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My Mother Still has Sex

And Here’s the Baby to Prove It

When Karen’s mom said that Karen wasn’t allowed to come to our house, she didn’t mention anything about the garage. It’s in the garage, away from parents and brothers and sisters where we talk about hippies, and teachers, the cute young new priest at St. Anthony, and  tell dirty jokes. We practice blowing smoke rings with the steam from our breath.   I fill my lungs deeply and hold.  Jaw open, lips held in an o, I snap the hinges of my jaw,  releasing a perfectly formed ring that vanishes just as it leaves my mouth. Karen tries opening and closing her lips like a fish, forming no ring, just little pathetic puffs. I owe my superior technique to my brothers who taught me to blow rings with real smoke from Tim’s cigarettes and from Greg’s water pipe. Karen’s brother is only a year older and isn’t good for much in the way of a worldly education. That’s why Karen hangs out with me.  Karen yearns for sophistication, the perfect balance between cool and naughty.  Poor naive Karen doesn’t know all that I know about hippies and rock and roll and smoking cigarettes and bootleg whiskey in the basement and homemade hookahs in the attic.

Since Karen isn’t allowed to come over to my house, most of the time we play at her house, which is swept clean by Karen and her mother who vacuum and dust daily and who pick up after Karen’s creepy brother Steve, who follows after us and smiles at me like he knows something about me that he’s not telling.  Karen’s mother told her that there were too many children in that house (meaning my house) already and that Karen shouldn’t be there causing any more problems for that poor woman (meaning my mother).  Karen’s mom is under the mistaken impression that Karen is all sweet and innocent.  Karen’s mom doesn’t know that Karen talked me into skipping Girl Scout meetings and going to Joe’s Carry Out across from Highland Park instead and spending her Girl Scout dues on chocolate candy.  She doesn’t know the Karen I know who sneaks her brother’s chocolate covered pinwheel cookies out of the cupboard and eats them in her room.  There’s a lot that Karen’s mom doesn’t know.

Back in the garage, Karen tells me the one she heard from her creepy brother about the little girl who tricks the boys who try to look up her dress at her underwear.

“’I showed them,’ says the little girl. ‘I’m not wearing any underwear.’”

I don’t tell Karen that something like that happened to me once.  Karen is a good friend, but I don’t think she’s deserving of a bare naked butt kind of secret.

Karen and I take turns swinging on the knotted end of a thick braided rope that George hung from the rafters so he could build bulk in his upper body.  To swing, we climb the side wall and clench the hairy rope that scratches and burns the insides of our thighs.  The ride is as frustrating as it is irritating, the end of the rope drags on the floor and ladders, tools and old porch furniture prevent us from swinging grace or ease. Still, we pretend to be circus performers, and argue over the length of turns. When it’s my turn on the rope I tell her my Gomer Pyle joke.

      “Lou Anne, can I stick my finger in your belly button?”

     “No, Gomah, you cain’t”

The garage is where we know that no one will kick us out, where we can be alone,  and where we

know that we can make messes that won’t be discovered for months, messes that can be blamed on some other kid in the family.

       “Please? Lou Anne, can I stick my finger in your belly button?”

       “Okay, Gomah, just this once.”

 The garage is where the Christmas decorations are stored and where we hang tinsel from rusted nails and drape garlands of plastic holly from the support beams, and enter a fantasy inspired by a tiny tableaux of Dickensian carolers stamped in frost on an ornament.

 “Why Gomah,  that ain’t my belly button!”

      “Surprise, surprise, surprise. That ain’t my finger, neither.”

Garages are meant for cars and lawn mowers,  not for children but they become the place where we hide from adults, we talk about boys, we talk about teachers, where we talk about the young new teachers at St Anthony who are men, and we tell each other secrets.

      It’s in her own garage where Karen tells me that her mother doesn’t love her and shows me the paddle her dad uses to give her “lickin’s” and that they only love her creepy older brother and give him chocolate all the time even though she can’t have any chocolate on account of her allergies and that when she gets older she’s going to move far away and never see them again.

It’s in the garage where I tell Karen my secret. 

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone.  So. Don’t. Tell. A. Soul. My mom’s having a baby.”

Karen’s chap lipped mouth drops open exposing the wide gaps between her jagged teeth. “You’re kidding!  You’re mom’s way too old for that.”

Karen’s right, but it’s still going to be fun having a cute little baby girl around the house to dress up in pink and to cuddle and to baby sit.

 “Do you even know where babies come from?”  At first, I’m not sure. I figure that babies just happen to people. People like my mom get married, and then they get pregnant.  Still, the way Karen  looks at me with her dirty joke grin, I know  there’s something more to baby making than that. I should know the answer already, if Karen knows.  I’m the one who taught her how to blow smoke rings.  What could Karen know that I don’t?

I do know what everybody knows.

Everybody knows that dogs hump on the back of each other so they can make puppies.  I know that boy dogs stick their pointy red dicks in girl dogs and then the girl dogs get pregnant with little puppies.  I know that cats howl in the night when they’re getting it from the boy cats.  I know it must hurt.  I know you can never really catch the cats doing it like you can dogs who don’t care who’s watching or even if you’re another dog.  They’ll do it to your own leg if you let them.  And even if you don’t let them they’ll go at it anyway.

     I’m not sure how this connects to human babies.

Then, I look at Karen with her sleazy grin and at once I know.  She doesn’t have to say any more. “I can’t believe it! No way?  Really?”

“What, really? I don’t think you know where babies come from.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

I knew about fucking.  I knew that bad girls got pregnant when guys fucked them. But that’s something that happens  to Protestant teenagers, to Barbie dolls, and stupid women like Gomer’s Lou Anne, not to old ladies like my mom.

“Then prove it,” Karen says. “Tell me where babies come from.”

More pictures flash: hair, mysterious folds of skin, middle aged muscle and fat, a man’s big pink rolling pin, a woman’s little pee hole hidden in a hairy triangle. My mother.  My father.  Rita and George doing the nastiest thing in the world. 

“They do it.”

“Do what? Come on.  Prove you know.  Tell me.” Karen is loving this, tormenting me.

I can’t say the word.  I just can’t. “They f-u-c-k.”

“That’s right.  They f-u-c-k.  They all f-u-c-k.”

“Who?”

“My mom and dad and your mom and dad. Everybody’s mom and dad.”

My face burns. It’s as if it’s me she’s accusing of fucking, not my parents.  But I can’t let on that Karen told me anything I didn’t already know.

“It’s okay, everybody does it.  That’s what my mom told me.”

It’s okay for Karen to say that. Karen’s parents only did it twice. Once for her and once for her brother.  But my mom is a raving nymphomaniac.  Six times!  No, seven times, including little dead Francis(es).  She just couldn’t get enough, could she? Worst of all, it wasn’t years and years ago for her. My mom is pregnant now. That means she and George f-u-c-k-e-d!  And everybody is going to know!

Where? How? When?  Was I in the house?  Did they do it in their sleep? Did they like it? Did George say, “Hey Rita, that’s not my finger neither”?

The weeks and months following, these and other questions will haunt me.  Sitting in Sister Gertrude’s math class, the image of George’s naked butt will come to me.  When Mom, on her knees, leads the rosary I will think of her open legs .  When I try to get to sleep at night I will wonder if they’re doing it again, not to make babies, but for the fun of it.

       As my mothers’ belly grows, the more obvious it becomes to all my friends, my teachers, my friends’ parents, and to me that my mother had sex. And my mom just keeps getting happier, even giggling sometimes.  To make matters worse, she wears frilly short maternity dresses made of pastel prints.  When she bends, which is often,  you can see her lacy slips and garter belt, bare thighs above the hose. They might as well have hung a big sign around my neck.  My mom has sex. I am mortified, but I know she’s enjoying every moment of it.

       It is early December, 1970.  Mom  sends me to stay with my Grandma and my Aunt Barb on St. Paul Avenue while she goes to St. Elizabeth’s hospital to deliver my little sister.  On St. Paul Avenue, down the street from Grandma’s  is St. Joseph’s Orphanage.  Sometimes, I long to be an orphan.  The kids have their own swimming pool, and when they had their picnic once a year they got to ride the rides without having to buy tickets.  Imagine that.  You could sit on the tilt a whirl all day long and not even have to get off to get back in line.  But I am not an orphan, I am staying here in this cute little house with my Grandma and my Aunt Barb who are two old ladies who like to spoil me, and for whom I don’t mind doing the dishes, or sweeping the snow off the porch, or running errands for.  It is always calm and clean here. Nothing gets lost.  Even the newspaper is always folded neatly, as if no one has ever read it.  There’s a place for everything and I don’t even have to put anything away. During the summer even the back yard is cute here with its vegetable garden,  no grass, no lawn, no messes, just Swiss chard, rhubarb, leaf lettuce, carrots and tomatoes.

       So for now, I’m satisfied that I’m not an orphan living at St. Joseph’s Orphanage.  I wouldn’t mind, though, being an orphan and just staying here at my Grandma and Aunt Barb, who I’m sure, never, ever have sex. 

       Aunt Barb is especially kind to me.  She’s always asking, “Are you warm enough . . .Are you hungry . . . Would you care for  some coffee . . .If we move the chair this way, you won’t have to strain your neck to see the television . . . Don’t you like Lawrence Welk . . . I really like that Irish tenor . . . Those Lennon sisters sure are pretty . . .You don’t like coffee. . . Here, then.  Try some milk, try some sugar, try some Fruit Loops in your coffee.  See, you like it now, don’t you?”

      This must be what it’s like to be an orphan living with old people.  Maybe something will happen to everybody while I’m gone.  It would have to be something really big like an earthquake or tornado. It could happen.   But mom’s already at the hospital having the baby, so even something big like that wouldn’t get everybody, and besides things will be a lot different around the house with a new little baby sister to play with.

       December 9, 1969.  Grandma hands me her old fashioned heavy black phone. It’s Cindy’s voice, happily shouting over cheering. “Oh, Patty, we’re so happy! She had the baby, Patty.  And wait till you hear this! A ten pound healthy baby boy.  Can you believe it?  Ten pounds exactly.  A baby boy.  Aren’t you happy, Patty?  Isn’t that great?  Patty, are you there?”  I hand the phone to my Grandma and run outside to the cold.  I am outraged.   How could she do such a thing to me?  A boy. If she’s going to have nerve to sex, get pregnant,  and have a baby, why does she have to have a boy? Boy babies, as far as I could see were like cake without any icing.  No frills, no little dresses, nothing fancy.  Just a baby boy.  A total waste of time. 

        Like all the brothers and sisters still living at 2009 Wyoming Street, we take turns holding new born Robby, playing with fuzzy headed Robby, bathing fat little Robby, posing for pictures with grimacing little Robby, lavishing attention on crybaby Robby.  When mom shows me how to change his diaper, I am fascinated.  This is the first time I ever get to take a long close  look at a real live human penis, a penis that isn’t just a drawing of a penis, or a penis that isn’t a dog’s. Once, I tried to get Gary Engle to show me his, but he wouldn’t do it.  Even after I paid him a nickel and he said he would, and all he did was pull his pants down far enough to show me the creases on either side of his groin. But little baby Robby shows me everything he’s got.  But then, he can’t help it.  He is just a little baby who can’t even roll over or sit up or defend himself in any way.  So this is what a real dick looks like?  Something about it looks strangely familiar, as if I’d met it before somewhere, or maybe it just looks like something else. I know what it is. It looks like an acorn sitting on top of a chicken gizzard.  Not a big acorn, just a little tiny one.  I was under the impression that a penis is more like a long tube, or more like a hot dog, and so I am a confused by Robby’s round little cap topped organ.

       When Robby’s little acorn seems to wake up and stand a little taller, mom grabs a diaper and covers him. 

       “You don’t want to get squirted, do you?”

        Mom diverts a warm fountain of pee from both of us.  I wonder why she lets me see this kind of thing, Robby’s dirty little penis and all, and then I realize she can’t help it.  And he can’t either.  Looking at his penis, I feel a little sorry for him.  Robby’s penis is just one of those things, those dirty facts of life that can’t be hidden.  And so I learn to accept the fact of Robby’s little penis, like the fact of sex itself and that my mother had sex and Robby is the baby that proves it.