Story 7: Crash Day
By Cindi Lamb
Unionville, Maryland, August 1978:
A yellow cottage, a new baby boy, and a verbal nightmare
“Get your fat ass up the stairs”, he says behind me, and he smacks the pudge on my butt with a slicing slap, like a farm cow. My face heats hot with hate.
My head snaps to the right, “I hate you,” I snarl at him. “I hate you so much,” I whisper to myself.
“Oh pooder, I’m just kidding,” he says. “You know I love your fat ass.”
For four years, he’s called me fat-ass, dumb-ass, ugly-ass, every stinking day, all kinds of denigrating put-downs for me and about my whole family! and I want to strike back, I want to mock his mum.. or di…, I have a full arsenal of taunts and digs that I know would hurt him, but I don’t.
Don’t sink to his level, don’t do it; rise above the fray.’ I tell myself.
And he always says the same thing when he sees that he’s won, that he’s made me upset or hurt or angry: “Oh, I’m just kidding pooder, you know I’m just kidding, right?”
No, he’s not kidding. He says these things because he gets a sick joy seeing how much it all hurts, knowing that he’s broke me again. He even talked to me like that before we got married. I thought, “Oh, he’ll change,” or, “I’ll talk to him about it and things will get better.” You know, stupid girl thoughts.
Whatever.
I was pregnant with my son when we bought our first home in the early spring of 1978 and moved into Unionville, Maryland. Population: 200. Our darling yellow cottage sat neatly atop a five-acre gentle slope with a variety of fruit trees and pines lining the perimeter. The front door opened to a large sunroom, enclosed with waist-to-ceiling jalousie windows, a pain in the butt to keep clean, but delightful for windy, warm days in spring and fall.
Two webbed lawn chairs and a coffee table made from upside down five-gallon buckets topped with a wooden board draped in colorful chicken fabric gave the sunroom the look and feel of a picnic on the farm. I was so proud to create this cozy nook for under $10.00 and excited for him to see it when he came home from work.
“Do you always have to chintz things up?” he said as he walked through the sunroom door. “Just like your Mother, a house full of cheap, cluttered crap,” he mumbled.
“Sit down,” I said to him, patting the patio chair seat. “I have something to tell you.”
He rolled his eyes, released his suit coat and lunch bucket which clanged when it hit the concrete floor, and sat in the webbed chair.
“I’ll bet this chair sticks to your big ass when you get up,” he smirked. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I went to the baby doctor today,” I started, “And guess what? We’re having a boy! A wonderful baby boy!” I said excitedly.
“Can’t even do that right, can you,” he snapped. “I want a girl. Maybe you’ll get it right the next time.” He got up and went inside, leaving his lunch pail and coat on the floor.
He was right about one thing, though; the cheap chair stuck to my butt when I got up, so I left it on and waddled inside the house after him, quacking like a duck and laughing like a loon. He failed to see the humor. “Get away from me, fatass,” he yelled.
I stopped laughing and plucked the patio furniture from my pregnant plumpiness.
June first blew was my official due date, and it blew right by. So did June seventh, and June fourteenth. My OB/GYN scheduled a c-section Friday, June 30th. I was admitted the day before, and my new son would arrive at 7:00 AM on Friday. I was equally excited and nervous! But me and my boy didn’t quite follow the plan.
“I’m going to have a baby!” I yelled in a panic at the night nurse behind the reception desk.
“Yes, we already know,” she told me calmly. “Now go back to bed because it’s only 2:15 in the morning and you’ll need a good night’s rest. It’s the last one you’ll-
“No, I’m going to have a baby now!” I yelled a little louder. “Look!”
I took a few steps back and pointed down to the puddle of water on the floor. Then I doubled over and wailed with my third and final contraction.
The nurse made a ten-second call and helped me back to bed. Within minutes, a doctor appeared with a cadre of chatting nurses and beeping monitor equipment. The doctor quickly administered a shot in my back, and I was scrubbed, prepped, and wheeled into a surgical suite, ready for my c-section.
My ten-pound beefy baby boy checked out of womb service and was born on the last day of June at 3:10 AM! What a beautiful hunk of baby boy!
Seven weeks later, I returned to my OB doctor for my postpartum checkup.
“Guess who’s pregnant?” my doctor asked me. I think he was trying to distract me as he plucked the c-section staples from my lower belly. It hurt like hell.
“Oh, Wanda? Is Wanda pregnant?” I sputtered.
“No,” he said.
“Mary Beth? I know she wants another baby.” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“I dunno, who?” I said.
“YOU are!” he said.
And I laughed.
“That’s very funny Dr. Harris. Remember me? I just HAD a baby!” I exclaimed. “A big one!”
“Well, you’re going to have another one,” he said firmly, and he was not laughing. “And it will also be a cesarean delivery because your cervix is the size of a small pea,” he told me. “If you have any more, we’ll install a zipper,” he said, slightly grinning, and then added, “or you could die from it.”
I stopped laughing.
“You’ll probably have this next baby sometime in May,” he said before walking out.
After he left, I lay there, staring intensely at the tiny holes in the ceiling tiles, stunned, and struggling to come to terms with this news. For months, my plans for leaving him and going back home to Jamestown, New York, seemed increasingly doable. But not after today.
I loved my home. I adored my son. And I always wanted to have two children. But he was devouring nearly every strand of self-confidence I ever had. I felt trapped, not by my children, but by wondering how much longer I could bear the constant verbal emotional abuse. And afraid of where it would all lead.
Just then, the nurse entered, swabbed my 7-inch slice, and helped me sit up. “Can I have a tissue please?” I asked her. I didn't know I had been crying until I felt the wetness of my tears sliding into the crevices of my earlobes. The nurse patted me on my shoulder and whispered a perfunctory “It will all work out, dear”, as she left the room.
On May 23rd, 1979, my daughter was born, and just like that, I had my cherubic Irish twins: two infants, ten-and-a-half months apart, my son Alan, and now my bonny new baby girl, Laura Lamb. In stereo, I changed their diapers, bathed them, rocked them, and occasionally, I even breastfed them both at the same time. Sometimes, though, I did feel like a farm cow. But this was incredibly bonding and so special. And if I had it to do all over again, I would.
Crash Day, November 10, 1979
“I’m going to Mount Airy to get my hair cut,” he told me. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Take your time. I’m going to the store for groceries,” I told him. “I’m taking Laura with me, and Alan is staying with the Cooks till I get back.”
“Why don’t you take Alan with you?” he snarked.
“Because the boy will not stay in a car seat; he hates being confined. Plus, grocery shopping with a 5-month-old and a 15-month-old is kinda tough,” I told him.
“Then why don’t you leave both of them with the Cooks and hurry up back because I’ll be hungry by then,” he ordered.
“Because Laura is so sweet and she doesn’t fuss much, and what’s it to you? Other than its wrong, like everything else I do,” I peeved.
He stomped out of the dining room like a three-year-old, into the sun porch, then he smacked the wooden frame of the screen door with his palm, caught it on the rebound and slapped it back with a slam. He tucked his 6’4” frame into the blue VW and squealed wheels down the road.
Good, I thought, a few hours of peace with a bubbly baby. It’s OK, it’s alright, it’s all going to be OK, I tried to convince myself again.
We had purchased a brand-new fire engine orangy-red Ford F150 pickup truck just a few weeks ago and I was excited to drive to the Frederick A&P. But I thought about how much it would cost for gas and decided to take the yellow VW instead.
I began packing all the baby goodies I needed for our trip to the grocery store. First, I loaded the diaper bag, then my coupon caddy, the grocery list, my purse, and then I began loading Laura’s car seat. As I started to buckle it in, I noticed my purse and diaper bag took up half of the back seat and I thought ‘Oh, what the hell. Might as well take the truck. I could use the room.’
I removed the car seat from the yellow VW and buckled it around the bottom and back of the bench seat of the truck. I grabbed my purse and the diaper bag from the VW and tossed them on the passenger-side floor of the truck. I snatched up my pre-bundled baby Laura from her crib, brought her to the truck, placed her in the car seat and snuggly fastened the straps around her shoulders, waist, and through the middle of her legs. Then I went back inside and picked up my wiggly, giggly little boy, plopped him between Laura and I on the bench seat, and drove directly across the road to drop him off with the Cooks.
“And we’re off!” I announced to Laura, and we headed west down Rt. 26 to the A&P in Frederick.
A thick drizzle and a shivery chill in the air made for a bad hair day, but Laura and I were toasty in our shiny new truck. It was great! I was smiling and talking baby talk with Laura as I neared the top of a tall hill in Mt. Pleasant’s horse country. A few brown and beige dappled horses draped in moist gray blankets were grazing near the edge of the road, just behind the fence. I watched Laura watching the horses. I reached over Laura’s car seat, lightly tapping the top of her itty-bitty baby fingers with my pointer finger.
“Hey, Laura, guess what?" I said, getting her attention. "You already have those long, gorgeous legs, just like your Daddy, and when you grow up, you’ll look great on a horse!" She turned to gaze at me, to listen, then she smiled at me, and wrapped her tiny baby fingers around my thumb.
That was the last time Laura ever wrapped her tiny baby fingers around anything.
“Or how about a ballerina?” I asked, gently jiggling her left foot. “You could be a ballerina, too!” I said, glancing between the road and watching her sturdy legs and chubby feet kicking up and down.
I looked forward again, and as I crested the top of this steep hill, I saw a car in my lane, at the bottom of the hill, several hundred yards away.
Someone’s picking up candy they dropped, I thought, as the car quickly swerved back to its own lane.
Wait, in my lane,
close faster,
LEFT RIGHT, GO,
WHERE?
no shoulder,
oh back to the other la –
wait,
my lane now,
where to??
No shoulder, jagged ro-
GO BACK!
Oh GOD, I CAN SEE HIM
SLUMPED
OH GOD!!
OH MY GAH
ROCK ROCK NO
Nowhere to—
glass and metal blender
lights out.
