We did keep on seeing each other.

In fact, most of the trysts and dates and sex, happened after I was with child.

Every time I would tell myself that I just had to tell him and I never could though it stuck on the tip of my tongue like a bad sore.

Now I am a small person and I was even smaller then. I don’t know how I hid that pregnancy as long as I did. It was the end of February when I conceived, and by April I had a pot belly. I know I went to the beach in early summer, wearing a one piece suit that had a huge open cutout for my midriff and kept sucking my stomach in all day until it hurt. I know I wore cardigan sweaters, even in the hot Manhattan summer months, for they would fall straight down from my breasts and just skim my growing belly if I held it tight.

In fact, that is how Jeffery found out I was pregnant.

Jeff was the “message” boy at the firm and I worked closely with him. The fax machine was a new thing then and not everyone had one, so if you needed a document received that very same day, you sent your boy. He was a good guy, hardworking, making his way though law school. A young man from some of the worst projects, he was the first black person that I knew really well. To Jeff I could ask stuff like:

“What’s all the ads in the subway for ashy skin? What’s that about?”

I will never forget how he let me examine in earnest the pink palms of his hands, figuring out where the black stopped and the pink began. He didn’t even get mad when I insisted on seeing his feet since he said the soles were the same. Reasons why I see no purpose now in making people live in segregated societies where another race does seem alien. So much for my nice middle class white education; it made me react to a black man like he was a science experiment.

He was teasing me one day about getting fat. Or at least he thought he was teasing, for in the process he poked my belly hiding under my baggy sweater. I can still see the look of surprise in his eyes when his finger did not sink down into the void of the sweater, but rather, stopped at my very hard baby belly. He looked at me, straight in the eye, questioning and yet knowing. I must have received his look with the utter panic that I felt, for when I hurriedly shush him and said “Don’t say anything” he never did again. My one chance to come clean and the panic overtook me.

I believe that Jeffery knew of the affair. He was smart and missed little, but said even less. He spoke to me a few times of Him. Apparently He also spoke to Jeffery and had asked him something about whether or not I had allot of boyfriends. AID’s was just starting to become a concern for heterosexuals and non drug users, so I think He was thinking about his own protection.

No one else ever said anything to me. Not my mom, not my friends. They all admitted later that they thought I was getting fat. There were two other pregnant women at the office and I, as the lowly receptionist, got the errands to run for them. I got their food since they were so tired. I carried their bags since they should not lift. All the while, I knew I was in the same condition they were, but still I obeyed rather than out myself.

I know, in my heart, that he knew I was pregnant.

One night, towards the end, we were in his apartment and he was nosing around my pretty obvious belly. He looked up at me, with a tender questioning look..like “tell me”. I think he even kissed my baby bulge.

My eyes again, must have spoken of deep panic, for even with this sweet prompt, I was frozen.

Again, I said nothing.

I can only assume, that my refusal to speak of it, made clear to him that he had no concern regarding the parentage my child. He teased me so about other nonexistent boyfriends, and wondered out loud to Jeffery. I suppose, in his head, it was someone else’s child. After all, if it wasn’t wouldn’t I have told him. That’s only logical, right?

But logic was not to rule the day. In frustration, probably as much frustration with myself as with him, I stopped seeing him. It was probably June. He asked me to go out and I refused, angrily, meanly. Maybe he asked once again, maybe not, but he never asked me why. Just accepted that I was done with him and didn’t seem at all concerned. This, of course, made me all the more angry. I was curt and rude to him every day now, every chance I could get, and still, he never asked even why.

It was probably about this time that Marina confronted me about being pregnant.

Working late one night, she called me into her office and in her lilting accent as she was Columbian;

“Cloudia, are you pregnant?”

Of course, can you expect it, I denied it completely.
Though I can still hear her words, over 20 years later, rattling in my skull. Somehow I managed to convince her that there was no way I was. Sucked my stomach in tighter and bought even baggier clothes.

How could she not have known, how could he not have known, how could my mother not have known when people on the buses and trains knew enough to offer me their seats as I waddled about.

I protected my secret with a crazed determination, though for what I did not know. Poor little baby, I would feel it swishing about inside me and, despite all, would feel something close to joy and excitement with each movement. It was like having a real, yet imaginary friend, who I would speak to throughout my day. This little life meant that I was not truly alone.

About a month later, Marina called me in again.

This time she did not ask, but proclaimed “Cloudia, you are pregnant!”

And finally, the I laid down the burden of lies and admitted it to be so.

It was all so obvious, how could I not.

Now Marina was one of those folks who thought education to be above all else. So the first thing she said upon my admitted defeat was,

“How could you do this? You are ruining your life. What about your education?”
Then, “Does your mother know?”

No one knew.

“And how about the father?”

Hide the panic, hide the truth. Let’s not forget the connections here: He was her boss too. She was Sondra’s mother. Sondra was married to my Uncle, but before their marriage; Sondra had had a relationship also with him. It certainly was NOT a relationship I was proud to be in. Plus, I think she might have gone ballistic on him.

” No, he’s not in the picture. It doesn’t matter”

Somehow, I managed to skim over the father of this child as though he was not working in the next room. Made it seem like some transient boy toy who was noticeably absent. This, she accepted.

“Tomorrow,” she again proclaimed,” you will go to the abortion clinic. I will lend you the money. You cannot have this baby”

And so I agreed. I tried not to care that I was going to lose my secret friend. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that someone else was finally taking charge and telling me what to do. Someone actually cared enough to make something happen. Someone was going to take me and my terrible mess and fix it. I was releived to have someone else making decisions. I was releived tht finailly the secret was out.

The next day, I left home and went to work like any other day. Marina came in later at 10 to miss the morning rush hour and promptly sent me to some fancy clinic as promised.

“Go here and see what they can do”

And so I took a cab to the big fancy 5th Avenue abortion clinic, just like I had feared, and waited my turn.

When my turn came they did a quick physical examine upon me, but upon seeing my huge belly, they referred me to yet another clinic where second trimester abortions could take place.
I called Marina and went where I was told. This clinic would cost $700.00 and Marina immediately sent Jeffery over with the envelope full of cash.

At clinic number two, I waited again. Jeffery came in and found me in the waiting room. Quietly, but with sympathetic and understanding eyes, he gave me the envelope and then left. I continued to wait until they called my name.

Once inside, they examined me and said I needed a sonogram to determine how far along in the pregnancy I was. Granted I knew, but for whatever reason, I seem to recall that I pretended that I didn’t. Or maybe I told them and they did not believe me. The sonogram made me out to be at closer to 30 weeks. In NY, abortions were only legal until 24 weeks gestation.

They declared me beyond the abortionist help and sent me away after announcing that I would have the child in September.

I remember being in shock at the thought of September. I was also really hungry. So I stopped on my return journey to the office at a diner for lunch. Over a grilled Swiss and Bacon sandwich, I consulted my handy dandy date book which confirmed why I was confused. Clearly marked were the dates I had had sex with anyone. And during the time period they claimed I conceived, there was no one. In fact, there was no one until Him and the earliest possible date was only 22 weeks earlier. And that was the date I had thought it had happened.

For some odd reason, this baby was portraying itself as much bigger than his actual gestational age. It turned out to be survival.

I went back to a disappointed Marina with both what they had said and what I knew to be true. She was very unhappy that it was not taken care of, but reassured by my insistence of the babe’s true age. So, she called up her personal doctor who was also a friend and sent me over to him.

Again, even after I explained the dates in my book, he felt my belly and declared me too far along for the knife. No one in NY was going to touch me.

Just as determined, Marina decided that I should go to Kansas where abortions were legal to the 26th week.

She knew the place, she knew the cost. I was going to owe her money forever at this rate. She was willing to fly me to Kansas, lie to my mother, keep my secret and front out the 2-3 thousand dollars needed to rid myself of this life ruining pregnancy. I did end up calling them and speaking to a woman who explained the procedure to me.

It would take three days. They used seaweed sticks to dilate my cervix. They would inject the baby with something and then, when dilated I would give birth to it, dead.

I am not a terribly moralistic person about abortions. I believe that late trimester ones are needed in threat to a mother life or if the baby is to be born so malformed that birth and life would equal pain and suffering. I was lost and hopeless, but to go through all that because I was so lame as to not deal all the months and weeks that I could have.

No.

Simple as that, it was a no. I resigned myself to having this baby.

I could not hurt my little squishy swimming secret friend.
I got off the phone and told Marina.
“Then what will you do? This baby will ruin your life!”

“I will have this baby and I will give it up for adoption”

I had no firsthand experience with adoption. No one in my family had adopted.

There was talk once, back in the early 70’s with the Cambodian refugees on TV being airlifted. I was old enough to remember seeing the news footage. Still and only child, my mother was experiencing what we would now call secondary infertility of an undisclosed nature. I saw the thermometer used to talk her Basel temperature and pin point ovulation. I think that there were a few times when we all yearned for someone else to join us.

So my parents spoke briefly of acquiring another daughter, but nothing came of it. I thought it would have been cool, but probably would have tired of it. The need for a sibling passed and when my brother did come, I was 12 and would have preferred a 10 speed bicycle.

I knew people who had been adopted, that went to my school. Adoption seemed almost glamorous. They had an air of mystery about them. But that all I knew, the air, I never knew anyone well enough to scratch the surface and speak of what it was really about.

I based my knowledge on made for TV movies and novels in the young adult section that were always full of conflict. Reunions sounded terribly exciting and I romanticized the whole event.

Adoption for this baby would be much more noble and dignified.

Besides, it was an answer. I was not going to ruin my life, plus I knew there was no way I could begin to think about taking care of a baby. Win Win. I believed that 100%.

I didn’t think long and hard about adoption in order to come to my “decision”. It was more as though once that other road was impassable, and then my brain happened upon the next option in line. Not meaning to make it sound flippant, but once it occurred to me as the only viable solution, then that was it. My mind was made up and my fate was sealed.

After announcing my plan to Marina and also, practically, to myself, I had to find out how to set it in motion. Still going in blind, but now with a mission, I at least did some research as to where and how.

I don’t think I had a definitive plan worked out when I told my mother. It was still in the “here’s the problem and here’s the solution” kind of mode. Once I had Marina behind me, I was able to make myself deal much more. It wasn’t just me having to force myself to do the impossible; she was keeping tabs and making sure that I kept moving along. Always the procrastinator, I allowed myself one last Harrah, before I broke the news to Mom. What was a few more days going to hurt anyway.

It was July Fourth weekend and a bunch of us crazy kids had planned a camping weekend. Actually, I didn’t plan a thing. I was incapable of planning. And as it was discussed and I heard my friends excitement for a great country adventure, I was overcome with the feelings of dread..Knowing that there was no way I would be able to be involved…knowing what I knew and they did not.

Somehow though, the timing worked out so that the weekend was before me and still my secret was only out to Marina.
Laura, Mary, Christine, Maryanne, Joe Figg and Jason and myself were going up to the country, camping at Camp Gonocotta. Silliness, high jinks and induced laughter was to be on the agenda. I can remember forcing myself to have fun, or seem like I was. Still sucking in my stomach, pretending that the world did not weigh heavy on my mind, it was stressful and forced. For whatever reason, I could not tell my friends in the midst of good times, so all though the weekend my mind whirled.

“This is it, you can’t do this again….this is the last time that things will ever be like this…everything is going to change”

We talked about going camping again, late in August, and I knew that I was lying when I tried to agree with enthusiasm.
Tired now with the pregnancy, I spent allot of time sitting still. The day was spent at my most favorite place on Earth; Awosting Falls.

Sitting by the pool below the great falls, walking and ambling along the creek, I was struck by the grand sense of time and my own insignificance. I imagined Native Americans standing in the same place, their everlasting footprint directly below mine, crossing though time, and connecting, as our parallel thoughts were engrossed in the magnificence and the power of nature.

I imagined the child I carried standing in the same shadow, years into the future, and tried to infuse the feelings of love and sorrow into the environment. I wanted this spot to call to him, place dreams of waterfalls in his head, to be able to speak to him though the years.

My head and heart were filled with such musings, for now, with a plan in mind, and life for the babe ensured, I could allow myself to begin to really explore my feelings for the small being inside me. Knowing that there was a future, began to allow a connection to the presence. It was that weekend among the beauty of nature that the nature of my body took over.

In my head, in my heart, I became a mother.

Something inside me shifted almost or perhaps I just called upon a reserve of strength hidden away. The next step would be one of the hardest. Returning from fun, I had to confront my mother. After some bland smalltalk about my camping adventure, which I reveled with no enthusiam, I laid with defeat on the couch in the living room. Clear now, the sensations, the picture of the past. I can feel the rough tweed of the plaid couch arm under my cheek and the anxiety rising in my throat. My mother was on the phone and I had to wait for her to complete her conversation. That took a while and I controlled the great urge to have her shut up about such mindless, insignificant chatter. I wept quietly, wiping away my tears on the off white muslin pillow.
The phone call finally ended and my mother came in and looked at me:
“Are you OK?”
“No”
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Not really, I am going to have a baby in November”
Sputter, look of disbelief..” November?”
“Yes.”
“Well what will you do? I can’t raise this baby for you!”
“You won’t have to. I am going to give the baby up for adoption”
“oh……how?”
“I don’t know yet. I am finding out.”
“Who knows? How long have you known this?”
“Only Marina knows. I haven’t told anyone at all. She figured it out”
“You should have had an abortion. Can’t you?”

“No, it’s too late. I have no choice. I have to have this baby”

It was very calm. A late Sunday afternoon, rainy, darkness, subdued. A serious discussion, disbelief and shock, but nothing loud nor emotional. My mother seemed content with my line of thought. As long as she was off the hook and no one knew really, then the horrible aspects of it were covered. I knew my mother though, and even though the conversation ended with her promising to support me in this, I knew that she could not be gauged with this as her reaction. She mulled at things, my mother, and caused thoughts to fester in her mind. She would pick at this and make it out into something it was not. No, this was not to be a pattern of calm rationality.

She was amazed at my secretness and no doubt, also as her ignorance. Claiming that she just assumed I was getting fat, I think she resented the trickery. How dare I try and succeed to pull the wool over her eyes.

Over the next few days, the level of her offence grew until it took a life of its own. What was I thinking, how could I have let this go on so long. How come I didn’t tell anyone, how dare I think to tell anyone now. How did I not speak about this in therapy? Was I sure that Jerry did not know? Laura didn’t know? Who was the father? What do I mean I am not telling? She should know. That’s isn’t right!

It became very important to her that no one was to know. Blind to it for so long while under her nose, my condition must have seemed to her extremely obvious once reveled. She lived in fear of anyone else figuring it out. The insanity of this charade only got worse.

I was forbidden to tell my friends of the pregnancy.

They would tell people and then everyone would know. She didn’t want people to look at her funny. Not even Laura, my best friend. Laura would tell her mother, she would and then Maureen would look down on my mother even more. It was bad enough she was divorced and Laura’s family was so perfect. No, no way. I was not going to be able to see my friends again.
I begged one night. We were planning on going to the movies to see the Lost Boys, an 80’s Vampire movie. It must have been days after she was told, but enough time had passed that the plan had become more concret. Just this one more time. No, I promise I won’t say anything, but I have to tell them something. I can’t just disappear. They will freak out; I have to see them first. After many promises, she gave in.

Of course, I lied and once in the car, I announced my plan. Actually, there were other future plans being made, either more camping or a concert, something. I know the poll was being taken to see who could go, I boldly announced that I would not be able to join in on the next great adventure.
Why.

Because I will be in Boston. I am moving to Boston to have a baby and place him for adoption.

silence..utter silence……

What really could I have expected my friends to do? There was nothing that they could have done. It was almost an ideal situation. It played out the way these situations do in made for TV movies and the booklets adoption agencies hand out. Everyone said the kind supportive things that they should. I don’t know what they wondered aloud when I was out of earshot. And I don’t care. It really doesn’t matter. I would have done the same. I think there was shock and disbelief, but genuine concern. It was big deal. No one else had had a child before. I am always the first.

At least my friends knew. That was a great relief. Of course the added thrill of having to go against my mother’s wishes, but I thought them unreasonable anyway.

Most people, in the long run, I told.

Maybe my mother told Jerry, my therapist? He was filled in eventually and he knew of a Private adoption attorney in California who I spoke with. I remember sitting his office. He has a practice Uptown in the West 70’s that was very beige, nice, but beige. I sat there and spoke to someone, a paralegal, in California. She asked at one point what I needed. I had to explain that I needed to find a place to live as my mother needed me out. It was not said, nor even implied. It was understood that I would not stay visible to complete this pregnancy. She said something about how my living in an apartment in Manhattan would be very expensive, worrying about how they would sell the need for this expense to their clientele. IE: would an adoptive family pay for it? I immediately had this vision of living alone, in some cold place uptown, hugely pregnant and forgotten. Going into labor and having to call a Taxi. She wanted me to price out some apartments and budget what I would need to get though the next few months. I couldn’t imagine having to do so much of this alone. The private attorney in California was scratched from the list.

I sat in the law office, in that weird little back room, and talked to some Catholic agency in NYC. Pulled the number right out of the phone book. It sounded a little more doable, but still she was mean sounding on the phone. And I felt guilty and bad just talking to her. Plus I was very concerned about staying in NY, my NY. If I was in NY and went downtown, as I knew that I would want to, then people might see me. I didn’t want to hide because I was ashamed, but I didn’t want people to know I was pregnant and accept me as such. I knew that, on some level, being pregnant and visible would mean that it was acceptable..and once I was accepted as being with child in my world, then I would want more to keep my baby. I needed to eliminate that possibility of weakness. I needed to be gone.

I don’t know if I just went down the line to the next number in the Manhattan yellow pages, or if I said, “OK, I did one today” and made the next call a day or so later, but eventually I got to the ad for AWL. Why did I pick them? I liked the name:

Adoptions with Love. How’s that for targeting a marketing group.

I remember talking to them and from the very second I got on the phone was a feeling of relief. Compassion came though those phone lines and suddenly I was dealing with someone who understood and was trained to talk to me. Split second approval.

She said that they would bring me up to Boston. I would live in a house with a family that had already adopted with them. They would take me to doctor’s appointments. They would make sure I was at a good hospital. I would have counseling. It felt right. Everything I could ask for, taken care of for me, and all I would have to do is be pregnant.

Now, it was all about righting the wrong. Broken out of the shell of denial, I sprung into action. Trying to make sense of it all, making all the answers fit. Motivated by my past of doing it all wrong, I was going to move ahead now at lightning speed and with a fierce determination. It was like suddenly I had a direction: Boston.

They fed ex’d me their booklets and I spoke to them again a few times, but I had no hesitation anymore. The plan was set. I just had to wait until they got all their ducks in order to get me set up in Boston. It was going to take a few weeks and then they would send me a plane ticket. It couldn’t be quick enough. I had to get out soon. My mother was getting more freakish and the stress level was being elevated by the day. She wanted me to stop working. I needed to hide and not be seen. I fought her on this since at least getting out to work, hard as it was, was something to do every day. She was insisting that I tell her who the baby’s father was. I was steadfast in my refusal. She kept on naming every guy friend, ex or whatever that she could think of. It was almost laughable. I knew that never in a million years would she guess and told her so. I begged her to just stop and let it rest, but she persisted.

My one weakness always has been writing. Never a standard journal, but many notebooks in haphazard order, drawings and date books, loose papers saved. Somewhere before going to Boston, I started a new big black bound book. And I wrote enough in there about what was happening that if my mother was to read it, she could figure it out.

Suddenly one day, upon returning home from work, she had it figured out. She knew about Him.

She was very angry. Not so much at me, I think, but at him. At the age difference, at what happened, at the state that I was in now. She was going to call Marina, she was going to go see him. She was rattling her cage and beating her chest like an injured primate. Now, I see her reactions differently.. as a mother who was protecting me, her child, but then; she was just crazy to me.

I remember being completely panic stricken. I begged her not to do anything. I pleaded that it didn’t matter, He didn’t matter. That he knew and didn’t care, that nothing could be done anyway. Reminded her that men suck. I do not know why, but she listened to me. She allowed me this grace of not having to deal with him. At this point, being so far along, I felt that there was no way to ever tell him, I had taken away his choice to have a child, I had made it for him, now ignorance of the loss would be bliss.

I was so afraid of the shame.

It was more than just that he was my boss and so much older. I could not face my family with the truth of this baby and the father. My uncle Mike was still married to Sandy though they were living separate lives. Sandy had gone out with Him before my Uncle and I had the sneaking suspicion that he and Sandy were involved somehow again. Maybe I was just paranoid and maybe it was because she was so sick, but I felt a weird vibe from her when she was in the office. I knew that he was not only seeing me. I would be a fool to think otherwise. He teased me about “all my other boyfriends”, but I am sure it was a way of justifying his own actions. Whether they were other woman or my Aunt, I don’t know, but the whole thought of it all coming to light made me feel so dirty and disgusted. To me, it seemed like something that would be held over my head in my family forever. And my family was good at that. Big Italian grudges never die out. It was an insurmountable ordeal. The hint of incest in the relationship besides the age and the working relationship made it all such taboo.

I could not face it.

Looking back, I wish she had not listened to me. I wish someone had made me face him and the truth. It was the most cowardly weakest thing that I have ever done. Up to that point there was probably a small shred of hope. When I convinced my mother to hide all of the secret, including that part, there was no hope left.

I wasn’t talking to him at all anymore. Mad, scared, involved in something now beyond my control and under Marina’s ever watchful eye, it was decided that I had to stop working.

I documented it in my book the day it happened:

“A final comment on Him
Today was my last day at B&S. A very weird day because I cannot imagine not going back tomorrow. So I type up my resignation memo and spend the day making up tales about my life at Boston University- Ha!
6:30 comes about, time to go. Office is cleaned. Everyone has been good-byed. He knows I am going, yet says nothing. Marina is ushering me out the door. I go to wave good bye to him. He is on the phone. He motions me closer. Tells party on the phone to hold on. Makes a kissy face from his side of the desk. I stand on the other, I look down on him, I do not move closer, I do not smile, I don’t make a kissy face. He places his hand on his lips and then touches my nose and says:

“Bye baby, have fun at school”

I say thanks and leave.
I am six months pregnant with this man’s child and he thinks I am going off to school to have fun. Stupid fool doesn’t even know what I am doing for him, doesn’t care. I wish I wasn’t crying.
So much for fairy tales from Cosmo.”

That is what I had to say about it when it happened. I don’t quite understand now what great favor I really thought I was doing for him. Maybe ridding him of the conflict and responsibilities of an unplanned child? I can’t see the same rational anymore, it is lost to me through time, but somehow I thought I was doing a good thing.

Continued on: The Real Hard Part: Giving Birth and Relinquishment to Adoption