My biological grandmother was still in high school when she got pregnant. Since she remains silent, a hidden participant in our family’s history, my mother’s origins are a mystery. Was my mother the product of passion, young love that couldn’t wait for marriage, clothes that flew off as kisses multiplied? Or was she the result of a moment — or more — of coercion, the forced coupling in the broad backseat of a car, the push to the ground, the inexperienced fumbling leading to blind acquiescence?
When my grandmother started to show, her parents sent her to the city. They dropped her off at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. I imagine her emerging from the black car alone, tattered suitcase in hand, looking nervously up the set of granite steps. Inside, somnolent girls in the late, leaden months of pregnancy, inward, deliberate, walk slowly through the gray halls.
It is the home of permanent in between; the suppressed energy of smothered potential thickens the air. The girls, all going by pseudonyms, make very little small talk. In the nursery, rows of bundled babies silent as dolls wait, neatly packaged in individual bassinets. Once retrieved, the babies seek out their mothers’ faces, liquid newborn eyes encountering guarded glances. Both mother and child have learned not to waste energy on tears or outward displays of emotion. The bonding and the break are inevitable.
This is how I picture my mother’s birth: hazy trauma of labor, discovery delivered as flat fact — “it’s a girl.” They undo the straps, let the drugs wear off. Hours later, my biological grandmother holds her swaddled daughter, names her Lois. Lois is tiny — less than five pounds — too little to be released to her adoptive family. Over the next six weeks the pair are entangled in the monotony of new life, the seemingly endless cycle of feeding, diapering, and sleep. They calm to one another’s warm, familiar scent. Their gazes become intimate. Bone-deep.
When the six weeks are up, Aunt Ruth, a go-between, my adoptive grandmother’s sister, comes to take the baby. Waiting in the home’s entrance, the young mother frantically bounces her silent infant, dreading the break. Finally, Aunt Ruth appears, says her hello, and waits.
“It’s time.”
The mother hands over the baby. It is as clean as a guillotine strike.
Before she has time to reconsider, she races inside to the central staircase and runs up two flights of stairs to her room. Her breathing is contained, shallow, a precaution against tears. She’s been trying to memorize every inch of her daughter, the moon face framed by white-blonde hair, her blues eyes, dainty toes and impossibly tiny hands, but already the image is fading. She reaches her room and slips inside, leans against the closed door taking short, sharp breaths. A glass baby bottle sits on the bedside table, a remnant from the final feeding. The girl eyes it, finally reaching out. Then, the satisfying sound of glass irrevocably broken, the implied threat of jagged shards.
Taking several deep breaths, the young woman calms. She begins to push the glass into a pile with her shoe and decides to find a broom and dustpan.
There will be no tears.