Motherest

by Kristen Iskandrian

  She has crumbs on her pilled purple sweater and wears a lizard brooch. Instantly she reminds me of someone, and I am preoccupied trying to remember who. I notice that her purple nail polish is chipped as she extends her hand to me.

  “Hi! Welcome. I’m Mary, the coordinator?” She points to the nametag opposite the brooch. “Must be your first meeting, because I never forget a face. Never in my life. If you just come this way, I’ll get you to sign in and make yourself up a nametag.” Everything she says lilts upward, questioning. She keeps one ice-cold hand in mine, gently, and puts the other one near the small of my back, guiding me. “Help yourself to some refreshments?”

  I write my name and phone number on a sign-in sheet and then write my name again with a Sharpie, this time a bit more slowly, luxuriating a little in the fresh point and bold lines—I have always enjoyed a new Sharpie—on a nametag, checking surreptitiously to see if anyone has included her last name too. No. First names only. I try to find the least awkward part of my chest to stick it on and settle on the left side, up high and close to my armpit, safe from my breasts that seem to heave even when perfectly still. My mouth is dry and the thought of sugary cookies and lemonade makes it more dry. I locate a pitcher of water and pour some into a cup. I drink the whole thing and pour another one and almost immediately have to pee. A girl—or are we women? I don’t know—appears at my elbow. She looks younger than me.

  “Hi,” she says. Her nametag says Alicia. “Is this your first time?”

  For a moment I can’t decide if she’s asking if this is my first baby or my first time here. Either way, I figure. “Yes. You?”

  “Uh-huh. My mom said I had to come. She was worried if she left me alone I’d just go see my boyfriend.”

  I nod. “My dad wanted me to come too,” I hear myself say.

  “It, like, doesn’t change anything, but whatever. It’s not like I’m getting an abortion at this point.”

  “Ladies, let’s migrate to the circle and find our seats?” Mary announces, her hands framing her mouth in a megaphone gesture. I notice her tongue flicks out frequently, like a lizard.

  I sit on one of the folding chairs because I know my thighs inside my thin skirt would stick audibly to the couch vinyl. Every person in the room, I notice, has erect nipples. One woman is putting on a sweatshirt. Including Mary, there are seven of us.

  “I’m sorry for the cold,” Mary says, as if in reply to the sweatshirt and the nipples. “It’s either freezing or sweltering, unfortunately.”

  “It feels GOOD,” says one woman, whose nametag says Gloria. She sits closest to the air conditioner and fans herself with both hands.

  “So before we get talking, let’s welcome AGNES, who’s here tonight for the first time? Welcome, Agnes?”

  Alicia reaches over and taps my knee. I feel unexplainable emotion rising to my face.

  “Hi,” I manage to say. “Thanks.”

  “Today we’re going to talk about healthy ways to manage our stress during pregnancy? But before we get to that, does anyone have anything to share?” Tongue flicker.

  A blond girl with dark circles under her eyes puts her hand up.

  “Yes, Carrie?”

  “My boyfriend, he bought a crib. Like, he picked it out himself. I got home from work one night and he was putting it together. I just feel like, he is like, finally getting it. I didn’t ask him to buy anything or anything.” Her voice is climbing with excitement. “I kind of can’t believe it.”

  Mary smiles widely and one or two people tap their hands together in muted applause. “I’m thrilled to hear it! What do you think has created the change in him?”

  Carrie stares at the ceiling for a second. “I don’t know. I guess I feel like we’re being really honest with each other now? Like after last week, I sat down with him and was like, you’re either in or you’re out. You can’t, like, be with me and not be with this baby.”

  “Damn right,” a girl, Megan, says, stretching her arms over her head and revealing most of her enormous belly, including, I note with relief, the same line of black hair that’s starting to form on my own.

  “And how did he respond after that discussion?” Mary asked. Tongue flick.

  “He walked straight out the room! He went into the den and turned the TV on and I was like yelling and following him and he kept turning up the volume and I kept like trying to yell over it and finally he yelled at me, ‘CARRIE, okay, I heard you, just let me be. I just need to think,’ and I was like ‘You’re not thinking; you’re watching the damn TV’ and he was like, ‘Fine, then I need to fucking not think,’ and I was like so pissed and, I don’t know, just, yeah, like, so MAD, that I just left and went for a drive. I wanted to smoke so badly but I didn’t. I just blasted the radio and drove like a maniac.” She laughs slightly, and a few others do too. “When I got home, he was asleep. And like the next day he told me he was going to try harder.”

  “Okay, good,” says Mary. “So let’s look at this, as a group. Last week we talked communication? How to communicate with your partner, if you have one; how to communicate with others in your life who either want to help you or might be having a hard time knowing how to help you? We even talked about, if you remember, how to talk to people who have shut you out completely? Sometimes this is the case with our parents, right?”

  Most of the group is nodding. I nod.

  “We all communicate differently,” Mary says, and then the questions begin. “Carrie needed to yell? And Carrie’s boyfriend needed to think? Unfortunately, we’re not always in the same place at the same time, are we? Actually, we rarely are! But the important thing here is honesty. You’ve got to deal with these feelings, these fears. You’ve got to share them! And then you’ve got to be prepared for the aftermath. Remember the acronym: TRY: Take Responsibility Yourself—if those around you see you being responsible for yourself, accountable for your own actions, they will follow suit. All you have to do is TRY! ”

  I look around to see if anyone else is holding back an eyeroll. But no. Everyone appears to be absorbed, nodding thoughtfully. I shiver as an extra-large chill works through me. My nipples are actually beginning to hurt from the cold.

  “Yeah, well, I told my grandmother about my fears and she won’t look at me,” Gloria is saying. “I was like, ‘Gramma, I miss talking to you. And I am SCARED.’ And she, like, walked away. She’s mad because my mom had me young, and it messed her up, and now she feels like I’m doing the same thing.” Gloria rearranges herself on her seat. Mary is nodding encouragingly, her eyebrows way up high. “But I’m not. I’m not my mom. I finished school. I got a job. I don’t do drugs. I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? And I’m gonna love my baby and be around for him. I mean, we’ll live with Gramma. But my gramma will be his great-gramma, not his mama. So it’s different.”

  “Gloria, you make a very good point here. Very, very good. One I’d like us to think about and discuss in the weeks to come. Think about, and discuss, and think about some more. About patterns, patterns of behavior. All of us, for better or worse, are linked to our own mothers and to the ways we were raised. We all need to decide what we want to bring to our own mothering experiences and what we’d prefer to leave behind. Some things are going to creep in, regardless. But as we’ve been talking about, being mindful, being conscious of each decision we make, big and small, will help us become our best selves and the best mothers we can be.”

  The group seems to hang on Mary’s every word, which I find incredible. How starved we are for attention, for wisdom, such that even the most basic platitudes, when delivered expressly to us, seem holy. I don’t really want to be a part of this, but here I am. Impishly, I find myself thinking about abortion. Were there women who came here once or twice and then decided, no, this baby will not be happening? Or is there a separate group for those women? Does Mary lead that group too? What about the women who are going to give away their babies? Is there a room for them?

  Mary is talking about stress management, her tong
ue keeping the beat between almost every sentence.

  “Nutrition is important. Sleep is very important. If anyone needs those nutritional guideline handouts again, I have extras I can give you. I also have several bottles of prenatal vitamins. If anyone needs some help or can’t afford them, let me know. But beyond the things you can do to take care of your physical health are the more abstract things that can make all the difference. Positivity is crucial. You want to try to minimize your exposure to negative, critical people? People who make you feel bad about yourself?” Mary’s eyes are shiny and her voice is growing faintly shrill. She is somewhere else now. She is on some kind of mountaintop, beckoning us toward redemption. She is being the change she wants to see in the world.

  Alicia bows her head and covers her face with her hands. There is some channel of energy happening between her and Mary, something softly kinetic.

  “Does anyone care to share anything?” Mary asks after maybe a minute.

  “It’s just really hard,” Alicia says from behind her hands. “It’s just so hard, like, to do this alone.”

  “Well, Alicia, you are not alone, are you? That’s why we’re here, remember?”

  Maybe it’s in the drawn out, peevish way she says remember, or the look she gives her, tender and reproachful, and how it makes their faces suddenly resemble one another, but in that moment I realize that Mary is Alicia’s mother. I look around, but nobody is offering any reaction. Maybe they already know. Maybe they don’t care. I’m suddenly more interested now in being here, in participating in this, if only as a witness to someone else’s mother–daughter vagaries. Maybe this is how groups like this work. You feel better about yourself because other people’s problems seem worse. You stop thinking, for a few minutes, about your own shit, because someone else’s is more lurid, more interesting. Maybe the expectation isn’t healing, but rather gaining perspective. Your problems don’t get solved. They get placed. A sense of calm moves through me as I watch Alicia become more upset.

  “I mean, yeah, in theory, that’s why we’re here,” she is saying, taking her hands away from her face and facing Mary. “But come on, Mom! Everyone in this room is alone. We can be alone together, but we’re all alone. I think it’s my boyfriend that needs the support group. I think they should be the ones to have to figure out how to do this too. Why should they get to opt out?”

  April, who looks both fourteen and forty-five, is nodding. “That’s how I feel too,” she says softly.

  Mary’s agitation vibrates through her slowed, deliberate speech, as though each word is an attempt at calming herself down. “Yes? Yes, of course? This is probably, on some level, how we all feel, Alicia! That too much is being asked of us! That the sacrifice is too great? This might not be how you envisioned your life, but life, as we are learning, does not always comply with our expectations! And so we must do our best with the situation we are in—we must do our best to TRY!”

  “It just sucks,” Carrie starts to say, and then clears her throat. “It just sucks like how guys can have sex and not have their life turned upside down.”

  “I’m saying,” April is saying, leaning forward a little, her voice rising, “it’s bullshit. I swear the whole reason they don’t have to grow up is because they don’t have to worry about getting pregnant, ever. Who do they have to grow up for? They go from their mama’s house to like some dumbass girl taking care of them. You don’t hear about single fathers hardly at all, but single mothers? We out here.”

  I sense Mary’s frustration that this session is getting away from her. I wonder if perhaps maintaining control over this, over us, is the only way she can cope with her daughter’s pregnancy. I wonder how long she has been doing this, and I wonder if somehow, in that way the universe has of giving us exactly what we don’t want, her role here is the precise reason Alicia’s egg got fertilized. I wonder if Mary is married and if her husband is Alicia’s father, or if Mary herself is unwed and Alicia was unplanned. How far back does this go?

  I get up, perhaps too suddenly, and draw head-turns from most of the group. I need water. I need something. I go to the other side of the room and fill a cup. My bladder seems to instantly fill, and the pressure, as I stand there drinking, grows more and more intense. Impossible, I think idly, to imagine having to pee more than I have to pee right now. And still, I hold it, in some kind of rebellion toward my body, toward these alien urges and aches. The nature of rebellion is that it redoubles the forces of oppression, the measures willing to be taken. That is why when you pull a gray hair, four more grow in its place, as my mother used to say as I watched her up close at the mirror, tweezing gray hairs. At some point you must surrender to your body. And to the body inside your body. I picture myself peeing on the floor.

  I find my way, somehow, clenched in all directions, to the bathroom, which looks like a bathroom in somebody’s house. I sit heavily on the toilet and the pee struggles out, as if dazed from being held. When I return to the group, Mary seems to have regained her post.

  “…which is a good way to minimize anxiety? And you should help each other with this too? Check in with one another? Share your tips? I’m giving you a list of books that you can get from your local library? And before we wrap things up, I’d like each of you to write down one thing that you’re most worried about—let’s call it your biggest baby-related fear, whether it’s a health concern or a financial one, or if it’s something as basic as changing diapers—and put it into the box? We’ll address one or two tonight and then continue next week?” Mary goes around to each of us as she talks, handing out two slips of paper. One is blank, and the other is a typed list of book titles. At the top, handwritten, are the words TAKE RESPONSIBILITY YOURSELF.

  “Who needs a pencil?”

  I put up my hand and Mary hands me one, brand-new, sharp. I stare at the blank page and try not to notice everyone around me, heads bent, scribbling as though they have been waiting their whole lives for this chance. Mary catches my eye and gives me a small smile. “It can be anything?” she whispers. “Anything at all?”

  Dear Mom,

  I can feel the baby moving all around. I think it has been happening for a while but I think I was not letting myself feel it. Every time it would turn or roll or whatever, I would make a move in rebuttal and convince myself it wasn’t actually moving, that it was just me who was moving. Just me. But there is no more “just me.”

  I have been thinking a lot about the fish I killed in third grade. Remember the one I won at the school fair? I guess I didn’t really win it. I missed hitting the target with the water balloon all three times but they gave one to me anyway. At home, you gave me a bowl to put it in, blue pebbles at the bottom and everything, telling me it had belonged to Simon’s fish, which was one of those moments where I found myself wondering, what else don’t I know about this family, if I didn’t know that Simon ever had a fish? Anyway, you’d kept the fish food, too, so we were all set, and I named mine Fishy Fishy Glub Glub, and I took care of it very devotedly for a while. I kept expecting it to die, and it kept not dying. And then at some point, I guess I got bored with it. Feeding it and cleaning out its bowl, the fish itself—none of it brought me any pleasure. I started taking care of it less. I sort of just wanted to see how much it actually, you know, needed me. It was a kind of experiment in neglect, and the day I came home from school to find it belly-up in cloudy water, I felt truly shocked.

  I think you can probably see where I’m going with all of this. When Mary the support group leader asked us to write down our biggest fears, I immediately thought of Fishy. It’s not so much “What if I kill my baby?” but more like “What if I don’t care enough about my baby to keep it alive?” And obviously I don’t mean just physically alive. I mean, the kind of alive you are when you are loved versus the kind of alive you are when you’re not. I didn’t write this on my little slip of paper. I felt too much shame. I thought about writing something more general and socially acceptable—“What if I’m an unfit mother?” (
which might as well be the center’s tagline) or “I’m scared of actual labor,” which I’m guessing is a popular one for obvious reasons and which is a legitimate fear of mine, too, based on the little I’ve forced myself to read—but then time ran out and I hadn’t written anything and I managed to avoid the whole exercise. Between us, I guess the thing I’m most afraid of, really, is love. Not having it. Having too much of it.

  I’m beginning to begin to understand, or probably not understand but rather sense, or imagine, why you might be gone. I mean, I don’t think me and Dad are the Fishy Fishy Glub Glubs in this situation, not quite, but maybe you got tired of looking into the same bowl every day. Maybe you knew that if you’d stayed, you would’ve inflicted on us the most terrifying thing of all: indifference.

  Maybe you need to learn to miss us.

  Yours—in solidarity?

  Agnes

  The phone rings early, one week and one day after the support group meeting. I did not go back the previous evening, even though I planned to go back and told my father I was going back. I went to a movie instead, a “taut political thriller.” The theater was semi-packed with people who were, it seemed, like me, only semi-watching. I ate a small popcorn and most of a big box of Raisinets. My attention alternated between my food and the screen and the strange sensations in my belly, or my uterus. I honestly don’t know which. At one point my lower half seemed to be visibly vibrating. Could the baby hear the loud sounds of the movie? Was it cold from all the ice? I took my sweatshirt off and draped it across my middle, figuring if I could hide it I might stop thinking about it, but it didn’t work. In the end, the president’s good men won, by a narrow margin that seemed to take hours to play out.

  I answer the phone, still in my too-small nightgown and too-small robe.