But our daughter had not survived her first day.
“Haul the chair to the yard, to the garage, or out to the garbage pickup, I don’t care. But now. Please.”
Mother Glenn nudged her head toward her son, a sympathetic crease across her brow.
In the car on the way home from the hospital, Dennis and Mother Glenn had chattered about our very first fireplace and the shaded backyard with a swing set and slide. The shiny appliances, the larger space with light from abundant windows. Mother Glenn had set up the whole kitchen—unpacked every skillet and pan herself, washed every bowl, and stored all the dishes in convenient spots.
“We considered yellow for Janie’s room,” Dennis had said, “because you love yellow. But we haven’t hung a picture or bought new linens. The room needs your special flair for decor.”
Dennis had forced a smile in the driver’s seat beside me. I had not smiled back. I didn’t care about decorating.
“And you have a third bedroom for all your sewing,” Mother Glenn said from the back seat, as Janie squirmed on her lap. Dennis’s face froze as he drove. He knew what I was thinking. That spare room in a new house should have been our second daughter’s. No one had spoken the rest of the ride home.
Standing in the entry now, I turned my head, and Mother Glenn’s eyes locked with mine. Her face swirled with emotions. Her smile-be-pleasant expression fought with her horror of seeing her son and daughter-in-law so beaten. Dennis had lost his child. And Mother Glenn had lost her grandchild. Was there anything on earth she cherished more than her grandbabies?
But poor Dennis.
When I looked at him, his eyes, unlike his mother’s, did not lock with mine. He looked at Janie or out the window or at his shoes. Anywhere but at me. With this house he’d bestowed on me a gift I didn’t want. All he’d hoped for, all he’d wished to see, was a tiny hint of a smile when I walked through the front door. He’d needed a sign that we’d be okay.
I hadn’t meant not to give it to him. It just hadn’t come.
Dennis was downcast, his shoulders slack as he lumbered across the room and manhandled the womb chair out the back door. Mother Glenn busied herself, rearranging Janie’s bangs with her fingertips, which she’d licked.
I had supported moving from our old Gunnison model to this new one. No matter what, I was never going back to the house on Grace Street. I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom where I’d organized the layette on the perfect dressing table tucked between the chest of drawers and the closet, the diapers and booties and blankets I had aligned just so.
Mrs. Glenn, I’m afraid I have bad news.
In months to come Dennis and I would try again. And I still had my precious first daughter. If anything at all promised to get me through this loss, it was Janie—and my having a third child. I wouldn’t fail the next time. Kathleen, my departed baby girl, was my responsibility. I’d failed her. I had let Dennis down, too. And now Janie had no sister.
Where had I gone wrong?
I sat on the sofa now with Janie snuggled beside me, my arms around her waist. I kissed her clean-scented hair. She’d grown so much in the weeks I was gone. Her hair was longer, her teeth slightly larger, her vocabulary broader. “Mine,” she said when I held her stuffed puppy and tried to play. She wriggled to get up. Our reunion didn’t mean as much to her as it did to me. She scooted off the couch saying, “Bah, bah, bah,” and though she wouldn’t understand, it pierced my heart right in the center. We should have had a baby to bring home for her.
Then Janie took off at a pace I’d never seen before, a toddler’s all-out sprint across the green carpeting like a new, wide-open field to her, her little arms flapping, her voice babbling with glee.
“Slow down, Janie. Slow down.” My shout startled her, and she collided with the middle of the floor almost face-first.
“Oh no,” I cried. I could not run, was not supposed to make sudden movements at all, but my child was hurt. I pushed myself up. I had to protect her.
“She’s fine,” said Mother Glenn as Janie looked back at us all, poised on her rump, her expression one of indecision as to whether she’d laugh at her blunder or cry for effect.
“See, she’s okay,” Dennis said, looking at me now. My heart pounded, and I felt my face grow hot.
She was fine. She was fine. Janie was fine.
“She’s gonna be an athlete,” Dennis said lightly. I didn’t laugh. He worked his fingers into a crumpled cigarette pack and pulled out a smoke. Janie was already off to the toy basket, jabbering all the way.
The doorbell rang. We had a doorbell now? “Who is it?” I asked. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want anyone seeing me.
Mother Glenn answered the door. I heard voices.
“We’re here. How’s Millie doing?”
Abbie? I thought. And Nathan? Oh no.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law tiptoed into the room. Nathan hugged me—gently, as though I might crack. He said, “I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. It’s terrible.”
Yes, that’s what it is, I thought. Terrible.
“I’m sorry for your loss, too.” That was Abbie.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve brought some gifts,” she said. “I’ll put this stuff away in the kitchen for you.”
Mother Glenn and all the sisters-in-law had sent meals for us. Casseroles in the freezer. Sliced ham in the fridge. There were soups and eggs and vinaigrette dressings. They’d already stocked the cupboards with peanut butter cookies and banana-nut bread.
Mother Glenn went to change Janie’s diaper. Dennis toured Nathan through the house.
With her hands fidgeting in her lap, Abbie said, “How do you feel?”
“I’m on medicine, so the incision isn’t that bad.” That part was easiest to explain. As for how I felt in my heart, that was harder to answer.
“The children wanted to come, especially Margaret,” Abbie said. “She adores you, you know.”
I was mute. I supposed Abbie meant well, but how could I possibly enjoy a visit from her bubbly brood of healthy children?
Abbie fiddled with the hem of her dress. Her vision swept about the room, a frown forming on her face. Was she looking for cobwebs? For dust? Must I get out a white glove for her to test my housekeeping on my first day in this house?
“Something’s missing in this new room.” Abbie pondered. “Oh yes. Where’s the big red chair, the modern one with the matching ottoman? In the bedroom? I like that set,” she said, and smiled. The womb chair.
“Abbie, I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. “I’m feeling rather taxed and need to go rest.” I rose and retired without saying goodbye.
After Dennis’s brother and his wife left, my mother-in-law served Dennis and me a dinner of pot roast with potatoes and carrots. She cleaned up the kitchen and bathed Janie. She’d be back in a couple of days for more help.
Standing at the front door now, I embraced her. I rested my head on her strong, soft shoulder. I didn’t let go for the longest time as I pressed my face into her thick felt coat.
She said, “I know you’re devastated, honey. I hate it for you. You’ll live through this, somehow—though you’ll always carry its scars. I’d bear them all for you, if I could.”
I respected her for not pretending that time would heal all. She knew it wouldn’t.
“I never got to hold my baby,” I said. “Never even got to see her. I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t stop thinking about who will rock her to sleep. Who will feed her? Who will change her diaper? She needs me.”
Mother Glenn’s round cheeks were wet against mine. She said softly, “There are angels in heaven whose sole job it is to rock the little ones and give them comfort.” I pictured that heavenly sight. Then Mother Glenn added, “I bet your mama got that job.”
Dennis’s mother had said just the right thing. And she held me as I wept.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
April 1951
Two weeks later, Dennis and I rece
ived a letter from the hospital.
“It’s signed by Dr. Collins,” I said frantically.
The mail had come, and I’d caught Dennis in the garage just in time. I was still getting used to our new garage, to our new house—to our new place in life. Every time I changed Janie’s diaper, I’d think: I should be changing two babies’ diapers. Every time I heard her cry, I’d think: Which baby is it? And then I’d remember I had only one. How often had I said to Dennis, “I can’t believe this happened to us.” He’d shake his head. He couldn’t believe it either. Now with this letter, thank goodness I’d stopped him after he filled the car’s oil tank. The burnished smell of the empty oil cans mingled with the scent of his aftershave. Two minutes longer and he’d have been off to check a house for new storm doors.
“I can’t read this,” I said, turning my head away and handing the letter to him.
My husband stood between his open car door and the car’s interior. His engine was humming, and the garage was open to the breeze.
The hospital administrator had also signed the letter. Dennis summarized for me that an investigation of my operation and delivery had been concluded; investigations were routine when a child expired. The letter had used that word: expired. Was that more formal than writing the word died? More medical than saying passed away? Was the word intended to be softer for a mother like me to hear? If so, its author was gravely mistaken.
Then Dennis read aloud, struggling to pronounce an even worse medical term, “The baby expired of encephalomalacia due to undetermined cause.” He looked up, his mouth twisted and his forehead scrunched. “What the hell is encephalomalacia?”
I grabbed the letter back and scanned it. “No explanation? They spit out some two-dollar word without telling us what it means?” The letter went on to express the administration’s sincerest sympathies, because “there was nothing the maternity staff could have done.”
“You’ll have to drive me to the library,” I said, already heading into the house to pack up Janie, who was asleep. “I’ve got to look this word up.”
“First, I’ve gotta take care of—”
“Storm doors can wait. This can’t.”
Dennis didn’t speak while we loaded up to go. As with the womb chair, he honored my wishes without more debate. He’d ceded to me a lot lately. He’d held me in his arms even more.
Janie squirmed and fussed in her canvas car seat attached to the back of the front seat with metal hangers. It was positioned between Dennis and me so Janie could see out; the seat even had a plastic steering wheel—but it didn’t help her temperament today. I had woken her from a nap, so she was fussy. Dennis was sullen, and my soothing-mommy voice wasn’t working. My mind was in chaos. What was encephalomalacia? Had my second child been born as a misfit, the word the cruel nurse on the ward had used? I loved my lost little girl with my whole being, whatever way she was, sight unseen.
While I had still been sedated in the hospital, Dennis had gotten to peep at her through the nursery observatory window during the posted viewing hour. Tiny Kathleen had been swaddled among a score of newborns, each in their glass bassinettes. She’d had pretty little lips like Janie’s, he’d said. She’d also had an inflamed, swollen spot on her head, but other fathers remarked on their infants’ soft heads being misshapen, too—or having unsightly red marks left from forceps. One father assured the rest that this was his third child, and he could attest that such marks and the uneven pointiness of their heads eventually faded away.
If only we could have been so lucky.
I didn’t know what encephalomalacia was, but I did know one thing: I’d done something wrong in carrying Kathy to term. I had to have. My temples pounded as echoes of Abbie’s warnings crowded in: Why do you spend so much time making up newspaper ads or bookkeeping or whatever you do anyway? Isn’t being a mother and keeping a nice home more important?
Dennis pulled the car up in front of the library. “I’ll swing back around in thirty minutes,” he said, surprisingly gently.
“Thank you,” I said, and our sad eyes met. “I’ll hurry.” Janie was crying as I closed the passenger door.
I stepped inside the library’s main hall. For an instant I imagined I was here for a fun task, not an emergency one. The scent of books and old mustiness filled me with memories of Opa. This library had been built before my grandfather was born, and he had walked me here a lot when I was a girl.
“No matter how much money we have or don’t have,” Opa had once said, “you can always read books for free.”
I made my way across the floor with its familiar pattern of large, diagonal marble tiles. Cast-iron cases housed stacks and stacks of books around the hall’s perimeter. They reached several lengths up to the coffered ceiling fitted out with skylights.
I had no idea where to begin a search in the card catalog for a medical condition so foreign to me. I headed to the circulation desk for direction. I realized how I’d been slogging from day to day without helping our business. I hadn’t missed that work, not yet. But I would. I would heal, and I would return. I was on a different mission now. I had a purpose. I got what I needed at circulation and headed back to the card catalog.
By the time I returned to the desk with a slip of paper noting the book I required, twelve minutes of my thirty-minute limit had ticked by. I handed the paper to a college-aged page boy, and he glanced at the Dewey decimal number I’d written down. He ran off as if he knew exactly which metal spiral staircase would lead him to it. He came back within six minutes, carrying a reference book that I was not allowed to check out.
“Thank you for your haste,” I said. He gave a little bow.
I lugged the weighty leather-bound volume to a weathered table, trying not to put pressure on my tummy. I had to share the table with a businessman. He didn’t bother looking up. All the seating areas in the hall had quiet patrons stationed at them, mostly men with their fedora hats and periodicals spread across the tabletops.
My hand shook as I opened the medical tome’s back cover and thumbed through the index of human diseases and conditions. There it was: E. Encephalomalacia. I flipped to its chapter and quickly traced my finger along the technical text:
Several things can cause encephalomalacia, such as a cerebral infarction—most commonly known as a stroke. This occurs when oxygen flow to brain tissue is blocked by a blood clot or hemorrhage of one of the brain’s blood vessels. Cerebral softening may occur as a result. A traumatic brain injury, such as one sustained in an automobile accident, can also deliver a violent blow to the brain, and the body will interrupt normal brain function. A number of infections may also lead to inflammation and cerebral softening. Encephalomalacia is a serious form of brain damage. The softening of brain tissue can occur in one part of the brain and then spread to contiguous regions. The condition may occur at any age, though in infants diagnosed with the disorder, it is often fatal.
Fatal.
My daughter counted among the fatalities.
It was easy to rule out what hadn’t happened. We’d certainly not been in a wreck. So it had to be me. I’d carried her. I’d done something wrong. Did something I ate cause an infection in my womb? Had my rigorous activities—my workload—caused a deadly blood clot or hemorrhage to develop in my body?
I scribbled notes of the text on a card. I slammed the thick book shut and left it there. The stranger at the table scowled at me.
When I climbed back into the car, Dennis said, “You okay?”
“Not really.”
He nodded. As if by intuition we knew my findings would wait until we were safely off the roads.
Once we were home I let him review the description intact. I braced the whole time he read it. Then he said, “I don’t know about this mumbo jumbo. I know what I learned about life on the farm. I suppose babies aren’t that far off from foals. Not all newborns survive. It’s Mother Nature’s way.”
I could not have predicted what that man would say. He spoke with such finality, t
hough, such reason, it signaled to me the matter was closed. I needed to dissect the findings or wallow in the pain of them or hear him speak his wisdom some more. But once would have to be enough. He didn’t blame me. That much was good.
I could do all the blaming myself.
Business always flourished in the spring—and that was a blessing, because I needed something to flourish. I needed something to talk about over late dinners or early breakfasts—chitchat to fill that space where my chest was hollowed out like a tooth with a monstrous cavity.
Dennis was working more Saturdays, staying out later every night during the week. Was he throwing himself into his job to cope with his grief? Did he seek refuge from our house, where his wife’s eyes held telltale signs of tears most days—such a contrast to Janie and Raggsie, who thrilled when he arrived home? He never asked if I was ready to return to more business duties. I wasn’t.
But it might’ve helped me if he’d asked.
It was now Sunday afternoon, a rare day home for him. Dennis said, “Honey, I’ll run a load of wash for my work clothes this week. You rest.”
What? Had I missed laundry day on Thursday? No one—I do mean no one—in our circle of friends or in Dennis’s family had ever heard of a man doing laundry. It pained me to think what Mother Glenn would say if she heard.
My eyelids shut, sickly. And there was Abbie to consider: she would never let me live this down.
“No, no, I’ll do a load,” I said from where I lay on the couch. “In a few minutes.”
Moments before, Dennis had given me another pill in hopes of lifting my mood. At the doctor’s suggestion Dennis had already purchased more medication since I was discharged from the hospital. The pills helped me to sleep. They helped me cope.
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