Janice
Philadelphia, 1982
No.”
Edelman’s feet were still in the stirrups when the doctor, balding and avuncular in his white coat, gave her the news.
“I can’t be.”
“You can, and you are,”
Dr.
Gaines announced, pulling off his gloves and tossing them into the trash can.
“About twenty-two weeks, I’d say.”
“Twenty-two . . .”
closed her eyes, struggling to reorder her thoughts.
“I can’t be,”
she repeated.
The doctor sat on his wheeled stool and used his heels to scoot himself over to her chart, spread out on the counter beside the sink.
Zoe was in her stroller, snoozing peacefully, her rosebud lips parted, her hair curling and her cheeks adorably pink.
swallowed hard as Dr.
Gaines scribbled something in her file.
“Were you using birth control?” he asked.
“I’m still breastfeeding! I never even started my period again! I thought . . .”
She pressed one hand to her forehead.
The truth was, after her daughter’s birth, just seven short months ago, it had never even occurred to her to go back on the pill.
In those blurry, sleepless months, sex felt like something she’d done in another life, or possibly on a different planet.
She’d gotten the go-ahead to resume marital relations at her six-week checkup, but Sam, her big, brave, police-officer husband, had been too scared to touch her.
Eventually, they’d managed to make careful, tentative love, an act repeated just a handful of times in the subsequent months, and suspected she’d fallen asleep midway through a few of their intimate encounters.
Even easy babies needed nighttime feedings, and when was in bed, it was hard to stay awake, no matter what else was happening at the time.
“I understand that this is a surprise,”
said Dr. Gaines.
“A surprise,”
repeated.
She licked her lips and made herself ask, “Is it too late to .
to terminate?”
“Yes,”
said Dr.
Gaines, without meeting her eyes.
“You’re well over the cutoff, unless there’s a danger to your health.”
“Does my mental health count?”
asked, only mostly kidding.
Twenty-two weeks meant she’d be having another baby in four and a half months.
It barely seemed possible.
She and Sam had been married for two years before they’d started trying.
When she’d found out she was pregnant with Zoe, she’d been thrilled.
She’d gone to Modell’s to buy a tiny Eagles onesie, which she’d folded up and set at his place at the kitchen table.
He’d stared at the green-and-silver garment when he’d come down for dinner, then whooped with happiness, scooping in his arms, whirling her around, raining kisses on her cheeks and lips and forehead.
“Our little family,”
he’d said softly.
And that was the thing: a little family was what they’d wanted.
Sam had three brothers, had two brothers and three sisters.
Sam had grown up in a rowhouse in Olney, and had lived in a ranch house in Somerton, a few miles away.
They’d both shared bedrooms and bathrooms with their siblings.
They’d both worn hand-me-downs throughout childhood.
They’d both wanted things to be different for their children.
I want my kids to have their own bedrooms, had said, remembering how she’d yearned for privacy and a place that belonged to her alone.
I want them to have their own clothes, said Sam, who had been eighteen before he’d owned a new winter coat.
They’d both wanted a house that had been newly constructed, or at least recently renovated.
No aluminum awning over the front stoop; no worn, grimed linoleum floors or cheap laminate countertops in the kitchen; no walls that had absorbed the scents of tens of thousands of meals and the energy of tens of thousands of fights.
One kid, they’d decided.
Maybe two.
And only two after they’d saved up for a down payment on a big-enough house, somewhere in the Great Northeast, because Philadelphia cops were required to live within the city limits.
Another baby, before Zoe’s first birthday, was absolutely not part of the plan.
There wasn’t any room.
There also wasn’t any money.
But was not prepared to discuss that with her gynecologist.
At least, not until she’d put her underwear back on.
“How can I not have known?”
she asked.
“How could I have missed . . .”
She waved at her doctor, then at her belly.
“Everything?”
He pulled off his glasses, with their thick black plastic frames, and polished first one lens, then the other, on the hem of his white coat.
“It happens more than you’d think.”
Sure, thought, putting her clothes on slowly once the doctor was gone.
With fifteen-year-old airheads who gave birth in the school bathroom on prom night.
But she wasn’t fifteen.
And she’d never thought of herself as stupid.
Not until that afternoon.
“Congratulations,”
the nurse said, giving her a little wave as made her way toward the reception desk, pushing Zoe, who was still sleeping in her stroller.
made herself smile back at the woman, and thought, Maybe it won’t be that bad.
Maybe the next baby will be easy, like Zoe.
It was just after three o’clock in the afternoon when got into her thirdhand Honda and pulled out of the parking garage.
She found herself driving south on Eighth Street, heading instinctively toward her aunt’s house in South Philadelphia.
Out of her four sisters, ’s mother was the one who’d made it, married to a man who earned a good living, who could buy her a three-bedroom split-level ranch (a house they’d promptly stuffed with too much furniture and many children).
’s mother’s oldest sister, Bess, still lived in a Jewish neighborhood of South Philadelphia.
found her aunt right where Bess spent most of her time, when the weather permitted: on a folding lawn chair on her stoop, wearing a flowered housedress with scuffed black Keds on her swollen feet.
There was a pack of Marlboros in her hand, an empty Tastykake pie tin full of ashes on the table beside her, and a lit cigarette plugged into her lipsticked mouth.
Aunt Bess had a blocky build, wide shoulders and hips without much of a waist between them.
Her hair was cut short and dyed a brassy magenta, a color ’s mother referred to, through pursed lips, as “a shade not found in nature.”
Bess’s face was jowly, grooved with wrinkles, her eyes deep set in a net of crow’s-feet .
but she loved to laugh, and throw parties, and cook for a crowd, and she always had a five- or ten-dollar bill in her pocket, to press into the hands of any niece or nephew or, these days, great-niece or great-nephew or grandchild who came to visit.
sat on her aunt’s porch, handing Zoe over gratefully when Bess held out her arms for the baby.
gave her the news, as Bess listened, considerately blowing her smoke away from Zoe’s little face.
“Hon, just tell him,”
she said in her raspy smoker’s voice.
“Even if he’s surprised at first, he’ll come around.
Sammy’s a good boy.”
“We can’t afford it.”
Bess shrugged.
“How much does a baby cost? You’ve already got your stroller and car seat and bottles and all.
Zoe will grow out of things, and the new one can have her hand-me-downs.”
At the word hand-me-downs, winced.
“It’s not what I wanted for her,”
she said, low-voiced.
Bess gave a kind look.
“So maybe this is a little setback.
Doesn’t mean you won’t get that nice new house in the end.”
“Okay, but . . .”
took a deep breath, smelling cigarette smoke, hot tar (the Golds, two doors down, were having their roof repaired), and the ghosts of Shabbat dinner, fresh challah and chickens roasted in honey and lemon juice, emanating from Bess’s kitchen.
“What if I can’t love another baby as much as I love Zoe?”
Bess smiled fondly.
“I remember feeling that way, after I had Marjorie and got pregnant with Scott.
I thought, I love her so much, there’s no way I’ll ever be able to love a new baby even half this much.
But I surprised myself.
You will too.
I promise.
And who knows?”
She gave a lipsticky smile and nodded toward her niece’s belly.
“Maybe this baby’s going to be special.
Maybe he’s got something big to do in the world.”
doubted that.
She kept her mouth shut as Bess got to her feet.
“Sleep on it,”
she said to , hugging her, and, saw, slipping twenty dollars into the diaper bag.
“I promise, things will look better in the morning.”
drove slowly, following Passyunk Avenue to Columbus Boulevard until she arrived at the house in Fishtown she and Sam were renting.
Just get on with it, she thought, and unlocked the front door.
She heard all the familiar sounds: Jim Gardner on Channel 6 broadcasting the evening’s headlines, Sam snoring quietly in the bedroom.
She let him sleep, waiting until he came to the kitchen, his hair sticking up in spikes around his head, and let him pour a cup of coffee before saying, “I have some news.”
She ended up having to tell him twice, while he stood in front of the fridge, blank-faced, rubbing at his head and staring at her, looking slack-jawed and, she thought uncharitably, a little stupid.
“Another baby?”
he finally asked.
nodded.
His face fell, and he said exactly what she’d thought when she’d learned: “Shit.”
And then, “What are we going to do?”
“Have another baby, I guess.”
went to the living room where she half sat, half fell onto the sofa.
After a minute, Sam sat down beside her.
He put one arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“It’ll be okay,”
he said, sounding like he was trying to convince her, and himself.
“We’ll figure it out.”
That was when finally let herself cry.
did her best to think happy thoughts, to try to feel a fraction of the excitement that she had the first time around, but the remainder of her pregnancy was as hard as the first one had been easy.
With Zoe, she hadn’t shown at all until well into her sixth month, but as the next few weeks unfolded, she gained twenty pounds, and watched, in amazement and no small amount of horror, as her body transformed in a manner that made her feel monstrous.
Her stomach and thighs and breasts bulged.
Her belly button turned itself inside out and poked against her shirts like a pumpkin stalk; her feet grew an entire shoe size; her cheeks and the bridge of her nose darkened.
Everything she ate gave her agonizing heartburn, and, even after she’d cut out tomatoes and coffee and dairy and chocolate, her chest and throat burned like fire whenever she lay down.
“It’s going to be a boy,”
Sam would say, resting his hands on the outsized globe of her belly.
They’d decided not to have an ultrasound—their insurance wouldn’t cover it, and Sam was so convinced it was a boy that he didn’t see the point.
was less certain.
It’s going to be a monster was what she sometimes couldn’t stop herself from thinking.
Her due date came and went.
When she was a week overdue, Dr.
Gaines scheduled a C-section.
The night before was to report to the hospital, her labor began .
but not with the contractions she remembered from Zoe’s birth: pains that rose and crested, sharpening and swelling into agony, then receding long enough for her to catch her breath and even sleep for a few minutes between them.
This was different, an agony that felt endless.
It began in her lower back and it radiated all the way to her toes and fingertips, her jaw, her face, even the crown of her head, and the pain never stopped or even faded.
It was unrelenting; misery without end, a world of hurt where she would live forever.
Sam drove her to Pennsylvania Hospital, where she labored for an eternity of red hours, screaming herself hoarse, until finally, the baby’s heartbeat dipped sufficiently to necessitate an emergency Cesarean.
A nurse helped sit up and lean forward, and could guess at the size of the needle from the horror on her husband’s face, but she was too exhausted and miserable to care.
She felt like an animal in a trap, ready to chew off her own limbs to escape.
As the blessed numbness rolled down her body, was wheeled to the operating room.
A drape was unfolded just below her breasts, but she still shut her eyes when the cutting started, listening for the calls of “suction”
and “suture,”
waiting to hear the baby’s cry.
By the time they stitched her up, she was shivering violently.
Everything was hurting, as if the pain had never stopped.
The space between her legs burned like it had been dipped in acid and set on fire.
She felt as raw as if she’d been chewed.
“Another girl,”
Sam said, settling the bundle awkwardly against her chest.
remembered how dainty Zoe had felt—a tiny, warm cloud wrapped up in a blanket.
This baby felt gigantic, huge and unwieldy.
There was a fringe of greasy-looking dark hair around her bald head.
Her eyes were squinched shut, and her lips were smacking, moving in blind sucking motions that made think about sea creatures, deep in the ocean’s trenches, eyeless things that never saw the light.
She held her baby and shut her eyes, waiting to feel the thing she remembered from Zoe’s birth, the thing that all the books and soap operas, every girlfriend and female relation from Aunt Bess to her own mom, her sisters and sisters-in-law, had promised she would feel: a tidal wave of love, undeniable in its presence, inarguable in its force.
This time, felt empty and numb; dull, and so tired.
She felt like a heavyweight boxer had used her body as a punching bag after she’d slid down a staircase made of razors.
Her mouth was dry.
Her head was throbbing, and tears were dripping down her face to plop on top of the baby’s bald skull.
“Take her,”
she husked, in a rasping whisper, and held out the bundle, until her husband lifted it from her arms.
The next morning, a nurse came, to try and get the new baby to nurse.
“Does this little one have a name yet?”
shrugged.
She and Sam had been so sure this baby was a boy, they’d picked a boy’s name—Matthew—and had never even talked about girls’ names.
considered and rejected Mattie and Matilda—Mattie sounded too much like matted, and Matilda was too old-fashioned.
“Cassandra,”
she said.
She wasn’t sure where the name came from, unless it was a book she’d read about Greek myths, back in middle school.
had never known a Cassandra in real life and had only the vaguest notion of who the mythological Cassandra might have been.
Only later would she learn—or relearn, if she had, in fact, already known it—that Cassandra was a prophetess, cursed to speak the truth and have no one believe her.
Had the name shaped Cassie’s life somehow, condemning her to sorrow? Would things have been different if had named her unplanned second daughter Sarah or Rachel or Jane? She would never know.
But sometimes, late at night, walking the hallway with Cassie screaming in her arms, begging her baby to go back to sleep, sometimes crying herself, would think of how it could have been different, if she’d waited longer to have another child .
or, most of all, if she’d found a doctor who’d do what Dr.
Gaines wouldn’t, if she’d never had Cassie at all.
I will never be able to love her, she’d think, and then hate herself for thinking.
I can’t do it, no matter how hard I try.