Chapter 12 #2
This work, according to Mrs. Kilgore, was her helping me better understand myself and my true motives, so I wouldn’t have the baby, go home, and then end up in the same predicament once again.
She wanted me to know most maternity homes didn’t take second offenders.
I told her I most definitely would not be a second offender, but Mrs. Kilgore, wise and all-knowing, was not convinced.
She said something in me had made me reckless in the first place, and until that thing was addressed and corrected, I could very well put myself and my family through the expense and embarrassment of an illegitimate birth once again.
“I’ve seen it happen,” she said. “More than once. More than twice.”
She had theories about girls in my situation, and theories specific to me.
As I’ve acknowledged before, and will acknowledge now, not all of her theories were wrong.
Or not completely wrong. That night in Bradenton, I do think, in the back of my mind, getting pregnant didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen, because the worst thing would be Leonard dying and me not having anything left of him.
I didn’t take into account that Leonard might live, and still leave me to fend for myself.
Mrs. Kilgore told me she was glad I could admit that my situation was something I’d willed, and that this admission was proof I was making progress.
But she felt I was still being dishonest, with her and with myself.
I had no idea what she meant, and when I told her this, she specified: She didn’t believe for a minute my worry that I’d made such a poor decision because I worried Leonard would die.
“Well, no,” I said. “It wasn’t the only reason.”
She leaned forward. “What was it, then?”
I almost laughed. I mean, she wasn’t so old. But she saw it in my face, what I was thinking, and she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t just carnal desire that brought you here. Not really. In fact, the real reason had nothing to do with this boy at all.”
I thought she was going to make me guess, and I was stumped, so good thing she went ahead and told me.
It turns out Mrs. Kilgore was sure I’d done such a foolish, selfish thing because I missed my mother.
That’s how I learned that she had a file on me, full of information from Mae, or Mrs. Lifton, or both.
Even before I said a full sentence, she knew the very year my mother had died.
“Nora,” she told me, with some sympathy, “you are, and remain, a child in search of the mother you lost. That’s why you did this.”
I told her this theory didn’t sound right to me at all. I missed my mother. I hated that she’d died—the time she didn’t get, and the time I didn’t get with her, and the time that my father and Bobby lost, too. But that night in Bradenton, I wasn’t thinking about her at all.
“Not consciously,” Mrs. Kilgore said. “Your subconscious, is what I mean.”
That was a big subject with Mrs. Kilgore: my subconscious.
She said it made decisions for me, and those decisions were irrational because of my immaturity.
Specifically, I had immature fantasies of motherhood, and I was immature for my age in general.
This immaturity should be expected because I’d lost my mother at a crucial age, and it was common knowledge among those who studied psychology that a present mother was essential for the appropriate maturation of the child.
I told her I appreciated that she’d gone to college, but I was pretty sure what was going on in my head that night very much had to do with Leonard and how I felt about him. And how my body felt. That was as honest and as explicit as I felt I could get with Mrs. Kilgore, but she shook her head.
“If you would be more cooperative with me, Nora, and more honest, I could help you find emotional maturity. There’s a saying, you know. ‘The social worker succeeds where the mother has failed.’ ”
I told her my mother hadn’t failed at anything. She just died.
“Do you see how upset you’re getting? Clearly, I’ve touched a nerve. I’m not saying it was your mother’s fault. But she left you when you needed her the most. Are you honestly going to sit here and tell me that loss hasn’t shaped you in every way?”
Here, she glanced down at my belly, and just that glance drained me of fight.
It was like having a serious argument with someone, standing up for what you’re sure is true, and then having the other person smile patiently and tell you that you have lettuce in your teeth.
Only I couldn’t pick out the lettuce and resume fighting.
The porcupine was always with me, not just a big scarlet A for Adultery, but another A for Abandoned, and a big scarlet D for Dumb.
Throughout every session in that cold little office, the porcupine sat heavy on my bladder, sometimes shifting, sometimes still, and always proof of my poor judgment.
Those sessions with Mrs. Kilgore lasted only fifty minutes at a time, but they uniformly wore me out.
By the time she said I could be excused, I’d usually go straight upstairs to my bed and lie there with my arms over my head.
Once, just once, Lucy looked up from her homework and said I’d only have to have a few more sessions with Mrs. Kilgore, especially if I didn’t argue with her.
“Just act like you agree,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, though we were the only two people in the room.
“Once she gives you the go-ahead, you get to start going to Miss Berry.” She was in her bed, writing a letter to someone, and wearing one of her pretty maternity dresses.
I’d had to wear whatever the home had to lend out, including a baby-blue nightmare with a print of yellow ducks all over it.
Lucy had come in with maternity clothes of her own.
“Who’s Miss Berry?” I asked.
“The other social worker. She’s got an office downtown, and it isn’t freezing like Kilgore’s. And she’s nicer. You’ll get there. Just don’t argue.”
I thanked Lucy for the advice. I also told her how much I liked her dress, which was made out of burgundy velvet that looked both soft and warm.
In response, she did her slow-blinking thing, nodded once, then looked back down at her book.
I got the message: conversation over. I didn’t take it personally.
It wasn’t like I ever saw Lucy chatting away with any other girl in the home.
Maybe it’s that all the other girls were white, or maybe that’s just how she was, or how she was that winter.
She might have been like me, different from how she was at home, wherever that was for her.
But one of the nurses was a black woman, older, and when she was done with her shifts, she sometimes took Lucy out for drives, just the two of them.
I once saw them from our window, talking in the parked car.
Watching them, I felt my loneliness, raw as hunger.
What I most remember about Lucy is that the day she was packing for the hospital, she left out that velvet dress.
I stayed quiet in my bed, writing a paper on the League of Nations.
When another round of contractions came on, she sat down suddenly, and I asked her if she wanted me to get anyone or anything.
She shook her head, so I went back to my writing.
But I was aware that her suitcase was already buckled, and the dress was still on her bed, folded neatly.
She waited until she was walking out the door, suitcase in hand, to tell me I could have it.
I thanked her profusely, but she kept walking, and she only called back that she was glad I could use it, as she wouldn’t need it anymore.
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