Читать книгу Chin Up, Honey - Curtiss Matlock Ann - Страница 10

1968—1971

It’s a Boy!

After two years of marriage, they decided to have a baby.

Actually, Emma decided. John Cole did not seem to care one way or the other, although he did get a little anxious to accomplish having any children they wanted while he was in the Navy so they could let Uncle Sam pay the medical expenses.

So Emma went off the birth-control pills, which so many women of her generation had believed to be the way of life, totally disregarding the popular margarine commercial of the time: It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Things did not quite go as planned.

When she did not get pregnant that very first month, she was quite surprised. A few more months, and she still did not get pregnant. It seemed like more women than she had ever seen were pregnant all around her, but she was not.

She began to read books about getting pregnant, started to take her temperature and try various sexual positions conducive to conception. Once, she threw her back out and therefore missed two perfectly ripe chances to conceive.

Finally, after a year, she sought medical help. Time was wasting, and she needed to take advantage of what the Navy medical services could do for her, free of charge. After checking her over, putting her through all manner of tests and having her try a number of the things she had already tried, to no avail, the doctor said that John Cole needed to be examined.

John Cole, who rarely said no straight out, looked at her like he would rather eat live frogs.

Emma was ready for her persuasion, which was that she didn’t think an examination or any test was too much to ask. After all, she got a Pap smear every year. That wasn’t any fun. And she herself was willing to go to great lengths to cure their childless state, so she expected John Cole to do his part.

This reasoning, along with Emma crying a lot about wanting a baby, compelled John Cole along.

The day of John Cole’s appointment, Emma waited outside the clinic in the car with all the windows down. It was summer at the naval station in Florida and hot as blue blazes. After a little while, John Cole came out, but he didn’t get in the car. He stood by her open window and told her that he had to undergo a sperm-count test. He looked disgusted and as if he might refuse to do the test, or as if he might ask Emma to go in with him to help. She hoped he didn’t do either and just sat there, not saying anything.

Finally, he went back inside for what seemed a long time, while she waited, sweating in the car and feeling guilty about making him do something he didn’t want to do. She promised herself to make it up to him, and that night and in the following weeks, she cooked his favorite foods, waited on him hand and foot, even left the air conditioner on high all night and never complained.

The test results arrived. John Cole’s count of live and volatile sperm was in the extremely low category. It said right on the results that his ability to impregnate her was in the bottom percentile.

It was hard news. John Cole got more quiet than usual, and Emma went in search of finding out what could help a man’s sperm count. She ran up a bill of twenty-five dollars just on long-distance phone calls to her mother, who excelled in research and who could also ask the other women in the family. She scoured the library and read long into the night, then started feeding John Cole protein drinks, vitamins E and C, and putting wheat germ in every recipe that she cooked—hamburgers, meat loaves, oatmeal, even salads.

When it came to chocolate cake, John Cole balked. “Good God, Emma. You’re gonna wheat me to death.”

She begged him to go without underwear, so that his little sperm wouldn’t be overheated and would be able to swim correctly. She followed her ovulation carefully and figured out how to prop her legs up on the headboard for ten minutes after sex, although John Cole really got afraid she might have a stroke from such antics. His fear over this, coupled with Emma’s demands on him, caused him to lose a lot of sleep and risk getting into great trouble during the day at his duty post, because he tended to nod off if he sat anywhere too long.

A little over three years later, after she had finally given up trying and reluctantly decided to seek an education for some sort of career, she turned up pregnant. By then, John Cole was out of the Navy and they had returned to his hometown in Eastern Oklahoma, where he worked at the Berry Hardware Store and Emma spent her days keeping their tiny apartment over the elder Berrys’ garage spotless and making cute crafts. John Cole had set his sights on buying one of the big fancy vans so popular at the time. He had to change that idea and accept a baby instead, along with paying a lot of the medical bills out of his own pocket, as their medical insurance was poor.

The evening Emma went into labor, John Cole had fallen asleep in front of the television. She had been engrossed in reading a magazine article about tie-dyeing when she began to feel odd. Her back hurt, and she thought she felt contractions. She checked the instructions from the doctor and wondered if she was truly in labor.

She woke John Cole and told him what was happening, then asked, “What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he replied to her question, gazing helplessly at her. He lay back again in the recliner and dozed off, until fifteen minutes later, when Emma shook him again and said that she was fairly certain she needed to get to the hospital—and quick.

Going into something of a panic, John Cole called his parents, who came running over from their house. They all got into Papa and Mother Berrys’ big Plymouth and headed through pouring rain to the hospital. Every couple of minutes throughout the drive John Cole would ask her, “Are you all right?”

How did one answer, when one’s body was seized with a wave of constricting pain at about the same time as the question was asked?

Just before they got there, Emma began to feel that she was about to deliver. She hiked up her dress and began to remove her panties.

John Cole grabbed her hands. “We’re not at the hospital!”

“I don’t care!” she cried. “And neither does this baby!”

John Cole moved to the far side of the seat, plastering himself against the door, while Emma removed her panties and tried to remember her Lamaze breathing.

Then her father-in-law called out, “Hold on, Emma, we’re here!” He hardly ever said anything, and his voice startled her. She was swung to the side as he turned into the emergency drive. Before the car had even stopped, Mother Berry was out and running inside. John Cole helped Emma work her way out of the backseat, leaving her panties stark white against the dark velour.

In front of them, the emergency room doors parted, and here came Mother Berry pushing a gurney, with a nurse and orderly following and trying to catch up. There ensued a great deal of fumbling and arguing in the effort to get Emma up on the gurney. This ended when she stalked off—as best as she could stalk while bending over in a contraction—leaving the others to follow her into the emergency room.

After all the rush, Emma was in labor for thirty-six hours, in which they told her that her contractions were just not strong enough, and she told them they weren’t the ones having them.

For most of those hours, John Cole stood by her bed, holding her hand. A point came when the doctor gave her something to make her drowsy so that she could rest. John Cole was led away to an adjacent room—to let him lie down. To this day, Emma was quite certain the reason for the delay was that the surgeon had not wanted to be disturbed on a weekend. He arrived on Monday morning.

John Cole was once again beside Emma, holding her hand. “You have to let go now,” the nurse said firmly, prying Emma’s grip loose. “He cannot go into surgery.”

“Blow, honey…blow….” John Cole called in a tired voice, as they rolled her away to surgery.

“Oh, God, my blow’s done gone. Would y’all just hurry the hell up and give me somethinnnn…”

The next thing she knew, someone was patting her cheek and calling her name. “Mrs. Berry…Mrs. Berry, can you hear me? Do you know what you had?”

She thought someone must be speaking to her mother-in-law, and she wished they would shut up.

A little while later, “Mrs. Berry…wake up. You had a baby boy.”

“I know,” she managed to get out.

“She’s awake…she knows she had a boy.”

Oh, you idiot, I knew all along I was going to have a boy, she thought, and went back to sleep again.

When she next came awake, she heard voices, someone telling John Cole to call her name. He said it softly, “Emma…Emma…”

She got her eyes open, and there was John Cole’s face, only inches away. He was smiling at her like he’d lost his mind. “We had a boy,” he said, and he kissed her gently and took her hand again.

“Oh, God, Emma, I was scared you were gonna die.”

The idea was a little shocking. She had not even thought of it, and she had not realized John Cole’s anguish.

Her heart flooding, she reached up and placed her palm to his warm cheek, saying, “Honey, it’s okay. I’m just fine…it’s okay.”

The next instant, her sweet baby was placed into her arms. She looked down at him and fell totally, indescribably in love in a way she had never before known.