One Perfect Day

by Diane Burke

  The doctor I had seen when I suspected I was pregnant had referred me to one of the few New York clinics that performed abortions in those days. This was before Roe v. Wade, but there were still doctors who handled abortion quietly. The obstetrician who ended up delivering my son was also known by word-of-mouth for performing abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy. I remember wearing a poncho on my first visit to him, and when I sat in his office for the initial interview, he asked what I wanted. When he realized how far along I was in my pregnancy, he became my obstetrician, not my abortionist.

  I had had an appointment with the New York doctor when I’d first learned of my pregnancy. It would have been so easy. No one would have ever known and this little “mistake” would be over.

  But this wasn’t a “mistake.”

  Not to me.

  It was a tiny little baby. Even at this early stage of pregnancy, I already possessed a love and a feeling of protectiveness for this child that was stronger than anything I had ever known.

  Even though my father’s footsteps drew nearer, while my mother sat glaring at me and I knew my life was definitely about to change, I wasn’t then, and have never been, sorry that I chose life for this child. It’s probably the one, right, good decision I ever made.

  The ensuing conversation with my parents was difficult and painful. They were angry, understandably so, and hurt and stressed to the hilt. I will never forget my father’s final reaction. He stood with his back to me at the kitchen sink and poured himself a glass of water.

  “We’ll put the child up for adoption,” my mother said. “I spoke to my brother today and he’s willing to help us set things up.”

  My father threw his glass in the sink. He spun around and looked at both of us, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Sure!” he yelled. “Let’s just give it away! It’s just a puppy that nobody wants, right?”

  He stormed out of the kitchen and down the hall toward his room.

  I don’t know what broke my heart more: seeing how much I had hurt my father or realizing for the first time what my mother intended to do with my child.

  All families have secrets—and this was a big one. My siblings were told I had moved to Atlantic City to live by the beach with my uncle and his family. My grandparents were told I had found a lucrative secretarial job in Atlantic City. That was the story my mother spun to the neighbors, too.

  Like all lies, there was a grain of truth in my mother’s words.

  I did stay in Atlantic City with my uncle for a couple of weeks while arrangements were made for me to be placed in a home for unwed mothers. It was a nice old house on a shaded, quiet street. It had a stone front, a large enclosed front porch, a flower-bordered sidewalk to a side entrance. I think what surprised me the most about it when my uncle dropped me off out front was that there wasn’t a sign.

  I don’t know what I had been expecting. Maybe a billboard that screamed unwed mothers inside, come take a peek. There was nothing so dramatic or definitive about the house. There was simply a wooden post with a black iron house number hanging from it.

  For the first time through this whole experience, I felt nervous as I stood outside and rang the bell. The reality of the situation hit me hard. I would be living in a city far away from my home, friends, and family. I would be living with strangers. I would be housed with mothers who also would be losing their babies. I would be totally alone. And I was scared.

  The two women, or house mothers who ran the home, were the sweetest women God ever made. Compassionate. Non-judgmental. Kind. Both women were in their seventies, retired and supplementing their retirement income by living in the home with the girls, doing the grocery shopping, doing the cooking, and making sure all the girls got to their doctor’s appointments and eventually to the hospital when the time came to deliver.

  The upstairs had been turned into two huge rooms with six twin beds in each. We all shared one shower, one bath. There was another bathroom downstairs. Each of the matrons had a private bedroom and bath downstairs as well.

  One of the elderly women, the one with snow white hair, metal glasses, and an ever-present smile, reminded me of pictures of Mrs. Santa Claus I’d seen as a child. She showed me to my room. Mrs. K would turn out to be the only friend I made the entire four and a half months I was a resident of the home. She took me under her wing. She’d play 500 Rummy with me in the evenings after chores. Trying not to upset any of the other girls by showing favoritism, she’d sneak me out of the house, occasionally, and take me to Bingo with her. I truly loved that woman.

  You’d think that the twelve girls in the house would have become good friends. We were all in the same boat. We were all going through the hardships and discomforts of pregnancy. We were all away from family and friends. We were all still smarting from the breakups we’d had with our boyfriends. We were all facing the inevitability of having to give our children away.

  You’d think with so much in common we’d develop a strong bond. We didn’t.

  The misery we felt inside we manifested on each other.

  Newbies were cruelly initiated into the house.

  I remember more than one night when I had to lay atop towels because one of the girls had soaked my mattress. Or I had my clothes and towels mysteriously disappear when I was taking a shower and would have to walk back to my room dripping and naked. Or I’d have my plate “accidentally” knocked out of my hand when someone passed me on the way to the dining room.

  I came to realize these incidents weren’t aimed specifically at me. They tormented me only until one of the girls delivered. Once a position was open and the next girl came into the house, then I was left alone and they moved on to the new girl.

  Not all the girls participated in this type of hazing. Most of us minded our own business and kept to ourselves. I know I was just as guilty as the other girls when I didn’t try to stop the tormentors or try to make friends with the girls who arrived after me.

  I have no excuse other than to say I was in pain … deep, dark emotional pain … and the only way I could cope with feeling deserted by my boyfriend, deserted by my family, and scared to death of the future was to hide inside myself.

  The only person in this world who I loved was my baby and I knew without doubt that this baby would love me back. It would be the two of us against the world and it would be all right.

  Many nights, I’d lie awake staring into the darkness, afraid, confused, unsure, but never alone. I had my baby. I’d rub a comforting circle on my stomach as my baby moved and kicked within me. I’d hum a lullaby, never sure whether I was comforting the baby or myself until we’d both fall asleep.

  It didn’t take long for me to adjust to the schedules and routines in the house. We’d all have chores listed on a chart on the wall. Some of us helped in the kitchen to prepare meals. Others cleaned up afterward. Some ran the vacuum throughout the downstairs. Others were on bathroom clean-up detail. Once a week the chores would be rotated so no one could complain about the jobs they were assigned, although everyone complained anyway.

  Every two weeks, some of us went grocery shopping with one of the house matrons. Looking back, I’m sure we were quite a sight: an elderly matron leading the way, pushing a grocery cart, with at least three pregnant girls following single file behind her. The store manager would greet us. He’d open a cash register just for us (and our four overflowing grocery carts) and then he’d have a couple of his stock clerks help us load our van.

  There was a psychologist, Mr. D., who maintained an office in the basement. His office hours were posted on the door leading downstairs. He’d come up periodically, ask the group as a whole (usually from the dining room doorway as we were gathered for breakfast) how we were doing, and reminded us that his door was always open if any of us wanted to talk.

  In the 1960s and early ’70s, society operated under the mindset that the only sensible thing to do with an unwed mother was to place her child up for adoption. Children deserved a two-parent lovi
ng home and a teenage single mother couldn’t possibly meet the child’s needs, so there wasn’t any further discussion. No one suggested or encouraged other alternatives. In my world, unwed mothers were worse than the fictional heroine wearing a scarlet A. I was never sure whether it was falling in love and engaging in sex before marriage that was the sin deserving ­punishment—or if it was getting caught.

  I truly believe social workers and psychologists in those days were trained to encourage unwed mothers to give the children away and little thought was given to the emotional or psychological needs of the mother. I believe that at that time in history society truly believed it was acting in the best interests of both mother and child when it encouraged adoption and offered limited or no alternatives. By keeping this secret, by aiding and abetting the placement of the child, society was, in fact, giving the child a good home and the mother a second chance, a chance to go on with life and get it right this time.

  So everyone covered it up, lied about it, hid it, and encouraged the mother to just get on with her life and pretend it never happened. Pretend. It’s a simple word but it can cause a world of emotional damage and pain.

  I’ll never understand this line of thinking.

  If a married woman carried a child to term and experienced a stillborn delivery, society would have rallied around that mother. There would have been a wake and a funeral for a sense of closure. There would have been family and friends gathering to show their support and offer comfort. There would have been telephone calls and visits in the months afterward to help that mother move past her grief.

  Why didn’t anyone think that an unwed mother would experience loss?

  Didn’t that unwed mother just carry a child for nine months, endure the pain of labor and delivery and then have that child taken away? Why didn’t anyone realize that for this mother, placing this child up for adoption, either willingly or unwillingly, would still result in a similar devastating loss?

  Only for unwed mothers there’d be no help.

  There would be no support groups where the pain could be discussed and healing begun. There would be no sense of closure because everyone, including the mother, would know that child still existed somewhere out there in the world. There would be no comfort offered from family or friends because the unwed mother had brought shame to them.

  So it was no surprise to me that Mr. D. didn’t have anyone beating down his door to talk.

  But I did talk to him once—about how to build a kite.

  He actually spent an hour with me trying to put together an elaborate kite that I could fly on the beach.

  A kite!

  I look back now and want to shake him silly. Why didn’t he encourage me to talk? Why didn’t he ask even one question about how I felt or how I was doing? Why didn’t he once ask how I was adjusting to the idea that I would be placing my child up for adoption?

  Any of those questions would have opened a flood gate that I wouldn’t have been able to close. All those questions lived inside my head and my heart twenty-four hours a day. I was afraid. I felt alone and unloved. I felt there wasn’t an adult in the world I could trust or talk to.

  With the slightest encouragement, I would have talked. Most likely I would have burst into tears and talked and talked and talked until there wasn’t another word or breath left inside of me. He was the adult. He was the professional. Yet, the only time I ever spent with him was the day we built a kite.

  He was a great kite builder.

  Chapter

  2

  THE GIRLS IN the home were mothers-to-be. They were also young, teenage girls ranging in age from twelve to nineteen—silly, immature, and still interested in boys despite their bulging bodies. Some of the girls would sneak off and meet their boyfriends on the beach. Nobody ever told the house matrons, probably because we were envious and wishing it could be us.

  One girl in particular took her boy-crazy days to the extreme. She’d head to the beach before the lifeguards arrived. She’d dig a huge hole in front of the lifeguard station, lay on the ground with her belly in the hole, and then flirt for hours with whatever young lifeguard showed up for duty.

  Seeing some of the girls sneaking around with their boyfriends or flirting with the lifeguards made me miss my boyfriend terribly.

  One afternoon I decided to call him at work.

  When he came on the line, he immediately asked me where I was. I couldn’t tell him. My mother had threatened both of us that if he ever contacted me again she would have him deported since he was here on a visa from a foreign country. I realize now that had been an idle threat. There was nothing she could have done to either one of us. I wasn’t legally a minor and he was a year older than me. However, we honestly didn’t realize at the time that she couldn’t make good on those threats.

  When he came to the phone, just the sound of his voice filled me with hope … hope that I’d hear him say everything was going to be okay and that somehow we’d work it out and be together as a family. I’d dated other boys in high school but he was different. He was my one, all-consuming, passionate teenage love.

  When I met him, he was working and attending college on a visa here in the United States. I had a job on an assembly line earning money for college. He worked in the same plant for the same reason and fixed the machines when they’d break down, which they did at least once during each shift.

  I thought he was so handsome. He stood about 5’10” and although not tall, he was solid and strong. He had dark brown, coarse hair with a slight wave directly on top. He had dark eyes and even darker eyebrows that made his stare intense and captivating. He wore a mustache and, since everyone I had ever dated had been in high school, the mustache made him appear masculine, manly, and all grown up despite the dusting of freckles on his nose.

  I loved his accent. Since English was his second language, he had problems sometimes with some of our words. He couldn’t pronounce my name correctly and would call me Deanna which, of course, I thought sounded so much more romantic than plain old Diane. I loved learning how to speak his language—and how he’d laugh at the way my “accent” fractured the words as he asked me to try again. I loved how exotic and different he seemed from all the boys I knew. Intrigued by his culture, his habits, and his traditions, I was fascinated and I fell madly in love with him.

  He was a good man—admittedly a young man barely out of his teens himself. He was a hard worker and besides working in a local factory, he was also attending school to be a mechanical engineer. He treated me with a gentleness and attention the likes of which I had never received from anyone else. I was his first love, too.

  But this was just the beginning of several hard lessons to come—sometimes love just isn’t enough.

  Unfortunately, the differences that I first found attractive and interesting were the same ones at the root of our disagreements and problems within the relationship. We’d find ourselves arguing more and more, our different cultures and religions slowly building a wall between us. Then I found out I was pregnant.

  He didn’t want to be a father at this time in his life. He was also terrified of the reaction his father would have to the news that he had come to the United States and had gotten into trouble. Still, he offered to do the right thing.

  My mother and the local parish priest arranged for us to meet at the rectory. We were given some private time to talk. My boyfriend had recently turned twenty. He offered to marry me. But he asked me to wait several months, in reality almost a year, until he turned twenty-one so he wouldn’t have to face the wrath of his father.

  If there hadn’t already been problems surfacing between us, if the cultural differences weren’t looking now like insurmountable obstacles, I might have said yes.

  When I said no, I was crushed by the look of relief on his face. He couldn’t get to his car fast enough to drive away. In hindsight, I don’t hold that against him. He was young, scared, in a foreign country, and in big trouble.

  I remember standing i
n the doorway of the rectory with my mother and the parish priest right behind me. I was crushed, my heart broken as I watched him drive away. I heard my mother’s voice in my ear.

  “Telling him no was the first mature decision you’ve ever made,” she said.

  I didn’t feel mature.

  I felt like running through the parking lot after him and telling him I’d changed my mind and please take me with him. Believe me, there were many times over the years I’ve wondered what would have happened if I had.

  Now, months later, I was standing miles away in a phone booth on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, listening to my boyfriend’s voice. I was in my eighth month and feeling very, very pregnant. My feet swelled if I was on them too much. I’d gained tons of weight. My back ached and it seemed the baby moved and kicked constantly.

  We chitchatted briefly, if that’s what you want to call it. He asked if I was okay. He asked if I was still pregnant. He knew at one time I had considered abortion, so it was a legitimate question. Then he asked me the most important question of all—why was I calling?

  “Do you ever miss me?” I asked him. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath while I waited for his answer.

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  Then he said, “Sometimes, Deanna. Sometimes.”

  There was nothing left to say. Those words said it all. So I simply hung up the phone. I knew I would never see or speak to him again and a deep sadness filled my being.

  I sat on the beach for a long time that afternoon. I felt so alone. I wrapped my arms around my swollen belly, hugging the baby inside, and saying over and over that it would be all right. I didn’t know how I’d keep that promise but, for that moment in time, I had to believe my own words to survive.

  Almost four weeks later to the day, I was sitting in the dining room after lunch playing a game of 500 Rummy with Mrs. K. We’d just finished playing a hand and Mrs. K. was tallying the score when she looked up at me with a quizzical expression on her face.