I was only 14 and about eight months pregnant when I was shipped to the Friends Rescue Home for unwed mothers in Columbus, Ohio. I hid out there until I could give birth and put my child up for adoption.
It was a strange hiding place.
The Friends Rescue Home was a large but spartan house at the end of a winding, tree-lined drive on the city's southwest edge. Many years after I was there, I learned that it could accommodate as many as 50 expecting mothers and that it was founded in the early 1900s by a woman named Evangeline Reams. She was a Quaker and prominent crusader on behalf of Ohio women, rescuing them from brothels, helping them care for their unborn and newborn babies, exposing what amounted to human-trafficking rings — really inspiring and courageous stuff.
But I knew none of that at the time and, in all honesty, probably would not have cared to have known. I was focused on my predicament, and to me, this was like entering Boys Town, except for girls.
The dormitory was on the top, half-story of a house that had to have been at least 60 or 70 years old by then. It was a large room with dormered ceilings and short walls, like you would expect to find in a converted attic. Three rows of about 15 beds aligned along its length. My bed was the last one on the right. Everyone had a little, metal light stand.
Accommodations were austere and life very regimented. When we awoke — always early in the morning — we went straight downstairs for prayer. Then breakfast. Then school. There were six or seven other girls in class with me, but we were all in different grades and in different classes, each with our own books. The instruction was probably very similar to what a student might have received in the old days in a one-room schoolhouse.
Despite all the chaos, I finished eighth grade on time. Maybe I got that from Mom. She graduated early from high school despite being orphaned and shuffled from relative to relative.
At night, we had chores, which I did not mind at all. Usually, I peeled potatoes or set the table or cleaned up after dinner. I loved to clean. I definitely got that from Mom. Maybe it was our way of exerting control when nothing else around us would bow to our wishes.
I don’t remember making many friends or talking to anyone. When I arrived, there was one 16-year-old girl who sort of took me under her wing. I cannot remember her name, but she was from Findlay, Ohio. She watched out for me, which was fortunate because I was the youngest one there. Most of the adults who ran the place were stern and unpleasant.
And the other girls, except for my friend from Findlay, were not particularly affable or accepting.
Among the few things I brought to the home was a stuffed bunny rabbit that I had received as an Easter gift. It was white, with pink inside its ears. I was not one to sleep with stuffed animals, but that bunny somehow brought me a little comfort in this alien environment. Sometime in the first week, though, the rabbit disappeared and was gone for at least another week. When it finally reappeared, someone had cut its ears off. No one ever owned up to it. I do not even know how it got back to me. But I kept it, even in its tattered state.
That episode was very unsettling. I remember thinking, “Please don’t cut my nightgown off of me or do something weird to me.” Why would those girls be so mean to someone in the same position as they were, but so much younger? I was fearful, and the adults there, while not mean, were not protective, either. That did not help my state of mind.
I got relief here and there, however.
Someone from my family came to visit me every weekend. Mom and my stepfather, Ernie, came at least once and took me to the movies to see “Oliver Twist.” That was the only time I left the grounds, except to give birth. My brothers and their wives came to see me a few times, too. They each had a child by then, so I got to see their kids. I do not remember anything we talked about on those visits; I just remember I was always so happy to see my brothers and their wives, and my niece and nephew.
I settled into a routine pretty quickly. I think I’ve always been highly adaptable, and there was a predictable rhythm to life at the home, as well.
That was disrupted one night, however, when I woke up extremely sick. Certain that I was about to vomit, I got out of bed and skittered across the dormitory floor to the bathroom.
Given the size of the sleeping quarters and the number of girls staying on that floor, the facilities were thoroughly inadequate — a single commode and a single pedestal sink, in a walled-in corner of the dormitory that was scarcely larger than a port-o-john. The ceiling slanted severely, which made the bathroom feel even more cramped and which made it difficult for anyone to stand upright — even me, at no more than 4-foot-9 at the time. I went in and sat on the toilet, hoping my stomach might settle, but not even the cool of the seat helped. The knot in my stomach was inching up my throat, so I lunged forward and vomited into the sink.
By this time, one of the adults had come to investigate the commotion, and she gave me hell — “You should have thrown up on the floor; you’re gonna stop up the sink!” I do not think she had any idea what was happening, but she took me down to the infirmary. There, they figured out I was in labor and whisked me away to the hospital.
Attendants wheeled me into an extremely bright, extremely crowded delivery room. No one held my hand. No one told me what delivery would be like — either that night or at any other point during my stay at the home. I felt in no way prepared for what was about to happen.
And who were all of these people? I did not know anyone.
Much like the Rescue Home, the movements of all who worked at the hospital seemed regimented and highly impersonal. Someone draped a sheet over my legs. I do not remember if they gave me anything for pain — I think I arrived too late for that— but I do not remember feeling any pain, either. No crying, or screaming or freaking out. My baby just kind of slid out of me — a miracle birth!
The weirdest part was that right after the delivery, I expected a nurse or doctor to tell me something — whether the baby was a boy or girl, or at least if the baby was healthy. Maybe if I had spoken up, they would have told me, but I did not say a word, and no one else did, either, at least not to me. I was just an assembly line belt. I squeezed out a baby that was carted away immediately to the next step in production. I did not hear a bottom slapped or see a child wiped clean of goo. I did not hear my baby cry. Nothing.
It was as if I had delivered my child directly into oblivion.
Mere minutes later, I was in my room in the maternity ward. That really flipped me out because there was a new mother in a bed beside me with her baby, and I wondered what she thought I was doing there.
I do not think that, back then, they thought a whole lot about the psychological effect this placement might have on me. And nobody thought twice about giving me a packet of “new mother” brochures and documents, just like all the other new moms around me who would be taking their babies home with them.
Looking back, I’m grateful to have received this, though. I am pretty sure this is how I got my hands on this 5x7, heavy-stock card with “Hospital Birth Record” printed across the top. It had a sky-blue border decorated with sketches of bunnies and ponies and swaddled infants. You could fill in all sorts of information about your baby, kind of like an unofficial birth certificate. I looked at it and thought, “Well, what the hell?” I decided to fill it out, but I had no idea what to put in the blanks.
And that made me mad.
The nurses told me I was forbidden to go to the nursery, but that night, I did it anyway. It is amazing what you can get away with when you walk around like you own the place. No one said a word to me or tried to stop me as I passed down the dimmed hallways.
The nursery was just like a stereotype from the movies — a room behind a big, plate-glass window, with shades that could be drawn when it was time for the babies to sleep. Unfortunately, those shades were down when I arrived. But fortunately, the outer edges of the blinds were curled back, so that if I stood in just the right spot, I could look in and see most of the cribs, if not the babies in them. Looking about, I spotted my name, “Rigel,” on a blue card. Blue. That’s the only way I knew I had a boy.
There must have been other information on that placard, too, because when I went back to my room, I started filling in the blanks on that sky-blue hospital birth record card. Weight: 6.5 pounds. Length: 15 inches. Hair: Blonde. Time of birth: 3:45 a.m.
I had one last piece of information to record — I had to give my son a name. I thought for a moment. Then I filled in that blank, too.
“Jeffrey.”
When I went to sleep that night, I was certain I would never see that boy again. I had no idea what would become of him. And I had no idea I had just given him a name that would never leave him.
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I just wanted to thank Lynette for sharing such a profoundly vulnerable, heartbreaking story that is also incredibly inspirational. The resilience and love she has comes shining through in the honesty of her recollections. Jeff, kudos to you for turning over your "pen" to her for this part. I'm so happy for both of you.