The Pioneer Woman

by Ree Drummond

  “Your belly’s getting big,” he said one night.

  “I know,” I answered, looking down. It was kind of hard to deny.

  “I love it,” he said, stroking it with the palm of his hand. I recoiled a little, remembering the black bikini I’d worn on our honeymoon and how comparatively concave my belly looked then, and hoping Marlboro Man had long since put the image out of his mind.

  “Hey, what are we naming this thing?” he asked, even as the “thing” fluttered and kicked in my womb.

  “Oh, man…” I sighed. “I have no idea. Zachary?” I pulled it out of my wazoo.

  “Eh,” he said, uninspired. “Shane?” Oh no. Here go the old movies.

  “I went to my senior prom with a Shane,” I answered, remembering dark and mysterious Shane Ballard.

  “Okay, scratch that,” he said. “How about…how about Ashley?” How far was he going to take this?

  I remembered a movie we’d watched on our fifteenth date or so. “How about Rooster Cogburn?”

  He chuckled. I loved it when he chuckled. It meant everything was okay and he wasn’t worried or stressed or preoccupied. It meant we were dating and sitting on his old porch and my parents weren’t divorcing. It meant my belly button wasn’t bulbous and deformed. His chuckles were like a drug to me. I tried to elicit them daily.

  “What if it’s a girl?” I said.

  “Oh, it’s a boy,” he said with confidence. “I’m positive.”

  I didn’t respond. How could I argue with that?

  MORE AND more, I began helping around the homestead. I learned to operate my John Deere mower so I could keep the yard around our house—and our half-remodeled, boarded-up yellow brick house—neatly trimmed. Marlboro Man was working like a dog in the Oklahoma summer, and I wanted to make our homestead a haven for him. The heat was so stifling, though, all I could stand to wear was a loose-fitting maternity tank top and a pair of Marlboro Man’s white Jockey boxers, which I gracefully pulled down below my enormous belly. As I rode on the bouncy green mower in my heavily pregnant state, my mind couldn’t help but travel back to the long country drive I’d taken when I was engaged to Marlboro Man, when we’d stumbled upon the old homestead and found the half-naked woman mowing her yard. And here I was: I had become that woman. And it had happened in less than a year. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of our bedroom window and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The Playtex bra was all I was missing.

  I was nesting now, completely powerless to stop the urge to give our entire house, yard, and garage a daily scrubbing. Inexplicably, I began cleaning baseboards for the first time in my life. I wiped down the insides of cabinets and made lists of what to dust on what days of the week. Monday was the top of the fridge. Tuesday was the top of the cabinet in the bathroom. Every day I washed and dried Onesies, burp cloths, and tiny socks in an intoxicating potion of Dreft and Downy; our whole house smelled like a white, puffy cloud.

  Marlboro Man was so excited for his son to be born. We’d elected not to have the gender-identifying sonogram, but he was convinced, as was I, that it was going to be a boy. Marlboro Man had grown up in a house with two brothers, on a ranch full of cowboys. A son would come first; it was simply predestined.

  MARLBORO MAN and I had built a life together. As different as I felt—and as distorted as I looked—it amazed me how similar it all felt again to the time before we were married, when we first met and fell in love. We had been very much in our own little world then—spending 95 percent of our time together alone. Now, in our little house on the prairie, it was still just the two of us. In an effort to spin optimism out of the sorrow of my parents’ split, I told myself that their separation, paradoxically, had actually brought Marlboro Man and me closer together. If I’d had a home to go to—one still thriving with a mother and a father and all of the warmth with which I’d been surrounded as a child—I might have been tempted to visit home more often. To fold laundry with my mom. To sit and visit and cook and bake and maybe spend slightly less time at home with my new husband who, it turned out, had needed me so much over the previous several months. So it was good, I told myself. In the long run, this whole divorce ordeal would all prove to be good.

  But it really wasn’t good at all. My dad was having a hard time, and in my growing concern, I’d taken to visiting him weekly to assess how he was doing. And seeing him still so despondent, I couldn’t help but project my irritation onto my mother. Why was I having to bear the burden of worry over my father’s emotional health when I should be spending all my time in anticipation over the birth of my baby?

  And that really got me going. What was going to happen when I had the baby? Such a monumental event would surely warrant both my parents being present at the hospital, which was a scenario so horrifying to me that I began to lose sleep about it. My parents hadn’t seen each other since the day my mother left our house; how would my sanity survive such a meeting occurring while I’m in labor or recovering? After stewing about it for several nights, I decided I had no choice but to call my mom and be honest about my dread.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice as far away from warm as I could muster. “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “Sure, Ree Ree,” she said, positive and chirpy.

  I let it out, explaining that while I’d love for her to be present at the hospital, I just wasn’t sure that was the best time for there to be a face-to-face encounter with my dad. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her there, I explained—it was really more about me. The day would be stressful enough without my having to worry about everyone else’s feelings.

  She understood. Or, if she didn’t, she wasn’t about to argue with a nine-months-pregnant woman.

  I checked this item of worry off my to-do list, right along with the sterilized refrigerator, sparkling baseboards, Q-tipped doorknobs, and Cloroxed floors.

  Everything was in place.

  I was ready.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  THE HILLS RUN PINK

  A WEEK BEFORE my due date, Marlboro Man had to preg-test a hundred cows. Preg-testing cows, I would learn in horror that warm June morning, does not involve the cow urinating on a test stick and waiting at least three minutes to read the result. Instead, a large animal vet inserts his entire arm into a long disposable glove, then inserts the gloved arm high into the rectum of a pregnant cow until the vet’s arm is no longer visible. Once his arm is deep inside the cow’s nether regions, the vet can feel the size and angle of the cow’s cervix and determine two things:

  Whether or not she is pregnant.

  How far along she is.

  With this information, Marlboro Man decides whether to rebreed the nonpregnant cows, and in which pasture to place the pregnant cows; cows that became bred at the same time will stay in the same pasture so that they’ll all give birth in approximately the same time frame.

  Of course, I understood none of this as I watched the doctor insert the entire length of his arm into a hundred different cows’ bottoms. All I knew is that he’d insert his arm, the cow would moo, he would pull out his arm, and the cow would poop. Unintentionally, each time a new cow would pass through the chute, I’d instinctively bear down. I was just as pregnant as many of the cows. My nether regions were uncomfortable enough as it was. The thought of someone inserting their…

  It was more than I probably should have signed up for that morning.

  “God help me!” I yelped as Marlboro Man and I pulled away from the working area after the last cow was tested. “What in the name of all that is holy did I just witness?”

  “How’d you like that?” Marlboro Man asked, smiling a satisfied smile. He loved introducing me to new ranching activities. The more shocking I found them, the better.

  “Seriously,” I mumbled, grasping my enormous belly as if to protect my baby from the reality of this bizarre, disturbing world. “That was just…that was like nothing I’ve ever seen before!” It made the rectal thermometer episode I’d endured many mo
nths earlier seem like a garden party.

  Marlboro Man laughed and rested his hand on my knee. It stayed there the rest of the drive home.

  At eleven that night, I woke up feeling strange. Marlboro Man and I had just drifted off to sleep, and my abdomen felt tight and weird. I stared at the ceiling, breathing deeply in an effort to will it away. But then I put two and two together: the whole trauma of what I’d seen earlier in the day must have finally caught up with me. In my sympathy for the preg-tested cows, I must have borne down a few too many times.

  I sat up in bed. I was definitely in labor.

  IMMEDIATELY, I kicked into gear and did what the plan dictated: I got out of bed and took a shower, washing every last inch of myself until I squeaked. I shaved my legs all the way up to my groin and dried my hair and curled it, and put on layers of shimmery makeup. By the time I gently tapped Marlboro Man on the shoulder and told him the news, I looked like I was ready for a night on the town…and the contractions were intense enough to make me stop in my tracks and wait until they passed.

  “What?” Marlboro Man raised his head off the pillow and looked at me, disoriented.

  “I’m in labor,” I whispered. Why was I whispering?

  “Seriously?” he replied, sitting up and looking at my belly, as if it would look any different.

  Marlboro Man threw on his clothes and brushed his teeth, and within minutes we were in the car, driving to the hospital over sixty miles away. My labor was progressing; I could tell. I felt like something was inside my body and wanted to come out.

  It was a normal sensation, given the circumstances.

  AN HOUR later we were pulling into the hospital parking lot. Sparkly and shiny from my hair and makeup job, I had to stop and bend over six times between the car and the front door of the hospital. I literally couldn’t take a step until each contraction ended. Within an hour after checking in, I was writhing on a hospital bed in all-encompassing pain and wishing once again that I’d gone ahead and moved to Chicago. It had become my default response when things got rough in my life: morning sickness? I should have moved to Chicago. Cow manure in my yard? Chicago would have been a better choice. Contractions less than a minute apart? Windy City, come and get me.

  Finally, I reached my breaking point. It’s an indescribable feeling, the throes of hard labor—that mind-numbing total body cramp whose origin you can’t even begin to wrap your head around. After trying to be strong and tough in front of Marlboro Man, I finally gave up and gripped the bedsheet and clenched my teeth. I groaned and moaned and pushed the nurse button and whimpered to Marlboro Man, “I can’t do this anymore.” When the nurse came into the room moments later, I begged her to put me out of my misery. My salvation arrived five minutes later in the form of an eight-inch needle, and when the medicine hit I nearly began to cry. The relief was indescribably sweet.

  I was so blissfully pain-free, I fell asleep. And when I woke up confused and disoriented an hour later, a nurse named Heidi was telling me it was time to push. Almost immediately, Dr. Oliver entered the room, fully scrubbed and wearing a mask.

  “Are you ready, Mama?” Marlboro Man asked, standing near my shoulders as the nurse draped my legs and adjusted the fetal monitor, which was strapped around my middle. I felt like I’d woken up in the middle of a party. But the weirdest party ever—one where the hostess was putting my feet in stirrups.

  I ordered Marlboro Man to remain north of my belly button as nurses scurried into place. I’d made it clear beforehand: I didn’t want him down there. I wanted him to continue to get to know me the old-fashioned way—and besides, that’s what we were paying the doctor for.

  “Go ahead and push once for me,” Dr. Oliver said.

  I did, but only hard enough to ensure that nothing accidental or embarrassing would slip out. I could think of no greater humiliation.

  “Okay, that’s not going to work at all,” Dr. Oliver scolded.

  I pushed again.

  “Ree,” Dr. Oliver said, looking up at me through the space between my legs. “You can do way better than that.”

  He’d watched me grow up in the ballet company in our town. He’d watched me contort and leap and spin in everything from The Nutcracker to Swan Lake to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He knew I had the fortitude to will a baby from my loins.

  That’s when Marlboro Man grabbed my hand, as if to impart to me, his sweaty and slightly weary wife, a measure of his strength and endurance.

  “Come on, honey,” he said. “You can do it.”

  A few tense moments later, our baby was born.

  Except it wasn’t a baby boy. It was a seven-pound, twenty-one-inch baby girl.

  It was the most important moment of my life.

  And more ways than one, it was a pivotal moment for Marlboro Man.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  UNFORGIVEN

  I LAY THERE, depleted and relieved that whatever used to be in my body was now out. Marlboro Man, on the other hand, was stunned. Patting me affectionately, he stared at our newborn baby girl with a shocked expression he couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried. “Congratulations,” Dr. Oliver had said moments before. “You have a daughter.”

  You have a daughter. In the previous several months of gestation, I’d been so indoctrinated with the notion that we were having a boy, it hadn’t even occurred to me that things might go the other way. I couldn’t even imagine Marlboro Man’s surprise.

  “Good job, Mama,” he said, leaning down and kissing my forehead. The nurses immediately wrapped our little one in a white blanket and set her on my chest. Plop. There she was. Lying on top of me. Writhing and looking pink and pitiful and about as precious as anything I’d ever seen. Marlboro Man grasped my hand, squeezing it softly. “Wow,” he said, almost in a whisper. He stared and stared. We were totally quiet. We could hardly move.

  My throat began to tighten as I realized what had just happened. The being that had been growing inside of my abdomen, that had tapped and kicked and pummeled me in the ribs and bladder during those final weeks, that had brought me heartburn and exhaustion and weeks of debilitating nausea, was now lying on my chest, looking around this strange new world in which she found herself. It was the most surreal moment of my life—more surreal than any moment of surprise during my courtship with Marlboro Man, the father of this new human that had just arrived on the scene and changed absolutely everything. She had arms and legs and a nose and a tongue, which she slowly thrust in and out of her tiny mouth in an effort to familiarize herself with the sensation of air. She was a person—alive and moving around in a real world. I realized that tears were rolling down my face. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying.

  WHEN MARLBORO Man and I had gotten married, he had his sights set on starting a family sooner rather than later. I was slightly more ambivalent; I knew having a child would probably wind up somewhere in our future, but I hadn’t exactly been chomping at the bit to procreate. When I’d “turned up” pregnant five weeks after our wedding day, no one had been more excited than Marlboro Man.

  That’s partly because he just knew we’d be having a son. Aside from the occasional visit from a female cousin, Marlboro Man and his brothers hadn’t had much contact with or interaction with girls. His mother had been a positive female role model, but most all of the day-to-day ranching activity involved nothing but men.

  I could feel his disappointment hovering thick in the air. Though he made every effort to appear supportive and pleased, I could tell that Marlboro Man was utterly shocked, just as anyone would be whose life had just—in one, single, amniotic fluid-drenched instant—metamorphosed into something completely different from what he had always imagined it would be.

  Once the baby was assessed and declared healthy and the nurses went about the unenviable job of cleaning up my nether regions, Marlboro Man picked up the phone to call his parents, who had coincidentally taken a two-day trip, not expecting I’d go into labor when I did.

  “It’s a girl,” I heard Marlbo
ro Man tell his mom. Nurses dabbed my bottom with gauze. “Ree did great,” he continued. “The baby’s fine.” The doctor opened up a suture kit.

  I took a few deep breaths, staring at the baby’s striped knit cap, placed on her head by one of the nurses. Marlboro Man spoke quietly to his parents, answering their questions and providing them with details about when we’d gone to the hospital and how it had all gone. I drifted in and out of listening to him talk; I was too busy trying to assimilate what had just happened to me. Then, toward the end of the conversation, I heard him ask his mother a question.

  “So…what do you do with girls?” he said.

  His mother knew the answer, of course. Though she hadn’t had any girls of her own, she herself had been the oldest child of a rancher and had grown up being her father’s primary ranch hand throughout her childhood years. She knew better than anyone “what you do with girls” on a working ranch.

  “The same thing you do with boys,” she answered.

  I chuckled softly when Marlboro Man relayed his mom’s sentiments. For the first time in our relationship, he was the one in a foreign land.

  A LITTLE WHILE later, I found myself waking, groggy and nauseated, from a deep sleep in a regular hospital room. Disoriented, I glanced around the room and finally found Marlboro Man, who was quietly parked in a comfortable chair in the corner and holding our flannel-wrapped little bundle. He was wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt—the best he could manage the night before, when my unexpected labor had yanked us both out of bed. His muscular arms holding our baby were almost too much for me to take. Just as I sat up to take a closer look, the baby stretched out her two arms and made a series of tiny gurgling sounds. I was not in Kansas anymore.