Hillbilly Gothic

by Adrienne Martini

  My dad is going to stay with the baby until I get back from this appointment. Then he needs to hit the road to make it back to Columbus before dark. I do just fine during the twenty-minute drive to the second shrink’s office, the first solo trip I’ve taken in weeks. It’s nice to drive again and I turn up the radio, getting lost in pop songs about heartbreak and hot summers. I also do just fine during the wait to see the second shrink, flipping through a copy of People magazine, which I allow myself only in waiting rooms. Once I’m in her tastefully decorated room, however, the waterworks start. By the end of the session, the top half of my shirt is so wet with my own tears that I need to wring it out.

  She is a godsend, the new shrink. She lets me unload all of my accumulated Mom stuff on her. I go on and on and on about how I think I’m going to fail because I can’t seem to do what I’ve been told I had to do in order to raise a functional child. I can’t sit and stare lovingly into her eyes the whole time she sucks on a bottle because the boredom makes me profoundly antsy. I can’t seem to set up a bedtime routine because I’m just too tired. I don’t know that I can give her all of the sensory input she needs because I don’t have flash cards or know many baby songs. Because of this, my child will fail to develop and it will be all my fault. Plus, she’ll hate me, because I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing and because a lot of the time I wish she’d just shut up so that I can sleep for more than three hours at a time.

  My shrink assures me that guilt about perfection and resentment for the intrusion are perfectly normal. I am not a Bad Mother for wanting to sleep. I don’t have to stare into the baby’s eyes every minute of every day. I have the shrink’s permission to flip through a magazine if the boredom takes over during feedings. Bonding will come, but it won’t be immediate. These next few weeks will probably be ugly, but I am the only one who will remember them. And they are not going to scar the baby for the rest of her life; nor will she hate me because of them.

  My shrink is a latter-day version of the angel who visited my mother on the night I was born, patting my back and assuring me that it will all work out okay. But she’s an angel that I’ll get to see again and again.

  Before I leave the appointment, she asks two questions. First, did I think that my depression and angst and fear would have been as bad if my baby had been a boy and I hadn’t been able to project my problems with my mother onto my own daughter? And, second, when I mentioned that my father-in-law offered to come down but that I was planning to tell him not to because I am strong, she asked, “Why must you make this so hard?”

  I still don’t know how to answer either.

  From my journal, July 23:

  “Had a pediatrician visit today. All is well and you are up to 9 pounds, 8 ounces. You also got your hepatitis B vaccine—your first one. You looked so surprised when the needle went in, then you started screaming. Fortunately, a bottle calmed you right down.

  “Unfortunately, next week and the following week your father goes into tech [tech is when a theatre gets a show ready to open, which includes adding lights, costumes, sound and sets, and means that those involved rarely have time to shower, much less hang out with their crazy wives], which means that he really won’t be home. I’m freaking out a bit, simply because the isolation may drive me crazy again. I’m so scared and don’t know what to do. Hopefully, a solution will present itself and soon.

  “It’s raining right now. A real downpour. Normally I’d find it soothing but just can’t be soothed right now. The panic is rising too quickly. But I’m trying to breathe and think moment by moment. You are very cute and your daddy is coaxing you back to sleep and I am crying.”

  July 24:

  “Today was a better day, although the morning started out a bit shakey. You were up for your 4 a.m. feeding then decided to stay up until 7 a.m. You stayed awake until about 1:30 p.m. with just a few 10-minute catnaps. We think you’re going through a growth spurt. We shall see.

  “I also got to get out of the house today and go to Barnes and Noble. It doesn’t sound like it should be a thrill but it was. I also stopped into Toys R Us and bought some puzzles to take to Tower 4. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to run up there this weekend.

  “While at B&N I picked up a copy of the classic ‘Madeline.’ Your daddy is on the couch reading it to you. Very cute. Oh—and you turned one month old today. Whee!

  “One thing I am always struck by is how in-your-body you are. When hungry, you eat like a junkie cooking up his next fix. You look almost drunk after a good feeding. When gassy, you fart with reckless abandon. And when asleep, you become like a coma victim, oblivious to the waking world. We wonder what you dream about. Giant breasts? Pinkies? Bath time? Of course, by the time you are old enough to ask, you will no longer remember.”

  Scott’s dad, who we did ask to come down, hangs out with me for a week. I am not quite sure what we talked about, but I remember watching a lot of cable movies. At some point, I leave the baby with him and deliver the new puzzles to Tower 4. The staff looks at me like I’m insane, which isn’t far from the truth, but accept my offerings. Some future loon will thank me.

  Whenever Kimberly comes over, Scott’s dad and I make a break for it and go shopping. Neither one of us is really predisposed to spending time at the mall, but it is something to do where there is air-conditioning. He also convinces me that I can go for a walk with the baby in her stroller. We do this one day shortly before he leaves. At the end of our street, a mere mile down the boulevard, is the main road and a great Mexican restaurant. It’s a walk that I’ve made many, many times, even when pregnant. Now, I get about two blocks in before having to turn back. I’m covered in sweat and wobbly-kneed. When did my life get to be so sad?

  Still, the knowledge that I could pack a baby in a stroller and walk around without dying is freeing, even if I can only make short jaunts at a time. After Scott’s dad heads back north, I go walking every morning. The first few times I’m convinced that we are going to be run over by rogue pickups or mugged by the retirees who populate most of the street. It gets better. Without fail, Maddy spends the first fifteen minutes taking in the world, then crashes into a peaceful sleep. After a while, I can make it to the Mexican restaurant and back again. I’d stop in for a bite but always take my walks long before they’re open. Even that doesn’t save me from the worst of Knoxville’s summer heat. It’s in the eighties by the time I get back home, which is always before 10 a.m., so that I don’t miss Martha Stewart. I ponder moving my walks to the mall, but the logistics of packing both the baby, her stuff, and myself in a car are overwhelming. Two years ago I navigated a rental car through Britain’s B-roads using nothing but a lousy guidebook map. Now, I can’t take a baby two miles up the road for shopping. Oh, how the mighty can fall.

  Scott’s two-week tech leaves me burning up the phone lines and calling in every last favor I can. I know that I can’t handle being alone for nearly fourteen straight days without coming unglued again. I toss what little pride I have left into a small, mockable heap and beg friends to come over. And they do, which amazes me. And sometimes they also bring treats from the outside world, like falafels and turkey melts and pizzas and gossip.

  Most haven’t heard the story of the Psych Ward. Those few who knew about it as it was happening remained mostly mum. And each night, I tell the story again. I still have no nifty harmony worked out, but each time I launch into the litany, it makes more sense. I start developing set pieces, like the flock of doulas and Spalding Gray and Angola. I can only talk about it with colorful anecdotes, however. Talking about the shame takes much, much longer.

  As long as someone else is in the house, I’m fine. When left to my own devices, however, the system breaks down. Paranoia sets in. I’ve been through tech at least nine dozen times and know how consuming it is, but rationality can be hard to find at 2 a.m.

  From my journal, 5 August:

  “The fact that Scott can’t find a way to actually be at home more often must mean that
there is something fundamentally wrong with me. Why would he want to be here anyway? If he feels so guilty, why can’t he work on changing the situation instead of whining about how guilty he feels? His guilt is really no replacement for an actual spouse. I’m so tired and angry about always feeling like I’m being unreasonable by wanting a husband who is actually present. Why can’t I find a way to get used to this. But if I were really what he wanted in a wife, he would be home more. So I must not be what he wants. Especially now.”

  There are, in fact, actually spots on this page where my tears made the ink run. This fit of rage and jealousy is not my finest moment in a long, long series of not-finest moments. I add to it by becoming rabidly convinced that Scott is actually having an affair. Once tech ends and he’s home again with some regularity, I turn on him, hurling accusations and recriminations at the one person who hasn’t wavered at all during this whole debacle. It isn’t pretty. And as easy as I now find it to talk about the baby, the depression, and the aftermath, I can’t give you the details on how much bitter ugliness I piled on him. I am too ashamed, even now. I don’t know why he stayed.

  August 8, the day that sparkles like a polished diamond:

  “Yesterday, you graced us with your first real smiles. You’re gonna break some hearts with that grin, kiddo. Melted mine.”

  I’d like to say that that was all it took and I was cured. That would be complete and utter bullshit, but it did get better. Time passed. I found ways to fill it. I walked. I sweated. During one such jaunt, the phrase “Hillbilly Gothic” came to me as I was trying to come up with the right description of my mother’s family. I was next to the Presbyterian church on the corner, waiting for the light to change so that I could cross the street. The fact that I filed it away as great fodder for a writing piece proves that I was able to envision a future again, and one in which I could work. I had a strange epiphany, right there in front of the church, a realization that this strange summer was but a passing phase. And then someone cranked up a lawn mower and I lost the rest of the thought in the din. The Lord does work in mysterious ways.

  I stopped writing in my journal, mostly because I didn’t feel compelled to anymore. Also, the time that I would have spent writing, I spent napping. Yes, the sleep fairy was making regular rounds to the bedroom again. I had missed her, even though I’ve always pictured her looking like Kirstie Alley.

  Rather than brood when the baby napped, I flung myself into reorganizing my life whenever I felt rested enough. I started simply, with a nebulous desire to rearrange baby clothes so that I could always find what I was looking for. I plunked Maddy, who was snoozing in her car seat, in the middle of the nursery and got to work, filling all of the empty floor space with the contents of every closet and drawer. She woke up, of course, in the middle of it. When she drifted off again after a bottle, I went back to work. By the time Scott came home, everything was in its place and I was smirking like a self-satisfied cat.

  The next day, I tackled our linen closet/medicine chest. It took a week, what with scheduling around the naps. After that, I took on the bookshelves. Scott kept coming home to stacks of books covering every flat surface in the house, with the baby and her car seat plunked in the middle of them somewhere. My eyes took on the zeal of a professional organizer. By the end of a couple of weeks, I had three diaper boxes of unwanted books to take to the used bookstore and shelves that were actually alphabetized and sorted by genre. I amazed even myself with that last feat, given that my previous strategy was simply to cram books in wherever there was an open space.

  The rest of the time I filled with knitting hats, which I’d learned how to do after writing a story on local knitting groups, of which there are many in Knoxville. I couldn’t devote much time to these hats before I had Maddy. All that I knew how to knit was a simple cap with a rolled brim. Folks were always asking me when I was going to do some bootees or a blankie. “I only do hats,” I’d tell them, “and only sporadically.”

  But during my organizational phase, I found a ragged piece of knitting that needed to be finished. It was something I could do with my hands while the baby hung out with me on the couch or slept in my lap. When I ran out of yarn, I worked up the courage to lug her to my favorite yarn shop one day. The owner made the appropriate fussing noises and amused the child while I shopped for more hat yarn. It was a tiny accomplishment, but my pride was immense. A few weeks later, I picked up a book of kids’ sweater patterns and started one a few days later. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d anticipated.

  From my journal, August 29:

  “So it’s been a while since I’ve written. Things have been busy—and more stable. I still have doubts—lately my biggest fear is that you’re not getting enough sensory input to develop properly—but I am generally more confident.

  “Some thoughts and observations:

  “When you eat and it’s going well, you ball up your fists under your chin and curl your toes up. Nothing has ever tasted so good.

  “You love walks and are more alert than ever when we go out.

  “There’s some ancient intelligence living behind your eyes. And you seem so pissed off that your body won’t do exactly what you want it to.

  “We almost have you on a schedule where you eat a lot every four hours. Tonight may mark the end of that, given how fussy you’ve been, but it was nice while it lasted.

  “Oh, and today marks the day when I cut my hair really short. Not sure how I feel about it yet. It makes me look a lot more like my mom, which is disturbing as hell. I may have made a grave mistake.”

  September 3:

  “First day back to work tomorrow and your first day at day care. Last week, I couldn’t wait to hand you off and have some contact with other adults. Now, though, I break into tears about leaving you in a strange place. Will they know how to play with you? Will you be scared of the unfamiliar faces and surroundings? Will you cry the whole time? If I didn’t need to get out of the house so badly, I would call the whole thing off. We shall see…”

  On that day, after dropping off Maddy at day care and shedding a few requisite tears, I made a quick stop at the Salvation Army because it was on the way back downtown. I dropped a half-dozen knitted caps and my green floral pajamas into the box. And then I went to work.

  11

  I make it sound so easy. Just knit a few hats, clean out a few closets, go for a few walks, et voilà, sanity. While this isn’t untrue, it isn’t the whole truth. But the whole truth is remarkably boring, just like most of day-to-day life is. Some days, during my forced confinement with the child, I did nothing more impressive than watch TV and read Entertainment Weekly. Occasionally, I would spend a whole day crying because I couldn’t find a clean T-shirt and lacked the will to wash one. On those days, I did my best to get out of the house, to pack up the baby and head for any space that contained other people. On really bad days, I’d inflict myself on my friends, especially the ones who were willing to listen to me gripe and who usually had snacks in their cupboards.

  I wish there were a miracle cure. I could make an astounding amount of money by marketing it. There isn’t. The only way to get through it is by getting through it, by finding a good shrink or two and listening to their advice. Eventually, one of my mental-health professionals said that I was now in the same zip code as sane, and that was enough to make the struggle less of one. The advice worked for me, even though I still felt like a stranger to myself most of the time.

  But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Andrew Solomon, in his book The Noonday Demon, an atlas of his own depression, talks about the unseen benefits of losing your mind. “Psychiatric illness often reveals the dreadful side of someone,” he writes. “It doesn’t really make a whole new person. Sometimes the dreadful side is pathetic and needy and hungry, qualities that are sad but touching; sometimes the dreadful side is brutal and cruel. Illness brings to light the painful realities most people shroud in perfect darkness. Depression exaggerates character. In the long run, I think,
it makes good people better; it makes bad people worse. It can destroy one’s sense of proportion and give one paranoid fantasies and a false sense of helplessness; but it is also a window onto truth.”

  The person I was before the baby is gone, for the better, I think. It’s not that I was horrid—at least, I don’t think I was—but I was quick to judge others and in constant fear of being found out as a fraud. I lived my life in pursuit of perfection, because that was the only way that I felt the world would deem me worthy of its love. Now, I just don’t give two shakes about making the world love me. I know who does and that it is based on who I really am, not who I want you to think I am. I spent too much time in my twenties running, denying that the past could have any influence on my present. Screw that. I’m too tired to play that game anymore, especially since striving toward being honest is so much more rewarding.

  I don’t mean to paint myself as a saint, one pure woman in search of authenticity who brings with her an aura of peace, calm, and beatific enlightenment. Most days, I’m happy I remember to brush my hair, much less polish my halo. I have been known to scream at Maddy, who, at almost three, is now referred to as the Diva. I have also been known to scream at the spouse, especially when I’m not feeling he understands how hard it is to be a mom, a writer, a teacher at the local college, and the chief scheduler and cook. I have been known to serve popcorn with a side of butter and salt for lunch. The Diva is not enrolled in soccer and gymnastics and swimming and ballet. She watches TV. She eats red dye and French fries and nonorganic produce, but generally not at the same time. The holier-than-thou mommy patrol, who believe in breastfeeding until college and growing their own organic flax, would be appalled. Which is fine, really, because they aren’t very much fun to hang out with in the first place. I can be perfect and completely insane or good enough and sane enough. I choose the latter—but it is always a choice. I have options, but this is the best way for me to be right now.