Archive for November, 2006
November 26, 2006 at 11:36 am · Filed under About Deanna's Book, Miscarriage
I have been so struggling with this.
I’ve played with babies and angels and mothers and wombs and sorrow and birth and all sort of words. I have pages of combinations but they all came off as too television drama, or nonfiction sounding, or just plain overblown.
This morning I lay in bed, stressing over this, trying again to put together a set of words that would both let people know the topic but also not be too melodramatic. I thought of all the terms that are unique to these women–being pregnant, trying to get pregnant, losing babies, stuck in reproduction woes. I ran down the list of the abbreviations and terms on the site and then I saw it. I knew immediately this was the title.
Baby Dust.
What term could both embody the loss (ashes to ashes, dust to dust) and also the hope (we sprinkle each other with baby dust to encourage a new pregnancy.)
It’s perfect. And I’m very happy about it. I checked Books in Print and it doesn’t yet exist as a title. Joy!
I’ll change the blog name shortly.
I am about halfway through my outline. I will push hard each week night until the end of NaNo to see if I can get closer to the end. There are many surprises yet in store!
November 24, 2006 at 9:10 pm · Filed under Book Excerpt, Miscarriage
Read the book summary if you need catching up to this point of the book.
Stella patted her purse. She was well armed for the party. Fifth of vodka. She could spike most any drink with Smirnoff and no one would be the wiser. No way to get through a baby shower without it.
She rang the bell. Another newborn in the family. Each one felt like a fist in the gut. But she could handle it. Her loss in life was no reason to resent others who got what she had once longed for.
“Aunt Stella!” Kayleigh herself opened the door, her belly preceding her by at least three feet. Stella smiled and hugged the girl, all of twenty years old and already popping out puppies.
“You look mighty fine, little Kayleigh!”
“I’m so glad you’re here!” She turned, no more than a mite with a basketball attached to her front, and announced. “Aunt Stell is here!”
Stella followed her into the room, where a dozen other women sat around on furniture and folding chairs. Her sister-in-law Patty, Kayleigh’s mother, watched her through narrowed eyes.
She knows, Stella thought, once again touching her bag. She remembers.
She would not get drunk this time. Just a few nips to take the edge off. She normally didn’t drink much at all, but this added to the glory of the alcohol in these moments. I’m a cheap drunk! She stifled a giggle. Patty cleared her throat and Stella straightened her expression.
“I think everybody’s here now!” Kaleigh chirped. An engagement ring on her hand flickered in the light from the sliding glass doors. Not quite going to make it to be legit. The party was actually a combination baby/wedding shower but since the groom had a fully outfitted house, everyone had gone the baby direction.
Other than Stella. She laid her silver package amidst the pink bows and pastels. The crystal frames could be used for either purpose, she reasoned. But no need to step foot in one of those torturous baby superstores.
She lowered onto the overstuffed chambray sofa. The room was so Patty, she thought. Shabby chic, trendy, but cheaply outfitted. Borderline tawdry, actually, with its fraying white lace cloths and bleached muslin drapery.
“Time for games,” Kayleigh said, bouncing from chair to chair with a roll of toilet paper. “Mama isn’t much for silliness, so I’m spearheading the fun at my own shower!”
Everyone glanced at Patty, who sat stiffly in an armchair, lips pursed. She nodded at the crowd and then waved her hand dismissively. “You guys go on and have your fun.”
Kayleigh gestured to the roll in game show host prize style. “Okay, the object of this game is to figure out how long a string of toilet paper it would take to go around my belly.” Kayleigh turned, model-style, her hand on her hip, so everyone could assess her girth.
Stella sighed. She’d get through this one game and then steal away for her first bathroom break. She eyed the punch bowl and other drinks on the far table. Ah, good. Plain punch without any of that nasty sherbert inside. It will work quite well with vodka.
Kayleigh bounced from guest to guest, passing the Charmin. Stella recognized the quilting as she held the soft white roll in her hand. Stella stood, comparing her bulk to her niece. “Well, I think you might have me beat for the time being,” she said loudly, her voice echoing off the wood paneling. Too much, she thought. And she hadn’t even started drinking.
She wrapped a length of tissue around her own belly, then tore off the strip. “I guess we’ll find out for sure in a minute,” she said, softening her tone. “It’ll be a good laugh.”
“Oh Aunt Stell, you’re too much.” Kayleigh tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear and accepted the roll back.
Too much of many things, she thought as she plopped back on the sofa, folding the toilet paper into squares.
When everyone had taken a turn, other than Patty, who sat like she was impaled on a corn cob, Kayleigh danced around the room, allowing each woman to encircle her with their guess.
Titters rippled through the room at the outrageous length of tissue that wrapped the girl two times over. The next ended well before reaching all the way around.
Kayleigh paused before Stella. “Okay, Auntie Stell. Let’s see how we compare.”
Stella stood and pinned one end of her stream of toilet paper beneath Kayleigh’s palm. She walked around the girl, tugging lightly on the strip to pull it taut without tearing the squares apart.
She made her way back to the front. The last square landed neatly with one inch of overlap on the end.
“Wow. Look at that! I think you won!” Kayleigh dropped the tissue on the floor to wrap her arms around her.
Great. She and the pregnant girl had the same waistline.
“Get her prize!” Kayleigh said, waving at another young woman by the food table drenched in pink cakes, pink cookies, petit fours with pink bows, and strawberry tarts.
The girl presented her with a baby bottle festooned with Elmo. Stella placed it in the gift basket for Kayleigh, as was expected.
“Let’s do the one-handed diaper race!” Kayleigh called, snatching a life-sized doll and a stack of Pampers.
Stella slapped her hands on her knees. That was enough for her. She picked up her purse and stopped by the drink table, splashing a touch of punch into the tiny cup. Damn, they wouldn’t have anything bigger.
She stepped into the kitchen, smiling and nodding over the bar as she flipped open her purse and pulled out the flask. Patty’s back was to her, fortunately, or the old shrew might actually walk over and call her out. If so, she’d just go to the bathroom. But no use starting that number early in the party. She might need that escape later.
She drained the cup and poured another half glass before replacing the flask and stepping back out. Another hefty splash of punch tinged the vodka pink enough to pass muster. She settled back on the sofa only after Grandmother Ellen was declared the winner of the diaper race.
“Who knew you still had that in you, Grandma!” Kayleigh said, her cheeks flushing red. “I know who to call in the dead of night!”
“Don’t even try it!” Grandmother said. Stella smiled at her, Dane’s stepmother. His real mom had died when he was twenty, but his dad had done right by the family by bringing on Ellen. Her feisty no nonsense pared with to-the-bone compassion has served them all well during those hard years with the infertility, and certainly the decade before, when all their troubles had really started with the miscarriage of baby Angelica.
Yep, she was a fine woman and Stella was glad to have her around. Ellen glanced over at Stella, as if catching a whiff of her thoughts, dropped her eyes to the drink in her hand, and winked.
Stella smiled at her. She’d been better than Stella’s own mother, who’d spewed every trite expression ever taken down in Bartlett’s little quote book. “It’s God’s will,” was a favorite. So was “All good things come to those who wait.”
If she’d told her just relax and she’d get pregnant one more time, Stella would have shoved the basal thermometer up her mother’s nose. They hadn’t dropped ten grand per IVF round because she needed to cut back on her work, or stay home more, or get a massage.
When Dane suggested they move to Texas to be near his family and put a little space between them and her mom, she’d agreed. Best decision they ever made. So much of their past had been tied up in Minnesota, none of it good.
“Who’s starving? I’m starving!” Kayleigh announced, bouncing back toward Stella. “I got to see if I can beat Aunt Stell’s waistline before the baby comes!”
Stella crossed an arm over her stomach in the flowered tent-like dress and downed the rest of her drink. Good God, she loved that kid but this was getting to be too much.
The women filed past the pink pastry parade. She’d skip the sweets in favor of liquor. She needed to get her buzz on to manage the ooohs and ahs of gift opening.
“So, Kayleigh,” Ellen asked. “Did you ever decide on a name for the baby?”
Kayleigh swallowed a forkful of cake and said, “Yeah, Grandma. I think Paul and I finally agreed on one.”
The murmuring in the room quieted down.
“Well, do tell us,” Patty said, her frown deepening. She’s irked, Stella thought. She wanted to be the first to know.
“Well,” Kayleigh said, flushed with delight in the attention. “At first we thought something like Patricia, for mom,” she gestured to her mother and smiled somewhat patronizingly. “Then we tried various combinations of Kayla and Kelly and Lee like mine.” She glanced around the room, savoring the stillness, all eyes on her. “But we’ve decided on Angelica!”
Stella stomach heaved and she felt certain she’d throw up right there on the shabby chic armrest. Her face burned and what started as panic quickly sizzled into rage.
“How dare you!” She stood, sputtering, and her cup fell to the floor. “How could you do that?”
She looked around, but no one seemed to know what she was talking about.
“Oh do sit down, Stella. You’re drinking again.” Patty crossed her arms across her chest. “Don’t wreck another family event.”
Kayleigh’s doe eyes filled with tears. “Aunt Stell, we worried you’d be mad. But we really loved the name. And it’s not like you really got to use it.”
Stella stumbled through the room, clutching her purse with one hand and the amethyst on her necklace in the other. Several of the women were mumbling to each other.
“What is she talking about?”
“What in the world?”
“It’s the name.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Grandmother Ellen stood, wavering over a cane. “Kayleigh meant no harm,” she said. “We’re dreadful sorry you’re upset about it. Stella, we love you and recognize your distress. I think you naming your first lovely child that when Kayleigh was small probably put some impression in her head and she just came to love the name without thinking about it.”
Kayleigh bent over her belly, full on crying now. Stella paused. “I trust your wisdom in this, Ellen,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier, or any less wrong to me.” She looked around the room, women all casting their eyes to the floor. “But none of you ever treated my babies like they were real or that I might consider myself a mother. And I done sat around and took it for ten years. But this here just beats all.”
She opened the front door and stepped through.
The world spun in a whirl of blue sky and green grass. She couldn’t drive. She knew this. She opened her car and sat, leaning her head on the steering wheel. Maybe she should call Dane to pick her up. She checked her watch. An hour until he got off shift. Damn.
Someone tapped on her window. She turned, bleary eyed, and peered out.
Grandmother Ellen. “Let me in, you twit!” she said, but her eyes were merry.
Stella couldn’t roll down the window without putting the key in, so she opened the door.
“Scoot!”
Stella moved over on the broad front seat of her Cadillac. The diminutive woman settled behind the wheel. “So this is what it feels like to drive a Caddy,” she said. “Your father-in-law never gave me anything bigger than a Volkswagen.” She held out her hands for the keys.
Stella raised her eyebrow. “I intended to sober up before the end of the party.”
“I know. I seen you do this a dozen times. Now give the keys to an old woman.”
Stella passed her the chain. Ellen tossed her metal walking cane in the back and started the engine. “Nobody’s going to say I’m too old!”
They rocketed across the street and Stella clutched the door, grabbing for the seatbelt. “I feel like a cheeseburger!” Ellen called over the roar of the radio. “They didn’t have anything fit to eat at that lame party!”
“It was all pink!” Stella called back, finally snapping the belt into place and turning down the radio.
“Those girls get a theme and they run with it,” Ellen said. “What is WITH all those worn out draperies?”
“Shabby chic.” Stella stared out the window at the houses whizzing by. Ellen knew where the gas was.
“Shabby crap. That son of mine sure did pick a doozy,” she said. “Hopefully Kayleigh’s not too late to save.”
They rode on for a spell. Stella tried not to wince as Ellen slammed on the brakes for red lights and floored it on green. “Where we headed?” Stella asked.
“I already called that husband of yours.”
“Oh?”
“He’ll be out to meet us.” Ellen glanced at Stella, then faced the road again. “You know, Kayleigh asked me if she should name the baby Angelica. She was pretty darn worried about it.”
“Then why’d she do it?”
“She couldn’t explain it. She just felt like it was special somehow, like the baby told her to call it that.”
The light shone straight through the old woman’s thinning hair and edged her in white. Stella could see every wrinkle, each smile line, deep creases thinning out until they disappeared into her pores. “I guess I’ll have to live with it.”
“That’s what we do. For family anyway. Husbands we can do without. Totally ditchable if they’re no good. But kids, aunts, nieces. They’re keepers.”
They pulled into the main parking lot of the refinery. Dane stood by the front entrance, leaning against a metal column.
“Isn’t he the most beautiful thing?” Stella said. He walked toward them, a lanky off centered stride, his hair gold red on his head and face.
“Yes, he is. I’m glad to call him a son of mine, even if I got him late. And I’m glad for you. You two would have made fine children.” Ellen reached to clasp Stella’s hand. “But you two are fine anyway.”
Dane dropped Ellen back off at the party and they drove home in silence. Stella stretched out on the flat broad seat, her head in his lap. He twirled her hair between his fingers as he always did.
“You gonna say what happened? Ellen just said she needed me.”
“I’m sorry you had to take off.”
“Just half an hour. Larry went on shift early for me. He was already there.”
Stella watched the minute tick by on the clock in the dash. Silly Caddy had an old fashioned analog clock. It seemed out of place. She sighed. “Kayleigh is naming her baby Angelica.”
“Whew.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t seem like too good an idea, naming your kid after a dead one.”
“No, it don’t.”
“She sure about it?”
“Ellen said Kayleigh thought the baby was telling her to call it that.”
“Good Lord.”
“I know.”
“It’s been ten years since then. You think we’re ever going to get over that?”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
“Yeah, I don’t reckon we will.”
“Dane?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to go to the shop.”
“What for?”
“I just need to.”
He drifted across the lanes of the highway to exit early. The strip mall was deserted on a Sunday afternoon, all small stores that stayed closed to give their owners a rest day, like her.
She opened the back door and headed straight for the cabinet where her bracelets lay. The worktables were strewn with amethyst and peridot in varying shapes. She’d made the first shipment on the big order but had many more pieces to make for the second.
She opened the little doors and slipped both bracelets on her wrist. Dane came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “What’s up, Pell Mell?”
“I don’t know. I feel this unsettledness. This anxiety.”
“The booze?”
“No.” She pulled away and circled the tables, fingering random beads. “Maybe I’m worried I’ve crossed the line.”
“What line?”
“With the babies. Maybe I shouldn’t be exploiting them.”
“How do you mean?”
Stella picked up two fists full of beads. “This! I started with each piece as a little monument to them. Every bead was a moment of their lives, every finished piece a monument. I prayed over them, cried over them, set them aside with love and hope and some sort of belief that the women who bought them carried my babies around with them, that they had somehow broken into little pieces and got to meet other people, maybe even people they might have known as they lived.”
She sat on the work chair, letting the beads trickle wildly through her fingers, many rolling and dropping to the floor. “I would assess each person who bought something–maybe that would have been Angelica’s kindergarten teacher, or this one was the lady who’d have cut her hair.” She pushed beads into a pile.
“Now I’m doing it for money! Nothing but money! I’ve taken the very thing I once did out of love and turned it into profit! I’ve sold them out! I’ve sold their souls!”
She swept her arm along the table, knocking everything onto the floor.
“Stella!”
“I’m awful! I used them! I used my babies!” She reached into the basket of finished pieces carefully packaged in plastic bags. “I can’t believe it! I’m horrible! I’m awful! I didn’t deserve them!” She tore at the bags, ripping them open and smashing the jewelry against the tables. Beads flew across the room, bits of silver and clasps disappearing into the dust in the corners.
Dane grabbed her arms and pressed them against her sides in a full body hug. “Stell! Stop! You didn’t! It’s not like that!”
“It is! It is! And now nobody cares enough about them any more to even leave their names alone!” She leaned over the table, forehead to the hard surface. Dane still held her down, pulling her close to him.
“You loved them, Stell. You did. Nothing you do now can change that, and nobody can take that love away.”
She sobbed then, a rare thing, embarrassing and loud. He relaxed his grip and turned her to him, pressing her head into his chest. “It’s okay, Stell. It’s okay you made the bracelets, and it’s okay you’ve done well by them. It’s not what you do with your hands here that matters anymore. It’s what you keep in your heart.”
November 20, 2006 at 9:14 pm · Filed under Book Excerpt, Miscarriage
The baby had no brain.
Barry had handled the news with concern mainly for her. He’d held her hand when the doctors insisted she terminate the pregnancy.
They’d sent her to an abortion clinic, as the regular clinic couldn’t perform the surgery. Barry had shielded her from the others in the waiting room, mostly teens, anxious with their parents.
“They’re getting rid of their babies, when we’ve lost ours,” she said to him as the nurse called back another young woman, this one hanging on to her teenage boyfriend.
He’d squeezed her arm. “It’s hard I know. But they’ve got their stories, their hardships too.”
Dot nodded and leaned on his shoulder. The baby was kicking her. “Hey, feel him,” she said. “We won’t get to much longer.”
He put his hand on her belly. “Hey Bubba,” he said, leaning close to her distended stomach. “You probably can’t hear us, but we’re here. We’re right here.”
Dot pushed his hand hard against her belly. “Please tell me you can feel him. I know he doesn’t kick very hard as small as he is, but tell me you can feel him.”
Barry looked straight at her with his crystal blue eyes. “Here, let’s try this.” He ran his hand beneath her shirt, oblivious to the people around them, the clerk at the desk, the ding of the elevator outside in the hall.
“There it is again,” she said, and shifted his hand. “Please tell me you can feel him, this once.”
Barry closed his eyes and held firm, his hand warm on her skin. “Is it small, like bubbles breaking on the surface of water?”
“Yes.” Dot turned her face into his shoulder. She had told herself she could be strong in this, but she didn’t feel strong. She was afraid to start crying, afraid she couldn’t stop.
“I feel it, Dot. I do. It’s Bubba.”
The nurse called her name. She stood as if in a dream, the scene had gone liquid around her. They couldn’t do this. Bubba was alive, and they were going to kill him. Her knees gave out and she stumbled. Barry caught her and wrapped an arm hard around her waist. “Here, I’ll help you,” he said.
“I see God,” she said. The nurse had opened the door and light poured from overhead. Her wet eyes magnified its intensity and she was momentarily blinded.
“He’s here to watch over you and the baby,” Barry whispered.
“He’s here to carry out his punishment,” she said. “My child is dying for my sins.”
Barry led her into a room behind the nurse and seemed to concentrate on the instructions. Dot quit listening. She could not follow the stream of words. She looked around the room–a table with stirrups on the end, not little ones for feet like at the doctor, but big ones for your knees, like the ones where she’d had her babies. It seemed wrong, somehow, to have those kind here.
The room was partitioned, and beyond the half wall she could see crates of glass bottles with big open mouths. Did they put the babies in those jars? Surely not. Surely they wouldn’t be clear. Surely they couldn’t do that–look at the babies in jars.
The nurse left and Barry helped her undress and settle on the table. “Why won’t they let us just have him?” she said. “Why do we have to do this?”
“Baby, the doctors, I guess they just know. They said it’s dangerous, that you could die. You got all those kids, Dot. You can’t risk it.”
Dot rolled away from him. “I can’t see you no more, after today, Barry. It may be a risk of dying to see this baby, but seeing you another day is risking my burning in everlasting hell. I will have to work hard every day of my life to earn forgiveness.”
“Dot, you’ve been talking this way every since we found out. I love you. I want to take care of you. We’re going to get you divorced and get this all straight. You’ll get right with God.”
She couldn’t see him, facing the half wall and the jars. “You really think those jars are for the babies?” she asked.
He expelled a rush of air. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”
The nurse returned. “Here’s Dr. Glenn. He’ll be taking care of you.”
“Hello, Dot,” the doctor said.
Dot turned on her back. “Are we sure I have to do this?”
“Your doctors sent you to me. That means they were sure. We’re going to fit you with some monitors while we do this–blood pressure, heart rate. You should have taken some medications this morning. Did you get those?”
Dot nodded.
“I’m going to check your laminaria,” he said. “Make sure you’re well dilated. They went in okay yesterday?”
“It was a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel it once they were done.”
The doctor helped lift her feet in the stirrups. “You might want to lose a little weight before getting pregnant again,” he said. “Not healthy.”
Dot washed cold. They were taking her baby before her eyes and he wanted to talk about her weight? She turned to look at Barry, who sat stiffly in the side chair, his knuckles white on his grip on the arm rests. He wants to punch him, she thought. But he won’t. He’s too good a guy. Buster would’ve punched him.
“It all looks good,” he said. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes. The nurse will start the gas.”
A large woman in pink scrubs fitted her with an arm cuff and checked her blood pressure. Then they placed a monitor over her belly. Bubba’s heartbeat flooded the room, a rapid whomp whomp. The nurse flicked off the sound. The screen still silently showed the pulse of it, a small corresponding number like the one on the sonogram blinking in the corner.
184. 178. 192.
Dot closed her eyes until she felt the nurse touching her face. “Try not to cry,” she said. “It will interfere with the gas.” The woman fitted a rubbery mask over her nose and mouth.
Barry took her hand and she concentrated on that one touch, the warmth, every callus, each rough spot in his skin. Had she just told him she couldn’t see him anymore? It seemed the right thing at that moment. But his being here felt right in this one.
The door opened and the doctor came in again. “Is she prepped and ready?” he asked the nurse.
“Yes.”
He sat on a stool between her knees. She felt the cool slide of metal inside her and the opening of the instrument. She looked over at Barry, who sat on the edge of the chair, leaning hard to hold her hand.
“Does she have to be awake for this?” Barry asked. “I didn’t know she would be awake.”
“There’s no need for a general for this procedure,” he said. “It’s expensive and riskier.”
Barry looked at Dot and drew his eyebrows together in concern. She shrugged.
“Here we go, Dot,” the doctor said. “You’re going to feel a little pressure, but no pain.”
“Is the baby going to come out alive?” Barry asked.
The doctor paused a moment. “No,” he said. “We are not dilating her to get it out whole. That would require labor and delivery.”
“It’s going to be in pieces?” Barry turned ashen.
“Yes.” He and the nurse exchanged a glance. “If you think you’d rather not be here, you can wait outside.”
Barry leaned his head on the arm leading over to Dot. “No, I’ll be here.”
The doctor settled back down and Dot struggled with the rubber pieces on her face. She felt claustrophobic, but the air was hot and sweet. She felt mirth rising, a bubble of funny, and she stifled a giggle.
How could they do this? Make her want to laugh when she should cry? She looked over at the nurse, who scowled slightly, as a warning. She looked past her at the monitor.
186. 178. 182.
The doctor reached beside him for a long tube. She couldn’t see much more, as the blue paper sheet blocked her view. She turned back to the monitor and felt Bubba moving within her, slowly, like a wave.
The pressure began low near her vagina and pushed up, as if she were swelling, then reached higher and higher until she could feel it near her belly button, then even higher by her rib cage. The graph on the monitor began spiking and she couldn’t tear her eyes from the screen.
196.
186.
0.
November 20, 2006 at 12:25 pm · Filed under About Deanna's Book, Deanna\'s Story, Miscarriage
I will put a new excerpt up soon, hopefully tonight. I cranked out another 20 pages yesterday and have propelled to chapter six. I am approximately 1/3 of the way through the novel.
I spun out Dot and Barry’s entire story of their love affair last night, and Dot surprised me by revealing more than I thought would be in the book. She lives in a trailer, has been deserted by her husband, and Barry comes along as her first true love at age 26. She already has five kids.
But she gets pregnant, and the baby ends up with anencephaly, and in a pair of very difficult scenes, a happy sonogram goes very wrong, and eventually she is forced to terminate the pregnancy to avoid endangering her own life in delivery.
I didn’t plan to write the termination sequence into the book, but when one of you ladies posted mentioned a family who got to hear their baby’s heartbeat on the monitors until the very last one, well, I had to write it. Along the way I mentioned another troubling story when the doctor commented on a woman’s weight as he put her in the stirrups, as well as a rather awful comment from my own nurse (I had to go to an abortion clinic like many of us do when we are in the second trimester before the baby dies) during my D&E warning me “not to cry or it would interfere with the anesthesia gas.”
Yeah, don’t cry as they take your baby from your body.
While I doubt a lot of caregivers will read the book–and even if they did they probably wouldn’t recognize insensitivity as it might apply to things they sometimes do or say–I do want people to be shocked by what has happened to people and hopefully speak up. Most of us, in these traumatic moments, don’t say anything at all. I didn’t. And while many wonderful ob/gyns and nurses (my regular ob/gyn and staff are certainly among them) are amazing and kind and help us through the process with sensitivity and compassion, many–so many–make our experiences even harder than they have to be.
I will post the excerpt when I get a chance to read over it (right now I am eleven orders behind on my photo work) and we can all feel what is like to see the heartbeat go from 180 to zero in the space of a lifetime.
It’s been a hard day or two of writing, and most everyone in the Austin NaNoWriMo group is prepared with Kleenex when I come to a write in.
But I’m doing okay.
November 14, 2006 at 4:04 pm · Filed under Book Excerpt, Miscarriage
Here is the story leading up to chapter four:
In chapter one, you go through Melinda’s miscarriage and Tina’s premature birth.
In chapter two you met Stella, the group leader, and go to the first meeting of the miscarriage group, where Melinda and Tina realize they lost their babies the same night.
In chapter three you follow home group member Dot, who lives with her five children in a trailer park. Her philandering truck driver husband has been gone for two years, and she has fallen in love with another man, accidentally gotten pregnant and lost the baby. Now her husband calls saying he’s coming back.
We then turn to Janet’s story. She’s the director of a school for the gifted and about to hurriedly marry her boyfriend to avoid a scandal of her single pregnancy when she loses her baby. Marcus asks her to marry him anyway, but she can’t decide what to do.
Stella’s husband visits her shop and she surprises him with news of a huge sale. They “celebrate” in the back, but as so often happens in their moments of joy, her big bear of a husband breaks down, upset at his role in their never being able to have a family.
Chapter Four opens to Tina looking through her high school yearbook. She’s decided she needs a new boy to father a new child so she can go back to her alternative high school. Her old school is torture, the students are horrible to her. She finally realizes only an older man can help her, so she decides to search for one on the internet.
After this we find Melinda preparing to go to the next meeting of the group, disturbed by her hallucinations where she still sees the trail of blood leading from the toilet.
Here is the second meeting of the group and the introduction of Gabriella.
______________________________________________
Stella and Janet had already arrived, dragging chairs into place.
“Hello Melinda,” Stella said. She was breathing hard just from the effort of moving the furniture. Melinda could see she had once been a real beauty–still was, but the fineness of her features were softened with the extra weight. “You been doing all right?”
“Yes!” Melinda recognized the falseness of her automatic reply, and added, “Well, at least everyone thinks so. I can manage to put on a good front.”
“Fronts are good,” Stella said. “Just don’t fool yourself into thinking the front goes all the way to the bone.”
Melinda nodded. Janet paused for a moment, chair in hand, then shook her head and set it down.
“Are you okay?” Melinda asked. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name.
“Yeah. Oh. No.”
“Sit down, girl,” Stella said, settling heavily into her own chair. “Spill it.”
“Marcus–my boyfriend–asked me to marry him.”
“That’s great!” Melinda said.
Janet stared at her hands.
“Or not.” Stella said. “You said no?”
“I didn’t answer. I didn’t say anything.”
“You have misgivings,” Stella said.
“I don’t know what I have.”
“Is he good to you?” Stella smoothed her glittery blue skirt over her knees. “He’s got to be good to you.”
“He is. He is. He’s just so…emotional.”
Melinda glanced at Stella. She seemed to always have wise words, but no one spoke.
Stella sighed. “Babies are emotional things. Men sometimes can be. The good ones are.” She reached over and patted Janet’s wrist. “Give it some time. Your recovery has dragged out, and this is going to affect your thinking. The hormones can do more jacking with your brain than anyone gives them credit for.”
Janet applied a false smile. “Yes, I am sure. And the bleeding goes on.”
“Okay. Now you’ve called your doctor again, right?”
“No.” Janet clasped her fingers together. “Perhaps it is time I found a new one.”
“He’s not listening?”
“They just tell me the same thing over and over.”
The door flew open and Tina sailed into the room. “I’m late, sorry!”
“You’re okay, child. Sit.” Stella motioned to the circle. “We’re just gabbing.”
“What about?” Tina sprawled in the chair, striped legs in every direction. Melinda smiled inwardly. She seemed totally changed from two weeks ago.
“Doctors, mainly. And men.”
“I’m trying to find one of those myself,” Tina said.
“A doctor or a man?” Stella also seemed bemused by the teen’s turnaround.
“A man.”
“Oh?” Everyone turned to look at her now. Melinda felt a niggle of alarm.
“Yeah. I figure my life got thrashed when I lost the baby. The good school. My parents want me to move back in. Arnie ditched me. I want all that back. Well, other than Arnie. He’s a putz. I’m looking for an older man. One who can help me with the baby.”
The heater kicked on, a light roar that blasted a dry wave of hot air over their heads. Stella shifted in her chair. Melinda toyed with her pants leg, finger pressing the crease.
Stella held Tina’s gaze firm and sure. “I think that if this is what you want, you should move forward, with great care and serious thought. Do it wisely, and consider every possibility, but certainly follow your heart on it.”
Melinda’s face burned. How could she encourage her? She wanted to speak up and contradict her.
Stella’s eyes moved around the circle, resting on each of them. She misses nothing, Melinda thought. She knows we don’t approve.
“I know you other ladies may not agree. But there is only one path we can follow and that is the one we ourselves choose. It doesn’t matter if we’re young or if others think we don’t know what we’re doing. To do what anyone else thinks we should do is the big mistake. And in this group, well, sometimes we’re the only ones who know where we’ve been and where we need to go. I will try to never disapprove. This is the one place where you’re safe to speak your mind, no matter what’s in it.”
Melinda shifted back in her chair, trying to release the tension in her back and neck. She did feel better. At least she did have a husband, a family, security.
The door opened again and Dot hurried in. “Sorry, late again,” she said.
She no more sat than another woman tentatively peeked through the entrance. “Is this the pregnancy loss group?”
Stella stood. “Yes, come on in! We’ve just been chatting.” She seemed flushed, as if unsure of what she’d done and said, but ready to defend it. Melinda watched her greet the new woman, comparing her stance and gestures to the ones she’d first seen upon her own arrival.
The woman tugged her brown sweater over her waist and sat down. Her thick hair cascaded in waves around her broad face, high cheeks, and heavy eyebrows. Pretty. Uncertain. Jittery, even. She tapped a high heeled brown boot anxiously on the linoleum.
“We’ve mainly been talking about our situations. I’m Stella, and we have Janet, Tina, and Melinda with us today.”
“I’m Gabriella.”
“Welcome. Traditionally we explain a little bit about ourselves. Just as much as you’re comfortable sharing.”
Gabriella looked at the other women in the circle, pinching her lips with her hand, then suddenly gasped and started sobbing. “I threw my baby in the trash!”
Melinda sat forward, much like the others, stunned silent.
“It’s okay,” Stella said. “Just tell us what happened.”
Melinda admired her calm. Her own panic whistled in her ears and she could scarcely bear to hear what the woman might say.
“I had been bleeding a little. I went over to my friend’s house and she said we should get away for the weekend. My husband packed some things and met us there. We were all ready to drive down to the coast. I went to the bathroom…” She bent over, arms crossed over her stomach.
“Hang in there, Gabriella,” Stella said. “Take your time.”
Melinda glanced at Janet, then Dot, trying to judge if this sort of story was commonplace for the group.
Janet sat immobile and stiff, her head perfectly aligned over her navy pantsuit, ankles crossed. Dot sat hunched much like she had before, face down, hair covering her cheeks and forehead.
“The baby came out right then! I didn’t know what to do! I just put the baby in a plastic bag, then put it in a grocery sac and left it in the trash behind her house!”
Her voice had reached a terrible pitch, almost a shriek. Melinda tried to maintain her composure, but her own breathing was coming fast.
“I don’t know what to do! All I think about, all day long, all night, where is the baby? Is he still in her trash? In a dumpster? Will he get crushed in a garbage truck?”
She sobbed for a moment and the other women looked at each other. Stella walked over and knelt clumsily beside her chair. “It’s all right. It’s okay to worry about this. It’s okay to think about it day and night.”
Gabriella accepted the hand Stella offered and gripped it so tight Melinda felt sure it must hurt, but Stella did not visibly flinch.
Dot sat up and cleared her throat. “I keep my baby’s placenta in the freezer.”
Everyone turned to her.
“I do.” She pushed her hair back. “I often take it out and hold it. I keep it buried underneath a bag of peas.”
Gabriella reached out with her free hand. Dot hesitated, but extended her own.
“See, none of us are crazy,” Stella said. “We’re just surviving. Survivors don’t have the luxury of acting like regular people. We do what we have to do to get by.”
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Cradle, Broken Heart
