The truth was, I hadn’t known. I still didn’t. I knew I got a period roughly every four weeks, and since I’d moved away from home, I’d started testing myself for luteinizing hormone levels to catch ovulation. The joint privilege and annoyance of being the oldest Girl was that I didn’t have anybody else like me to look up to. No other bodies to use as a guideline. Bellanger hadn’t even lived to see me reach adolescence.
Since that routine deflowering, I’d had only short-lived relationships. Most men were less interested in me than in the story of me. The bragging rights involved in screwing the Amazing Unscrewable Girl. In eighth grade, a sweaty-faced man once cornered me in a dark parking lot, whispering that he was my real father while staring at my breasts under my Tears for Fears T-shirt. There were men out there who ranked the mothers of the Homestead from the ones they’d most like to fuck to the ones they’d least like to fuck. The daughters too, even before we’d reached puberty. It all made for a shallow dating pool.
The closest thing I’d come to a romantic prospect lately was Dr. McCarter. He was nearly twenty years my senior, but I responded to his keen intelligence, the way he could look at a woman and know the exact pattern of her internal organs, understand her abilities. At least I wasn’t a surprise to him.
The Chevy finally sputtered to life, the lights on the dashboard muted and dim, and I took off into the late-afternoon light, Madonna on the radio, whispering seductively about sex and apologies and human nature.
7
Time magazine—May 13, 1973
In Praise of Patience
On Mother’s Day, a day set aside to celebrate the too-often-unsung champions of home and hearth, it’s difficult not to think about the woman who currently defines “motherhood” in an entirely new way. Dr. Joseph Bellanger took time out of his busy schedule to grant this exclusive interview, along with Margaret Morrow, the first woman to give birth at the Homestead.
Time: On this Mother’s Day, Margaret, will you be sending your own mother any bouquets or cards? Will she get to meet her granddaughter?
Margaret: I’m not really in touch with my folks. The Homestead is my family now. Sometimes life doesn’t give you the family you want and you have to make your own.
T: What was it that drew you to working with Dr. Bellanger, Margaret? Not many young ladies would agree to be part of such an unusual project.
Bellanger: Margaret was always wonderfully open to my ideas. All the young ladies have been such receptive listeners, and so patient with an old man like me. I’m quite grateful to them.
T: But surely you realized, Margaret, when you agreed to this project, that you might be shutting off other avenues in your life. You’re only twenty-five. You still have time to meet someone and perhaps start a family with him. Do you worry that your unconventional daughter will prevent you from marrying?
B: You haven’t given that much thought, have you, Margaret? Josephine is your whole world. Anyone can see that much.
T: But Margaret—if I may—do you think Josephine will one day want a father in her life? Do you worry about explaining where she came from, when she’s older?
M: I would say that her fatherlessness is the most remarkable thing about her. It’s what makes her special. Why would she resent the very thing that—
B: But then I certainly—I wouldn’t say Josephine is without a father. On a practical level, I love that little girl as much as I love my own boys. Every milestone she reaches is a fresh delight to me. Not merely because I’m watching my creation take shape—monitoring her health, her development—but simply because Josephine is a wonderful child.
T: So even you, Dr. Bellanger, a man who’s made it his life’s mission to take fatherhood out of reproduction, admit that there’s still value to fatherhood?
B: Scientific progress is one thing, and I’m certainly proud of what I’ve accomplished, but we can’t forget the importance of familial ties.
T: What of motherhood? How do you think your work with parthenogenesis has changed our views of the maternal role?
B: Without the patience and faith of these young ladies, nothing would have been possible. Margaret, I hope you know that history and science owe a lot to you ladies for your willingness to listen to a man like me, before the rest of the world would put up with me. My hope is that your names will be listed every time I’m mentioned, as a reminder of the enduring virtues of faith and patience.
8
I’d been staring at the same giant, blank-eyed baby for nearly an hour. As the sun sank lower, the lights beneath the billboard popped on, illuminating the baby’s round cheeks and startled O of a mouth. Aside from the arc of the overpass, this billboard for a pediatric hospital was the only thing out here. I was stuck on the side of the freeway, the Chevy swaying and rattling ominously whenever an eighteen-wheeler roared past. The tow truck wouldn’t be here for another hour, at the earliest. The repair alone would cost four hundred dollars that I didn’t have, and I’d have to figure out a place to spend the night in this waystation somewhere between Redbud and Topeka. It was as far as I’d gotten before the Chevy gave up the ghost.