It wasn’t much longer until Peter returned. I caught a glimpse of him before we made eye contact, and I felt my shoulders relax knowing he was nearby. After six years of marriage, he still makes me feel like a teenager, I thought, as I took in his strong jawline and wavy black hair and broad shoulders. And now, even though I knew there was more pain to come, his presence steadied me.
They moved me into a private room—big and bright, with picture windows spanning the horizon. An anesthesiologist arrived to start the epidural, and soon it had numbed my body from the waist down. Now all I had to do was wait. Peter went about setting up speakers so we could listen to music. My mother and sisters arrived. They walked in quietly, but I could see the excitement on their faces. Kate’s eyes sparkled. Elly looked as if she might laugh. Brooks clapped her hands together when she saw me, but then she stopped herself as if she needed permission to continue.
“Hello, everybody,” I said, setting aside the most recent issue of The New Yorker. “No need to tiptoe. The epidural is working its magic. I can’t feel a thing.”
Kate let out a little cry. “I can’t believe this is really happening!”
Mom gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and turned to greet Peter.
Brooks shimmied her shoulders, as if she might start dancing. The three of them crowded around the bed.
I said, “I’m so glad you can all be here.”
“I’m glad you’re early,” Elly replied. “I would’ve been back at school if you’d waited until your due date.”
I was seventeen days early—not enough to be considered premature, but enough to surprise us all.
“Okay,” Brooks said. “Wait a minute. I still don’t understand. How are you so calm right now?”
I pointed to the screen. “It’s all about the epidural. When that line shoots to the top, it means I’m having another contraction. I just can’t feel them anymore.”
“I’d say you’ve been pretty calm all day,” Peter said.
I told the family the story so far. Then they reviewed their afternoon—Peter’s phone call, driving around town to find Mom on a walk with a friend, throwing clothes in bags and piling into the car.
“Dad’s going to come tomorrow,” Mom said.
I nodded, thinking that Dad wouldn’t know what to do with himself through the hours of waiting. But Mom and my sisters seemed happy to be here now. The energy in the room was palpable, like the giddy anticipation of kids on Christmas morning.
We didn’t have to wait long. About an hour after my family arrived, Dr. Mayer checked in again. “It’s time to push,” she said. “We’re a little short-staffed, since this is a holiday weekend.” She turned to my mother. “Mom, think you can help?”
Mom certainly had experience—four deliveries of her own, and one of those without a doctor present. He had walked in with my father, who had been away on a business trip, five minutes after Elly was born. Now Mom pushed up the sleeves of her white turtleneck and took her position holding my left leg. Peter, on the right, was my coach. He never stopped looking at me, and his voice held a mixture of gravitas and pride as he said again and again, “You can do this. Push.”
But I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t feel anything. I was doing something wrong. I was failing. Failing. A monitor started to beep.
“The baby’s heart rate is dropping,” Dr. Mayer said. She turned to a nurse. “Page the neonatologist.” And then she looked at me, equally stern. “When the next contraction comes, you have to push. You have got to get this baby out.”
Somehow, my body knew what to do. With the next contraction, Dr. Mayer cheered. “You’re on your way. Okay. Okay.”
Two pushes later, Penny shot into the world. I caught a glimpse of her wriggling body and heard squawks from her little lungs. With a weary, delighted smile, I lay back. Peter held both sides of my face and choked out the words, “You did it. We did it. She’s beautiful.” He kissed me and held my hand tight.
“Eight out of ten on her Apgar,” someone said.
I turned my head, following my daughter. The neonatologist had just arrived. Her presence seemed unnecessary now. She examined Penny and washed her off, wrapped her in a blanket, and placed her in my arms. Penny had a full head of black hair and pouty lips, and she opened her eyes just long enough for me to see that they were deep blue, the color of a lake on a cloudy day. And then she was gone.
It was all action and congratulations from there—Peter announcing the good news, my body starting to respond to the intensity of what it had just experienced, shaking, teeth chattering, my sisters exclaiming how cute Penny looked when they saw her through the glass walls of the nursery. We called my dad, his dad, his brother, a whole list of friends. Peter even called his boss so he could send an email to the rest of the faculty: Penelope Truesdell Becker, five pounds, five ounces, nineteen inches, born at 5:22 p.m. on December 30, 2005. Alleluia and Happy New Year!
Amidst the euphoria, amidst the doctor’s report that Penny was a little cold and they would bring her in when she had warmed up, a nurse called Peter out of the room. In the back of my brain, a warning signal flashed. I was in the middle of giving directions for Mom and my sisters to get some dinner and was more attuned to my own body than anything else—this mushy midsection that hours before held a baby, these shaky limbs, the ache that began to creep into my back. My legs tingled. Adrenaline seeped out of my bloodstream, leaving me dazed, content.
When Peter returned, my eyes were drawn to a speck of blood on the collar of his red-and-white checked shirt. It took me a minute to realize the blood was mine. Only then did I notice that his eyes were brimming. He grasped my hand. “The doctors think Penny has Down syndrome.”
I kept staring at that speck of blood, trying to differentiate it from the red of the shirt, wondering whether it would come out in the wash or whether it would be a permanent reminder of Penny’s birth. That speck of blood.
Peter said, “Age?” using his nickname for me.
I shook my head. The only word that came to mind was No.
The lines in his face were soft and his tone was gentle, careful. “She has some of the features of a Down’s baby, I guess. The doctors said they can come talk to you if you have any questions.”
“Okay,” I said with a nod.
The world began to break into pieces, as if I had been looking at a scene through a plate-glass window that suddenly cracked, jagged lines distorting my vision. I had a flash of anger—How dare they talk to Peter without me? And then a flash of concern—Is Penny okay? And soon they were standing there, the neonatologist, a woman with thin brown hair who never smiled, and the pediatrician, a round-faced man with sweaty palms. I thought, They don’t know what to say. My voice clenched, but I didn’t cry. I argued with them a little, as if I could convince them to take back their pronouncement. But I couldn’t register their words, with their grim faces and somber tones. Whatever it was couldn’t overcome the narrative inside my head. The lines that began with No and concluded with I want to run away. Far away. Now.
The day before, I had been reading about the tsunami that had devastated the island of Indonesia a year earlier. I read that before the wave hit, all the water had rushed out to sea, leaving a dry floor littered with fish. It must have been an eerie calm, watching, waiting, wondering if the water would return.
After the doctors left the room, I felt like a woman standing on that beach. I didn’t believe what was happening, and so I watched, as if it were someone else’s life. As if the water would never come back. As if there weren’t a tidal wave on its way.
They brought Penny into the room, swaddled tight, her head covered in a blue-and-pink striped hat. All we could see was her little round face. She felt so light as she gazed up at me with those big blue eyes. Her cheeks looked splotchy. When Peter held her, his long arms enveloped her body. He rocked her and stroked her cheek.
As I looked at them together, questions flooded my mind, stealing me from the sweetness of seeing Pe
ter become a father. How could this happen? What does this mean for her? Will I be able to be proud of her? Will I be able to love her?
A nurse entered the room and handed me a pamphlet about breast-feeding. I scanned the page. “You may have difficulties,” it read, “if your baby is more than three weeks early . . . If your baby weighs less than six pounds . . . If your baby has Down syndrome.” It struck me as such a terrible introduction to nursing that I almost laughed out loud. But Penny nestled in and began to eat. It was awkward, and she kept falling asleep, and yet she latched on and sucked. She did it just right. The nurse said, “She’s doing better than any other newborn I’ve seen today.”
For the first time since Peter had told me the news, I smiled. And by the time Penny had finished nursing, I heard a whisper of peace. I sat there without words, without tears, looking at her and wondering what lay ahead. Earlier in the day, the epidural had numbed me from the waist down. Now, its effect worn off, I winced with the effort of trying to sit up. But my emotions seemed to have followed my body, as though an anesthesiologist had found a way into my soul, temporarily protecting me from the fear and sadness and guilt.
I was still sitting there, calm and solemn, when my sisters and mother walked in. I had heard them in the hallway, the cheery cadences of their conversation wafting into the room. But they knew as soon as they saw us. And then the first tear trickled down my cheek. I tried to tell them, but I had to wave in Peter’s direction. He said it again, “The doctors think Penny has Down syndrome.”
Mom nodded, almost as if the news had confirmed a suspicion. Kate’s eyes got big. Brooks jerked her head a little, as if she had been slapped. Elly looked at the floor.
“May I hold her?” Mom asked. With Penny in her arms, she said, “I knew something was wrong from the way the nurses were looking at each other after the delivery. They kept catching each other’s eyes and trying to catch your doctor’s eye, and they weren’t smiling. And Penny’s body didn’t look like all of you when you were born. I wondered if she had dislocated her shoulder or something.”
I thought back to Penny naked, her limbs splayed as they washed her after birth. I hadn’t seen it then, but Mom was right. Her body had looked different from those classic images of newborns curled up tight, arms and legs pulled in.
“And they took her away so quickly,” Mom said. Her voice held relief, as if she had been worried she would return to news far worse.
Again, I hadn’t thought anything of the timing. I hadn’t held Penny for long, but it hadn’t struck me as odd. I just didn’t know any better.
A nurse interrupted. “Penny’s body temp is on the low side, and we need to run some more tests,” she said, extending her arms.
Kate said, “But I haven’t gotten to hold her yet.”
“I’ll bring her back as soon as we’re done.”
Silence settled upon us once Penny was gone until I said, “I need to call Dad.”
“Do you want me to do it?” Peter asked.
I shook my head even though I didn’t want to pick up the phone, to call him back, as though I were retracting the good news from a few hours ago.
It was the first time I said it out loud: “The doctors think Penny has Down syndrome.”
“Oh,” Dad said.
“But she seems healthy,” I added.
“Good.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
When I had told my family I was pregnant, Dad had jumped up and down in the middle of our living room with exclamations of delight. I had never seen him so happy. “Nancy,” he said to my mother, intertwining his fingers with hers, “we’re going to be grandparents.”
After I hung up the phone, a stone of fear dropped into my stomach. What if our families don’t love her?
Mom went back to our apartment around ten o’clock, but my sisters waited two more hours until Penny was back in the room. They stroked her cheeks and rocked her and kissed her forehead. Aunt Kate. Aunt Brooks. Aunt Elly. I was the oldest child and the oldest grandchild. Penny was the first daughter, the first niece, the first granddaughter, the first great-granddaughter. And they all wanted to be with her, even though everything I thought we had known about her had been swept away.
By midnight I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours. My sisters said their good-byes. Penny nursed again, and Peter curled up to sleep in the fold-out cot next to my bed, his hand resting upon my thigh.
A nurse came in. She recorded my temperature and my blood pressure and asked about my pain. I handed Penny to her, and she turned to walk out of the room. Almost as an afterthought, she stepped toward me and said, “I had a special child, too.”
I couldn’t see her face in the dim light. I was lying down, on the edge of sleep.
“How old is your child now?” I asked.
Her tone stayed the same—even and soothing—when she said, “He died a long time ago.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. I didn’t want it to be true. I said, “I’m sorry.”
She looked past me and shook her head, as if I didn’t understand. Before she took her leave, she said, “He was a gift.”
2
I am crying because of you. Because of joy and love that run deeper than any logical construction. Because of sorrow that you are not who I thought you would be.
You are beautiful. You are my daughter. We are delighted to meet you.
And yet I cry . . .
I don’t want to cry over the birth of my daughter.
January 2006
Again and again that night, I emerged from the blissful anonymity of sleep with my heart racing, as if a door had slammed shut, as if a gunshot had pierced the silence. And then I would remember, and I would tell myself, Your daughter has Down syndrome, and I would try to figure out how I had come to be this person, this mother.
Peter slept straight through, his body rising and falling in a gentle rhythm. They brought Penny in to nurse, and he hardly stirred. But I stayed awake, gazing at her little round face, trying to make sense of it all. I didn’t know much about Down syndrome, but I did know that it had happened at the moment of conception, as soon as the chromosomes from Peter’s body joined the ones from mine. From the beginning. Before I even knew she existed.
I thought back to that day in early May. In the course of a week, two friends had called. Each of them said, “I dreamed last night that you were pregnant.” And so, on a warm spring morning, I took a test. Peter had been on his way out the door to coach a tennis match, and I had asked, “Could you wait about three minutes?” I didn’t tell him why until I emerged from the bathroom wide-eyed, smiling. I held out the pregnancy test with its little blue plus sign. He yelped and wrapped his arms around me.
And here she was, falling asleep against my chest. Here she was, needing me to be her mother. Here she was, beautiful and fragile and not who I had expected. This child who had danced along my spine, slept against my organs, kicked my ribs, and handled my hipbones. This child who had been to places inside me that I had never seen or touched, that I had only begun to feel because of her.
Her hands were so tiny—white fingernails that looked as though she had a manicure in the womb—and a chubby face with an upturned nose and puffy eyes. I gazed at her, and the nurse’s words, “He was a gift,” came back to me, a simple, haunting refrain.
———
Peter went out to get coffee in the morning. He returned with a blueberry muffin and a cup of tea just the way I liked it, with one Splenda and a lot of milk. The whole room was a testimony to his care for me—the down comforter and pillow he had brought from home; the laptop computer with speakers set up so I could listen to music; the stack of magazines—Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, First Things—in case I had needed a diversion during labor; and the pile of pastel-colored baby clothes on the windowsill.
He had put away the sheets and pillows from his own makeshift bed and now he sat next to me, elbows on knees, both hands arou
nd the coffee cup, eyes down. I wanted to talk, but I didn’t know what to say. The question that repeated itself inside my head was, How could this happen? When I tried to come up with an answer, all I could think was, We haven’t done anything to deserve this. We haven’t done anything wrong. And Down syndrome is the one thing she can’t have, the one thing we ruled out.
Halfway through my pregnancy, in August, Dr. Mayer had called. Peter and I were on vacation at my family’s summer house. It was midafternoon, and we sat side by side in beach chairs overlooking the water. The air was clear enough to see Long Island, miles away. Its sandy beaches were obscured. Only the trees met my eye, as if they were floating above the water with nothing to anchor them in place.
“I’ve been trying to track you down,” Dr. Mayer said, a hint of admonishment in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. I sat upright, like a kid in school who had been caught not paying attention.
“We got some test results back,” she said, more gently. “From the quad screen you had last week. We’ve been leaving messages at home, but I really needed to get in touch with you.”
I moved my sunglasses to the top of my head, as if I could look Dr. Mayer in the eye. Peter put his book aside.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The results show a 1 in 316 chance that your baby has Down syndrome. Technically, that’s not considered a risk. One in 250 counts as a risk. But you’re so young. For a woman your age, the risk should be closer to 1 in 1,000. You might want to do some follow-up tests.”
She went through the options. A definitive answer could only come via an amniocentesis, but it posed a slight risk of miscarriage.
“No,” I said. “We don’t need that.”
Peter and I had already agreed we wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy in the event of abnormalities, so we scheduled a Level Two ultrasound one week later. And we rejoiced when the technician reported, “This baby may be many things, but it won’t have Down syndrome.”
Good and Perfect Gift, A: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny Page 2