Like the good student I never was, I practiced the breathing techniques every night. Knowing now that most contractions lasted only a minute, Steve would start the stopwatch, then call out the passing seconds, which allowed me to know how much longer I had, and at the same time he’d pinch my leg as hard as he could in an effort to provide pain for me to breathe through (though the pain of him gripping my thigh and that of my cervix yawning open are not on the same Richter scale). But with whatever pain level we did or didn’t replicate, eventually we were a well-rehearsed team and ready to take the act on the road.
At three thirty in the morning on May 25, 1972—one week before the due date and shortly after I’d been stabbed awake by a bright, unmistakable feeling—I stood in my mostly darkened bedroom before the full-length mirror with my nightgown held up. As the first contractions began, I could see the miraculous movement of the baby inside, shifting down toward his new life. Femmy had told us that Lamaze was still rather controversial in most American hospitals, that the staff might not easily cooperate, much less participate, so it was best that we wait at home, away from the hospital’s rules, until signs of the second stage of labor had begun. She also coached us that once we were in the hospital we should repeat to everyone constantly, “I’m Lamaze. I’m Lamaze.” I had it all in my head while I stood there, marveling at the process, feeling totally in control, not a single piece of me afraid—though I’d begun to notice that the contractions were intensifying.
Steve had gone to wake Baa, who’d been staying in the tiny guest room for just this reason, while I took my time dressing. I moved nonchalantly, making sure we had everything, including a collage I’d made of fabrics and ribbons, pictures of Peter, and a poem Steve had written to me when we were kids, the focal point that Femmy instructed us to have. I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen as Baa stood in the doorway with a nervous smile, and when I finally started to walk out the front door, I felt the next contraction beginning to build. My disciplined, rhythmic panting abruptly stopped. I slid to the floor as if I’d been shoved and immediately got angry at Steve, saying, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” When this monstrous wave of a contraction slowly began to pass, we looked at each other: I was in transition. How could that be? This was too quick; the house was a good forty minutes from the hospital. But forty minutes was not very long, surely I could do that. Our leisurely pace cranked into double time, but no sooner had I pulled my bulk into the car than I yelled out as if sighting Moby Dick rising to the surface, “… Here it comes!” Steve started both the car and the stopwatch, keeping track of the seconds and the winding road at the same time. “Ten seconds,” he called. “Twenty… thirty…”
And at that, my breath suddenly caught, forcing me to grunt out a barely audible “I’ve got to push.”
“No,” Steve firmly shot back. “No. Blow… blow. Don’t push.”
While riding in a car that seemed to have Mr. Toad at the wheel—flying down Bel Air Road and onto Sunset Boulevard—I planted my feet on the windshield and rose up out of the seat like some levitating demon, all the time forcing air out of my already airless lungs. If the contractions ever diminished I was not aware. It seemed they came faster and faster, tumbling over each other, while the intensity sent me climbing higher and higher on the windshield. I remembered Femmy saying, “If ever it becomes impossible to keep yourself from pushing, allow your body to push just the tiniest bit with each release of the forced breath. Don’t worry if you poop in your pants, who cares, you’re having a baby and you’re allowed to break all the rules of polite society.”
When we finally pulled into the hospital’s emergency loading and unloading zone, I could feel the baby’s head crowning. Lost in frantic confusion, not knowing whether to stay with me or get some help, Steve ran to my side of the car and opened the door. I sat there, finding it difficult to peel my feet off the windshield, feeling certain that standing up would mean giving birth in the parking lot, so I awkwardly rolled out of my seat, onto my hands and knees, then crawled, crablike, onto the hospital’s clean linoleum hallway—clean compared to the asphalt driveway, at least. A wheelchair was rolled to my side by a bewildered nurse’s aide trying hard to act as if this were standard behavior, and even though Steve explained our predicament, the young man—with a “take charge” attitude—asked if I would please sit in the chair, stating patiently, “It’s regulation.” All I could do was blow air out of my mouth, which by then sounded like I was giving him the raspberries—which I was. We rode up the elevator with Steve standing next to the young man, whose hands were on the wheelchair, while I stayed on the floor.
In the maternity ward, people took me a little more seriously. I was lifted onto a gurney—still on my hands and knees—while Steve was whisked off to fill out the frigging paperwork. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep from having the baby, I shook my head no, refusing to lie down, while spitting out, “I’m Lamaze, I’m Lamaze.”
The nurse at my side put her hand on my back, speaking to me slowly as if I didn’t understand the English language. “You have to lie down so I can get your clothes off and put you in a gown.”
“Cut them off,” I shot back.
“Oh no, we can’t cut your clothes off.”
I wanted to say, For fuck’s sake, cut the piece-of-shit clothes off of me, but by then I could only blow and words were not an option. So, without lying down, I let her slip my clothes off, helping as much as I could, which meant not at all. She then placed a gown on one arm, but couldn’t get my other arm to cooperate, so the garment was never fully on my body and slid around willy-nilly.
I finally agreed to lie down when a young intern came into the room saying he needed to examine me to determine if I was truly in labor—I swear to you. His name was Dr. Paul Crane and he would eventually become a prominent OB-GYN in Los Angeles, and I will never forget him. He leaned down to talk to me as I lay on my side. “You’re about to have this baby, Sally, and your doctor’s not here yet. Do you want to try to wait or would you trust me to deliver it?” He said this while they rolled me into the delivery room, then stood at the head of the table looking into my eyes, waiting for my answer.
I barely got out, “You do it. I trust you,” before the nurse snapped an oxygen mask over my face, which I found impossible to tolerate, immediately pushing it off to the side (but at least this time I wasn’t tied down). Dr. Crane—who years later admitted to me how brand-new he was—gave me a casual smile, then moved toward the end of the table with a forced sense of ease, tripping over the oxygen cord connected to the unused mask around my neck, which jerked my head up fast, then plopped it down with a thud, like a puppet on a string.
Miraculously, Steve dashed through the door, tying a mask on his distraught face, looking as undone as I did, and from this young doctor came the most beautiful words I’d ever heard anyone say: “With the next contraction, you go ahead, Sally. Hold your breath and push. Okay? And here we go.” With one glorious, heavenly, orgasmic push, my beautiful, impatient, and joyfully alive son was born. Elijah.
Steve, Peter, Eli, and me. 1973.
14
Culpable