The child in my arms breathed the fast breath of baby sleep. Her eyes moved beneath her lids and her mouth pouted and relaxed, pouted and relaxed. I smoothed my hand over her thick black hair, smelled the smell of her, milk and powder and Desitin. Her small weight and the heat of her against my chest were perfect comforts that stilled me.
It was 1990. I was thirty-one years old and a month into my second marriage on that weekend in May. My husband, Bill, and I had made the three-hour drive from our home in Portland, Oregon, to the family ranch just outside my hometown of Condon.
My sisters and sister-in-law and I were gathered at the round oak table in the kitchen nook. Mom was at the counter chopping vegetables for a layered salad. The steady beat of the blade made time against the whine of race cars on the TV in the family room. Bill and Dad and my brothers and brothers-in-law were in there, talking now and then, watching those cars go around.
The roast in the oven filled the kitchen with a familiar smell of home and of a history that went all the way back to my great-grandparents, who settled this wheat and cattle ranch in the north central part of the state. They built this house and raised eight kids in it. The house was passed on to my grandfather and then to my father, who raised his five kids here. My parents still lived in the house, and this was the gathering place whenever I came from Portland for a visit.
My nieces and nephew ran through the kitchen. They were streaks of giggles, blond hair, brown hair, brown hair, blond hair, hard-playing pinked cheeks. On into the family room to ask Dad could they go into the granary? Feed the chickens? Comb Jader, the collie?
I was sunk deep in holding-a-baby love. Alyson was the first child of my younger sister. I’d held her only once before, at my wedding, when she was a month old. My women friends had gathered around us, me the bride, Alyson the newest baby in my world.
I smiled now at Cris. “You did good,” I said.
My older sister, Leanne, watched. I figured she was thinking this baby would get a good dose of the love I gave to her two girls and to my brother’s two kids as well. She nodded toward the baby.
“Holding her,” she said, “does it make you want to have one?”
A sharp catch in my chest, the small arrow of hope in Leanne’s question.
Mom stopped chopping and turned for my answer.
Leanne had a careful smile, like maybe she shouldn’t have asked but couldn’t stop herself, this moment so right, me so clearly adoring this baby.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, trying to think of how to say it. That yes, holding Alyson did make me want to have one. But no, I wasn’t going to.
Most of my life I thought I’d end up being a mother. But things had changed. I’d changed in a way that drew me toward a life different from what I’d been raised for.
Somewhere along the line I’d told Leanne, told Mom, too, that Bill and I didn’t plan to have kids. Up until this moment I’d been settled with this. No one had tried to talk me out of it. We weren’t the kind of family to question each other’s decisions, or mostly we weren’t. There were exceptions. This seemed to be one.
Mom set the knife down and moved closer. She looked at the baby. At me with the baby. “It’s our only disappointment,” she said, “about you marrying Bill.” From the pressure of her words like a held-back horse coming out of the gate, from the angle of her jaw, the way she leaned in, she’d been holding this thought for a while. “You’re missing out on the biggest joy in life,” she said.
I looked at the baby. My scalp prickled. All eyes on me, the only woman in the room who didn’t have kids. The room was quiet except for the racing cars. Except for the beat of my heart. The breath of the baby.
This felt like an intervention. It felt like an argument I couldn’t win.
Bill must’ve heard all this over the whine of those cars. He called out from the family room. “Aren’t I Jackie’s biggest joy?” The tease in it, a call to me that covered his worry.
“It’s not the same,” Mom said, quick and harsh. “Having a child is like no love you’ve ever felt.”
Bill went quiet. I wanted to go to him. To stand in the doorway and protect him from her sure jab.
From the family room, Dad said, “It’s not our business, Jeanie.” The calm and patience of his voice didn’t hide his silent command: Stop.
My sisters were quiet. The men in the other room were quiet. Dad speaking up to Mom like this surprised me.
A few years earlier, not long after my first marriage had ended, Dad told me he hoped each of us kids would have five kids, just like he did. “That’d be twenty-five grandkids,” he’d said.
“Twenty-five.” I’d laughed at the accuracy of his math. The extravagance of his hope. I brushed past it, with a joke about how the others had better get to work making babies because he shouldn’t count on me.
The conversations Dad and Mom must’ve had. The two of them, maybe in the family room, her with a crossword, him with the TV. Mom saying, “Jackie said she and Bill aren’t having kids.” Dad saying he’d figured that out. Or in bed at night, them next to each other in the dark. Her saying she was disappointed. Him saying he’d hoped for more grandkids.
Their disappointment moved into me. I opened my mouth to speak, like I might find a right answer.
Mom said, “I’m just worried.” She softened her voice a little. “Worried you’ll end up being a bitter, lonely old woman. Like your Aunt Lena.”
Alyson still slept in my arms. My shirt was damp from the heat she put off.
I didn’t know what Mom meant. My great aunt Lena wasn’t bitter. All her life, up until she died, she had a smile every time I saw her.
I tried to keep my voice this-is-no-big-deal calm. “I won’t,” I said. My throat felt tight. I put my head down and pretended all my attention was on this baby.
Mom went back to the counter, knife in hand. She started chopping in quick beats.
I breathed, tried to gather myself, the splintery feeling of knowing I was a disappointment. My sisters moved on to some other topic. Minutes went by. Minutes where I thought I could stop the tears coming up in me. Then knowing I couldn’t. I gave the baby back to Cris. Smiled a fake smile. Didn’t look anyone in the eye.
I went into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub. Took a long breath. Tried to get that breath past the clench in my throat. The brass pulls of the dresser next to the sink had dulled over the years. The first two drawers still held ribbons and hairbrushes and pink foam rollers, old lipsticks and broken necklaces and dull tweezers from when my sisters and I lived here. The third drawer down had Mom’s secret things that I used to look at before I knew what they were. I’d kept looking after Mom explained the woman things to me, when I was still waiting to be old enough to use them myself. Pads and tampons and sprays and creams.
I’d been the second-to-last one in my class to start bleeding. I’d felt left behind. Sometimes I snuck one of those pads and wore it to pretend.
The murmur of the women in the kitchen came through the walls. The kids called out to one another. Their bright voices. I wanted to slide to the floor. Tears pushed against my throat, mouth, eyes. I must not cry. It would show on me. Mom would feel bad that she’d said anything. Everyone would know her words shoved open a door I thought I’d closed.
The scent of soap and musty towels and the cinnamon perfume of potpourri came to me in a long breath. I stood up. In the mirror over the sink, my dark eyes had the pinched-in look of held back tears. “It’s okay,” I said. Another breath, hard to take in. “It’s okay,” I said again.