GRAVIDA Stories a Thesis Submitted to Kent State University in Partial
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
GRAVIDA Stories A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts by Katherine Rigney Trook December 2012 Thesis written by Katherine Rigney Trook B.A., Davidson College, 2000 M.F.A., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by ____Varley O’Connor___________, Advisor ____Robert Trogdon____________, Chair, Department of English ____Timothy Chandler __________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………..iv STORIES The Birth Plan……………………………………………….…1 If You Learn the Fate of Freddy…………………..………..…22 Specimen………..……………………………………….….…26 Misconceptions………………………………………...………60 Gravida………………………………………………………...82 Jayne Types……………………………………………..…….113 Company………………………………….…………………..140 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although this collection contains “dark” motherhood stories, none of this would exist without the lights of my life. Thank you to my three boys (one big, two little) for the time, space, inspiration, and unconditional love and support they’ve provided throughout this process. Thank to you Kent State for funding me, the NEOMFA for educating me, Varley O’Connor for helping me, and my thesis committee and colleagues for reading me. The term “gravida” comes from the Latin gravidus, gravida, gravidum and has three separate but related meanings: 1.) A pregnant woman 2.) Number of pregnancies, regardless of their outcomes. 3.) Weighted down This collection revolves around these definitions. These stories are works of fiction. Some ring more true than others. iv THE BIRTH PLAN When I was five or six, I thought I had a firm understanding of the labor and delivery process. Babies came from bellies and left behind thick scars like the ones I had seen on my mother’s thin, white middle—a lengthwise stroke for me, a up-and-down line for my brother, pockmark scars from the staples —a reminder to her of where we came from, just like our own belly buttons reminded us. In my kindergarten mind, vaginas were for peeing, and the reason women screamed while they were in labor was because they knew the doctors were going to cut them open, and they knew it was probably going to hurt. If you had asked me then where the dad was during the birth process, the answer would be easy; he would be in the waiting room, watching television and reading a newspaper. He would sit there eating a bologna and mayo sandwich until the nurse, wearing one of those white, angular bonnets with a red cross on it, burst through the swinging hospital doors, interrupting Dan Rather on the evening news to announce, “It’s a girl, sir!” And the new dad, in his button-down shirt with sweaty armpits, would loosen his tie, grab the bouquet of flowers from the end table, and rush in to meet his family. In my head, it happened exactly like that. Thirty years later, I was six months pregnant, listening to my best friend Claire 1 2 clamor about childbirth over decafs, hers soy, mine with half-and-half. Claire, one-eighth Sioux, with dark eyes and hair, has a baby-birthing body—tall, with curvy hips, and muscular arms and calves that bulge when she loads her three small girls into her oversized truck. Claire works full-time as a lawyer, eats cheesecake, runs marathons, plays with Play-doh. I was barely holding it together as a pregnant, part-time teacher. If we were traveling westward in the mid-1800s, you’d find Claire giving birth with one arm and fixing a wheel axle with the other, while I’d be in the covered wagon, probably drinking whiskey and dying of dysentery. “Oh, c’mon,” she said. “You and Jake have to at least consider a natural birth.” By natural, she didn’t mean vaginal. She meant drug-free, meditative, painful, and vaginal. And while it was nice of her to include my husband in the conversation, I was sure he was more focused on our son’s entrance into the world than his exit from my body. “You are meant to birth a baby without drugs. Sure, it hurts. But the recovery is easy, and you’ll be so happy you at least tried it,” she said, gulping her coffee so piping hot that it made my tongue hurt. I blithely blew on mine. I liked trying new things. I had tried hot yoga once. I went on a Paleolithic diet where I ate nothing but meat and green vegetables for eight days. I had been skydiving and SCUBA diving. But it was more like I dabbled in these things, put my toe in the deep end before running back to my lawn chair. I wasn’t sure I wanted to dabble in natural childbirth. I didn’t know if you could dabble in it, really. “I don’t know, Claire. Given the choice, I choose less pain over more pain, you 3 know? I take Advil, put Band-aids on paper cuts.” She nodded like she agreed, but then tossed her black hair back for the counter-argument. “It’s not just about you any more though. I’m not going to scare you with statistics or tell you what epidurals do to babies—it drugs them too, you know—but at the very least you should take the Bradley Childbirth class. You like to learn. Why wouldn’t you want to make as informed a decision about your child’s birth as possible?” she asked. I told her I would think about it. What Claire didn’t know, what no one at that time knew, was how wholly unnatural my path to motherhood already was. The baby in my belly was the stuff of science fiction. He was made on a Tuesday afternoon in a second-floor laboratory by a woman in a lab coat who selected one of my husband’s healthy sperm from a petri dish and plunged it into one of my bulbous eggs, like a needle through a stubborn blister. She did this six times, once for each egg that had been retrieved from my ovaries under twilight anesthesia hours earlier. The litter of six embryos whittled down to two after attrition and a failed fresh IVF cycle, and the twin remainders were cryogenically frozen in a laboratory cooler for three months (I paid $93 in rent) before a thaw and transfer of the two embryos back into my uterus via a small pipette. I watched the process on a Jumbotron-like screen that electronically descended from the ceiling. Getting pregnant on an alien spaceship might be a similar process. I have a photo, taken when my son was a mass of eight cells, next to the second embryo, that, for whatever reason, didn’t stick around. Even a mother can’t tell the two apart, which one made it, which one didn’t. The cells in the photo overlap like circles in 4 a Venn diagram, each cell’s shape clear, its destiny yet unknown, and I could look at that picture for hours and not begin to fathom how those circles, so crude that I could draw them in seconds with a pencil on the back of a cocktail napkin, could ever become something else. So simple, and basic, and beautiful. But not exactly natural. The week after I met with Claire I saw my obstetrician for my twenty-week appointment. While I sat on the cold, paper covered exam table, he mentioned that I needed to start thinking about a childbirth course, and he suggested a four-hour accelerated program that met for one morning in the hospital basement. They served donuts and covered the basics, he said. “It’s only four hours?” I asked, remembering my conversation with Claire. Four- hour birth classes felt analogous to a four minute wait for food at a favorite sit-down restaurant; you’d like to imagine that the preparation took a little bit more time. “These days, all that women seem to want to know is where to park at the hospital, what door to enter, and when they can get an epidural,” my doctor said. I was a little offended. Maybe we could squeeze in a quick tummy tuck while we were at it. But I didn’t see myself writhing around in a birthing tub, either. I went home and looked online at the birth class offerings. There was the quick and dirty four-hour course my doctor had mentioned. There was a class for people who wanted c-sections. There were some Lamaze classes, which Claire had said was the method of our mothers’ generation. Then there was the thirty-six hour, twelve week Bradley Childbirth Method course with a description that read, “This class is for couples who anticipate an unmedicated birth experience, although medication options are discussed. The emphasis 5 of the class is on normal, abdominal breathing and total relaxation techniques.” I liked some of these words. “Normal,” “relaxation,” even “unmedicated” didn’t seem laced with pain when written like this, and nowhere was “hard-core” or “crazy” mentioned. I signed us up. At the very least, I figured we could rule the natural method out. I didn’t tell Jake about the full scope of the Bradley Method commitment until we were in the car on our way to the first meeting. “So what are we doing in this class tonight?” Jake asked as he drove down the highway. “I don’t know. Get-to-know-you stuff probably. Maybe an ice-breaker.” “Do you know how long this is going to take? Will we be home for the Ohio State game?” “They said three hours.” “Three hours? What will we do for three hours?” It was time to break the news.