Play & Book Excerpts
Childless Mother
(Vanguard Press)
© Tracy Mayo
Prologue
Before she moved into double room #12 on the first floor of the east wing of the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers, she had moved into a three-story Georgian on the Norfolk Naval Shipyard with her upright U.S. Navy father, her anxious mother and their Shetland Sheepdog, Brandy. This was their eighth move in her thirteen years, her seventh school in nine grades. Though she started over with each school year, the lonely, only child was resilient. In a military family, resilience was commanded.
An “officer’s kid” within the insular domain of the military base, she bonded with a group of equally nomadic officers’ kids. In a land of sail boats and destroyers, they shared a singular year of unexpected freedom and discovery. They formed a Shipyard “gang” and roamed around the base as if they owned it, as if immune from harm.
She snuck into the pool after hours, tried her first beer and fell in love. His blond hair tinged green with chlorine, his nose coated in zinc oxide, his arms and legs sun-bleached, the handsome sixteen-year-old lifeguard’s name was Ken Locke. In July of 1969 we walked on the moon for the first time, and she was Kenny’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”
________
She hadn’t yet joined the gymnastics club with the hopes of inducing a miscarriage in this Pre-Choice era.
She hadn’t yet been given the fake name “Susie” to protect her identity in a building full of girls with the same secret.
She hadn’t yet walked one hundred and five miles in circles around the Florence Crittenton grounds, with her transistor radio held close to her ear, listening to “Bridge over Troubled Waters” and “American Woman,” reaching for a world she could never get back. She had no way to know that “The Long and Winding Road” would become the anthem for her search, twenty-two years later.
She hadn’t yet heard the college boys shout “Hey, Preggers” from their rowing sculls. She had not yet been elected President of the Expecting Girls, having run on a platform of a first-floor cigarette machine and chocolate for dessert every night. She hadn’t yet composed letters to friends describing a phony new life in Seattle, supposedly tending to her grandmother’s broken hip, as any good fifteen-year-old would do.
She hadn’t yet labored alone for nine-and-a-half hours at Norfolk General Hospital, registered under a number instead of a name. She hadn’t yet telephoned her parents at home on the other side of town across the river, to tell them that she had delivered a boy.
She had not yet officially relinquished the only child she would ever have.
________
But she never forgot the feeling of him kicking inside her. And she knew, when he slipped from the dark, fluid warm of her womb into the bright, cool lights of the delivery room that they were separated in body only. She never forgot the sounds of the bassinet’s wheels approaching from the hallway when they brought her baby, bathed and swaddled. His blond hair smelled like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.
She never forgot how he stared at her as she held him for ten short minutes.
Her sense of herself as a bewildered teenager skated far away and left, instead, the essence of Mother. She had made something so beautiful. And then they took him away. But she never forgot, as she surrendered him into the arms of strangers, their covenant. So she kept him close, and saved her silent tears for the darkest, most quiet part of the night.
_________
She never failed to wonder if he grew into her dark hair or kept Kenny’s blond. Each year she imagined his birthday and Christmas gifts, and what he looked like in his back-to-school outfits. She dreamed she was Joni Mitchell and would craft a song with a message meant just for him. One evening in college – Duke Forest, twilight gathering – she thought she heard his then four-year-old voice. She stopped to listen – knew it was impossible – but with clarity beyond the finest crystal, understood he was out there.
She never forgot that frozen October night in 1980, when she lived in a log cabin and the wind howled through the cracks between the mortar and the logs – the awful premonition that he was in danger, at age ten. She would wait thirteen years to learn her premonition had been right. She never lost the purest requirement: to know that he was safe.
For twenty-three years I lived as a mother without my child, but I was a mother, nonetheless. They said it would be best if I could forget, which only made me more determined to remember.
Before she moved into double room #12 on the first floor of the east wing of the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers, she had moved into a three-story Georgian on the Norfolk Naval Shipyard with her upright U.S. Navy father, her anxious mother and their Shetland Sheepdog, Brandy. This was their eighth move in her thirteen years, her seventh school in nine grades. Though she started over with each school year, the lonely, only child was resilient. In a military family, resilience was commanded.
An “officer’s kid” within the insular domain of the military base, she bonded with a group of equally nomadic officers’ kids. In a land of sail boats and destroyers, they shared a singular year of unexpected freedom and discovery. They formed a Shipyard “gang” and roamed around the base as if they owned it, as if immune from harm.
She snuck into the pool after hours, tried her first beer and fell in love. His blond hair tinged green with chlorine, his nose coated in zinc oxide, his arms and legs sun-bleached, the handsome sixteen-year-old lifeguard’s name was Ken Locke. In July of 1969 we walked on the moon for the first time, and she was Kenny’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”
________
She hadn’t yet joined the gymnastics club with the hopes of inducing a miscarriage in this Pre-Choice era.
She hadn’t yet been given the fake name “Susie” to protect her identity in a building full of girls with the same secret.
She hadn’t yet walked one hundred and five miles in circles around the Florence Crittenton grounds, with her transistor radio held close to her ear, listening to “Bridge over Troubled Waters” and “American Woman,” reaching for a world she could never get back. She had no way to know that “The Long and Winding Road” would become the anthem for her search, twenty-two years later.
She hadn’t yet heard the college boys shout “Hey, Preggers” from their rowing sculls. She had not yet been elected President of the Expecting Girls, having run on a platform of a first-floor cigarette machine and chocolate for dessert every night. She hadn’t yet composed letters to friends describing a phony new life in Seattle, supposedly tending to her grandmother’s broken hip, as any good fifteen-year-old would do.
She hadn’t yet labored alone for nine-and-a-half hours at Norfolk General Hospital, registered under a number instead of a name. She hadn’t yet telephoned her parents at home on the other side of town across the river, to tell them that she had delivered a boy.
She had not yet officially relinquished the only child she would ever have.
________
But she never forgot the feeling of him kicking inside her. And she knew, when he slipped from the dark, fluid warm of her womb into the bright, cool lights of the delivery room that they were separated in body only. She never forgot the sounds of the bassinet’s wheels approaching from the hallway when they brought her baby, bathed and swaddled. His blond hair smelled like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.
She never forgot how he stared at her as she held him for ten short minutes.
Her sense of herself as a bewildered teenager skated far away and left, instead, the essence of Mother. She had made something so beautiful. And then they took him away. But she never forgot, as she surrendered him into the arms of strangers, their covenant. So she kept him close, and saved her silent tears for the darkest, most quiet part of the night.
_________
She never failed to wonder if he grew into her dark hair or kept Kenny’s blond. Each year she imagined his birthday and Christmas gifts, and what he looked like in his back-to-school outfits. She dreamed she was Joni Mitchell and would craft a song with a message meant just for him. One evening in college – Duke Forest, twilight gathering – she thought she heard his then four-year-old voice. She stopped to listen – knew it was impossible – but with clarity beyond the finest crystal, understood he was out there.
She never forgot that frozen October night in 1980, when she lived in a log cabin and the wind howled through the cracks between the mortar and the logs – the awful premonition that he was in danger, at age ten. She would wait thirteen years to learn her premonition had been right. She never lost the purest requirement: to know that he was safe.
For twenty-three years I lived as a mother without my child, but I was a mother, nonetheless. They said it would be best if I could forget, which only made me more determined to remember.
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Tracy Mayo has two degrees from Duke University. A naturalist, she later embarked on a thirty-year career in commercial construction management, as a trailblazing woman in a man’s world. Retired from construction, she studied creative writing. Her writing has appeared at Aspen Summer Words’ juried workshops, in Heimat Review and in The Octotillo Review. Tracy lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and Flat-Coated Retriever.
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Photo Courtesy: Tracy Mayo
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