Rose loved this story. She would always say she couldn’t wait to grow up to be a mother. She wanted five babies, preferably all girls, and whenever she said that, Mother would laugh and kiss her head and say, Oh my Rosie, I hope they’re all as sweet as you.
But I would always stay quiet. I didn’t dream of babies, of being a mother. I’d never much relished the idea of taking care of anyone else aside from myself. And I’d never quite thought past marrying a man, becoming a wife, to what might inevitably come next.
I’d never quite thought about it at all, until I found myself on that hard tile floor of the Santa Barbara Hotel, vomiting into the toilet.
In that exact moment, I’d tried to count back to the last time I’d seen my monthly visitor and I couldn’t remember, precisely. But it had been… months, sometime before my wedding.
And then I’d leaned my cheek against the cool porcelain of the hotel toilet and I’d cried.
* * *
TOM AND I left Santa Barbara almost immediately after his accident. We went to Boston first, where his family owned an estate. He wanted to go on to Europe from there, but I wanted to return to Louisville instead, at least until the baby was born.
“I need my mother,” I insisted, like I was still a pouty little girl, and not this grown-up married woman about to be a mother in her own right.
Tom finally, reluctantly agreed, and by the first of 1920, we were back in Louisville, staying in Mother’s house. I retreated to my old bedroom and made Tom go down the hall to Rose’s. I told him the baby and I needed our space in bed. But as my stomach swelled, my nausea grew. And even if I might have wanted Tom to touch me, my body wouldn’t stand for it.
We never discussed the accident, about what had happened with the chambermaid in Santa Barbara or why Tom had been driving in the middle of the night in a car with her. Tom had come back to our suite later that afternoon, a goose egg on his forehead, and had simply said, “What would you like for supper tonight, Daisy?” As if my entire world hadn’t just burst into spontaneous flames, with one telephone call and one realization stretched across the cool bathroom floor.
I’d answered him by saying: “I think I might be pregnant.”
Tom had opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t say anything at all for a few moments. When he finally spoke he said: “A baby?” It was more a question than a reaction, good or bad.
We’d stared at each other, the ocean breeze wafting in through the window I’d opened to try and ease my nausea earlier. It gave me a chill; I shivered a little, but neither one of us moved to shut the window.
There were so many things left unsaid in that moment, but neither one of us said them to the other, either.
* * *
IN LOUISVILLE, MY belly grew and grew, and I had never felt more unattractive, more ill, in my entire life. Mother couldn’t stop crowing about what a blessing this baby was. I’d walk by her in the mornings, on my way to try and swallow down some breakfast, and she would put her hand on my belly and trill like a snow goose. Blessings and grandbabies and new life! It was like she forgot all other words but these.
But this was the first time in my life I truly despised being a woman. I no longer felt, in the slightest, pretty. When I looked in the mirror, I saw unfamiliar bloated and blotchy cheeks staring back at me. And I felt like I was suffocating from the inside out. Trapped by this baby swelling up inside of me, taking over my body, making me ugly. And trapped by Tom, too.
Mother would never understand it, and so when she cooed, I smiled politely, and kept all the awful feelings inside. I couldn’t bear to tell her that Tom had been unfaithful to me. I couldn’t bear to admit out loud what I now understood deep down: any power I’d thought I’d gained in becoming Mrs. Buchanan was all an illusion. Instead, by marrying Tom, I’d given up every last part of myself. Even now, my beauty.
And then I hoped to God this baby would at least be a boy. That it would come out of me already having choices.
* * *
I AWOKE ONE night in the middle of April, my stomach clenching. Mother called for the doctor, and he came and gave me ether for the pain, and then I truly was grateful she was close, her snow goose trilling and all. I was in and out for hours or days, sweating and screaming and pushing. Mother held my hand. Maybe Tom was down the hall in Rose’s room, or, maybe he wasn’t. I didn’t know where Tom was.
Then, there came the ether again; a dark and dreamless sleep followed.
When I awoke again, there was Mother’s face, hovering, and the doctor’s voice. He placed a baby into my arms. “It’s a girl,” he said, brightly.