To his left sits Patty. Her head is down and she is furiously writing something. Too late, I want to tell her. Her hair is uncharacteristically loose today, parted in the middle, and I can see the narrow dye line between her part and the vibrant auburn of the rest of her hair. She passes the note to her attorney but still does not look up at me.
At the end of the table, between him and me, is the court reporter, a friendly young Asian woman with an array of equipment before her – a computer with at least three cords attached and a tiny extra keyboard with only a few keys, from which she is poised to begin. Distracted by it, I wonder how its few keys can capture whatever will be said.
“Good morning, Ms. Haskins. I am Stephen Petrakis, your sister’s attorney.” His voice is deep and steady. He launches into a rote set of instructions, not to answer a question if I do not understand it, to ask him if I do not understand a question, and so on, as if I am an idiot. He tells me our dialogue will be printed into a book (as if this were book-worthy), which I will be tasked to read and to correct any errors. He asks me to recite my full name and address, and I obey. It proves to be my first and last good answer of the day.
“Rough and Ready, is that a real place?” He asks with some sarcasm and a trace of a smile.
“Haven’t you ever been to the Gold country?” Analee kicks my foot, her signal for me to behave. “Yes, it’s the name of a real town.”
He wastes no further time in preliminaries.
“Was your sister Patricia involved in your decision to become pregnant?”
“No. I decided that myself.”
“Was she involved in your choice of a sperm donor?”
“Yes. I previewed the choices with her and my friend Megan.” That day again. And so he walks me through that worst decision of my life, to have my sister donate her eggs so I could become pregnant.
“Why did you use your sister’s eggs?”
I pause for a moment here. I could rant for days about why this was a terrible decision.
“One of the fertility nurses gave me the idea, and when I asked Patty, she said yes.”
“Was Patricia present at Dawn’s birth?”
“At the moment of her birth, no, but she and my friend Megan were at the hospital with me.” I notice Patty’s furious writing has begun again.
He asks why, at that very moment, Patty was not there. I have not thought about this at all since then, but it floods back. There is a reason in nature that women forget the details of their labor and birth; it is simply too painful to replicate. I had wanted no drugs, which was not Patty’s way of giving birth; she’d had a spinal both times and apparently had had relatively short labors (I wasn’t there). When I was in my fifth or sixth hour of hard labor, groaning like a wounded elephant while I stood in a shower under a relieving stream of hot water, Megan gripped my hand and reassured me I could do this, just stick with it. Patty paced outside the shower, haranguing me to take some drugs and be done with it. When the doctor popped in, Patty quizzed her as to why she wasn’t doing something to relieve the labor. The doctor made it clear that it was my decision to make. I couldn’t stand in the shower all night, I had to return to the hard, narrow pallet of the delivery table, but the doctor offered to cut the amniotic sac to relieve the pressure. My water had not broken and I was nowhere near fully dilated. As soon as I said yes, a momentary, relieving flood of warm water bathed my legs, and then, soon after, my labor became more intense. Patty kept telling me I was doing this to myself and that I was foolish not to take drugs to relieve the pain. I yelled at her to shut up or get the fuck out of the room. She paced around a bit more, grumbling, and then left. Megan was the only person with me as Dawn emerged, at five eleven in the morning.
“Ms. Haskins, I asked why your sister left the delivery room.” Apparently I had answered the question only in my own head.
“She kept badgering me to take drugs to relieve the pain, and I wanted a natural childbirth, so I told her to leave the room.”
“Did Patricia take you home from the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Did Patricia help you out frequently during the first weeks and months of Dawn’s life?”
“Yes, as did my friends Megan and Jenny. They all knew more about new babies than I did. They were all helpful.”
He continues in this vein, and I am beginning to get a feel for answering these questions. As I am starting to relax, I notice more of the room. Behind him on a credenza are about fifty Christmas cards. I can even see the faces on some of them, no doubt satisfied clients. I randomly focus on one card with a couple and their three children seated in front of a fireplace with three stockings hung from the mantel. I am answering questions on automatic pilot. The youngest child in the photo has red hair remarkably like Dawn’s and it is curly like hers. I stare more closely and finally recognize it is Patty and Doug, with their children and Dawn in the photo. Unbelievable! How did they do this? How could they!
“I need to take a break,” I blurt. I nearly topple the chair as I get up, and unavoidably see Patty staring at me. Analee follows me to the hall. There is a window to the conference room, and I have to get as far away from it as I can. Analee leads me outside, where no one can see or hear me. I burst into tears. She understands immediately, says it is psychological warfare on Patty’s part, and tells me that I have to put it out of mind and resume. She walks me around the parking lot, telling me to take deep, long yoga breaths, and to know that I am strong enough to get through this. It works for a little while, and then I think of all the people they must have sent that card to, with its misleading photo of their tidy family. They must have made that card back in June, when she still had Dawn with them. What a fraud! I burn at the sneakiness of it. I tell her I can’t go back into that room and stare at that card another time.
“Tell them it was a cheap shot and they need to take it down before I will come back. Go do that.”
I can tell this is not what Analee wants to do, but she goes back into the building while I hang out in the parking lot fuming.
When she fetches me back into the room, all the cards are gone.
“I want to know when that photo was taken. It’s a theft and a fraud.” Analee forcibly takes my arm and pulls me into my seat. I sit but won’t let it go.
“When did you take that photo?” I snarl at Patty, who looks ever so slightly daunted. I have never seen this expression on her before.
“Ms. Haskins, today is the day for your deposition. I ask the questions and you answer them.”
“When you finish asking them, I want to see that card and know when the photograph was taken.” I barely recognize the person in me who makes this demand.
I have no sooner sat down than he asks me whether I have always had a competitive relationship with my sister. Huh? I’ve never thought about it that way. Is that how Patty sees it? It’s not about competition; she has her family and I have mine. My mind drifts back to the summer before my senior year of high school, when I worked for my father in his law office. I was only vaguely aware at the time that she resented my going to work with him every day and learning the details of his work life. At the end of that summer he took Patty away for Labor Day weekend to one of the lakes in the Sierras, just the two of them, something our family had never done before, and I didn’t understand at the time why they were doing it. Mother explained to me that Patty had felt left out with all the time I had spent with Dad, and in the way she told me I gleaned that Mother had also felt left out. Only she did not get the vacation alone with Dad.
“Ms. Haskins.” His voice penetrates. “I’m waiting for your answer.”
I am beginning to lose track of what I answer in my mind and what I say out loud. I tell him I had not seen our relationship as a competition. He perseveres.
“Do you consider yourself a competent mother?”
“Yes.”
“D
o you consider Patty a competent mother?” Aha, I think, he has started to call her Patty.
“Yes.”
“As between you, who is the better mother?” Analee objects that it is irrelevant (how I love to hear her object!) but I have to answer the question anyway.
“Patty is the better mother for her children and I’m the better mother for my child.”
“Did you consider yourself a competent mother when you were hospitalized for depression?”
“No, I didn’t. I definitely needed help then.”
“How would you describe your state of mind then?”
“Confused, profoundly fatigued, depressed, foggy.” Completely demoralized, sorry I had been born, undone, fearful, ashamed, hopeless …. Analee had told me beforehand that many people forget things in the pressure of a deposition, and that it was okay to say I don’t recall or I don’t know. But it is having the opposite effect on me. I could run on and on with my answers. The questions spark memories I wish I didn’t have.
It was a cloudy day in March when I was taken to the hospital. I lie in bed without the energy to get up. Dawn darts around the house with the energy of a squirrel, chattering as she goes. “Berries,” I hear her say, and she is out the door into the yard before I can stop her. In slow motion, my brain tells me to get her, but I can’t rouse myself. It’s not long before she is back, standing beside my bed with one hand in the air, clutching some early white flower. I burst into tears. She tries to climb up onto my bed, and I am able to lift her to lie next to me. I spoon her hot, hungry little body, rest my nose in her springy curls and weep until my body is heaving. She needs breakfast and I cannot even get out of bed to get it for her.
At this moment Patty comes into the house. She has been worried about me and has been checking on me every day.
“Karen, did you know your door is unlocked? Anyone could come in,” she says in her admonitory, superior way.
“I’m glad it’s you.” She gives me a look as if I am mocking her but I ignore it. Her tone allows me to stop crying. “Can you get cereal for Dawn? She hasn’t had breakfast yet.”
“No breakfast? It’s nine o’clock.” From her incredulous tone, you’d think I had tied Dawn to a chair and starved her for three days. She bustles efficiently around and fixes Dawn a bowl of Kix with milk and strawberries.
I can hear Dawn slurping by herself in the kitchen when Patty materializes at my bedside.
“What’s wrong with you?” This time there is a little fear and even some kindness in her voice.
“I can’t….I can’t…seem to do anything. It’s hopeless.”
“Oh, Karen.” She actually puts her hand gently on my cheek. “We need to get you some help.”
She gets me a clean set of underpants, a bra, a tee-shirt and my jeans, along with a fleece. She helps me to sit up, and once up, I know I need to get up and get dressed and follow her. By the time I am ready she has packed a small bag of Dawn’s clothes and her floppy kitty, she has dressed Dawn, closed my windows and locked my doors. She lifts Dawn into her arms, and I see how readily Dawn wraps herself around her Aunt Patty. I follow them out the door.
“How long were you in that state of mind?” It is the lawyer again, back in my deposition.
“I don’t exactly know. I got better gradually. I’m fine now.” I feel Analee’s foot again, knocking mine under the table.
“Were you fine when you ripped Dawn out of Patricia’s arms last July?”
“I did not rip Dawn out of Patricia’s arms, then or any other time.” This is only half-true, I realize immediately. I did rip Dawn away from Patty, who was holding her hand. I think her lawyer sees me shift in my chair. One of those eyebrows has lifted and his glasses slip slightly down his nose. He pushes them back up with his left hand. Patty looks at me for the first time, a smirk on her face.
“How, exactly, did you take Dawn away from Patricia that day?”
“I took Dawn’s hand and told her to come with me.”
“Were you yelling at the time?”
“Not at Dawn.”
“What did you yell at Patricia?”
“I said, ‘what did you do to her hair!’”
“What if anything did Patricia say to you?”
“She told me she had straightened Dawn’s hair, which was obvious. She told me it used to hurt when she combed Dawn’s hair.”
“What did you reply?”
“I told her she had no right to do that.”
“Was Dawn witness to this conversation?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do or say?”
“She started to cry.”
“Do you believe Patricia’s straightening Dawn’s hair justifies your cutting off all contact between them?”
Of course not; how could it? “I believe everything Patty has done since the judge gave my daughter back justifies my cutting off contact. She was never Dawn’s mother or other mother or whatever you want to call her. Her filing this lawsuit is outrageous, and on some level she must know it.” Patty’s eyes have reverted to the tabletop, her expression hidden from me.
“Do you think it’s in Dawn’s best interests for you to deny her contact with other members of her family?”
“I think this whole lawsuit is not in her best interests.”
He shifts tactics, this eel of a lawyer.
“When you were in the hospital, did Patricia deny you contact with Dawn?”
Taking me back to the hospital is painful for me, and he knows it. Patty brought Dawn to me whenever I was able to muster myself to see her presentably. At first, I could not even show my face to anyone, let alone her. I would have lain in bed, just starting at the ceiling if the hospital attendants hadn’t prevented me from doing so. Patty came to the hospital often. I remember her telling me that Dawn missed me. It made me feel worse every time she said it. One day I pulled the covers over my head and refused to talk to her or to anyone else. When I finally told one of the doctors what she had said and how I knew I was a terrible mother, Patty stopped saying it. Instead, she began to bring Dawn to the hospital to visit. Dawn would crawl into bed with me and we would just cuddle for as long as we were allowed.
I look up and everyone in the room, it seems, is staring at me.
“What was your question?”
“When you were in the hospital, did Patricia deny you contact with Dawn?”
“No. That started later.” Analee foot hits mine again.
He announces that it’s nearly noon and we’ll take our lunch break now. The two lawyers agree to come back at 1:00. I know I am not hungry, but I feel as if we have been at this for more than a day. Analee takes my arm as I get up and leads me out to the parking lot, where she offers to drive me to a local salad place. I’m not hungry at all, I just want to take a walk. She tells me that often clients have no appetite during depositions or trials. She tells me there is a walk along the river just a couple blocks away, pointing up one of the streets.
“But I want to talk with you a bit before we go into the afternoon session; meet me back here at 12:45.”
I am so relieved to be walking; it is like a release from inquisition. Soon I am at the river itself, in a parkway with a wide, winding pathway that I follow. Willows lean into the river, their leaves like fingers tracing the slow current. A pair of mallards shelter close to the shore. This is how I imagine walking meditation, slow paces and a cleared mind. It is cold enough that I can see my breath as I exhale but the air refreshes me. I feel I could go like this for a long time. There is an open field on the opposite side of the river, and a white-tailed kite hovers over it, poised in one space for a long moment, before it dives like a bomber. But it rises without a catch and soon hovers again in a slightly different place. I watch it until it flies to a further location. In the distance, I see a coyote pace through a gap in the field. I marvel to
see this much wildness so close to the city. At a curve in the river, there is a bench, and I sit in the sun. Its warmth soothes the tension from my neck. I close my eyes. Voices lift me from my reverie. Two joggers pass, and I ask them the time. 12:35. Now I have to hurry back. My reverie is replaced with the anxiety of knowing I will be late. My anger at the card returns also. I need to see that card.
By the time I leave the parkway and cross the boulevard that leads back to the lawyer’s office, I am burning. Analee is there in the parking lot, pacing in an agitated manner as I approach.
“Where have you been! It’s almost one fifteen. We were due back at one, and I needed to talk to you about this morning.”
She glances at my left wrist, where there is no watch, and I swear she almost rolls her eyes but catches herself.
“Do you know that you spaced out several times this morning before answering questions?”
“I’ll do better this afternoon.” I am determined now. “And I need to see that card.”
She looks at me, totally perplexed, then paces some more. “Let me be the one to ask for it.”
“I didn’t prepare you enough for this deposition. I think I should go back in there and tell them we need to continue this to another time.”
This time I took her wrist. “I can do this. I’m focused. Now that I know what this is and I’ve had a break, I can do this. I don’t want you to postpone it to another day. That would only be harder.”
When we return to the conference room, Patty’s lawyer looks at his watch with a pointed expression. “Let the record reflect it is 1:25 that deponent returns to the room. We were scheduled to begin at 1:00.”
Raising Dawn Page 17