Mom & Me & Mom (6 page)

I had been raped when I was seven and I had seen the rapist’s privates. My brother was too careful to let me see him naked so I really had never seen any man nude except the rapist. That evening I caught a glimpse of Babe’s privates and it embarrassed me. I was sorry I had been so bold.

I knew I was going to tell Bailey eventually—and I knew he was going to tell me I had again done something stupid.

Babe made a loud sound and then lay still. That’s when I knew we had finished having sex. He started to get up and I asked him, “Is this all it is?”

He said, “Yeah.”

I dressed, really disappointed that having sex had not assured me that I was normal and not a lesbian. We left the house. I wanted to discuss the incident with my brother, but he was in the merchant marine and was not due to return to San Francisco for months.

Two months passed and I found that I was pregnant. I called Babe and invited him over to my house. When I told him that I was pregnant, he acted as if he were about four years old. He whined, “I’m not the father. Don’t tell that lie. Don’t lie on me.”

So I said, “You may leave.” I could be very highhanded when I was young. “You may go out. Go out the back door.”

When my mother returned to San Francisco and then went back to Alaska, I did not tell her about my pregnancy. I was afraid she would take me out of school. But when Bailey came home on merchant marine leave, I told him I was pregnant. He warned me, “Don’t tell Mother. She’ll take you out of school.
You must finish high school now. If you don’t, you might never go back. You get that diploma.”

Mother made repeated trips to Alaska to tend to their affairs, so she missed watching me blossom into a soon-to-be mother.

My stepfather was around and noticed a difference but didn’t know what he was seeing. He said, “You’re growing up, beginning to look like a young woman.”

I thought, I should: I’m over eight months pregnant.

And Papa Ford, who cleaned the house and cooked, didn’t notice me at all.

I went to school unsteadily all summer—sometimes nausea forced me off the streetcars—but I finished my senior year at Mission High’s summer school.

Daddy Clidell’s birthday and V-Day coincided with my graduation. My dad took me out to a congratulatory dinner and told me how proud he was to have a daughter who had graduated from high school. He reminded me that he had gotten only to third grade. We came back home and I went upstairs to my room and wrote a letter.

“Dear Dad, I am sorry I have brought disrespect and scandal on the family, but I am pregnant.” I put the page on his pillow.

It was impossible to find sleep. I waited to hear his footsteps. What would he do? He might curse me out. No, he never cursed. At about four o’clock in the morning he came home. I thought surely he would read that note and come stomping up the steps. Nothing. I took a bath, then I gave up trying to sleep and sat on the side of the bed. At nine o’clock that morning, he called from downstairs.

“Maya, come on down. Come down and have coffee with me. I got your letter.” I was dressed and nervous. He was sitting at the kitchen table and said, in his regular voice, “Now baby, I got your note. Now, um, how far are you gone?”

I caught my breath, then told him I had about three weeks before the baby would be born.

“All right, I’ll call your mother. She will take care of this, don’t worry. Now, I don’t think you are supposed to do much jumping around in your condition. I see you did not get much sleep. Go back to bed.”

Surprised and relieved, I went back to my room.

The next day my mother flew in from Nome. I had no idea what she was going to do. I thought of how she would look at me. I was six feet tall and very pregnant, as well as guilty and scared. She was about five feet, four and a half inches tall and very beautiful. She came in and looked at me and she said, “Oh, you’re more than any three weeks pregnant.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am, it is three weeks before I have the baby.”

She said Daddy Clidell had misunderstood and told her on the phone that I was three weeks pregnant and she’d better come home. I looked at her and could not think of a word to say.

“All right now, baby, go run me a bath.” In our family, for some unknown reason, we consider it an honor to run a bath, to put in bubbles and good scents for another person.

So I ran the bath, then, after she got in, she called to me and said, “Come and sit in here with me.”

I sat on a stool in the bathroom.

“Do you smoke?”

“Yes, ma’am, but I don’t have any.”

She said, “Well, what do you smoke?”

“Pall Malls.”

She said, “All right. I smoke Lucky Strikes, but you can have one of mine.” So I had a cigarette and then she asked me, “Do you know who the father is?”

“Yes, ma’am, it was only one time.”

“Do you love him?”

I said, “No.”

“Does he love you?”

I said, “No.”

“Well then, that’s that. We will not ruin three
lives. We—
you and I
—and this family are going to have a wonderful baby. That’s all there is to that. Thank you, baby. Go on.”

I left the bathroom, tears of relief bathing my face. She didn’t hate me or cause me to hate myself. She gave me the same respect she had always shown. She cared for me and for my child. She talked to me.

Mother stayed in the house for the three weeks, talking to me, telling family stories about babies and pregnancies and delivering babies. She recounted the night I was born. She described how long she had been in labor and how she stuffed her mouth with towels so no one would hear her cries.

When the contractions began, I got my hospital suitcase, which she had packed, and knocked on her door. When I announced I was ready to go she laughed and said, “Not yet, baby, you have a few hours. They will come slowly at first and they will get faster. Don’t worry. I promise to get you to the hospital on time.”

She invited me into her bedroom and gave me a bath. She put me on her bed and she shaved me in preparation for delivery.

Vivian Baxter was, among other things, a registered nurse. In the three weeks she had been home, she had taken me twice to see Dr. Rubinstein, her doctor. He had calculated the delivery date. My
mother called him, left a message, and took me to the hospital.

When we arrived we could see two nurses through the glass in the door. My mother said, “Now this large one is going to be very jovial and the little one is going to be sour as a lemon. I’ll bet you fifty cents.”

The two women opened the door and the fat woman said, “Oh welcome! We’re waiting for her. Bring her in here.”

The little one said with a sour voice, “We thought you’d be here sooner.” It was just as if my mother had known them before.

She told them she was a nurse, and told them the hospital where she had worked. She took me into the delivery room. The contractions came faster but the doctor didn’t arrive.

Mother called one of the nurses and said that I was already shaved, and then she washed me again. My mother got up on the delivery table with me and knelt. She put one of my legs against her shoulder and took both my hands. Then she told me filthy stories, jokes. She timed the punch lines with the contractions and I would laugh. She encouraged me: “That’s right, bear down, bear down.” I bore down and as the baby was coming out she said, “Here he comes, and he has black hair.”

I wondered, What color hair did you think he would have?

The nurse washed him and my mother said, “Look at this: We have a wonderful handsome boy. Okay baby, it’s all right now. You can go to sleep.”

She kissed me and left. My stepdad later told me she was so wrung out when she got home, she looked like she had had twins.

I thought about my mother and knew she was amazing. She never made me feel as if I brought scandal to the family. The baby had not been planned and I would have to rethink plans about education, but to Vivian Baxter that was life being life. Having a baby while I was unmarried had not been wrong. It was simply slightly inconvenient.

I found a job when my son was two months old. I went to Mother and told her, “Mother, I am going to move.”

“You are going to leave my house?” She was shocked that I would leave her fine home, with all its amenities.

I said, “Yes, I have found a job, and a room with cooking privileges down the hall, and the landlady will be the babysitter.”

She looked at me half pityingly and half proud. She said, “All right, you go, but remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised.
With what you have learned from your Grandmother Henderson in Arkansas and what you have learned from me, you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don’t let anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will always have to make adaptations, in love relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don’t let anybody change your mind. And then remember this: You can always come home.”

I walked away and was back in my bedroom before I heard my own words echoing in my mind. I had called Lady “Mother.” I knew she had noticed but we never ever mentioned the incident. I was aware that after the birth of my son and the decision to move and get a place for just the two of us, I thought of Vivian Baxter as my mother. On the odd occasion and out of habit, sometimes I called her Lady, but her treatment of me and her love for my baby earned her the right to be called Mother. On the day we moved from her house, Mother liberated me by letting me know she was on my side. I realized that I had grown close to her and that she had liberated me. She liberated me from a society that would have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life. And from that time to this time, I have taken life by the lapels and I have said, “I’m with you, kid.”

“I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.”

(1986)

Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

By the time I was twenty-two I was living in San Francisco. I had a five-year-old son, two jobs, and two rented rooms, with cooking privileges down the hall. My landlady, Mrs. Jefferson, was kind and grandmotherly. She was a ready babysitter and insisted on providing dinner for her tenants. Her ways were so tender and her personality so sweet that no one was mean enough to discourage her disastrous culinary exploits. Spaghetti at her table, which was offered at least three times a week, was a mysterious red, white, and brown concoction. We would occasionally encounter an unidentifiable piece of meat hidden among the pasta.

There was no money in my budget for restaurant food, so I and my son, Guy, were always loyal, if often unhappy, diners at Chez Jefferson.

My mother had moved into another large Victorian house, on Fulton Street, which she again filled with Gothic, heavily carved furniture. The upholstery on the sofa and occasional chairs was red-wine-colored mohair. Oriental rugs were placed throughout the house. She had a live-in employee, Poppa, who cleaned the house and sometimes filled in as cook helper.

Mother picked up Guy twice a week and took him to her house, where she fed him peaches and cream and hot dogs, but I only went to Fulton Street once a month and at an agreed-upon time.

She understood and encouraged my self-reliance and I looked forward eagerly to our standing appointment. On the occasion, she would cook one of my favorite dishes. One lunch date stands out in my mind. I call it Vivian’s Red Rice Day.

When I arrived at the Fulton Street house my mother was dressed beautifully. Her makeup was perfect and she wore good jewelry.

After we embraced, I washed my hands and we walked through her formal, dark dining room and into the large, bright kitchen.

Much of lunch was already on the kitchen table.
Vivian Baxter was very serious about her delicious meals.