Her: A Memoir Read online

  The nurses were by the ER door as requested, with a chair. They wheeled me into a hospital room, where a doctor waited with a puke pail and a dose of activated charcoal in liquid form. I drank the many ounces of the thick, gray, chalky drink. Its dose absorbed the poison of my many pills.

  The doctor asked me what I’d taken and I told him.

  I explained exactly what I’d done, how I’d been impatient to get rid of pain and maybe a bit too celebratory from my sister’s visit. I explained the back spasms and recent job stress, the frustration I’d felt with my husband for retreating so fully into a book he was working on. It was all run-of-the-mill, I assured the doctor; and it was. He nodded and scribbled some notes on a writing pad. He asked me several times if I’d wanted to harm myself on purpose or had any plans to die.

  I told him I didn’t, though I knew I lusted to numb my troubles, which seemed dangerous enough. I told the doctor I’d been reckless but didn’t want to kill myself. That desire would come within the year, but that was far away, waiting for me in my new life, in the next winter. I pleaded with the doctor. It was an accident. I was a married professor, responsible. I needed the doctor to believe I hadn’t turned into my sister.

  The doctor warned that I might want to consider my behavior, clicked a pen on his clipboard. He told me that sometimes an accidental overdose is not such an accident. He closed my chart and walked into the hall. I could hear him talking to my sister just outside the door.

  “You’re not going to admit her?” Cara asked.

  “She’s free to go home as soon as her stomach settles.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Cara whined. “An overdose should require at least a consultation with a psychiatrist. I know protocol.”

  The doctor was testy. “Your sister is fine. I think she’s learned a good lesson here. Just get her home and have her husband put her to bed.”

  “I can’t fucking believe this. If that were me, I’d be checked into the Happy Valley funny farm by now.”

  She was right. I was always getting away with things she wouldn’t have.

  “Well, good thing she’s not you.” I wondered if he’d been an admitting physician for one of Cara’s ER overdose admits. “I’ve got to get back to rounds.”

  Cara tried another avenue with the doctor. “She’s been stealing my pills on the side, Klonopin. I’ve counted and she’s taken more than half the bottle this month. Thanks to her, I’m out. If you’re not going to admit her, can you at least write me a script to replace them?”

  The doctor turned from her, and his footsteps grew faint as he made his way to another emergency.

  * * *

  Cara was right. I did occasionally sneak into her handbag and take a generous helping of her sedative. My sister lost herself to a rape and drugs. I lost myself first in the fight to save her—my battle began before she’d taken her last dose of heroin. I was at war with her to live and then, quietly, with myself because I was powerless. I thought my occasional need to surrender to a pill was justified. But that need was also a warning: I was closer to being Cara than I knew. While she was alive I was vibrant, responsible, steadfast, and holding her up. I was her opposite. In the wake of Cara’s death I became her. The events of our lives unfolded before me. There was no stopping them.

  Once I was smaller than Cara. Once I cried more than she. Once she had to take care of me and tie my shoes and wipe my nose, and hug me on the bus all the way to school. Once we were on a bus full of kids and I kissed her on the mouth. Our classmates laughed and called us “Lezzies.” I didn’t know what that was, but I knew I didn’t want to be one. Once Cara punched me and broke my nose. Once, she removed a shard of a red glass marble from my foot with a pair of tweezers. No, that wasn’t it. Once, I had a red shard in my foot and I learned to walk with it.

  * * *

  The first time I laughed after she died I was driving in a beat-up Jeep with one of Cara’s ex-boyfriends. I’d always frowned on her dating him; he was her former student as well as her boyfriend. It was her way to mix business with pleasure, and it was never a surprise when it ended badly, as it did with Ethan. He’d befriended me out of worry for me and curiosity and, most of all, I suspect, out of longing to be near to Cara again. I wasn’t such a bad second choice. It was easy to rehearse with me what he wished he’d said to her. I nodded as he told me he’d loved my sister, that she was an angel in bed, the best sexual teacher as well as the best professor he’d ever had. He shifted gears and turned up the radio, smiled over at me as my hair whipped my face. Ethan was trying hard to fall in love with me. Winning my devotion was the only way to resurrect Cara. In our tryst, Ethan and I both tried to cheat death.

  We drove the back roads from Northampton to Amherst, windows rolled down, the hum of the road between us. I held my arm out of the open passenger’s side window and let it bob in the fast wind, ignoring the bugs that zoomed past and zapped hard against my palm. We passed a cemetery and Ethan turned down the radio and pointed out my sister’s favorite tombstone. It read: DEADY. He looked at me and waited for my reaction, thinking he’d told me something funny about Cara that I wouldn’t have known. He was right. I had no idea she’d loved it. Ethan couldn’t have known that I, too, had long admired Deady, that I often pulled my own car over and showed the tombstone to friends and had a good laugh at the Deady family’s expense. I’d even gone and photographed the waist-high marble grave marker and left behind a bouquet of flowers in thanks. I looked at Ethan, opened my mouth, and then the laugh came. The sound was as familiar as my own name, but it caused the hair on my arms to stand on end. My laugh was Cara’s exactly. Its emergence from my body was as disorienting as being addressed by a stranger, only to discover it’s not you they’re talking to.

  * * *

  After Cara died, I saw in my reflection, too, the face and body of her corpse: sallow green and chalky, bloodless and rouged. When I’d first glimpsed her like this, I’d jumped back. I gave this new look of mine a name. I called it Dead Face. I used the term often: When I wanted Jedediah to come and comfort me, I’d call to him through the house, “Hey! Could you come here? Honey? Just for a second? I need a hug. I have Dead Face.” Once I invited a girlfriend over for dinner in and then out for a movie. We primped before the show. I glossed and lined my lips, saw that I looked a bit pale. “Could you pass the blush?” I asked. “I need a bit more. I have Dead Face.” The name was perfectly acceptable, funny even. It became usual.

  Chapter 3

  We started from good intentions. Mom was big with us before she conceived. We swam in her mind. She asked God for a girl and called her girl Cara Marie. Mom held a single, imagined girl in her belly. Dr. Rosen told her she would have a baby boy. The sonogram said so. Mom knew better. Only a few months before we began, she’d lost her own mother to a brain hemorrhage. She wanted a girl to take her mother’s place and she thought God couldn’t be so unkind as to give her a son. Dr. Rosen said her baby settled like a boy. He knew it was an old wives’ tale that babies settled, he said, but he’d seen enough women and babies to know there was some truth to it. Boys ride high and girls hang low. Mom thought her baby kicked like a girl. She never picked a boy’s name or bought a single blue blanket.

  She asked God for a loud girl, a girl as tough as two boys, a girl who could yell and fight her daddy. The girl would, after all, need to fight her daddy if she had any chance of surviving in his house. Mom knew she was asking God for something selfish. She could barely manage her own safety in her husband’s house. Home wasn’t a place fit for a baby, certainly not a girl.

  Our dad didn’t want Mom getting pregnant. They’d been fighting about it ever since her mother died. He didn’t want babies slowing him down. He’d just gotten a raise at GE’s main plant in Schenectady. The money was finally good. Mom was disappointed; she was a twenty-two-year-old orphan who needed a family. She was on the pill when she missed her monthly bleed. All the tests were negative, but the tests were wrong, she thought, so she only pretended t
o take the fresh pack of tablets on her nightstand. She put one on her tongue each night and faked a swallow, then spit it into the wastebasket. She took vitamins instead of birth control; her girl had to be strong.

  Mom looked at the ceiling, tried to forget Dad on top of her. Sweat rolled from his armpits and dropped onto her face. Her baby made her sick. Mom thought of caramel apples rolled in sea salt to keep her nausea at bay. Dad took her tender breasts into his hands and squeezed. Mom imagined his pounding hips were a flower whose petals she could pull off: she’s sex; she’s not sex. She’s sex; she’s not sex. She’s sex, but she’s also a mother. She’s not sex, and she’s more than Dad’s rag-doll wife. We, sister and I, grew together in secret.

  Dad wanted a boy, if he had to have anything, and he bought baseball caps and blue bibs in support of their mistake baby.

  Mom made an appointment to learn our sex. She prayed in Dr. Rosen’s waiting room, asked God to make her baby girl cunning, a fooler. Her girl would have to be swift and keep one step ahead of her daddy.

  The doctor’s steel table was layered with a length of paper. Mom put her feet in the exam table stirrups. She shivered. It was winter, just after Christmas, and the blanket to keep her warm during her exam was thin and covered only her waist and knees. Dr. Rosen looked at Mom and nodded; he pointed at the black-and-white image of the baby on his screen, a single baby. He showed her where the penis was. Mom got dressed and made the sign of the cross.

  Mom grew rounder and rounder.

  She stood in front of her mirror and looked. She was so big, she filled doorways. Her ankles were swollen and the straps of her bras dug into her shoulders. Her nipples were hard, and dark. A thick brown line extended from her belly button down, halving her. My girl has eight more weeks to grow, our mother thought. She thought the mirror lied. She was too big for the months that had passed. We made fists, knocked on Mom like we were opening a door. Mom answered, “Hello, girl-baby. I’ll never stop loving you, not from hello on.”

  * * *

  Dad cracks an egg on the asphalt sidewalk while he’s at work. The egg cooks solid in five minutes. His coworkers watch. The dirty, concrete contaminated egg breathes heat. The men take off their hats, stare in disbelief. If the heat can make this egg alive, it can do anything.

  * * *

  Mom woke up wet today. Time for baby to come out. She thinks the water is sweat. She wakes all this week sweating; can’t turn down the heat as it rises with her breathing. She curls into a ball, hugs Baby, who is waiting, wanting to meet her.

  Dad doesn’t care; he wants breakfast. Mom cooks in a hurry. She hunches over his sausage pan and cracks an egg. She counts the minutes as Baby shifts and turns. Her legs shake. Oldest Aunt walks through the door.

  Oldest Aunt is the coach for Mom and Baby. She brings Mom to Lamaze classes, rubs her back, and rubs the baby in Mom’s belly. Oldest Aunt sings to Baby when Dad isn’t home. She stays quiet after he comes home. Dad doesn’t want any part of it.

  “At least it’s a boy.” He eats his eggs.

  Boy baby. His boy baby is making Mom hunch over the sink full of his dishes. She directs her soft, guttural muttering into the sink. Her words dissolve in the soapy water. Dad continues breakfast, watches Mom’s baby belly. He chews and smiles.

  Dad goes to work.

  Oldest Aunt brings Mom to the hospital, puts her in the backseat because her belly is too big for the front. They can’t drive fast because the brakes are going bad. Mom is calm, closes her eyes when a contraction comes on. She sees her girl baby’s face smiling, remembers throwing all her pennies into the park fountain, and watching the water ripple.

  It seems Baby is not in birth position.

  Oldest Aunt holds Mom’s hand. Breathe. Breathe.

  Mirror Mom and her naked mirror baby-body are prostrate, waiting. Her knees fold out. She is breathing hard; she pushes. It’s like metal bands crushing down, Baby sinking down, crushing her. We wrestle to see who can get out first. Mom thinks in litanies. Pennies in the fountain, pennies in the fountain, make a water wish. Push.

  Doctor numbs Mom and takes out his knife, pulls Baby out.

  I’m first. I’m screaming for air.

  Mom is not finished; she’s still contracting. There’s another foot.

  You’re a girl, too. We cry identical hellos.

  Dad is watching a baseball game in the waiting room. He doesn’t want to watch us get born. Grandpa didn’t watch him. Men don’t watch babies come. Dad cheers when the bat hits the ball. Soon, he thinks, he’ll be proud. He’s a man who can make a boy.

  “Hello,” we say. “You didn’t want us.” Dad has two hands. We’ve got four to beat him back.

  * * *

  My right arm was twisted behind Cara’s back. Her legs wrapped around my legs; we were tangled up. There was no telling where one baby ended and the other began. Our room wasn’t ready: no crib, no changing table, not a single diaper or pacifier. It was so hot Mom slept with a bowl of ice and a washcloth at her bedside. She dipped it into the bowl and wrung it out, dragging the cloth in long strokes across her breasts and brow. Her water broke a month early; she bore us in the middle of a July heat wave.

  Mom pushed for hours but baby wouldn’t show her crown. Dr. Rosen put one monitor inside of Mom and another on her belly, two monitors for one baby. He listened to the drum of our hearts. They played against each other, and the beats were doubled, pounding out of time. There would be no more laboring. Mom’s baby boy had a too-fast beating heart. He’d have to be sectioned out. A nurse wheeled Mom out into the hall and then prepared her surgery room. Mom went in alone. Her girl would see Mom’s face first and this calmed her.

  Dr. Rosen put a mask on Mom until she was painlessly awake. Dr. Rosen cut her belly button to pubic bone, pried her open, and looked inside.

  “Oh my God,” he said as he saw the baby in Mom’s womb. He saw a mass of doubled arms and legs, a single body, and two faces.

  “What is it?” Mom asked, worried, trying her best to peek around the big blue surgery curtain that draped her middle and obstructed her view.

  Dr. Rosen stayed quiet. He reached inside of Mom and pulled Cara out, finding me beneath. “There’s two of them!” he yelled out to the nurses in relief. “Two beautiful girls.”

  The nurses washed us clean and wrapped us in soft pink blankets. We whimpered and then we yowled.

  “Please, someone tell me he’s kidding,” Mom said through her anesthesia. “I don’t believe it. Someone tell me he’s lying.”

  “Look at your babies,” Dr. Rosen said and picked us up and brought us over to Mom. Our short loud cries sounded out insistently like worried horns or honking geese.

  Mom looked at us and cried. “I don’t know whose babies these are,” she said. “They’re not mine.” But she kissed each of us on the forehead. We were twice the girl she’d wished for.

  Dr. Rosen helped us over the IV drips and plastic tubes into Mom’s arms. “Careful,” he said as we settled ourselves toward her waiting breasts, nuzzling in. We stopped crying as she pulled us near, looking up for the first time at her adoring face. She’d pulled her hair away from it into a bun. She beamed with simple pure love, sweat, exhaustion, and fear. “They look exactly like you,” he said. “You might not need them but they will need you.”

  “But I do need them,” Mom said, carefully holding our small and breakable bodies in the crooks of her arms. “I always will.” Mom ran her fingers over Cara’s naked shoulder. “She’s so small, she’d fit right into the palm of my hand.”

  We slept in our mother’s arms until she needed rest of her own.

  A cheering section waited in the hallway outside the viewing glass of the nursery: Dad, aunts, uncles, Grandma, Grandpa.

  The nurses wheeled us in and our new family of admirers greeted us with applause, pressed their hands and faces against the glass to look.

  Grandma Josephine squeezed Grandpa’s shoulder. “Look, Freddy,” she said. “She had one for each of us.
”

  Dad turned away from the sight of his baby girls and slowly banged his head against the white cement hospital wall, both a joke and a worry. “What will we do with them?” he said to himself, wondering how he’d ever pay for two. “I guess there’s always Doublemint Gum commercials.”

  “They’ll need a daddy. All girls need their daddy,” Grandpa said.

  Dad walked to a chair and put his head in his hands. “Girls, two girls.” He shook his head. “Can we send one back?”

  When it was time, Dr. Rosen called Dad into the nursery to meet us.

  He sat down next to our father and held us, our tiny heads wresting against his chest.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “Baby B weighs three pounds fifteen ounces. Baby A is four pounds nine ounces.” He held us out for Dad to hold. “You’ve got tiny peanuts here now, but before you know it, they’ll be strong girls. Soon you can take them home.” Dr. Rosen shushed our crying and stood up to hand us off.

  Dad shooed us away. “I don’t know how to hold babies.” He got up to leave, but turned on his way, wagging his finger at our mother as if he’d caught on to this joke she’d played on him. We were her responsibility, the three of us, this much she understood. All of us against one man who needed to own each of us, but didn’t want any of us.

  Mom and Dad brought us home to 24 Steers Avenue, a modest two-story white Victorian on a quiet street. Mom’s beloved calico cat slept on the front porch beneath a rocking chair when we arrived, one of us in each of our parents’ arms. An impressive weeping willow tree grew in the front yard, framing the house with soft yellow leaves. We played hide-and-seek beneath its ground-sweeping branches. We carved our names into its trunk with the sharp rocks we gathered from Mom’s bed of lilies.

  Dad let us eat ice cream whenever we wanted and allowed us to make drawings on the wall with washable markers. He took us to baseball games and bought us adult-size team hats that flopped over our eyes. He told us we knew our stuff. He showed us how to play pitch and catch and hide-and-seek. He ordered us monogrammed T-shirts in blue and red. Dad taught us how to spit in a steady straight line, like all the boys in preschool could; he said all the power was in our cheeks, we just had to blow it fast. I hocked a loogie and imagined it shooting out like Dad spat his angry words.