If you put another’s heart or lung or kidney in your body, your body will fight it. You must take drugs to lower your immune response, so your body can accept the foreign tissue. A zygote (an embryo, a fetus) carries the unfamiliar genes of the father as well as the familiar of the mother. The zygote has its own genetic code. It is a foreign body.
The mother’s body must persuade itself to let down the fight, to not attack the strange thing. This zygote is considered a temporary allograft. It must stay within for those months, the mother must carry it, host it.
Sometimes the body does reject, or the temporary allograft resists, and the future baby is lost. But most times, her body takes care of the child. It turns its own immune response on low flame. She must avoid risks. No raw fish, no raw eggs, no sushi, no deli meat, no soft cheeses. And so on.
A mother practices these cautions to bring her child safely into the world.
And then she tries, we all try, to keep this child safe.
On a blue spring afternoon in 2007, after a visit to the dentist, I stopped to water my vegetable garden before going into the house. Pea shoots, bent up from the soil; small leaves of lettuce and beets and carrots in rows. I love spring and all the possibility that comes with it.
Bill came out of the house and said to come inside. The absence of his smile, the stillness of his face; I turned off the water and put down the hose.
He waited until I was in the kitchen, standing by the island. He said, “I have something to tell you.” And he told me.
Cris’s second girl, Devin, had taken her life. She was fifteen.
My knees didn’t buckle and I didn’t cry out, but you can fall apart in a hundred ways. A silence took over, shut my ears. I wished the silence had taken over earlier, before Bill had said what he’d said.
Her mother. My little sister. Being so damn careful through her pregnancy, falling in mother-love for Devin when she arrived, guiding her through the toddler years, almost losing her once when she was struck by a slow-moving car; worrying over her problems with reading and focus. Cris did everything she could think of to help Devin, even when Devin broke the rules, even when Devin was angry with Cris for doing what a mother must do to shepherd her child to adulthood.
The story of Devin’s death is another story, not mine. The story of my sister’s pain, the pain of her family, our family, of the town. We couldn’t understand what had happened.
But Devin remains with me. I am still her aunt, she is still my niece. Death cannot stop this. Thoughts of her will come in on seeing a horse or a cow or a long-haired girl with a perfectly curved forehead, a border collie, a basketball, rhinestones and grommets, a country song, a gun. On hearing the line of Shakespeare that, as a little girl, Devin broke and made her own: “To be or not to be, is that a question?”
When Devin was seven and Alyson eight, they came from Condon for a weekend visit. That first night, Bill was at work. Alyson fell asleep on the couch, but Devin asked to sleep in my bed. Maybe she was a little nervous being away from home.
We tucked in and I turned toward her. We talked for a while. It was getting late, so I pretend-closed my eyes and slowed my breath, thinking that might help her settle. She thought I was asleep.
Eventually, she turned onto her back and I opened my eyes a little and watched her. She soothed herself by laddering her thumbs and fingers like Itsy Bitsy Spider and whispered, “You have the power. You have the power.”
I thought I might cry at the hopefulness of her. What power did she need? What magical giver was she whispering to? I brushed the hair back from her head and immediately regretted it because she stopped.
A year or two before Devin died, the family had gathered for Christmas Eve. Mom, us five kids, our spouses. The nieces and nephews. Tawna’s girl T’Lee, the first great-grandchild, born the year before Dad died.
We had dinner. The tree. All of us getting ready to open presents. Someone hushing someone else, someone saying, “Hurry up, we’re going to do it now.” One of the kids, said, “Aunt Jackie, we have something for you. It’s from all of us.” JD and Tawna, Annilee and Shannon, Alyson and Devin and Joely were standing together. One of them handed me a gift bag.
Inside, under the red tissue, was a small pillow. It had hearts and embroidery. Not like what I kept in my house. “Oh,” I said.
“Turn it over,” one of the kids said.
On the other side, in dark lettering: AUNT: A cherished friend and personal cheerleader who will always see you through ‘rose’ colored glasses.
I’d loved them all of their lives. Helplessly. Fiercely. To be revealed in this moment was almost an embarrassment. My first impulse was to make a joke of my love. But I stopped myself. I said, “Thank you.” And I let the tears be.
When I chose not to have children, I made a bargain with the child-giving, child-taking powers. A bargain I hadn’t even known I’d made until Devin died.
Yes, I’d agreed. I will not have children. My task will be to find peace with this. The love I would have given to my own unmade children will be an added protection for those who are here.
This was the agreement.
I would see when they were struggling, and reach out. My hands were free.
I thought my bargain would keep them all safe.
But it did not.
Being childless wouldn’t protect them. It wouldn’t protect me. Even so, it won’t keep me from the stunning pleasure of witnessing a child in her pure moments, or of loving her even when she is gone.