Sewn to a Moment
Written in 1988 and included in the PhilWP Invitational Summer Institute I archives
by Carol Merrill
It was another normal, busy yet boring, Saturday in Simmons Hall, a small dormitory at Penn State University in Happy Valley. I do not remember exactly what I was doing that morning, but there were not many sisters in the sorority suite, which was not usual. The pledges were out on an activity; only four or five of us were around.
Roberta came into my room. "Come quickly to the third floor bathroom. It's Lisa! We don't know what to do, and we need help!"
Three of us followed Roberta upstairs to the opposite side of the dorm where we seldom ventured because that was the non-Greek area. As we raced through the halls and up stairwells, I got the facts. Lisa had gone to a doctor and lied about how far pregnant she was---three months instead of five. The doctor had given her something to induce a miscarriage, and she was having complications. (I found it hard to believe that the doctor did not know when a girl was too far along for an abortion.) Someone was stationed outside the bathroom door to prevent non-sorority women from entering and finding out.
As we raced through the halls and up stairwells,
I got the facts.
I walked into the cold, gray-green tiled room. In the stall to my right was Lisa, doubled over in pain, confused and crying. The other sisters finally convinced her that she had to go to the hospital. The placenta had not come out, and they saw no other alternative after three hours of unprofessional assistance. They quickly helped her out of the bathroom and asked June Ann and me to clean up the mess so no one would know what happened and tell the dorm resident or the school authorities. Before they left, they told us they had tried to flush the fetus down the toilet, but it would not go.
I entered the stall. There was a brown baby boy squeezed between the cold, white porcelain walls of the toilet. With no feeling, I, too, tried to flush him away. He wouldn't go down. He couldn't. He was too big. I couldn't leave him there. I had no choice but to remove him from the scarlet stained water. Trying to protect our hands, June Ann and I grabbed piles of paper towels, gently pulled him from the water and wrapped him.
We were not in our own territory, the safety of the sorority suite, so we quickly cleaned up the traces of blood, opened windows to let out the stench of a terrible mistake, and carried the dead bundle downstairs.
I sat in Bev's room on her bed. I couldn't go to mine. What was I going to do? He was in my arms. He was my responsibility. “God, he is dead!” We had wanted to throw him in the trash, just get rid of him. I held him in my arms, trying to get my thoughts and feelings together. What should I do? Over and over, I said to myself, "Is this my child? My little boy? He could be."
Finally, a shoe box. We would put him in a shoe box. I made a cushion of tissues and paper towels. I placed him in the box. He was a real baby, soft brown but with a dull film of death. He had ten little fingers and ten little toes; everything about him was a real person. Luckily, I never saw his eyes. Maybe he closed them so I wouldn't hurt so much. Looking back, I don't know if I could have withstood his look.
The decision was made. He was not a fetus, disposable tissue. He was a little dead boy who deserved a burial with as much respect and dignity as could be given within the confines of a secret murder. The place had to be private, free from animal or human disturbance. It had to have an air of peace and quiet, fitting for a final resting place for a child.
The decision was made.
I called a fraternity brother who was just that: a nice, trusting brother. I asked him to take me for a ride and to bring a shovel. He asked no questions and arrived within fifteen minutes. There was little conversation in the car except for vague directions. He drove past the campus boundaries, beyond the football stadium, to a dirt road in an undeveloped section of the countryside. Bev and I told him to wait for us.
We took the shovel and the precious box into the woods. We dug a hole as deep as our weak muscles would allow, trying to forget that we were digging a grave. We placed the cardboard coffin neatly and reverently. We spoke no words. I prayed to God to bless this life that could have been and to give us strength. We put rocks on top of the box to protect the life this body represented. We filled in the hole. Each lifting of the shovel to the grave was a stitch permanently sewing me to this moment, to those two long hours. We left a small marker and walked quickly to the car.
Back at the dorm, we secretly carried the unspoken story of an unlived life. For me, however, I have broken the silence. I was vaguely, yet acutely aware of another child growing and living inside me. The two hour nightmare vividly replayed itself many times, countless times, fated never to leave me. In eight months, I held another brown baby boy in my arms. Thank God, he was alive; and he was mine.
Carol Merrill retired from West Philadelphia HIgh School in 2007 after teaching for 37 years. Carol joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 1988 as a teacher consultant. For the past two years, she has been working with student teachers at the University of Pennsylvania.
Carol’s piece was originally written in 1988 and was included in PhilWP Invitational Summer Institute I archives.