by Diane Burke
“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“Well for one thing, you’re not concentrating on the game. I am hundreds of points ahead of you. You’ve never let me get away with that big a lead.”
“Game’s not over yet,” I replied with a grin.
“You’re squirming like crazy in that chair.”
I put the cards down on the table and reached my hand to the small of my back.
“My back hurts. It started last night. I thought maybe I slept the wrong way and pulled a muscle or something but it just won’t go away.”
Mrs. K. squinted her eyes, pursed her lips, and stared hard at me. “Does anything else hurt?”
I squirmed and shifted my position in the chair.
“Nope. Just my back. It’ll go away.”
“Uh huh.” Mrs. K. picked up the cards, pencil, and pad and put them away. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap? Maybe you’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“Okay. I think I will. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
I had just made it to the first landing of the staircase when I felt an unexpected gush. In shock, I looked down and saw pink-tinged liquid streaming down my legs and forming a puddle at my feet. My throat constricted in fear. I couldn’t utter a sound. I just stared and wondered what in the world had just happened to me.
Less than a minute later that mildly annoying back pain became a strong band of pain that radiated around my waist and tightened my stomach into a ball of steel.
“Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!”
I found my voice as I panicked and sat down on the landing. I poked my legs through the spokes, wrapped my arms around the spokes of the railing and held on as if my life depended on it.
“Mrs. K!” I screamed.
Within seconds, Mrs. K. and several of the other girls bounded up the stairs.
“Oh my goodness, your water broke.” She leaned down and put her arm around my shoulders. “Let go of the railing, Diane. You’re in labor. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
She might as well have been talking to a wall. The iron jaws of death wouldn’t have been able to pry my arms away from the spokes of that railing. I was petrified.
Mrs. K. yelled for one of the girls to go and get my bag. In the ninth month, each of us had one packed and waiting for the “big day.”
“C’mon, honey. Let go. It’s going to be okay. We need to get you to the hospital.”
Another band of pain, pain so intense I couldn’t even cry, wrapped around my middle and squeezed so hard I finally understood firsthand what the word agony meant. I hung on tighter to the railing. I heard a deep, guttural moan and was surprised that I was the one making the sound.
Mrs. K. wasted no time. Within minutes, an ambulance arrived.
I guess paramedics are stronger than little old ladies in their seventies—or maybe it was because they were medical personnel and I knew they could help me—either way, they succeeded in getting me to let go.
I was strapped to a gurney and down the stairs before I realized what had happened. Mrs. K. squeezed my hand and told me everything would be all right. I remember thinking as I was wheeled beneath the landing and out the door that I was surprised the spindles of that railing were still intact.
The matrons did not accompany the girls to the hospital. They called the girls a taxi and they notified family members the girl was in labor. They notified my mother but she was several hours away and didn’t come.
I spent the next three hours of my life on a stretcher in an empty room.
A nurse came in periodically, lifted the sheet, and announced how many centimeters dilated I was. I guess she was talking to me since no one else was in the room. But since I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about or what a centimeter or dilation meant, nothing she said mattered—except when she said that they’d reached my doctor and he was on the way. He’d been deep sea fishing and it would be a while before he’d arrive.
So I waited.
And I writhed and squirmed and cried through every increasingly difficult labor pain.
I didn’t have anyone to hold my hand or encourage me or feed me ice chips like you see on television. No one held a wet compress to my sweating forehead. No one explained the transition stage of labor and how severe but short-lived the labor pains would become.
Why should they? I didn’t deserve compassion or kindness, right?
I was an unwed mother who was getting what she deserved.
I was more than afraid. I was terrified. As the pains increased to a level so severe I didn’t think I could take another minute, I opened my mouth and screamed.
My body felt like I was being ripped in half.
I screamed as loudly as I possibly could and I silently prayed to die.
Then the door opened and my doctor walked in. He did a quick examination and then came up to the head of my bed. With one hand he grasped mine, with the other he smoothed some sweat-drenched hair out of my eyes and smiled down at me.
“You’re doing really good. I’m proud of you. You’re almost ready to deliver. I’m going to give you something to make you sleep. When you wake up, it will all be over.” He nodded to the nurse. Within minutes, I slipped into blessed oblivion.
The first sensation I remember when I woke was somebody pushing down hard on my stomach—and it hurt. I moaned and reached out a hand to stop them as I struggled to open my eyes.
“I have to do this, honey. We have to make sure you don’t have any clotting problems.”
Someone else steered my stretcher down the hall while the stomach-pushing nurse continued to walk beside the cart and push.
“My baby …” I was too groggy to say much more.
The nurse stopped pushing on my stomach for a minute and smiled. “You had a healthy baby boy.”
“A boy?” A grin split my face. “Where is he? I want to see him.”
The nurse who had been steering my stretcher spoke up. “We can’t do that. The doctor thinks it will be easier for you if you don’t see him.”
Anger coursed through my body. I tried to sit up. “I want to see my baby. Please, take me to see my baby.”
The stomach-pushing nurse gently lowered me back down and then glanced at the other nurse. “It can’t hurt to let her have a peek. We’re passing right by the nursery.”
The nurse at the head of my stretcher looked like she had just sucked on a lemon. She scrunched her lips together and refrained from speaking, but soon she stopped outside a wall of windows.
The stomach-pushing nurse helped me into a sitting position and gestured to one of the nurses inside the room. Apparently, they had just finished cleaning him up and doing their measuring and weighing. He wasn’t in the main nursery yet. When my nurse gestured, they brought my baby to the window. I stared at him through the glass.
He was so beautiful! And so tiny … and so perfect.
Tears streamed down my face. I ached to hold him in my arms. I felt overwhelmed with a wave of love like I had never experienced before in my life.
“Bring him to me.”
“What?” The nurse eased me back down on the stretcher. “Honey, you know the doctor doesn’t want you to do that.”
“I don’t care what the doctor wants. That is my baby. I want you to bring him to me.”
“See?” The nurse with the pursed lips said. She resumed steering my stretcher to my room. “I knew this would be a bad idea.”
No one spoke again until they had me in my room and had slid me off the stretcher and onto my bed. They started to leave.
“I want to hold my baby.”
Miss Pucker Face said, “We were told you were giving this baby up for adoption.”
“I am. But not today. Today he’s mine and I want to hold him.”
The kinder nurse came to my side. “Honey, are you sure you want to do that? It’s only going to make it harder on you.”
Tears continued to stream down my
face. “Please … please bring me my son. I know I only have a couple of days with him. I understand that. But please … I want my baby.”
The nurse nodded and stepped away.
Before she left the room, I grinned and yelled to her. “He has a name you know.”
She turned in the doorway and looked back at me.
“If I had a boy, I promised myself I would name him David Brett. I looked up names and their meanings in a book. It means ‘dearly beloved.’ I wanted him to know that just in case someday he ever looks up his name.”
I couldn’t swear to it but I think that kind nurse’s eyes were glistening when she nodded and left the room.
I got to spend three days with my son.
Three days that I would carry deep inside, knowing those memories would have to last a lifetime.
I fed him his bottles, burped him and changed his diapers. I cradled him in my arms and stroked the downy softness of his hair. I counted and kissed every one of his fingers and toes. I’d grin at how tightly those tiny little fingers would grasp my index finger, almost as if he would never let me go—and I’d pray that I’d find a way that maybe he’d never have to.
I’d sing him a lullaby. I’d rock him in my arms. I’d hold him tightly against my chest so he could hear the beating of my heart—that same heartbeat he had listened to for nine months.
I cried and I laughed and I smiled and I cried some more.
This was my son, my first born, and I couldn’t let him go. I couldn’t.
I called my mother.
“Mom, come see him. Please. He’s so beautiful. He’s perfect in every way. You’ve just got to see him.”
Silence.
“He looks just like a Bradford, Mom. I can’t believe how much he looks just like one of us. Won’t you and Dad come see him? Please.”
“Is that what you want? You haven’t hurt us enough? Now you want your father to drive down there and see him? What are you trying to do? Rip out his heart?”
“But Mom …”
“I’m not asking your father to do that. After you sign the adoption papers, I’ll bring you home.”
“I’m not putting him up for adoption. I’m keeping him.”
Ominous silence.
“I can’t, Mom,” I said in a rush, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence. “He’s my son. I love him. Please … help me. I’ll get a job. I’ll find a place to live. I’ll do anything but please help me keep him.”
“You agreed to put him up for adoption.”
“I never agreed. You’re the one who’s been pushing adoption for the last four months. I never wanted to do that.”
More silence.
“Fine,” she said. “Then keep him. But I’m done with you. You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met. You just don’t give a damn what your actions do to other people and now you’re going to ruin an innocent baby’s life. I mean it, Diane. I’m done with you. Don’t call here again … unless you come to your senses and change your mind.” She slammed down the phone.
The next day, Round Two came in the form of a forty-five minute telephone call from our parish priest. The words sin, selfishness, shame, and guilt were repeated so often eventually I tuned out everything except the sound of his voice. The priest chastised me for the pain and shame I was causing my parents. Then he really lit into me for my selfishness for not putting the needs of my child before my own. He kept telling me that the child needed two loving parents, a good home, a solid religious foundation, everything I obviously couldn’t provide.
The third and final round of the battle came on the third day—the last day I would ever see or hold my baby.
I had asked to see a social worker.
I was sitting in bed and holding my son in my arms when she arrived. I quickly explained my situation and asked if there was any way she could help me.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be happy to help you.”
My spirits soared. At last, someone to listen to me. Someone willing to help. I would be able to keep my baby. I looked down into my son’s face. I can’t explain the relief and my ultimate joy.
“How are you going to help me?” I asked. “What happens next?”
“Well, we’ll take the baby and put him in foster care.”
“Foster care?”
“Yes. Just until you get on your feet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, you’re going to need time to get established. You’ll have to find a job and a place to live. You’ll have to arrange for competent care to watch your son while you work.” She smiled widely. “We’ll take good care of your son for you while you do the things you have to do.”
“Foster care?” My voice was a mere whisper as my hopes and dreams seeped out of me.
“Yes, dear. Don’t worry. We have several foster families that would be willing to take him in.”
I didn’t have a car or a penny to my name. How was I going to find a job? I didn’t have a person in the world willing to take me in until I did. How would I ever be able to do the things I needed to do before they would return my son to me? And, worse, how long would it take? Would he even be a baby anymore? Would he even recognize me as his mother?
“If I do manage to do these things, how long will it take to get my son back?”
“You must realize that it’s going to take you considerable time to accomplish everything. Several months at the earliest, I’m sure. But once you’re back on your feet and feel you can provide properly for your child, then our office will do an interview and an inspection. If we feel it is in the best interests of the child to return him to you, then we will petition the courts to return custody to you at that time.”
Petition the courts? They decide the “best interests of the child”? Meanwhile, my son will be living where? In an orphanage? In a stranger’s house? In more than one home?
Who would see his first tooth come in? Who would hear his first word? Who would reach out and catch him when he took his first step?
Not me.
In society at that time, most women did not yet work outside the home or have careers. Daycare centers didn’t exist on every street corner like they do today. Government programs providing funds, food, and low-income housing for single moms didn’t exist, or at least we weren’t told about them if they did. How was I supposed to ever meet their standards and prove myself a fit mother?
At that moment, the realization finally hit me. No matter what I wanted, no matter how hard I tried, I was going to lose my baby. I knew I didn’t stand a chance of ever getting him back again.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”
When the social worker left, I rocked my son in my arms. I cradled him and kissed him, all the while dying slowly each second that ticked by.
I was going to lose my son.
My only choice now was whether to give him to the social worker where his future would be uncertain and unstable or give him up for adoption where he stood a chance for stability and happiness and love.
My tears flowed so freely, a few of them actually dripped onto his beautiful little face.
My perfect child.
My first-born son.
I pressed the button for the nurse.
When they took him away for the final time, they took a piece of my soul with him. They left me with an open, aching wound that only my baby would ever be able to fill.
Numbness swept into my spirit and wrapped itself deeply around my bones. I stared out the window of my hospital room, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. I must have sat like that for hours.
When I did start to think and feel again, thoughts of my own mother crept into my mind and, for the very first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to hate.
Chapter
3
WHEN I LEFT the hospital, I didn’t immediately return home. My mother had arranged for me to return to the unwed mother’s home. After all, my body was different now. I needed time f
or the swelling of my stomach to subside. I needed time to be able to sit on a chair without using the ring cushion they’d given me at the hospital due to my stitches from the episiotomy.
You can’t come home from a lucrative secretarial position in Atlantic City unless you looked the part.
I sat in a home with mothers who had not yet delivered their babies. I sat there with empty arms and an empty heart while I waited for my body to sufficiently heal so I could successfully pull off my mother’s lie. I never shed a tear or spoke a word to anyone about the situation because I couldn’t. I had buried the feelings so deep inside I was incapable of feeling anything at all at that time.
I did what I was supposed to do. Spoke when spoken to. Slept. Ate. Healed. Finally, I returned home.
When we pulled up to the house, my mother looked at me and said, “It’s over. You have a clean slate now. Nobody has to know anything about it. So go in there and tell everyone what a good time you had in Atlantic City but you’re happy to be home.”
Secrets are easy to keep from outsiders, but harder to keep within families. Many of my siblings knew the truth but no one dared refute my mother’s lie. So we pretended and didn’t have a truthful conversation about any of it for years.
I moved back into the bedroom in a twin bed beside my younger sister and acted like I had never left. I played the game. I lived the lie. But at night I would cuddle into a fetal position in my bed and I would sob.
I started looking for a job almost immediately upon returning home. I found one as a switchboard operator for a small yarn distribution center. I had been there about two weeks when I met my future husband.
Having never operated a switchboard before, sometimes I hit the wrong buttons and accidentally disconnected people. This particularly dark, thunderstorm-filled day, Danny Flanagan was making a delivery for the boss. He was delayed because many of the roads had flooded. He made his way to a pay phone to call it in.
I disconnected him.
Three times.