motherhood

I refused to be tied down to convention. In my closet of the childhood room I shared with my brother and sister, my mom had a box of papers with a red bumper sticker on the side: Men, can’t live with em, can’t shoot em. My father probably gave it to her. My parents shared a warped sense of humor. I took it to heart, or deep into my subconscious. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew it was neither wife nor mother. Unless of course I was in a lesbian relationship with adopted troubled kids from some distant and less fortunate place- then wifedom and motherhood would be somewhat more justifiable, palatable even.

How is it my finger is gold banded? My nipples sore from nursing? Everything I own has throw up, poop, pee, or smashed avocado on it? Was it the romance? Was I swept off my feet? Was it the pull of my biological clock, the ache that came when I saw a small hand reach for mine?

My child grew large in my belly as soon as we moved to Utah a state whose birthrate per capita is the largest in the country. This rural, sandy, isolated place is good for making babies. Suddenly everywhere I looked there were pregnant women, women carrying babies, women with a trail of children following them loudly. I was not special. I was not unique. The wonder of it, the rapid cell division within me, was as mundane as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My glow was blotted out by the weebling and wobbling of so many other pregnant women- their large bellies careening around the supermarket aisle before them. I was surrounded. No one looked at me special. I was not doing anything strange.

But I was. Inside me another being fought for survival. Demanded oreos and garlic bread. Demanded naps and three am play times. This being inside me pushed to get out, trying every corner of my body, her fists and knees protruding from me as though my stomach were made of elastic. Her little fingers wrapped around my lower ribs, squeezing and pulling them downward, pulling herself upward against my lungs. Yet none of this was strange.

I grew up on the coast in Florida. My peers were amazed at my birth and wedding announcements. Because it is not assumed we are all having children, and especially me who made a career railing against doomed stereotypical female roles. Was it my own demonizing of it, my own preaching against it that turned it from unappealing and boring to rebellious and dangerous? I resisted it so strongly that it became alluring again.

My midwife filled out our first birth certificate wrong. She put my maiden name down for both myself, my husband, and our new daughter. I laughed, my husband didn’t. It took her a moment to comprehend what I was trying to tell her, and then it puzzled her, this maintenance of my identity, this stubborn clinging to my old, original self.

I could not give up my name. My husband understood, and he did not encourage me against my instincts. My name was very much a part of my identity, of my people, the dwindling tribe I come from. I could not in one short year make so many sacrifices. So I walked down an aisle, if you can call it that, with my stomach 6 months out of my dress, vowing myself to kingdom come, but always I promised to remain a McDonald.

My daughter stays on my hip while I grocery shop. She holds an apple, trying to bite into it with her gums. We pick up beans and rice, she plays with the bag. Everything is filled with wonder. Around me the mormon moms push carts stacked high with gallons of milk loaves of bread and cookies, a couple children trail behind eating ice cream cones from the deli, the youngest one sits in the cart screaming or babbling. My little pearl is swallowed by an ocean of over breeding, multiplying women, who do not pause to share in the wonder of my little being. They only wonder how long it will be till I have my next one. And next one. And next one.

That’s not true, they know I’m not mormon. Because they don’t see me at their ward. They do not see me at monthly bunko. They see me pumping my gas at the farm store in a blouse a little too see through that slightly exposes my breasts when I lean over. I crouch down and jump up, screaming at the window of my car where my daughter screams back from her car seat- amazed each time I reappear. To her I left forever and then I came back. My same old self. I am wife. I am mother. I am cook. I am maid. I am McDonald. I am feminist. I am writing.

The neighbors lost another cow. A smaller brown one, its head hangs over the side of the tarp as they haul it, dangling from the tractor, puttering down the road. At least this time they carried it proper.

The last cow they lost was at the start of the season. She was black, tall. I saw her in the afternoon when the ruckus of my dogs’ barking roused me from the trailer.  She was mooing and mooing, standing at our gate. The dogs barked at her, she took no notice of them. She walked slowly up the lane, mooing. I locked the dogs up, then returned to her side. With the baby on my hip, I waved my arm, talking to her, C’mon Mama get along.

She turned around and headed back up the lane, towards the field in a distance where her herd was. She moved slow, I kept on her, the baby curious. C’mon Mama, get on.

She looked back at me every few steps, resistant to return up the lane. She ducked into the field gate before the turn. I left her there, safe enough, a good distance from the highway, and didn’t think of her again.

That evening, right before the in-laws arrived for an outdoor dinner, the neighbors came driving down the lane slowly, dragging a tarp behind their truck, a dead cow hanging behind, her entrails scraping along the dirt lane. A treat for the dogs, a greeting for the in-laws.

The next day I called in on the ole lady next door. We talked of the weather, of the garden planting, of the valley news. Her nephew lost a cow she said. I saw it, being drug along the lane, how’d she die?

Oh she’d gotten lose. Slipped out the fence, calling and looking for her calf. I guess they’d been separated during the move, her calf ending up with the second group up the mountain.

I think I saw her earlier that day, I tried walking her back, but she stopped in the field across the lane.

They knew she was missing, found her on the lane out there, and tried herding her back, but ended up chasing her to the highway. She stepped out in front of an old pickup- little 90 year old man was driving. Smashed his truck up real good. Killed the poor thing. Just out there calling for her calf. Calling and calling.

My daughter grabbed at me, wanting to nurse.

Boys still haven’t buried her, she’s sitting out in the field, out there in the sun.

My daughter was restless. I left, told her I’d call in soon.

I walked home down the lane, my daughter on my hip. Seeing that black cow, her searching and calling, determined to find her little calf. Her little calf, probably up the mountain calling and calling for milk. My daughter beat on my chest to nurse. It was lunch time.

My name is Katie McDonald. I have a degree in women’s studies which began with my first college course, Childbirth and Women’s Writing. I gave birth last December. An awful sunny day – the kind from my childhood playground days where you shed layers all day- the day that begins cold and does not stick to the bargain- the sun coming in at a sharp winter angle melting the skin off your bones. My birth was nothing I pictured. My daughter was healthy. She is strong willed. I mother full time and cook and clean (when it gets really bad). I am married. On my medical papers I am listed as Housewife. But I live in a trailer. I am a trailer wife.

My degree in women’s studies prepared me to live in Utah, middle of mormon country with my husband who I am fully dependent on and baby who is fully dependent on me.

I am doing my masters in women’s studies- a real life case study of how poverty, religion,  gender, education intersect in rural America.

My daughter’s small foot kicks off the bed across the trailer. Nap time is over. Writing time is over.