Dearest Glory,
Please stop thinking your actions had anything to do with Robbie’s illness.
There is nothing more unavoidable or more damaging than a mother’s guilt. This I know perhaps better than most, though I was never meant to be a mother.
Back in grammar school, I fell from a tire swing and landed hard, fracturing some necessary bones in my small pelvis. I can barely remember the pain, but I can clearly recall the doctor telling my father, in hushed tones over my sickbed, that I was ruined.
I’d never heard my father cry before, but he did, either for me or the grandsons he surely thought would someday come. My mother soothed him, saying, “Wait and see. Wait and see,” over and over until even I was able to sleep, to dream, to heal.
For months I walked with crutches and drank half a cup of wine before bed to thin my blood. I rested when I could and ate so much cheese I got a little plump. Eventually the bones fused back together and I tossed my crutches into the fire.
We never talked about it. When I first saw spots of blood on my underthings Mother hugged me tight and said it was God’s sign I could have a baby. Even at thirteen I knew she was simply wishing for it to be true. Still, I decided I would take her word.
I never told Sal. It shames me to write this. We married, moved into his parents’ building on Chicago’s west side and tried for a baby. Nothing happened. After a year Sal cupped my chin and said, “Maybe it’ll be just you and me, kiddo. And that’s fine in my book.” I cried through the night with Sal holding my face, kissing away each tear.
When I skipped my time, I figured I was coming down with something. A few weeks later Mama Vincenzo caught my eye at Sunday dinner, smiling her cryptic Mona Lisa smile. She pulled me aside after dessert and asked when the bambino was coming.
The realization sent a tremor through my body, head to toe. Mama V held my hand and told me not to worry, assuming my distress came from fear. But it was joy, Glory. Pure delight.
I couldn’t wait for the baby to come. Toward the end I showed up at the hospital where Sal worked every time I got a twinge. The nurses started teasing Sal about it, calling him “Mr. False Alarm,” which is why I waited so long when I finally did go into labor.
Mrs. Vincenzo delivered Toby on our kitchen table. “It will be quick,” she said. “Ten minutes.” And it was. By most standards I had an easy birth. But my pelvic bones—the ones my mother lovingly guided to health so many years before—cracked along those old fault lines.
The pain...it was like a couple of wild dogs tearing at each hip. Mrs. Vincenzo put the baby to my bosom, but I could only stare at a crack in the wall, a fixed point to hypnotize myself into oblivion. Sal whispered loving words in my ear, telling me how beautiful I was and how perfect the baby looked, but I could barely breathe, let alone talk.
Mrs. Vincenzo said I just needed rest, and Sal agreed with her until three days passed and I still could not get out of bed.
He sent word to a doctor friend at Cook County, who showed up after his shift. I blacked out during the exam. When I came to, Sal knelt at my bed, saying over and over, “What’s wrong with us that we didn’t notice?” He never once said, “What’s wrong with you that you didn’t say anything?”
I withdrew from everyone, even Toby. Mrs. Vincenzo said all women had “the darkness” after childbirth, to varying degrees, and since I’d broken my bones I needed extra time. But my darkness came from guilt—I felt like all the things I’d kept from Sal had weakened my insides, each lie causing a small fracture. All my goodness came out with the baby, and my body, with nothing to stabilize it, shattered.
Sal brought Toby to me for feedings, carefully drawing my breast to the baby’s small mouth. He changed him and cleaned his pink body. He sang operettas and patted his tushy with powder. Sal mothered.
Eventually Sal had to return to the hospital, and Toby failed to thrive. His skin took on a yellow hue and he lost interest in nursing.
On the day he refused my breast entirely, Mrs. Vincenzo came into my room with a bottle of sugar water and a pair of crutches. She pushed me to sitting, grabbed one foot and planted it on the floor, then the other, and shoved the bottle in my hand.
“I can’t,” I said.
“He’s dying,” she said.
Then she brought her round face right up to mine, looked me in the eye and whispered, “Whatever it is, he’ll understand. Don’t you know that?”
I did. Sal would understand. Why didn’t I trust his love for me? I was punishing my child for my own stubbornness, my despicable insecurity.
I stared into Mrs. Vincenzo’s deep brown eyes for a few seconds. And then I shoved those crutches under my arms and started mothering my son.
But I continued to let fear guide my actions. I never told Sal.
One day, while he was eating breakfast, I blurted, “I’m sorry I failed you and Toby.”
He left his oatmeal on the table and came to my side. “You’ve never failed us,” he assured me. “And you never will.”
He was wrong.
When Toby was seven he ran around with a pack of boys from the block. They were a little mean and a lot rough, and Toby was neither. I always watched from the back porch, pretending to knit while I kept an eye on their shenanigans.
One evening the Mirro Cooking Class came on the radio, and I got caught up listening to a recipe for roast duck. I didn’t hear Toby scream. I didn’t hear anything until little Giuseppe from across the hall came running into the kitchen shouting, “Signora! Vieni! Vieni!”
They’d been playing cowboys and Indians. Chief Toby was tied to a tree, the rope snaking around his neck pulled over a high branch. His feet swung a few inches above the ground and the blood had already drained from his lips. My negligence had brought him to death’s door again.
I lifted him and yanked on the rope until the knot loosened. I gave him my breath and rubbed his limbs. He came to.
After church the following Sunday, Mrs. Vincenzo said she wanted to take Toby and me out. I assumed for lunch, but instead she walked us over to her sister’s apartment.
Zia Gialina was the neighborhood medium, or quack, depending on how you looked at life. Zia led me and a wide-eyed Toby into her back bedroom, where a bloodred velvet coverlet lay across the largest bed I’d ever seen. She sat on a mountain of embroidered pillows and motioned for us to join her.
“My sister says there’s been trouble,” she said.
I nodded.
“Give me your hand.”
I held it out to her, palm up.
She studied my lines, seemed unimpressed with what she saw and gave me back my hand. “Now the boy,” she demanded.
I didn’t want her to scrutinize Toby’s palm. But he straightened his skinny back and stretched out his arm.
She ran her sausage-thick fingers over his smooth palm for a very long time. “I see what it is,” she finally said. “His soul is crowded.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
Zia must have been used to resistance. Instead of addressing my lack of respect she called Mrs. Vincenzo in for a conference in Italian. When they finished, Mrs. Vincenzo said, “He needs open spaces or the black cloud will come back. You need to move.”
I was forming a smart retort when I saw the tears in her eyes. Toby was one of her greatest loves. She must have really believed Zia if she was considering sending us away.
And since she believed it so strongly, I believed it.
“We need to convince Sal to take that job,” she said.
Sal had been offered a position at the University of Iowa by an old college friend. It was a standard research/teaching position, nothing special, so Sal planned on keeping his lab job at Cook County.
I told Sal what his aunt said, and about my worries. He didn’t laugh at Zia Gialina’s reading. “Do you want to move?” he asked. I nodded. He went to bed to sleep on it.
The next day Sal called his friend and accepted the position. We took a house on a quiet street in Iowa City, not far from the Pharmacy Building.
Sal flourished. His lab work satisfied him and his classes were popular, filling up before the terms began.
Mostly I was happy, but a small part of me—the mothering part—failed to thrive properly. I grew so worried for Toby’s safety I kept him too close. He did the normal childhood things, but always with the veil of my protectiveness thrown over his head. Zia Gialina worried our crowded Chicago block was impinging on Toby’s soul, but it was me. My fears kept him fenced in.
But push hard and your kid will push back harder. At first Toby ran toward the open spaces in his head, gobbling up books about the solar system, New York skyscrapers, the mountains of Africa.
Later he ran toward the wide-open Pacific Ocean.
But I fear Toby has made a mistake. He’s on a ship, packed close as a sardine. I worry his soul is being smothered....
Oh, Glory, I’m sorry. Here I am rambling like a drunk. I’ve turned this into a letter about me. It’s not right to attach my shame and regret to you. It’s horrid to assume that my response will be your response, that Robbie’s illness will cause you to—
[Letter never sent—stuffed in a drawer.]