What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir

by Cohen, Alice Eve

  Is she a real mother . . . if she doesn’t yet feel love, hopes it will awaken in her, and in the meantime gives up everything to protect the child?

  Is she a real mother . . . if she thinks of her body as a mobile hospital, her womb an incubator, her pregnancy as the nursing task to which she devotes herself to protect this small life inside her, until its lungs are formed and its heart is strong?

  Is she a real mother if she does exactly what she’s told to do?

  If she doesn’t kill herself?

  Is she a real mother if she is terrified at every waking and sleeping moment for the safety of the child?

  Is she a real mother if she will sacrifice her life for the child inside her?

  Is she a real mother if she said, out loud, when she first saw it on the video monitor, that she didn’t want it?

  Is a mother who contemplated aborting her six-month fetus a real mother?

  What prevents a mother from loving?

  When a woman is forced to be a mother.

  When being pregnant makes her feel imprisoned and insane.

  What is an infertile woman who has a baby?

  Why did the baby leave the womb?

  To get to the other side?

  Because of the Hormones?

  Because she is a Miracle Baby?

  All of the above.

  When is a baby a miracle?

  When is a baby not a miracle?

  Aren’t all babies miracles?

  What is a mother who loves all children except her own?

  Is she still herself if she doesn’t recognize herself?

  Aunt Phyllis

  I called my Aunt Phyllis.

  “Alice, dahling, listen to me. You’re being too hard on yourself. When I was pregnant with your cousin Walter in 1949, my obstetrician said—I’ll never forget this!—he said, ‘Phyllis, I like to deliver a small baby, a six-pound baby. I don’t want you to gain more than twenty-five pounds.’ So he put me on a diet, and I called him and said, ‘But Doctor, I get so hungry,’ and he said, ‘Phyllis. If you get hungry, eat a candy bar.’ And I called him again, and I said, ‘But Doctor, I’m still hungry after the candy bar,’ and he said, ‘Phyllis. If you’re still hungry after the candy bar, have a cigarette.’ So I followed his instructions, and I smoked cigarettes all through my pregnancy. Do you think Walter suffered? He’s nearly six feet tall and he’s the dean of the graduate school at Cornell University. So stop worrying.”

  Scene 6

  Solo Theater

  On the last Monday night of September, I get out of bed unsteadily, get dressed, and cab downtown to teach my solo theater class.

  My class is enrolled to capacity. Fifteen students. New School University undergraduates and graduate students along with adult education students. A sixteenth student waits outside the classroom door and pleads with me to let her enroll. She’s white-haired, blue-eyed, stout, seventyish, with folds of pale white skin. Under the wrinkles, her round face is like a little girl’s, as is her fluttery body language, and the way she repeatedly pushes wisps of white hair from her eyes. “I drove here from Philadelphia and they told me your class is full, but I have to take this class. My name is Bella. They said at registration that you might let me stay.” I invite her into the class. Sixteen students, ranging in age from twenty to seventy, look at me with great expectation. All these people desperate to create solo theater. Who knew? It was disorienting to sit upright, act like a normal person, interact with students, teach a class.

  “All theater is storytelling,” I tell my class, “but solo theater is a more primal form—akin to the ancient teller of tales, the Homeric bard, the African griot, the trickster, and the shaman. In this course we’ll define ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ very broadly. Other peoples’ stories, your own stories, fantastical stories, stories with or without words. My goal is for each of you to find the story you want to tell and the way you need to tell it. The story you are compelled to tell right now might be different from the story you will want to tell a year from now. The way you tell your story now—the lens through which you view the story, the medium with which you communicate that story, the audience you want to reach—might be different from the way you tell that same story at another time in your life.”

  My students tell the class what brought them to a course in solo theater.

  Jeremiah, a black poet from Alabama, handsome, with dread-locks and glasses, is a year out of the military, getting his college degree, seizing a new life.

  Dani Athena, pale and thin, with black hair and eyes—a choreographer, my age, who teaches dance at a high school, wants to finish a solo piece she started a few years ago.

  Kayla, a nineteen-year-old African American girl from the housing projects in Red Hook, Brooklyn, has harrowing, half-finished stories to tell.

  Bella, a librarian from Philadelphia, tells incoherent fragments with great urgency.

  Richard, the prosecutor, tells stories for a living—“When I try a case, I tell a story with witnesses. The adversary tells a different story of the same set of events. My stories have to be disciplined, terse, and to the point. I want to learn to tell stories in a more narrative form.”

  Miriam wants to create a piece about her two dead grand-mothers, still feuding in heaven.

  I tell them I’m expecting a baby at the end of the semester, that I’m on bed rest but my obstetrician has allowed me to teach because this class was so important to me.

  The idea of a fragile life inside of me, the fact that I’m taking a risk by teaching, sets the tone. It’s a high-risk class. They treat the study of solo theater as if their lives depended on it, and as if my life depends on it, which it does.

  For two hours a week, on Monday nights, teaching solo theater, cultivating this crop of storyteller-performers, I recognize myself again.

  Scene 7

  Adoption Option

  I can give up the baby for adoption! Why didn’t I think of this before? The symmetry is redemptive. When Brad and I were unable to have a baby, we received the gift of a child from Julia’s birth mother, Zoe, who, like me, didn’t know she was pregnant for six months. I will reciprocate and give this baby to a childless couple. Unlike abortion, this solution is morally unassailable. I am adoption’s greatest advocate and happiest recipient. Julia is the poster child for adopted children. I’m adoption’s poster mom.

  “The baby doesn’t need adoptive parents,” says Michael. “She already has parents!”

  Undeterred, I call Spence-Chapin adoption agency. “This is very ironic,” I begin. “I adopted a baby through Spence-Chapin nine years ago. Now I’m pregnant and might want to give my baby up for adoption.”

  Eleven years earlier, when Brad and I first walked into the century-old mansion on Fifth Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street, we were given the historical tour. The side door was originally the entrance for pregnant women and girls, hidden from view to protect them from public shame. The grand front entrance was for the adoptive parents. These days, everybody—birth mothers and adoptive parents—enters through the front door; the side door is used for UPS deliveries.

  Because I am on bed rest, Sasha the social worker comes to our apartment and gives us the lay of the land. “There are open adoptions, where the birth mother maintains a relationship with the child and the adopting parents. And closed adoptions, which are confidential, with no continuing relationship between birth mother and child. If the baby is healthy, there will be many potential adoptive parents. If the baby is sick or has significant special needs, there is a much smaller pool of potential adoptive families. Many of the parents who adopt special needs children are devout Christians who dedicate their lives to raising sick and disabled children in group homes.

  “Since you haven’t yet decided whether you want to give up the baby, right after the baby is born, we can arrange to have it placed with foster parents for up to a month while you decide.”

  Michael sits in on the session. “I’m trying to keep this family t
ogether,” is all he says.

  Sasha looks at Michael. “Legally . . .” she says, then pauses and looks at me. “Legally, the biological father has to give his approval before a baby can be placed with an adoptive family.”

  Michael looks at me, actively not giving his approval.

  I think adoption is the right path. Michael disagrees, but our relationship is changing so rapidly, I can’t predict what will happen. I persevere.

  My sisters think this is a nutty idea. So do my friends. In this liberal, Upper West Side community, where abortion is accepted as a woman’s inalienable right, giving up a baby for adoption is inconceivable. There are many adopted children at Julia’s school, from all over the world, but it’s a one-way option, ethically. Adopted children are accepted and valued, their parents perceived as heroic. Where I live, I’d be more harshly judged for giving up my baby for adoption than for having an abortion.

  As an adoptive mother I want to fight for the moral defensibility of giving a child up for adoption. I want to start by correcting the distorted and misleading language of adoption. Giving up a baby sounds like abandoning it, throwing it away. But it’s a gift. I want to give, not give up this baby, to a childless couple who will welcome her with the unambivalent devotion that eludes me.

  “That’s euphemistic and self-serving,” says Michael.

  “How can you say that when Julia’s adopted?”

  But what would it mean to Julia, as an adopted child, if her mother gave up her little sister for adoption. Would it open up an early wound, make her fear that I might give her away to someone else? And Michael, who is ready to be this baby’s father, has never given me away or given me up while I’ve been on bed rest, hasn’t rejected me while I’ve been not-so-quietly losing my mind, has been patiently and lovingly taking care of Julia, proving what a remarkable stepfather he is to her and what a wonderful father he would be to this baby.

  Michael brings me a bottle of emerald green Gatorade. He sits on the edge of the bed while I prop myself on my elbow to take a few swigs.

  “My mother says she’ll adopt the baby,” says Michael.

  “That won’t work.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I can’t believe you told her we were considering adoption.”

  “We aren’t considering it. You are.”

  “What else did your mother say?”

  “She told me to be patient. She’s says your emotions are out of whack because of your pregnancy hormones, and you’ll snap out of it.”

  I have to get the fall issue of Play by Play to the printer. It’s not easy editing from my futon office, left cheek mashed into my pillow, facing the telephone and laptop on Michael’s side of the bed. The screen is perpendicular to my line of vision, so I prop it on Michael’s pillow at a forty-five-degree angle and hope my left arm doesn’t fall asleep before I finish typing. I’m having trouble maintaining my sense of professionalism.

  Now my star student writer has stood me up, damn it! Yolanda is a twelfth-grader at a high school in the South Bronx. An articulate seventeen-year-old from the Dominican Republic, she’s already been guaranteed a journalism scholarship and wants to study at Emory College. I’ve left a whole page blank for her review of a new play at Repertorio Español, which she has agreed to write in both Spanish and English, but she’s missed her deadline and hasn’t responded to my multiple e-mails or phone calls.

  I leave another message on Yolanda’s cell phone, trying to strike the right balance between supportive and scolding, between professional editor and maternal nudge.

  “Yolanda. Please call me. Your extemporaneous review of the play on the phone last week was word-perfect. All you have to do is write it down.”

  Her call wakes me from a nap. “I’m really sorry to let you down, Ms. Cohen.”

  “It’s okay, as long as you e-mail your review by—”

  “I can’t write the article.”

  “Then just make it up now, on the phone, and I’ll type it for you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  Yolanda sighs deeply, almost a groan. “I just found out I’m pregnant. There’s a lot to think about. I have to figure out what to do.”

  “Me too!” shouts my thought bubble. But I’m the grown-up here, Yolanda’s mentor.

  “I can imagine how difficult this must be for you,” I say, trying to disentangle my numb left arm from the intertwined phone and power cords. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I guess so. This is so confusing, cause my life was on a track that made me really happy, and this totally derails me. I mean, my boyfriend wants me to have the baby, but I want to be a journalist, right? I don’t want to give up this scholarship. Nobody in my family has ever gone to college. If I have the baby I probably won’t finish high school, so don’t even talk about college. I feel like my future has just died.”

  I feel an intense identification with this seventeen-year-old grieving for her lost future.

  “Do your parents know you’re pregnant?”

  “Are you kidding? My mom, she’s Dominican—maybe you can’t appreciate what that means—she’s like having a party over this baby. She’s knitting booties and mittens already, you know?”

  “She’s happy that you’re pregnant?”

  “Oh my God, totally! From the time I was fifteen she was like, ‘Yolanda, chica, when you going to give me grandchildren?’ ”

  “Wow. But what about your college plans?”

  “Are you kidding? She doesn’t want me to go to college! Emory College is in frickin’ Georgia! She’ll do anything to keep me home. She and my boyfriend are—they’re like conspirators. I think they planned this pregnancy for me, to keep me home. Don’t get me wrong. I’m equally responsible as my boyfriend, he didn’t force me into anything. We used a condom, but it broke.”

  I feel the baby kicking and put my hand on my belly. Yolanda is the only other pregnant woman I’ve talked to since finding out that I’m pregnant—but she’s not a woman, she’s a girl. It’s hard not to blurt out my story.

  “You must think I’m an idiot, right? A stupid, pregnant teenager.”

  Which makes me what?—A pregnant, old idiot.

  “I think you’re a very smart and talented girl, with difficult decisions to make.”

  “I’m sorry I screwed up your magazine.”

  “You didn’t screw it up, don’t worry about it. Good luck with everything.”

  I wonder what Yolanda will decide, knowing I’ll never hear from her again.

  The fall issue of Play by Play is printed in a larger-than-usual font, with lots of photos.

  It’s late October. I haven’t seen fall foliage. On my way back home from my East Side appointment with Dr. Rosenbloom one late afternoon, I ask the cabdriver to take Central Park Drive and circle the park so I can see the fall leaves. He laughs and warns me it will double the cost of the trip. There are some red and gold leaves, but most are brown and many have fallen. Outdoors, the season passes quickly, while in my bedroom, lying on my left side, time is interminable.

  Lamaze: First Lesson

  Joy, the birth coach from New York Hospital, makes home visits. She comes Tuesday nights to tutor me and Michael in Lamaze technique and give us tips on preparing for childbirth. She sets up a flip chart in the living room. We sit on the sofa and watch the show. Joy’s a very funny lady who moonlights as a stand-up comic.

  “One of my patients recently asked me, ‘Is it okay to have children after forty?’ And I said, ‘No, I think forty children is quite enough.’ Ba-Dum Ching! So where are you guys from?” Joy shows us how to breathe, gives me some relaxation techniques, and shows Michael how to massage me. He practices his massage technique later, in bed. Nice.

  Adoption Visit

  On Sasha the social worker’s second visit, she brings a photo album of hopeful adoptive couples, which she leaves with us. “Look this over. When I come back next week, tell me if there’s a couple you’re interested in plac
ing your baby with.”

  After Julia is asleep, we look through the album together. Self-portraits of seven childless couples. His arm is always around her shoulder, in their suburban ranch home, their apartment, their condo, their golden retriever running on the lawn, or their cat on the windowsill. Accompanying each picture is a personal statement, typed or handwritten to an unknown birth mother, promising a loving home, a religious foundation, a solid education.

  Eleven years earlier, Brad and I had a page of this scrapbook. We didn’t have a dog or cat or lawn, but we had the photo with Brad’s arm draped around my shoulder, and the personal statement trying to win over an anonymous pregnant woman. We tried to spin our freelance orchestra conductor and performance artist careers in the most positive light, so we’d be competitive with the equally childless but more financially stable stockbrokers in the album. Lucky for us, Zoe wanted her baby to be raised by artists, and chose us from a Spence-Chapin album just like the one Michael and I are flipping through right now.

  Michael and I are casting agents, auditioning these couples for the roles of Best Mommy and Daddy. We read their sentimental statements, look at their affectionate smiles. They look like nice people. But this job of shopping for parents by catalog seems insane.

  Michael asks, “Which couple do you think would be the best parents?”

  There are teachers, investment bankers, gardeners, and homemakers. They are homely, attractive, fat, thin. They are good writers and terrible writers. They all desperately want a baby. I turn the pages of the album again, pausing at each portrait to imagine the couple holding this baby inside me.

  “We are,” I say.

  “Yes!” Michael groans in relief.

  “These people don’t know how to raise a lesbian athlete,” I say. “We do.”