Children in the Closet...Chapter 13

 

Chapter Thirteen

               During the early fall of 1963, I began to prepare for having my baby. Jesse and I took a tour of the old St. Paul’s hospital in early September. It was a Catholic hospital run by sisters dressed in their black habits. I was still a child myself and knew very little about any religion other than Baptist. It was rather frightening for me to be in such strange surroundings. While we knew where we should go when I went into labor, no one told me one single thing about what to expect. Not my doctor. Not my mother. No one. I honestly had no clue what was in store for me. 

               I also did not have baby things ready. My cousins gave us some of their used baby clothes and so did some of Mother’s friends. Someone gave us an old bassinet and Jesse painted it white. We somehow managed to gather a layette. I had outgrown most of the clothes I had and, since the weather had turned cooler, I started to wear some of Jesse’s flannel shirts. 

               Most of my days were spent reading, it was an easy way to pass the time. Escaping through the pages of a book felt magical to me. One of my favorites was a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book. It contained five different books in just one volume. I had been trying to think of a name for our baby when I happened to read a story about a young woman named Summer. I loved the sound of that name and decided if our baby was a girl, her name would be Summer Dee. And if we had a boy, it would be Jesse Lee, Jr. When I told my mother about the names I had picked out for our baby, she said she hoped it was a boy because Summer sounded like a name you would call your pet poodle. It didn’t matter, I liked the name and so did Jesse. 

               Mother and my young siblings came to visit me on Saturday, October 19. It was good to see my siblings again. Now that they were back in school, I didn’t get to see them much anymore. Our lives had certainly changed since I had left home. Mother had brought a beautifully knitted baby blanket that her friend, Carrie, made for us. Mother and Carrie worked together at an answering service company. Mother also brought other gifts of baby clothes, baby bottles and a sterilizer as well as a few nightgowns, bibs, booties and receiving blankets—all given to us from Mother’s co-workers and some of her friends. 

               I remember asking Mother how I would know when I was going into labor. She just said, “You will know.” Not a single person—my mother, my mother-in-law, not even my doctor—told me what to expect when it came time to give birth. It sounds so terribly naïve, but I was so totally ignorant of life.  Since I was nearly nine years old, life was just something that you survived and coped with however you could.

               The Friday after Mother and my siblings had visited, I began to suspect she was right about “just knowing” labor had started. I had just turned 15 years old a few weeks prior and weighed only 110 pounds. I had begun having periods when I was nearly 12, which meant I had only had about 18 menstrual cycles before getting pregnant at 14 years and 4 months old. I remembered how menstrual cramps felt and what I was feeling that Friday afternoon was similar to that. But it quickly grew worse and felt like I had an extremely heavy brick pushing down on my pelvis. I thought maybe it was labor but I wasn’t sure. 

               Jesse got paid on Fridays and we would go to the grocery store when he would get home. But that Friday I didn’t feel like walking so I propped up in bed and read until he came in. I told him I thought I might be in labor. We decided to wait it out for a while and see what happens.

               Our main entertainment at home was TV and we had a certain show we liked to watch on ABC at 8PM on Friday nights. It was called Burke’s Law with Gene Barry and Gary Conway and was about a LAPD homicide detective who was also a handsome millionaire. By the time the show ended, I was sure of it—I was in labor.

               Little did I know then that labor would be a long, drawn-out experience. And an incredibly painful one, as well. I was not prepared. We called Mother before leaving for St. Paul’s Hospital in Dallas. I was scared and in a lot of pain. As crazy as it sounds, I had no idea that having a baby would hurt! If only someone had prepared me for this!  We walked into the hospital and were greeted by the Daughters of Charity, all wearing their distinctive coronet headdresses. One of the nuns took Jesse to the business office to fill out the admission forms while the other one escorted me to the maternity ward.

They called my doctor and I was prepped and put in a bed in a labor room. I was becoming hysterical with fear and the pain. At that time, pregnant women were often given “twilight sleep,” which was a combination of morphine and scopolamine that produced both pain relief and amnesia. I did experience some amnesia and have no memory of my labor after midnight. However, my mother told me what happened.

               Normally they do not allow the husbands in the labor room with the expectant mother. But since I was a 15-year-old girl, they made an exception and allowed both Jesse and my mother in the room. This was most likely an attempt to help calm me down. By midnight, I was incoherent and out of my mind with pain. At 3AM, my mother said I stood straight up in the bed—which was like a giant baby bed with tall rails on all four sides—and screamed out that I had changed my mind. I did not want to have a baby!

               At that point, they cuffed me to the bed and I survived another three hours of labor before giving birth to my daughter, Summer Dee, at 6:05 in the morning of Saturday, October 26, 1963. I remember her being brought to me later that morning. She was just beautiful, a healthy baby girl weighing 7 pounds 2 ounces and 21 inches long. As I looked at her there in my young arms, I vowed I would be a good mother and take care of her. 

               It was standard to stay in the hospital for three days post-delivery back then, and that gave me time to adjust to the fact that I was now a mother. I had a daughter. I was responsible for taking care of another life as well as my own. I was new to taking care of myself. I had never done that before. In actuality, I went from Mother controlling my life to a husband doing the same thing. I still had no power of my own. It was my own fault. It would be more than 40 years before I discovered that I have a choice and that I may have had one all along—but I didn’t know that then.

               Jesse picked me up from the hospital and we took our baby home. While I knew how to take care of older kids, I had never taken care of a baby before. When Mother had Luann and Sharon, we were living in the back shed and the babies lived in the house with Mother and Clayton. Only on occasion was Luann with us and she was over a year old by then.

               Making formula and feeding a baby was new to me. I had no idea about nursing. No one had suggested it at the hospital. It was assumed we would bottle feed.  They sent directions home with us and we stopped at the store to buy Similac formula. We used a diaper service instead of buying diapers and I was ever so grateful for that. In spite of my inexperience, Summer thrived. She took her bottles, burped, peed and pooped and cried. She didn’t cry all the time, but it was often enough to concern me. We took her to the doctor and he said she had a touch of colic and to give her a few drops of paregoric. I did not realize he meant for me to put it in her milk, so I just dropped it right into her little mouth. The things I didn’t know back then were staggering. 

               Whenever a new baby was born, the hospital would inform a photography service and the photographers would contact the parents to inquire about booking a photo session of their newborn. The pictures were black and white and not unreasonably priced so we decided to make an appointment. It was on a Friday morning at 10AM so I had Summer all bathed and fed and, since she was fussy with colic, I had given her a drop or two of paregoric. She was sound asleep. I tried to wake her up a few minutes before they were to arrive. I still had not made the connection between paregoric and sleeping, as it caused drowsiness. Amazingly, the photographers knocked on the door a few minutes late and when they came in, Summer woke right up. She made adorable pictures and we bought them with money out of our grocery budget. It didn’t seem to matter if we ate bologna sandwiches for a week instead of regular meals.

               I became confident in giving Summer her baths, feeding her baby food, and doing laundry. We took our laundry to a washateria on Friday nights after Jesse came home from work. We would also go to the grocery store afterward. 

I kept the bassinet we’d been given right next to my side of the bed so I could check on the baby during the night. Jesse didn’t help with diapers or feeding because he was either working or exhausted. He would hold Summer while we watched television in the evenings. We didn’t have any chairs so we ate our meals propped up in bed. It was a pretty make shift situation, but I was really proud of where we lived. Having a bathroom and kitchen access and a nice bed to sleep in were all still luxuries to me.

               I was thankful for the way God had taken care of us and I wanted to go to church. I missed attending every Sunday but by this time, it had been nearly two years since I had been going to church every week. Jesse typically worked seven days a week so the first Sunday that he had off work, he took us to a Baptist church we had seen nearby. It was a fancy church but I didn’t care. It felt good to sit in a pew again. I held my newborn baby and she didn’t make a sound during the entire service. We stood and sang the hymns and sat and listened to the sermon. No one seemed to notice us but we never expected them to.

               I had filled out a visitor’s slip and the very next Tuesday evening, a couple from the church paid us a visit. I was surprised to see them at our door but I invited them in. There was no place for them to sit but on the bed and they seemed very ill at ease. We were obviously not the type of people they usually visited. I remember the lady was beautiful and wore a mink coat and the prettiest high heel shoes I had ever seen. It was rather awkward as they thanked us for visiting and left in somewhat of a hurry. We never went back to that church nor did anyone else come by to visit again. But I continued to read my Bible every day and often an extra chapter on Sundays.

               I weighed 118 pounds before giving birth and six weeks later, I weighed 113. Since Summer had weighed only seven pounds, I wondered why I still weighed so much. More than likely, it was because we had money for groceries and I was eating regular meals. As weeks went by, my weight dropped off and I ended up slightly under 100 pounds, which is where I stayed for the next two years.

               I remember the moment that news of President Kennedy’s assassination was announced. It was Friday, November 22, 1963 and I was propped up on pillows feeding Summer her bottle. I had been watching television and waiting for the soap opera As the World Turns to come on. About 10 minutes into the program, Walter Cronkite broke in with the news that President Kennedy had been shot while riding in his motorcade in Dealey Plaza. The world was stunned.

               Thanksgiving that year felt like just a normal Thursday for us. Last year, Jesse and his sisters had celebrated with my siblings and me. But this year Jesse worked and I stayed home taking care of Summer. The world was still in shock from the assassination of President Kennedy just 6 days prior, so things didn’t seem the same at all.

               I was used to adapting to life and the changes that were always happening. I was happy enough to be at home taking care of my new baby and cooking simple meals for Jesse every evening when he got home. He would take a shower, eat supper and fall asleep watching television just about every night. He worked hard and got up early every morning. Since he worked outdoors, that meant rainy days or frigid weather meant he would stay home and have the day off. On those days, we would go to the washeteria and maybe to one of the unclaimed freight stores in Dallas that sold discounted furniture and things. Life at that time wasn’t bad and it wasn’t scary. Just a bit lonely and strange.

               Christmas that year fell on a Wednesday. We didn’t have any decorations in our little rooms and I don’t think Mother even put up a tree for the kids at their home that year either. We did spend Christmas Day together with Mother and my siblings. Since I wasn’t allowed to go to their house because of Clayton, Mother and the kids spent the night with one of her closest friends, Carrie, and her husband. 

Jesse and I drove over to Carrie’s early Christmas morning and there was a Christmas tree with gifts under it for Lloydine, Lanita and Lonnie. One each from Mother to them and then a few from Carrie. She was so very good to us by opening up her home and inviting us all in. It was a merry time and I took pictures of the tree and the kids with their gifts and Mother holding Summer. There is even a photo of Jesse standing between Mother and Carrie with their arms all around each other.

I hope Carrie knew what a blessing she was to us. We loved her and she was so generous with her love for us. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to stay long in that friendship. As was Mother’s habit, she always wanted what someone else had and she set her sights on Carrie’s husband.

Me, Jesse, Summer and Carrie's friends with Mother standing

Lanita and Lloydine

Lonnie, Lloydine and me holding Summer

Mother and friends of Carrie's

Carrie, Jesse and Mother