The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir by Nancy Stephan

Author:Nancy Stephan [Stephan, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Rum & Baker
Published: 2011-08-02T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Christmas morning Nicole and I came home from the hospital. The nurse had come with a large red Christmas stocking in her arms. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said. Santa Claus had already come to see me the night before, so I couldn’t imagine what the nurse was bringing me. But as she passed me the stocking, I could see the top of Nicole’s head. “Usually we can hide the babies in the stockings really well,” she said, “but she’s a very long girl.”

Although Erma Lee had gotten on my case about buying girl’s clothes, my error had been in buying newborn sizes. Nothing fit; even the romper I brought her home in was too small. I had to bend her knees to get her feet in, and even then I could only snap the outfit down to her waist.

Nicole was a very content baby. When she did cry, it was hardly audible. “What’s that hummin’ noise?” Erma Lee would ask. Realizing it was Nicole, she’d say, “Lawd have mercy! Why come she can’t open her mouth and holler like a normal baby?”

Nicole also slept all night, which Erma Lee said wasn’t normal. But when we took her for her six-week check up, Dr. Tanrik said, “If she sleeps, let her sleep; she’ll wake up if she’s hungry.” Erma Lee, however, insisted that the baby was malnourished, and when folks from the church would drop by to see how the new mother was getting along, she’d tell them I wasn’t feeding the baby enough.

“Well, Sister Erma,” they’d say, “seems like the baby would cry if she was hungry.”

“She ain’t got the good sense to cry. You oughtta hear her; sound like she got a mouthful of cotton.”

I would remind Erma Lee of what Dr. Tanrik had said, and she’d say, “Those White doctors don’t know nothin’ bout feedin’ no Black babies,” and thus began her remedy for my poor, undernourished Nicole.

By the time she was two months old, her diet, on top of the Enfamil with Iron, consisted of cornbread and pot liquor. The infant cereal, according to Erma Lee, wasn’t fit for a gnat. “That stuff disappear in her throat ‘fore it ever hit her gullet.” In spite of everything, Nicole was a healthy, happy baby.

Having a baby at 15 was, in my opinion, the most significant thing that had happened to me, and I had plans. I would finish high school and college and then settle down and be the best mother I could be. But within weeks, my caseworker paid a visit, and the old ghosts that I thought had been laid to rest were resurrected.

Because I was a ward of the court, she said, Nicole was automatically a ward of the court and was eligible to be adopted out. I didn’t understand it or believe it. That I could carry a baby for nine months, give birth, name her and bring her home, and she not be legally mine was ridiculous. But the

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