Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel

by Tori Whitaker

  “The year was 1932,” I began. I had a mind that my personal Christmas story would be one that I’d tell her year after year.

  Cincinnati was still in the drought of Prohibition and early in the Depression both at once. I was eight years old and sat on the floor beside the burlap-covered chair Mama used for sewing, though she had run to the market. Opa snored on the couch. I was thumbing through a week-old newspaper, looking at pictures of movie stars.

  My family had no tree, no blinking lights. We had Opa’s holey old socks for our stockings, but they would remain empty. It was several days before Christmas when a knock came at the door. A timid knock, not the Big Bad Wolf knock of the landlord. Opa continued his nap.

  I opened the door a crack. There was a lady—a real lady like the newspaper’s movie stars, who wore mink stoles with tiny feet and claws and heads on them. She even had one on. Some kind of fur anyway, even if it didn’t have feet. She held a package big enough to take up both her arms. It was covered in cloth the color of Santa’s suit.

  “Are you someone to get sewing done by Mama?”

  “I’m Lillian Partridge,” she said, “from the Ladies’ Aid Society.”

  The name Lillian Partridge sounded musical, like the “partridge in a pear tree” song I’d learned in first grade.

  “Merry Christmas,” Miss Partridge said with a kind, beautiful smile, and she held out the basket, removed the cover, and revealed a bounty of juicy, ripe oranges. “For you and your family, little one.”

  “Thank you.” Oranges came all the way on trucks from down south, Opa once said. No one we knew could afford them at the store.

  Lillian Partridge wished me a merry Christmas and waved goodbye, and I thought I heard jingle bells as she disappeared down the dark, rickety stairwell. “Merry Christmas,” I called out.

  After Opa awoke, I got to pick the first orange. I inhaled its sweet citrus scent that came from growing in so much sunshine. Opa used his pocketknife to bore a hole in the stem-end, a hole the size of a blueberry. Then I pushed the orange’s opening to my mouth and squeezed with all my might. With every compression of my palms on the dimply peeling of the fruit, I sucked out the juice. I tore the orange open and gnawed every bit of pulp from its peel. I was still chewing, juice dribbling down my chin, when Mama came home. She had a day-old loaf of pumpernickel, a surprise, and a grin on her wind-reddened face.

  Then her grin vanished. “What’s this?” she asked.

  After she heard my story, she shouted, “Who said you could take fruit from a stranger?”

  “Opa was here. I didn’t eat it until I had permission.”

  Mama stomped to the window and stared out. A minute later she took hold of the sill and forced it open. A freezing gust blew in. Then she grabbed the basket and threw the oranges out. One. Two. Three. “We don’t take no charity from fancy-dressed, filthy-rich, movie-star women in their high heels on their high horses. Not in my home.”

  But Opa had said I could have an orange, so I didn’t understand Mama’s anger. We needed food every day; she was always griping about that. So why would we not accept the fruit? It was a gift.

  Two days later it was Mama’s laundry day. Mama and five wives who lived in our tenement building took turns doing their family’s washing in the attic. I hated that attic. It had a splintery wood floor and stark gray walls with dark shadows. It was freezing cold. The walls and ceiling showed cracks you could see light through. The walls held pegs up high, too, and eight ropes hung from one wall to another. Mama and I hung our wet clothes there after carrying the water up from the spigot in the hall outside our flat. Laundry day was the one time Mama was glad we lived on the third floor, not on the first floor. I sat on a short-legged stool, scrubbing Opa’s overalls on a rubbing board in the zinc metal tub. The soap flakes helped hide the attic’s stink of something rotten. I did one rinse in a second tub, and Mama did the second rinse in a third. She said we must always have clean clothes. We must take care for nothing to be spilled down the front. We might be poor, but we weren’t ragamuffins. And never was I to have a dirty face. If Mrs. Shultz had apricot jam to spare, I mustn’t let my cheeks get smeared when I ate it on a crust of bread.

  Mama was pulling shirts through the wringer one at a time, her hair high off her face for fear it’d get caught in the rolling tubes, when she said without looking at me, “I shouldn’t have thrown those oranges away. I’m sorry.”

  I stopped scrubbing. I didn’t think Mama had ever apologized before. At least not to me.

  “When I heard that charity lady had come, my pride got the better of me. Sometimes a woman cuts off her nose to spite her face.” She started rolling another shirt through the wringer.

  I was confused. Had Mama’s nose been cut? I didn’t see a scab. Or was it somehow that the charity lady made Mama feel less useful? After all, Mama had brought the pumpernickel home. While I loved pumpernickel, it didn’t compare to a sunny, plump orange.

  Then before I could ask for clarification she said, “We have to move again. Somewhere cheaper.”

  “I don’t want to move away,” I said, pouting and letting soapy water splash outside the tub. Even at my tender age I remembered the two flats before and friends I’d had to leave. If I had a sister, it might not have been so bad. A mouse with a long, skinny tail skittered across the floor behind Mama’s feet, and I squealed.

  “Shush,” she said, her wide blue eyes boring into mine. “Listen. When you grow up, you must have a trade—be better at sewing than me, or teach. You’re a clever girl, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be grand to do something you liked?”

  I didn’t know. I’d never thought about it before. Mama let her chapped hands dangle, dripping, and she huffed. “You can’t depend on a man all your life, you know.”

  She’d confused me again. “But we have Opa to get coal for the stove. We have him to haul garbage to the alley in the snow.”

  She worked her yellowed white blouse through the wringer without speaking. I could not tell from her face if she was angry or sad. Why hadn’t she responded?

  “I used to wear fine dresses when I was your age,” she said. She had? “My favorite one,” Mama continued, “was dainty, made of dotted Swiss muslin in a color of pale cream. Had the prettiest green sash along here.” Mama swiped her wet hand in front of her chest from one shoulder to the other. “And when your papa and I were young marrieds, he bought me pretty dresses, too. He and Opa earned a good wage brewing lager in those days. Papa oversaw the crew that stored the kegs in the vaults beneath the streets, where the beer stayed cool.” Mama sighed heavily as if this story pained her to tell.

  “That was before Prohibition,” she said. “Then Opa and your papa lost their jobs. Opa’s own grandfather had learned to brew before moving to this country. So the men in our family had lost their heritage, too, not just their work. We all did.

  “The beer gardens with their oompah bands where our family gathered for fun were never the same. We lost our home, too. I had to start sewing for other people. For your father, making root beer in the old factories, or potato chips, didn’t pay the wage we needed—that’s if he could get the work at all, which often he and Opa could not.” Her bottom lip poked out. “Gone were the days of my having nice dresses.”

  “But the brown dress you sewed last summer is pretty,” I said. I truly thought it was. She smiled but shook her head no.

  “Things got worse when your papa died of fever,” she said, and I thought of the photograph of her with him—the only one we had, dating to 1918. They were seventeen years old and married. He’d been too young to fight in the Great War, but their picture was taken before Prohibition. They posed—their smiles evident in their eyes more than by their lips—in front of a drapery and a wall painted with a stained-glass window at Rensler’s photographic studio. Papa was taller than Mama by a whole head and so handsome.

  I watched as two tears trailed down Mama’s chapped cheek.

  “Then it was only
Opa and me,” she said, “to scrape up a dollar. Opa had his limp, so he was slow. And I didn’t have my brother, who’d been shot in France.”

  Mama’s story made me feel sad.

  “So you see,” she said, “men get jobs. Men lose jobs. And sometimes men die.”

  She reached out and gripped my chin in her wet, calloused fingers and yanked it up to be sure I was paying attention. She said: “Don’t trust the wedding vows that say, ‘And with all my worldly goods, I thee endow.’ You have to have a means of earning. Do you hear me? Lest you find yourself without a bed or a soupbone to your name.”

  She let go of my chin. I gulped. I’d remember. I’d remember many lessons from that day: I must earn my own keep. Sometimes mamas make mistakes. Pride can get in the way. We can grow up and do things we like to do.

  And a single orange can be the best present a girl ever got.

  The next morning Pauline kept Janie, and Dennis and I sat in the waiting room at the medical office one block away from the hospital. He’d come with me, as he said he would the day before. The walls were painted pea green, like peas from a can. The floor was commercial linoleum square tiles with enough multicolored specks and spots that scraps left by the youngsters with their pregnant mommies would barely show at all. I liked practicality. This doctor and I would get along well. Dennis tapped his foot and kept looking to the window. It was placed too high to see out, but it let in light while he must have obsessed about concrete sidewalks that needed to be poured or roof installations.

  According to the article Pauline had, Dr. Collins had gotten his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, a university in Baltimore. He had contributed to a journal while in medical school. The Cincinnati hospital at which he now worked had all the latest equipment.

  “I have to admit,” Dennis murmured, “one day when we move not far from here, it will be convenient when we have Glenns number three and four.”

  A lopsided smile appeared on his face. Maybe he’d warmed up after all.

  Following my examination, this new Dr. Collins allowed, “Unlike what some old-school doctors think, I’ve found a few women can deliver vaginally after undergoing cesarean. It depends on the situation.” I looked at Dennis with a glimmer of hope. “I’ve reviewed the charts from your last surgery,” Dr. Collins said, “as well as from my own X-ray exam, and I see you have an unusually small pelvis. I must advise against a vaginal birth in your case.”

  I was crestfallen. Dr. Collins, with all his silver-spoon-fed education and framed certificates on the wall, had advised us the same as Dr. Welch had out near the cornfields. Once a cesarean, always a cesarean.

  Mama’s face flashed in my mind. I’d inherited a problem with birthing children.

  At least this doctor had directed his concerns to both Dennis and me, and not acted as though I were a child from the last century—better seen and not heard. Regardless of the bad news, that alone was enough to win my patronage. Dr. Collins handed over the forms for us to review, and he’d actually passed them to me. I appreciated that.

  But then Dr. Collins said something else the same as Dr. Welch had: “It’s not recommended for mothers to have more than two cesarean babies. After the birth, I recommend you have a tubal ligation.”

  Dennis stared at me as if wondering whose turn it was to speak. I was incapable of speech.

  “Dr. Collins, can you explain more of what that procedure is?” Dennis said.

  “Of course. The main concern is that after a surgery, the scar tissue in the uterus creates a weakness in subsequent pregnancies. After two births there’s a very real risk of the uterus rupturing during labor, which is deadly. So getting one’s tubes tied, as it’s sometimes called, prevents more pregnancies.”

  Dennis started fidgeting.

  “Dr. Collins,” I said, “have you ever known of any cases anywhere—one of your patients or not—where the mother survived a third cesarean and bore a healthy child?”

  “The risks of something going wrong with a third are great in my estimation.”

  “Humor me, please. Have you knowledge of such cases?” I said, and I felt heat emanating from my husband.

  “It’s been known to happen.” Dr. Collins shuffled my papers back into his folder. “But you’ve had one surgery already. Even now, no matter what, you must deliver early in labor, or your uterus can rupture.”

  “Millie. Babe, listen,” Dennis said once we were home. “I went there with my mind about as open as a guy’s could be—”

  “I won’t do it, Dennis. I won’t consent to the other procedure.”

  “You wanted to see this crackerjack expert. He agrees with Dr. Welch,” Dennis said. “It’s too risky to have more children after two cesareans.”

  “I can’t submit to having my tubes tied. Please understand—”

  “I do understand. Your life is at stake. What would I do if something went wrong? I love you too much.”

  I’d wanted many children since before we married. I’d envisioned all my little ones gathered around Mother Glenn’s country table, helping her pinch the doughy rims of pie crusts. I wanted a large family like I’d never had while growing up, one that turned heads in the park on spring days and made people smile and wave. I had imagined a whole clan on Easter Sundays, hunting for eggs, each little tyke dressed in frilly go-to-church dresses and suits in pastel colors. Society expected families to be big. I wanted to fit in. Be the perfect mother.

  This dream I would capture on my own. Neither Dennis nor the doctor would stop me.

  “Do you think this all doesn’t hurt me?” Dennis said. “I want to throw big birthday parties. Pin the tail on the donkey and all that jazz.” His eyes drilled into mine. “But we have one precious angel and another on the way. Two babies are plenty. A blessing.”

  I folded back into his embrace. Yet my mind would not be content.

  Having my tubes tied was nothing but sterilization. Hadn’t the evil Germans, those of whom my family had been so ashamed, forced sterilization on Jewish women not so long ago? The practice was repulsive to me. Like slavery or incest. I’d read that over in Indiana even now, for Pete’s sake, eugenics laws allowed for “imbeciles” to be neutered like cats. And, pray tell, what criteria determined an imbecile? Was I an imbecile? Was I flawed?

  “Look,” Dennis said. “I’ll strap on the raincoats in bed—we aren’t going to go cold turkey. But what if you conceive anyway? Can we take that chance?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  That night, lying awake in bed beside the soft rhythm of my husband’s dream-filled sleep, I pictured Opa telling me how Oma passed away before I was born. It was in the epidemic of 1918. The Spanish flu’s dark spots had clouded her cheeks before her skin turned blue. “I lost the love of my life,” he’d said.

  If Dennis and I didn’t consent to the tubal ligation and something happened to me, he would never forgive himself.

  But Dr. Collins knew of mothers who’d had multiple surgeries without problem. I didn’t have to make this decision now. I could always go back and get the procedure done later if I changed my mind. I couldn’t think about becoming barren right now. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to be forced to choose so quickly—to sign papers this minute.

  And it was my body, wasn’t it?

  “We’re not signing the papers,” I said the next day. “It’s my body. It’s my domain.”

  2015

  It was my ninety-first birthday, and Jane and I were at the imaging center for her diagnostic mammogram.

  We found two chairs together in the waiting room. She’d already signed in, shown her new driver’s license, and provided insurance information.

  The whole waiting room paid homage to pink. Nubby brown carpet and crisscrossed pink stripes. Wallpaper with muted-pink shades. All but a few chairs covered in muted pink vinyl had a woman wedged into them. Patients thumbed through magazines, turning pages too quickly to be reading. Near the ceiling in one corner was a small TV. Two guys were rehabbing a b
ungalow for some newlyweds. Dennis would’ve loved today’s craze for home-and-garden television on cable networks. I smiled. He might have hosted his own show: Prefab or Rehab with Dennis Glenn. I bowed my head. How dare my brain think up such folly at a time like this?

  My worries returned. Jane. My secret that I would soon tell her in hopes of drawing us closer. For now I felt cold as stone.

  “I still don’t get why you insisted on coming,” Jane said. She let out a ragged breath. “You could find better things to do on your birthday. You could be home watching the Pioneer Woman cook breakfast burritos.”

  “I’m here because your daughter wanted to be here but couldn’t,” I said, undeterred. Jane’s eyes widened despite herself. “And because you, yes you,” I went on, “can’t anticipate everything you may need. You might need a cheerleader while you’re here.”

  “Rah rah,” she said without any cheer. “I’ve got to fill out the history of my life,” she said, holding up a stack of forms. “And everybody else’s medical history in the family, too.”

  Adrenaline hit me down low. My medical history, too? Why?

  “What do they need to know?” I asked.

  “Hold on,” she said, scribbling on one of the sheets. She shuffled to the next page. “I’m putting checkmarks by everyone who had cancer in our family. I have no clue about my grandparents’ high blood pressure or heart disease. Help?”

  I helped her complete the forms, thankful that my “sensitive history” had not been probed.

  “Ms. Glenn.”

  Of habit I turned to the voice at the door and saw a nurse holding a chart. But it wasn’t me she called; it was Jane. Jane sucked in a big breath and let it out through her nose as she stood. She followed the nurse wearing baggy blue scrubs, and I followed Jane.

  “Next door on the right, ladies.”

  We entered another space in the rear, where in an adjacent, enclosed cubicle Jane was to cleanse any deodorant from her armpits and put on a hospital gown, open in the front. Then we waited to be called to the exam room. My skin felt as numb as if a dentist had shot me all over with Novocain. A bodily defense? My body preparing for the assault, that is, perhaps bad news that might soon come? I wondered if Jane’s felt numb, too.