“Do not even for a moment think,” her mother said quietly, “that this degree is yours alone. We are going to graduation. Both of us.” Jill keeps the pictures from that day on her nightstand, requisite photos of a begowned graduate, Diane wearing the mortarboard and holding the scroll, arms around each other. Diane smiles for the camera, but also she looks like a soldier returning from war—shell-shocked, scarred by the horrors she’s suffered, but proud beyond articulation of all she’s done, of what she’s saved.
Jill and Diane were both hyperaware of the statistics which say that children of single parents are much more likely to be single parents themselves than children raised by two. When Jill made it through high school without getting knocked up, when she made it through college too, Diane breathed easy for the first time since Jill started her period. She had raised a strong, proud, smart young woman who had escaped unscathed. She figured any babies born now would be wanted and planned. But when it didn’t work out that way, when she heard our plan, she was also more sure than any of us that this arrangement could work. We weren’t going to destroy all our lives; together we could do this. Three, after all, is even more than two.
I went outside to throw some water on my face and found Diane lost at the nurses’ station. She turned and hugged me full-on and long as if she had nothing on her mind at all except how nice it was to see me.
“How are you, baby?” she asked me. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m good,” I replied, shaky, wondering if I should tell her or bring her to see for herself. She could tell though.
“I missed it, huh?” Diane looked at me closely, decided my paleness was due to an overly delicate constitution rather than something being wrong. Having assured herself of this, she asked nothing, preferring, I guess, to see for herself.
“You hardly missed anything,” I assured her. “Nothing good anyway.”
“A little squeamish?” she guessed, offhanded, but gripping my upper arm, guiding me to guide her to her daughter. “I remember. It wasn’t pleasant,” she said, laughing. “That’s the one good thing about doing it alone. No one has to watch.”
“Look who I found,” I announced as we walked into the room. A miracle had occurred. The horde of doctors and nurses had been replaced by one clean, kind-looking woman in street clothes. The metal instruments and beeping monitors and just-in-case equipment had been swept away, replaced by a tiny bassinet. The blood, the white clumpy stuff, was gone. The sheets stained brown and yellow and red were now miraculously neat, clean, and white. The glaring lights were off, the shades thrown open, the windows cracked and leaking fresh air and what passes for sunshine in December in the Pacific Northwest. A screaming, sweating, hurting Jill had been replaced by a calm, dry one clad in a green nightgown (god knows where she got it; certainly it wasn’t hers) and clutching to her chest a tiny, tiny baby, blue eyes wide open, also dry and clean and in new, soft clothes. Katie was madly taking pictures. Jill was oblivious, glowing, smiling blissfully at the new world outside. I stopped dead in the doorway. I thought of all those paintings of Madonna and Child. I thought of doves and larks, of church choirs and Benedictine monks, of puppies and spring and my breaking heart. I thought: what need we of baptism when we have whatever has happened here? I thought: the miracle of birth is nothing compared to the miracle that happened while I was in the lobby.
Diane was on the bed with her daughter instantly, both crying and crying. Into Jill’s hair, she was whispering, “Oh my babies, my beautiful beautiful babies.” Katie took like forty pictures of the three of them then exchanged glances with me, and we slid out into the hallway. It seemed the right thing to do. Plus, I suddenly realized, remarkably, I was starved.
“That was amazing,” Katie enthused.
“That was disgusting,” I tempered.
We went down down down to the cafeteria and sat under buzzing fluorescent lights drinking cocoa and eating rock-hard scones for breakfast (or dinner or lunch or whatever). All around us, everyone looked as tired and dazed as I felt except most of them were probably here with loved ones sick or dying, eating their eleventh meal of the week in the hospital, choking down oily, lukewarm soup with bad news and desperation. We ate quickly, said silent prayers of thanks, and went back upstairs to our bright day and our new baby.
When we got to Jill’s room, Diane was sitting on a chair in the hallway. “They kicked me out to have a chat about breastfeeding. When I did this, nobody told me anything about anything let alone reached in, took out my breast, and helped me nurse.” She gratefully accepted the coffee and muffin we’d brought her. “So how are you two doing?”
“Oh, we’re so great,” said Katie, clearly high on bliss or adrenaline or something. “Janey’s freaking out”—I hadn’t realized she’d noticed—“but it’s just so amazing.”
“I have a grandson,” said Diane, as if this clearly followed, starting to look a little freaked out herself. “What are we going to do with a boy?”
“That’s exactly what I said.” I nodded.
“Don’t know nothin’ about boys,” mused Diane.
“Oh, they’re just the same,” said Katie, who had four brothers as well as three sisters and so should have been a good source of information on this point, but Diane and I were skeptical.
“What if he’s one of those unenlightened ones who can’t think of anything but breasts?” Diane wondered.
“What if he takes full advantage of the hegemony,” I said, “and screws us.”
“What if he thinks he’s better just because he has a penis?” added Diane.
“What if he just thinks with his penis?” I countered.
“How do you even clean a penis?” wondered Diane to the amusement of everyone in the crowded hallway. “What if you all raise the girliest boy there ever was?” said Diane, and we were quiet, thinking about that one, wondering what sort of a boy we’d raise and how he’d get along in the world having grown up with three crazy academic moms.
“You all need a name,” said Diane finally. And suddenly we had a surmountable task. We didn’t have to raise him yet or nurture his maleness today or introduce him to the world this minute. We didn’t have to start teaching him all he would need to know or immediately give ourselves over to his every need or protect him from the world or protect him from ourselves. All we needed to do was give him a name. For all the thinking we’d done already, we had all been pretty certain deep down that this baby would be a girl. We were all girls, weren’t we?
The lactation consultant came out into the hallway and gave us a kind smile. “That boy is something, but he needs a name. You all had better get on it. By the way, we can order an extra cot tonight if you need it.” No one seemed at all fazed about the four of us, totally manless, obviously not coupled up, all clearly parenting this child. No one asked about a father; no one looked at us strangely. I guess it’s a new millennium and all that. Single parenting’s not new and never was, and besides, it can’t carry its persistent sense of shame into sterile hallways where it happens every day. But even beyond that, no one jumped to the obvious conclusion that we were all just friends, come to be supportive. It was more than that, and everyone seemed to sense and accept that. We all had to name this baby. We all might stay the night. We were family already, on sight, obvious to anyone who took any time to look at all.