The family visited Aunt Rose in the hospital.  My brother waited in the lobby.  Kids under twelve weren’t allowed upstairs.  Glad I was thirteen.  Barbara Iris is teeny.  Aunt Rose’s abdomen isn’t flat and she still looks like a pregno.

I was never in a maternity ward.  As we ogled each newborn searching for Baby Barbara among Nurseries One to Four, I remarked to Mommy, half in exclamation and half in question, “Wow, so many born each day!” 

Mommy whispered in my ear, “This is because the hospital is named after William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, and Booth Memorial is the hospital for unwed mothers too.”

Heavens!  Those unspeakable two words of stigma.  The phrase that marked you for life.  My friends and I saw, Blue Denim and Best of Everything in the movies.  We knew the consequences of a mistake.  It was drummed into us before we even knew how babies were made.

Recently the gossip wires were aflame when my best friend’s older sister got married at 16 “because she had to.”  Six months later, Stuart was born, but Angela had already dropped out of high school and sacrificed college, a shame because she was in Honor School.  Rodney had gotten her pregnant.  When we spied him pressing the downstairs buzzer of our apartment building, Rodney transformed into the devil holding a spear in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.  Seven years Angela’s senior, Rodney was probably a nice guy who stood by her in their mistake, but we girls saw horns protruding from his head.  Linda refused to talk about her sister and everyone tsked-tsked behind Angela’s back.  She is identified as, “Angela-Who-Got-in-Trouble.”

A nurse directed us to the “Special Nursery for Newborn Care” where every infant in an incubator was visibly smaller than the 80 we had already seen.  Many ranged in color from crimson to deep purple and blue and half a dozen had a yellowish cast.  Most had clear plastic tubes attached to their miniature nostrils along with a monitor on their palm sized chests.  They were naked except for cloth diapers and their skin appeared translucent and thinly attached to their bones.  Lots had misshapen heads that reminded me of the Indian babies whose skulls were intentionally elongated.  A good number of these doll sized creatures bore bruise marks the size of my pinkie nail on their foreheads or cheeks.  Mommy said forceps caused them.  I shivered. 

These newborns were scary, expelled too early.   One baby didn’t have any legs.  Her feet connected directly to her torso.  I couldn’t look, yet was mesmerized and stared.  I wanted to escape these ugly creatures, fragments of humanity, and return to Nursery One to see the pink angels.  My instinct screamed, “Mommy, get me out of here!” 

Instead, I stood, paralyzed, mouth agape, not being able to focus on the minute bluish infant the nurse pointed to:  my cousin.