The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,83
women’s bodies. But the birthmother one becomes an
“I,” too.
“I’m not selling my baby,” Katrina told me. “I’m not.”
Which made me think, Is this person trying to sell me her baby?
“I’ve got four kids. My youngest, Connor, is three. My oldest just had a baby of his own. But let me tell you something. It’s only with a daughter if you really know that baby is your grandchild. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“How do I really know that baby is not some other boy’s?” she said. “Some shitty fuckup like the one my seventeen-year-old got knocked up with? I have five children. The last one—Davis—I gave him up two years ago. This will be number six. I see the light in that family’s eyes.” Katrina began to cry a little. “I see what they couldn’t have without me, and I am happy that I made the decision. It was two weeks before the birth and my boyfriend left. What was I supposed to do? One minute you’re preparing for a kid, and then the next? Well.”
“I hear you.” I pictured the CHILD PROOFING! sign at the gynecologist’s office. They would have had a field day in here.
“I have a three-year-old at home, and a girl, Cassie, and even though I told my boyfriend, ‘You do so much as come on my knees I’ll get pregnant,’ he didn’t listen, and so here I am.”
“Here we are,” I said. “How lucky.”
“But this time I want to be there. Last time, the decisions were made for me. I’d checked out. Emotionally I mean. But not this time. I’m talking to a lot of people. I’m going to do it right this time,” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “We want to be here in whatever way makes you most comfortable.”
“In April,” Katrina said. “I’m going to do it right.”
“You’re due in April?”
“The twenty-second.”
“I understand,” I said. “You have to be sure you get what you need. We want as open a relationship as you want to have. Whatever you need.”
“I need to bond with my baby.” Katrina was crying harder now. “I need to have that time in the hospital to just see him again. Last time I didn’t even want to hold him.”
“That must have been so hard. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.” I couldn’t think about what that would be like. Holding a baby. After.
“I need to get the hell out of this trailer,” Katrina told me.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer this with reassurance of some kind. I didn’t know if she was asking me for help moving and I didn’t know if that was right or wrong. I had lost sight of a lot of things.
“I know I am a good woman,” she said. “I know what I am on the outside. I know what people think, all the tattoos. The bad boys. But that’s not necessarily me on the inside. I read a lot of books. Self-help books and books about God. I am going through a spiritual change and I know who I am now. On the inside? I have a heart as big as a cloud. And also? Jesse? I have a heartbeat that isn’t just my own.”
_______
When I hung up with Katrina, I climbed back into bed next to Ramon. I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling, convex, as if the pressed tin were a bowl that held the weather.
“Do you want to know about the conversation?” I asked my husband.
“Sure, though I heard the whole thing. You were great.” He patted my leg, anticipating my next question. It seemed like he might want to wait until morning to discuss this, which was an abomination as far as I was concerned. Here was progress. I thought of Carmen, the perfect birthmother who never called, and how now we were moving forward. For one split second I felt time stop. I imagined going up to Fishkill next year, holding our own baby. It was hard, I’d say, rocking her in my arms, kissing at her ear, but so worth it! I imagined Lucy and I leaning on two strollers, moving through the neighborhood we grew up in, smiling at the neighbors whose houses we once ding-dong-ditched, whose gardens we once plucked lily of the valley and lilacs from.
“She’s forty and a grandmother. But it’s her second adoption. I know she’ll go through with it. That’s what the agency said, remember?” I said to Ramon.