Writing From Home

She was finally free. At age twenty-four she was almost an old maid so when she met Jack and found him handsome and charming enough with reasonable prospects for a secure future she convinced herself it was love and married him when he asked. 

The honeymoon was a disaster. She hated the way he touched her, the way he kissed, the way he smelled, the way he existed. Whatever it was she needed and wanted from a man he didn’t have it and couldn’t provide it. She could not speak of her disgust, nor did she understand her revulsion for his touch.  She’d begun to see him as less than a man.  He was weak, spineless, incapable of pleasing her. He’d lied to her. Misrepresented himself. Betrayed her. He deserved to be punished. She blamed him for her own failure to respond. He’d made her feel badly about herself. Made her question her sexuality. He’d demeaned her, diminished her womanhood, accused her of frigidity.  He had earned punishment.  Moment by moment, day by day, vicious thoughts and feelings became vicious words and actions. Through her hatred she began exacting revenge, hurting him over and over with cruel words and punitive actions, sucking the life from their marriage, slowly consuming him. It took two years. By the time they were divorced she was thinner and healthier than she’d ever been and he was but a shell of the man she’d married.  

She escaped to Columbia, South America, where she taught English, refined her Spanish, and met a lot of men. She became especiale to one older man who required more affection and sensuality than sex, found she was able to tolerate his attentions and enjoyed his support for two years before returning to her family’s home in Brooklyn, New York. 

She lived on grapefruit and hard boiled eggs. To be loved she had to be thin.  At 126 pounds, she fit elegantly into her pencil skirts and tailored jackets. To meet men, like the ladies of her time, she went dancing. She met and fell in love with Nathan on the dance floor. 

Nathan loved women, and she was a good catch. Her parents owned a successful hardware business. To him, from his impoverished childhood perspective, she was an heiress and represented his future and his fortune. He was sentimental, charming, and attentive. He brought her along slowly. He was patient and tender. He courted her until she was not disgusted by his touch. She did not find his attentions repulsive. He loved her and she succumbed to his love. When Nathan proposed, she accepted. 

The newlyweds took an apartment in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York. Natie worked swing shifts and overnights repairing vending machines and juke boxes. 

They began the business of making a baby.

Her pregnancy was both miraculous and disgusting. A woman was expected to marry, honor and obey her husband, and raise a family. Pregnancy was a parasitic condition that ruined a woman’s body and stole her beauty. She’d had her taste of freedom, and now it was time to meet cultural, social and familial expectations that she wasn’t sure she believed in or wanted to meet.

As her body began to spread and fill with pregnancy, she repressed feelings of disgust for being grossly large. She decided not to nurse, choosing rather to bind her breasts to keep them from falling. When she learned she was carrying identical twin boys, she breathed a sigh of relief. Jewish men wanted sons. After the twins were born she would be finished with pregnancy and babies forever.

As her pregnancy advanced and her body softened, stretched and made room for the babies to grow, she found she fiercely loved and wanted them.

One night, there were strong contractions. It felt like the babies were coming too early. The hospital was required. It was snowing. Nathan drove. There was an accident that instigated labor. The first baby was stillborn. The second was born but failed to thrive and died on his second day. 

She knew it was her fault the twins were dead. She hadn’t loved them enough. She hadn’t wanted them enough. She’d resented her fat, misshapen body. She’d resented the nausea, the morning sickness, the hemorrhoids, the food cravings, the sore back and sore feet. She had thought of her babies as parasites. She had almost hated them.  

She believed babies were delicious as long as they were quiet or sleeping. She tolerated and even enjoyed teens and young adults who were capable of conversation, and who readily looked up to her and valued her advice. She had neither patience nor compassion for young children. She had no real desire for motherhood and essentially believed it was mistake for her to have children, but it was expected by her husband, her parents, and society. If she didn’t have children, she would be judged and found lacking. She would be seen as a failure. She could even lose her husband.

Failure was not an option. No one could ever know she was deeply disaffected. No one could ever know about the trauma and abuses of her childhood or their resulting psychoses. As always, she was fine. She didn’t have any problems. She was perfectly fit and perfectly stable and perfectly normal. It wasn’t her fault they were dead. It couldn’t be. She didn’t kill her children! She loved them! She couldn’t kill them. It wasn’t her fault! She was innocent. She was always innocent. She was always faultless and she was always correct. She was always righteous and blameless. She would not be questioned. She was irreproachable, always in control, except when she wasn’t, and no one could ever know about those times when she wasn’t.

She was at once terrified, elated, and disgusted by her second pregnancy. Convinced in her heart of hearts that she was responsible for the deaths of her beautiful twins, she was mortally afraid of killing this one too. She had kept her head, stayed strong, powered through and did what needed to be done. She was pregnant again and her husband, parents and family were happy.

But she wasn’t happy. She was in turmoil. Filled with dichotomous thoughts and a flood of equally conflicting unresolved emotions, she suffered a disunion of self.  

She hated feeling helpless even more than she hated feeling guilty, humiliated, criticized, shamed or embarrassed. The child made her feel helpless. The child posed a threat. She hated her own fear of losing the child as much as she despised the power it had over her. (The child knew. The child saw.)  She hated to be questioned, and more than anything, she hated to be seen as weak. (The child saw. The child knew.). Weakness was tantamount to death. Weakness meant giving abusers the satisfaction of knowing they’d succeeded in hurting you. Weakness was synonymous with failure. Weakness was helplessness. Weakness invited more abuse. She would not, could not be weak. She would not, could not fail. She took control of her terror. She overpowered her truth. She pushed and shoved, and stuffed and forced both the intensity of her previous traumas and losses, and all of her unresolved feelings about those traumas and losses way deep down into the center of her very own hidey hole of horrors and secrets that just happened to be occupied by her gestating fetus.

When the child was born, the new mother weighed 185 pounds, and the baby came in at a healthy, somewhat hefty, eight pounds, thirteen ounces.

She loved it, but she hated it, too. She wanted it, but she was afraid of the emotion instilled by its presence and the power that emotion had to unleash her rage and threaten her Control. (The child knew. The child saw.)

Two months after the birth the thing she’d most feared was spotted in the baby’s greening eyes. Tanta Bette held and looked into the soul of the infant, giving her pronouncement. “This one’s going to be trouble.” A tremor of fear quickened deep in Shirley’s gut awakening the sentinel of her hidey hole of secrets. The child knew. The child saw.