Mick said, “We’re in a mess. But don’t worry about it now, Jude. You might still get your period. Straighten up, here comes Lennie.”
I knew his words were empty. It wasn’t going to turn out okay. I looked up and saw Lennie getting ready to knock on the window. Mick rolled it down.
“Hop in, Lennie. How’s it goin’?”
We switched from life-threatening conversation to idle chitchat. My heart was still cold. I was surprised at how easily Mick could turn off the worry and switch to blasé chat.
After about thirty minutes, I said, “Mick, I better get home.”
As Lennie got out, dread and worry returned with the silence. The wind had picked up and dried leaves were swirling around the parked cars. We pulled out and didn’t talk much until we said good-bye when Mick dropped me off at home. I dragged my body out of the car.
I was a sickened and diseased soul. I had shared my burden with Mick, but it didn’t seem to lighten the load. I had never felt so alone. I don’t know what I thought Mick could do about it, but of course he had no solution because there was none. After telling him, I felt twice as bad—once for each of us. I wiped the tears from my face as I stepped into the house.
CHAPTER 15
CONSEQUENCES OF A SWOLLEN BELLY
If I carried any shred of hope that I was not pregnant, it was extinguished the night I lay in bed and ran my hand over my tummy, just above the pubic bone. I was shocked to feel a hard lump nestled deep inside, the size of a bird’s egg. Then I knew this was my pregnancy and it was taking hold. I tried to move it around but it seemed glued in place. I had to get rid of it. It was just going to grow and get bigger, a freaky tumor taking possession of my body. I held my arm out straight and made a fist. Then I snapped my hand back to my belly and punched. It hurt. Had I gone insane, pounding my own body? I tried again and realized I had to try harder. So I punched again. And again. I waited.
I could hear myself breathing. Nothing seemed to happen. I wanted to feel cramps. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I needed more force. I tried again. Arm straight: slam. It was difficult to get much power because my arms were too short. I tried again anyway. Tears spilled onto my cheeks. I’d had enough. It was hopeless. I hated myself and my growing belly with a newfound loathing. I settled down. I lay there. Was that a crimp in my belly? The start of cramps? I prayed again for God to bring the pains that would help me pass the lump. My arm ached from exhaustion and the skin on my belly was red. I cried, trapped. I rolled over and eventually drifted asleep.
The next night I tried again, but it was halfhearted. I suspected my efforts would be fruitless and it was just too nuts to be hurting myself like this. I was scared to use the force I thought was necessary and accepted defeat. The seed had taken purchase. It continued to expand, but still I told no one.
The weeks passed slowly until I was unable to button my uniform skirt. I couldn’t get the waistband’s button over to the hole, nor could I suck in my stomach enough to make it fit. It wouldn’t suck. I knew this day was coming, so the previous week I had decided I needed more props to pull off my act. It was windy and about forty degrees in mid-February. I was now four and a half months along. I bundled up and drove Mom’s car over to Edens Plaza. I went into the Ben Franklin Five and Dime and picked out the thickest and smallest girdle I could find. I knew it would look fishy if anyone I knew saw me buying a girdle—me, a skinny thing, except for the part no one could see. I plopped a bag of black licorice strings on top of the girdle when I got to the checkout counter to camouflage my purchase. I hoped I wouldn’t run into someone I knew.
Today I was glad I had that fat compressor. I reached way back in the bottom drawer, and found it tucked under my pajamas. It was impossible trying to pull the thing over my belly, it was so teensy. I wiggled and pulled but my skin was sticky from the lotion I put on. I got some talcum powder from the bathroom and sprinkled that on me. Finally I got the elastic waist over my tummy and tried the skirt on again. My stomach was still big and hadn’t compressed enough for the button to reach the hole. Now what? I only had two uniform skirts and they were both the same size.
While I was panicking over my predicament, I heard Dad’s footsteps going up and down the stairs and then into the bathroom. I was afraid he would knock and want to come in. I had my robe lying on the chair so I could grab it fast to pull it over me. I didn’t want him to see any shred of my body. I sat down on my overstuffed chair and put my face in my despairing hands. Dead end. What to do? “Come on, Jude,” I told myself. “Pull yourself together. There must be a way.” I wiped the tears with three fingers.
Then I had an idea. I threw on my robe and ran downstairs to the kitchen. I opened the drawer with the tin foil and grabbed an oversized rubber band from the corner of the drawer. It had been wrapped around the asparagus stalks. I scampered back upstairs. Dad was still in the bathroom. I went in my bedroom and shut the door, then I took the rubber band and folded it in half. I looped it around the button and then through the hole and back over to the button again. This gave me an extra two inches. It felt good. I left the girdle on, which seemed to help redistribute the bulge. I had a temporary fix for my expanding waist. For the first time, I was glad that we wore uniforms and that I had a blazer to hide my growing thickness.
The looping rubber band worked wonders, until one day at school my pen rolled off my desk. I bent down to pick it up and the rubber band snapped. It didn’t make any noise, but my skirt started falling to my knees. I was mortified. While I was still hunched over, I held my arms around my middle and then walked to the bathroom. I was glad class hadn’t started yet. I was also glad I had some change in my pocket. I put a nickel in the tampon dispensing machine and pressed “super.” I went in the stall and tried to pull the cotton away from the string. It was sewn into the cotton cylinder and wouldn’t come free, so I just looped the whole thing through the button hole and tied a knot around the button. I rolled my skirt up once so the tampon was hidden in the belt area of the skirt. It would get me through the day.
The stringed tampon didn’t have any “give” like the rubber band, so my skirt kept trying to ride up to the thinner part above the protrusion, kind of like Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show, with his pants up to his ears. Besides, the girdle made the surface slippery. The rest of the day, I had to keep pulling the skirt down to keep it around the thickest part of my waist. I was never so happy to get home and change clothes. I put an extra couple of rubber bands in my purse in case of any more mishaps, sort of like an inhaler for a person with asthma.
This time when I carried the secret of my pregnancy, alone, was the darkest period of my life. I am sad for that lonely teenager who couldn’t talk to anyone about her trouble. I could have saved myself some distress if I had faced the problem sooner and talked to an adult, but who would it have been? Dad would have had a solution. But telling Dad was too drastic, like jumping out of a plane. I couldn’t do it until I absolutely had to. How could I not know that I would eventually have to come clean? I held on to the false hope that the pregnancy would expel itself. It was the weak straw that I grabbed, for I couldn’t live without some shred of hope.
Not once did I think ahead of how it would all turn out. I never dreamed I would go away to a Home for Unwed Mothers or that I would give birth to a real baby. It was a time that I lived in absolute denial, an ostrich with its head in the sand. I lived each day in a shroud of fright that expanded with my belly. It was a life lesson for me.
As an adult, I try to address problems before they complicate themselves. I don’t like living with the dread of the unknown. I feel a bit duped when someone confides in me and then follows their words with: “but don’t tell anyone.” I’d rather know up front so I can say something like, “that’s ok, skip it,” because I really don’t like keeping secrets. They sit heavy on my heart.
CHAPTER 16
FRONT SEAT OR ELSE
About the time I was very large but still in hiding
, my friends and I went out to the Pitt in Glenview for a dance night out. Diane was driving and there were eight or nine of us who needed a ride. This was before seat belts, so it was common to sit on each other’s laps; sometimes we had six in the back seat. As we started to pile in, I panicked as I realized that if I sat on someone’s lap they might reach around and be able to feel my thickness—or worse yet, if they sat on my lap, it would be stuck there like a sack of potatoes between us. Dread of the back seat made me weak. I couldn’t risk being part of a double layer.
I crawled into the car, hoping I could keep my lap free, but then Jane started to crawl on top of me.
“No, Jane, get off. I’m claustrophobic.”
“Jude, there’s nowhere else to sit,” Jane said.
“Too bad” I said. “I have claustrophobia and will pass out.”
“When did this affliction appear?” Carol asked.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Barb said. “Gimme a break. Close the damn door, it’s freezing outside. Get in.”
“I don’t have anywhere to sit,” Jane said.
“Sit on the floor,” I said.
“Geez, Jude, don’t have a cow,” Jane said.
“I’m not having a cow; I just don’t want anyone on top of me. We’re packed in like sardines; I can’t take it. Carol, will you trade places with me? Please. I can’t breathe.”
Carol had no sympathy. “Forget it,” she said. “I get carsick. Besides, first come first served. I got dibs on the front seat.”
“Please, I’m begging you. Really, I can’t stand it back here.”
“Close the damn door,” Barb yelled again from the back. “Let’s get going.”
“Well, I’m not moving,” Carol said.
Feeling backed into a corner, I made a hasty decision. “Then I’ll walk,” I said.
I closed the back door of the car and stomped across the street and headed north on Waukegan Road. The cars whizzed by, throwing spray on the sidewalk. Flakes of snow had gathered on the bordering grass.
I felt like such a baby. I hated how I acted. All I knew was there was no way I was going to sit in the back seat with all the girls. I was seething with anger at Carol. She was so selfish sometimes, but now I was scared. It was late February and one of those bone-chilling, damp Chicago nights. I had no hat or gloves. What was I thinking? How would I ever walk the five miles home at 10:00 at night? I didn’t think I had a choice. Streams of anger came off me in waves. If only Carol let me sit in front.
I walked along, knowing that I had to make it home somehow. The snow was sloppy and stuck to my shoes; the moisture oozed through the soles. After a few blocks, Diane’s car pulled up next to me. My fear eased. Carol rolled down the window and said, “Okay, get in. You’re such a winner. I’ll sit in back; get in.” She opened the car door and walked around to the back seat. For us, a winner was a loser and although sometimes said in jest, this time it hurt. Carol got in back and sat on Jane’s lap. I sheepishly crawled into the passenger seat. I hated that I acted so snippy because of my predicament. My friends must have thought I was self-centered—demanding the front seat when everyone else was cramped in the back. Even though I was ashamed of how I acted, I was mostly relieved to be back inside the warm car, speeding toward home. I sat in silence, while everyone in the back chattered away. Tears tried to form, but I held them back. A tight band squeezed my throat, like a nail was stuck in there sideways.
When Diane pulled up to my house, I hopped out and said, “Bye, thanks for the ride.”
Carol said, “I hope you enjoyed the front seat.”
“Yeah, it was great,” I said and ran into the house. I suppose I could have at least thanked her for letting me sit in front, but I was way too angry to be kind. It wasn’t like she gave it up willingly. I sighed with resolve as I walked in the front door of my house. “This is ridiculous,” I thought. “I have to come clean about my condition. I just have to tell someone, but who?”
CHAPTER 17
MY SORRY LIFE
I tossed and turned most of those winter nights, waking and overcome by worry, then falling back into a fitful sleep. Five months into it and still nobody knew about my situation except Mick. The impending doom clouded my days with a sooty black. I knew I couldn’t keep the secret much longer. My belly was full and swollen. I had been feeling the baby kick for several weeks now. At first they were butterfly flutters, but now they were definite rolls and punches. My stomach muscles were stiff and iron-like from all the practice at holding in my belly. I walked with a slight bend forward so my blazer would fall around the sides, concealing my thick middle. With the rubber band around the button hole to add space to the waistline, the pleats fell with a sloppy bend in the folds.
It was quiet in our house. Mom had been taking high dose steroids for her pain, and the side effects put her in and out of the hospital. When she was home she slept a lot. She had wounds on her legs from the slightest nicks. One time a whole flap of skin came off: the wound filled up with pus and wouldn’t heal. With a compromised immune system, she caught illnesses easily. The worst episode was the staph infection that landed her in the hospital for several months, her life hanging by a thread, us visiting with masks tacked to our faces.
Hugren never could get the hang of making rice the way we liked it, so Dad did most of the cooking. His favorite meals included packaged sukiyaki with rice, T-bone steaks and rice, sukiyaki and rice. These were rotated on a weekly basis. As we sat across from each other at the glass table, Dad would look up from the newspaper and ask, “How was school today?” and I would say, “Fine.” Then we’d resume eating. Shame filled my space as I gobbled my food so I could excuse myself and go off to my room and be alone. Like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, nothing ever changed. It was a gloomy atmosphere with a word or two wedged into the silence. Hugren ate on her own and didn’t join us for dinner. The absence of Mom, who was in the hospital, and Jeff, who was away at college, left an uncomfortable emptiness. I was pretty much on my own those days; nobody paid much attention to where I was or what I was doing. I liked that part of it.
Mick and I had lost our romantic relationship. We were seeing each other occasionally, but there was such gloom wedged between us that the passion just slipped away. Our outings got fewer and farther between. After I was about four months into it, I heard through the grapevine that someone saw Mick at a Glenbrook basketball game, holding hands with some girl. My heart crumpled. How could he? I didn’t want to believe it.
One of my lowest points that year was a day in theology class. Sister Rosa Marie was lecturing us on the pitfalls of dating. “Girls, the Lord wants us to be pure and clean. You must please the Lord and maintain proper conduct at all times around the opposite sex. Holding hands, although seemingly innocent, can lead to dangerous activities. Never, ever engage in kissing and necking.”
While the words were coming out of her mouth, I could feel flutters and movement deep within my belly. If she knew how far away from the directive this young girl had gone, she would implode from the shock of it. Guilt and shame put a nasty green slime on my world. It felt like a moldy gunnysack was tied over my head: I couldn’t get enough air and I couldn’t see ahead. I longed for the innocent days when I went to Mass early in the mornings and just worried about telling Father in confession that I was thinking impure thoughts. If only I knew how good it was then. In the meantime, the baby that was hiding deep in there just kept on growing. I think it was around then that I put down the rosary before I completed my quota. What was the point? And, I never returned to confession. My sins were too monumental to divulge.
CHAPTER 18
BREAKING THE SILENCE
Memory works like Swiss cheese. There is the structure of the feelings and emotions and then the holes where the details should be. It amazes me that people who were present for the same event can remember entirely different details. As I gently plod along with the writing, all of a sudden I have a name, or a smell, or a
scene from forty years ago distilling in my mind’s eye.
It was about a week before Christmas, 2010, late and well after dinner. I was in Palm Beach, Florida, with my longtime friends, Annie and Jane. The weather was mild and warm as we gathered around the patio furniture with our glasses of wine. I read aloud from my backlit laptop as the thin, stiff leaves of the palms rustled with the breeze. It would be the first time they heard what I had written about my teen pregnancy in 1967. I felt vulnerable, like I was putting my words to the test for accuracy. I knew that my memory had some holes, and I was hoping they could shed some light on the subject. When I had finished reading, Annie said, “I distinctly remember we were under the bleachers at Glenbrook South at a football game and you lifted up your shirt to show us.” This was contrary to what I had written. I thought we were in a hotel room or a sleepover and I was in my pajamas when I confided in them.
I didn’t remember it happening the way Annie described it, but she seemed so sure about the details that I went to bed thinking, “Could it be?” Could that have been where I told the very first people about my secret, under the bleachers?
I rolled her words over in my mind. “We were under the bleachers at a Glenbrook South football game,” she said. She painted a picture of us gathered in a huddle and me lifting my shirt to prove my predicament. As I thought about her words, a sickening feeling of fright, like something was very wrong came back to me as I remembered the dark, damp feeling of being under there with the butts and legs of people showing through the slits in the benches as we looked up. Like time-lapse photography, the image materialized in my mind, yet I didn’t think I would be willing to divulge my secret in public or lift my shirt while I was outside and chilly. I remembered us gathered under there, but couldn’t remember why. I suspected it was right after I had exposed my secret, and perhaps they all wanted another look.
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