiled from her hospital bed with tubes in her arms. it

  had been a boy. her baby was dead in the womb for two

  weeks. i remembered she had complained no kicking. we

  had reassured her everything was fine.

  meanwhile i worked in the laundry, folded the hospital

  fresh sheets flat three hours a day. but never alone.

  stepping off the elevator, going up, feeling something,

  a spark catch. i would put my hand there and smile with

  such a luminous smile, the whole world must be happy.

  or out with those crazy girls, those teenagers, laughing,

  on a christmas shopping spree, free (the only day they

  let us out in two months), feet wet and cold from snow.

  i felt pretty, body wide and still in black beatnik

  leotards, washed out at night. my shapely legs and

  young body like iron.

  i ate well, wanted lamaze (painless childbirth)—i

  didn’t need a husband or a trained doctor—i’d do it

  myself, book propped open on the floor, puffing and

  counting while all the sixteen-year-old unwed children

  smiled like i was crazy.

  one day i got a letter from my cousin, said:

  don’t give your baby up—

  you’ll never be complete again

  you’ll always worry where and how it is

  she knew! the people in my family knew! nobody died

  of grief and shame!

  i would keep the child. i was sturdy. would be a better

  mother than my mother. i would still be a doctor,

  study, finish school at night. when the time came, i

  would not hurt like all those women who screamed and

  took drugs. i would squat down and deliver just like the

  peasants in the field, shift my baby to my back, and

  continue.

  when my water broke, when i saw that stain of pink blood

  on the toilet paper and felt the first thing i could not

  feel, had no control of, dripping down my leg, i heard

  them singing mitch miller xmas songs and came from the

  bathroom in my own pink song—down the long hall, down

  the long moment when no one knew but me. it was time.

  all the girls were cheering when i went downstairs. i was

  the one who told them to be tough, to stop believing

  in their mother’s pain, that poison. our minds were

  like telescopes looking through fear. it wouldn’t hurt

  like we’d been told. birth was beautiful if we believed

  that it was beautiful and right and good!

  maternity—i had never seen inside those doors.

  all night i pictured the girls up there, at first hanging

  out of the windows, trying to get a glimpse of me . . .

  when the pain was worst, i thought of their sleeping faces,

  like the shining faces of children in the nursery. i held

  onto that image of innocence like one light in the darkness.

  pain is as common as flies. if you don’t see it

  walking on your lip, if you can’t breathe it,

  don’t feel it for yourself, you walk in darkness.

  not knowing the price of common sunshine,

  air, the common footstep on the earth. one

  moment of life must be paid for, and no one

  walking in the darkness without eyes can see.

  the child is cut off from the mother, cut off

  from the blinding pain the mother sleeps

  and wakes up in forever, balancing the asshole

  of the universe, the abyss of god’s brain, inside

  that light in her forehead.

  she is bright. so bright that everything must

  turn and face her like the sun. every clock

  in life must stop to let her pass. slowly,

  like the regal death procession of the king.

  maternity

  when they checked me in, i was thinking: this is going to be

  a snap! but at the same time, everything looked so different!

  this was another world, ordered and white. the night moved

  by on wheels.

  suddenly the newness of the bed, the room, the quiet,

  the hospital gown they put me in, the sheets rolled up

  hard and starched and white and everything white except the

  clock on the wall in red and black and the nurse’s back as

  she moved out of the room without speaking, everything

  conspired to make me feel afraid.

  how long, how much will i suffer?

  the night looked in from bottomless windows.

  10:29

  going to the bathroom. worse than cramps. can’t stop

  going to the bathroom. shaking my head over the toilet.

  just sit. sit on the toilet. don’t move. just shake

  your head. try to go so hard. maybe it will go away.

  just try. press real hard. it hurts i can’t help it oh

  it hurts so bad!

  lie on the bed and can’t breathe right. go to sleep and

  wake up in the middle of a wave, too late . . .

  what time is it, i can’t keep track of time . . .

  fall asleep. two minutes. can’t stand the pain. have

  to go to the bathroom. feels so ugly pressing down there,

  shame, shame! have to go to the bathroom all the time.

  shake my head. can’t believe it hurts like this and

  getting worse.

  lie back in bed, just breathe. just relax. watch the

  clock. one minute goes so slow. seems like 10:29—the

  clock is stuck there, stuck on pain . . .

  nurse comes in, asks me if i want a shot. no i don’t want a

  shot. i want this to be easy. please god make it easy, i said it

  would be easy. no i don’t want a shot don’t want to give up

  yet, i want it to be beautiful like it’s supposed to
be if i just

  breathe right, can’t give up they want me to give up i won’t

  give up (the minutes stuck around the clock), please

  nobody see me (the nurse says the social worker wants to

  see me . . . and the social worker is pregnant!) god don’t

  let her see. i told her to have lamaze like me told her it was

  easy and not to be afraid. don’t let her see how hard don’t

  let her be afraid like i am now. never again, never have a

  baby, never believe that this is beautiful or right or good

  i’m rolling in the dark the clock is stuck the big black clock

  is stuck all night. inside i’m quiet outside i roll and can’t

  stop it getting worse, can’t stop it’s getting worse—it can’t

  get worse! how could a body hold such pain? how could

  such pain be here and how and what did i do? i want to

  scream i can’t. my mouth is stopped my mouth is dry—

  so dry god let me out of this hell i did my exercises loved

  my baby did everything i could, you promised if i was good

  you promised if i was clean and pure and beautiful, if i was

  humble like a child and loved them all the little children

  (so far the bathroom, so cold in the night loving my baby,

  so far, so cold, so long) and no one to come and save me

  from this pain i cannot stop oh god no one to save me . . .

  i watch the clock. 10:29. wait, desperate to see

  time go. it all depends on time. everything depends

  on those black lines on the clock. the second hand

  goes round. i want to push it, pray it into place.

  between each second are millions of seconds that must

  be touched and passed. the clock goes nowhere. or

  else i look again, and it has gone back.

  time is going nowhere only me inside of time is getting

  deeper getting lost can’t skate across the hours forgetting

  memory of pain no where to hide each moment is a desert

  i must cross can’t find the sides of anything everything

  expanding growing wider larger only me inside of time is

  growing smaller disappearing in a wider hole of nothing

  i have never been alive before, never want to be alive again . . .

  doctor comes in, wrenches his hand, a hammer up my cunt.

  wants to feel the head, wants to feel the damn thing’s

  head, wants to see how far i am. and i roll and moan

  and beg him not to see, but he keeps “seeing.” (no