It has been three days and I haven't written a
word for the blog. I have been doing busy work, which I do not hate as much as
I should because it really does keep me from doing things that are
important to me, like writing this blog. Writing the blog makes me vulnerable,
so I carefully craft each post and quadruple check my grammar. Heaven forbid I
should make a grammar error. However, tonight I am going free style. Let's see where we end up
I have been thinking. I have
been thinking about a TED talk I stumbled upon by a woman named Brené Brown. She was
talking about vulnerability and how it is the motivating factor for creating,
innovating and connecting with other people. She says we cannot do these things
unless and until (yep, Dr. Phil) we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. So, this
is swimming around my brain and today I hear a woman, a female employee of the
store I was in, say to another female employee, "I am really worried about
how Obama care is going to affect the hours I am getting. I thought I was going
to be able to stop selling my plasma (blood) but now I think that I will
just have to put up with the cramping in my arms and legs until I can get a
better job." That is a picture of vulnerability. To sell my blood or not
to sell my blood, that is the question and there is nothing noble about it.
Jump to...
It was a hot, hazy, summer afternoon in Los
Angeles, we were just coming over the hill that separates LA county from Orange
County and the smog lay like a blanket over the tops of the buildings. I was in
the back seat. My mother and dad were in the front. He was driving. No one
was talking. After getting lost, really just off by a couple of blocks, we pull
into the parking lot of St. Anne's Maternity Hospital on Occidental. The building
was stucco painted baby shit yellow and it looked more like the back entrance to the place where
you get your oil changed. We walked into a very small reception area and the
woman behind the glass window acknowledged us. Still, no one is speaking. If
this was a movie it would require some awesome cinematography to make it
interesting. I was in the "scene" and if I had not been busy telling
myself I wasn't scared and I didn't care, I would have been bored.
The receptionist picked up a heavy, black,
desktop phone and said something very short and quiet, hung up and returned to
her paperwork. In just 2 or 3 minutes a nun walked into the waiting area from a
door opposite the receptionist. She nodded at my parents, again, not speaking.
She nodded to indicate that she was ready for the hand off.
The nun spoke. She said, "Would you like a
short tour"? My mother said, “No, thank you." She then turned to me
and said, "See you in a few months." My dad hugged me, told me
he loved me and followed my mother out the door to the car. It was the Nun and
me. She looked at me kindly yet stern reached out as if she was going to put
her hand on my shoulder but stopped just short of actually touching me.
Understanding that resistance was truly futile, I shrugged away and cut in front
of her to walk back through the door from which she had just emerged, like I
knew where I was going. She walked silently behind me for a few steps and then
she began pointing out points of interest: here is the chapel, this is the
Cafeteria, here is the group room, through those doors is the clinic, let me
show you to your room.
I am not Catholic. The one and only time I
attended a Catholic mass, as a child, I looked up at the Crucifix and hurled on
my black patent leather shoes. My best Friend's mom who did not want to take me
in the first place never forgave me. What I saw was terrifying. We were in a
room that was vast and echoed, and there was a dead guy hanging on the wall. I
knew the story of Christ and upon reflection I figured out that it was a likeness
of him on the wall, but hey, I was six years old, somebody could have warned
me. After that I steered clear of Catholics and anything Catholic related, so
when that nun walked into the reception area my brain froze and then jumped
into over drive designing my escape. Each time she
pointed out a room I was casing it for an exit. I had nowhere to go but that
was just a detail. Again, somebody could have warned me. I believed to my core
that the Nuns would exact retribution for my hurling incident. Those nuns
have a serious network; I figured they had to have a record of my poor
behavior, somewhere.
I had arrived. St. Anne's Maternity hospital
held 90 young women ages ranging from 12 to 40. We were all there because we
had signed a contract with the State of California that we would sign our
children over for adoption, with the exception of one girl. Laura was angelic.
Long silky, straight hair (that I coveted) tall, from the back she did not look
pregnant at all but that was true of most of us. I learned that many of the
girls in St. Anne's had approached their pregnancies the same way I had-denial.
We stopped eating, wore baggy shirts and got mad and walked off in a huff if
any suggested we had gained weight. The day I walked into St. Anne's at seven months
pregnant I weighed 115 pounds. I was, and am, 5'7".
Laura had fallen in love in high school and when
her boyfriend who truly loved her told her how much he wanted to join the Navy
after graduating High School, she just didn't tell him she was pregnant. She
did not want to stand in the way of his dream. They said their goodbyes and
made promises to stay true to each other. Once he was on the ship she told her
parents she was pregnant and that she would never give her baby away. So, her
parents paid the "tuition" St. Anne's required of girls they
would house, feed and educate but whose babies they would not be processing.
They vowed to never see or speak to her again. They were Catholic.
In her first letter to her boyfriend, Laura told
him she was pregnant and why she had not told him earlier and where she was and
why. He wrote back swearing that he would come to get her and marry her as soon
as he could. I found that highly unlikely but Laura's faith endured and sure enough
before the baby was born a sailor showed up to take Laura away. We know this is
true because I had found a window in one of the bathrooms that allowed us a
view of the parking lot, as well as, the swimming pool the nuns used to
sunbathe and swim in, but I will get back to that.
We piled into the only stall that allowed access
to the window with the view and watched as Laura's love tenderly placed her in a car, walked
around the back of the car, head down and drove them all away into a future we
were left to imagine. With so many other stories, Laura's only came up in
conversation when an FOB was “actin a fool” to one of the girls. This occurred
daily and there were no secrets in St. Anne's. Everyone, well, almost
everyone, lived very public lives. Everyday one girl or another was beaten
up, cheated on, lied to, spit on, or just plain `ole ignored. As part of the
ritual of gathering in the group room to listen, sympathize and plan
retribution, we would also remember how beautiful Laura's handsome FOB sailor
had come for her. We really didn't get a good look out of that small window but
we knew that Laura's lover would have to be as beautiful as she. We all acted
jaded but were really weren't. We all wanted the fairy tale to be true. FOB was
shorthand for Father of Baby; this was in the days before "baby
daddy" came into common use.
There were only a couple of girls who did not
actually know who the FOB was. One of them was my first roommate. There were no
private rooms. Every room had two twin-sized beds with dull beige double knit
blankets covering sheets that had started out as 100 thread count but had been
boiled and bleached down to a 10; they were just short of burlap. The pillow was
encased in the same bright white sheet material. The bedclothes always smelled
like bleach. The smell never came out of them. There were two brown plywood
chest of drawers situated next to each bed. An ongoing competition was to
rearrange the furniture in our rooms in the most unique way possible. Props
were allowed, so we were always going on walks and sneaking back in with a
piece of fabric yanked out of a trash that had been set at the curb, or a
handful of weeds that we called flowers. The Nuns only checked rooms once a week, so we could enjoy gathering in each new environment for about five days before it would be returned to its original arrangement. If not by the girls in the room then by housekeeping.
My roommate, Chriztal was a
30-year-old woman with Down’s syndrome. I had never seen a person with Down’s syndrome. Chriztal was
very low functioning. She did not know who her FOB was or she never said it.
She did not talk much. She could talk she just didn't. So, we made up a
backstory for her. Her mother was a “wanna be” movie star who came to LA on the
bus of ambition and ended up pregnant from her first call back. Believing that
the casting director would marry her and make their daughter a star, she
continued the pregnancy and spent all nine months thinking up the best stage
name ever. Even after the producer dumped her, even after her child was born
with Down’s syndrome, she would not let go of the dream. Marking the father box
as unknown, Chriztal’s mother named her baby Chriztal Waterford Lee. This would
allow them to play with the arrangement of the names as Chriztal’s career
developed. We had no idea what Chriztal’s story was, she wouldn’t or couldn’t
tell us. Even when she came back in one day, beat up and reeking of weed, she
would only say, "parking lot."
They parking lot across the street from St.
Anne's was a hangout spot for FOBs and neighborhood guys who liked “gettin a
little off a preggie." It was bordered on all sides with tall junipers with
an opening for a driveway. There was no building it seemed to belong to, so the
girls who said they enjoyed anonymous and fairly public sex would stroll on
over whenever they got an itch "needed scratchin." Chriz visited
the parking almost daily and out of boredom and curiosity a few of us followed her over now and then to see what she was doing because she sure
wouldn't tell us. We thought the guy we saw her with was her FOB and maybe he
was but what he was doing was pimping Chriz out to the neighborhood boys who
liked to "get it on" with a preggie. Those boys hung in the parking
lot with candy, cigarettes, Boones Farm, pot and anything else they
thought would get them laid, everyday.
Seven seriously angry pregnant girls of all
colors marching across a street must be a terrifying vision. When Chriz said,
"parking lot." We took it upon our selves to find and punish whoever
needed punishing. I never felt that powerful again, in my life. As we crossed
the street the boys who were just hanging, kicking rocks, smoking whatever they
had, telling lies, looked up like a herd of gazelle and began to back up and
spread out as they broke from the herd to seek safety on the other side of the
juniper. A few of us broke off and cornered the guy we had seen with Chriz before
while a few others just enjoyed scaring the hell out of the other boys. I was
one of those girls. Watching those boys stumble backward trying to disappear
through the hedge only fueled my need to unleash all the fear and anger I had
been carrying around with me for what felt like my whole life. They faster they backed up the
louder I got and the more graphic my threats became. So, I did not hear his
confession, but the girls who had cornered the suspected FOB reported that in
trying to explain what happened to Chriz he let slip that he was making a small
profit renting her out to the neighborhood boys. It wasn't him that hurt her
and he would "damn sho never" rent her out to that guy again. We
ladies could be assured of that. We banned him and any of the others we could
identify from the parking lot and for about a week we took turns patrolling to
make sure that anyone doing anything in the lot was doing so of their own
choice. About a month later we caught Chriz and the possible FOB together in
the lot and just gave up trying to protect her. It was too hard to generate
that kind of explosive rage on cue, and, as we continued to grow larger we
became much less terrifying.
"Parking lot" were the only words I
ever heard Chriztal say until she "went up" to deliver her
baby. The Nuns allowed us to call her to see how she was. I said, “Chriz, what
did you have"? She answered with a tone of surprise, "A baby."
Lesliee,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this! Your piece has such range in it.
I found myself laughing in some spots: parking lot scene (imagining this stampede of big bellied girls out for justice)-, only to immediately cringe right after (how could anyone want to take advantage of this girl?!). Not to mention, I am now thinking about all of the issues that get interwoven here (girls looking to be independent and becoming a community of agents of change...).
I remember Lucy once saying "don't write about a moment. Write the moment,". This is what you have done. I felt like I was watching it play out rather than reading about it.
It's funny, because when I read an earlier post about how you had stayed at a Catholic Maternity hospital, I imagined some ivy covered country cottage/church in Maine or somewhere else in New England. I guess maybe I've seen that in movies. But your description: "The building was stucco painted baby shit yellow and it looked more like the back entrance to the place where you get your oil changed" totally brought me to your reality. I like that because it is real. As much as this piece is screaming to be turned into a major motion picture, it is real. Talk about vulnerable!
You did say to press, so here it goes.
I wish you would sloooow down. As a reader I want the whole story. Obviously blog installments aren't meant to read like a novel, but I wish it would. This is a compliment. I (selfishly) want the whole thing start to finish-- but perhaps that is not the format you planning. Are you considering turning these pieces into longer pieces? Perhaps spending more time in a particular scene would allow you to add more of yourself. For example, when your "mom turned to [you] and said, 'See you in a few months.'" I am curious to know what was going through your head and heart. It works without your personal thoughts being stated: as a reader I am plugging MY feelings in there. But it could add another layer to get your feelings in there too.
It would be interesting to read about what was discussed among the girls. Did all age groups hang out? Or did you stick with homogeneous groups? Were people mean to Laura? What was it like when she left?
What was it like for YOU? Again, I am not sure of your ultimate goal for how these pieces will look or function, BUT, I as a reader, I am left wanting more. It's not that there isn't enough here, but I am nosey ;)
thanks again for sharing.