crooked house

Babies in Literature: Breastfeeding (and Smoking) Toddlers in Pat Barker's The Eye in the Door

Pat Barker's The Eye in the Door is the second novel in her trilogy about British soldiers traumatized by World War I trench warfare. These particular passages, childhood memories of one of those soldiers, working class Billy Prior, struck me as particularly apropos in light of all the fuss last week about the breastfeeding mom on the cover of Time. Since the novel is set in 1918 when Billy is supposed to be twenty-three years old, this first memory would've taken place around 1900.

The bell of the shop rang as he pushed the door open. How old? Four? Five? A smell of cat pee and tarred string from the bundles in the corner. Beattie's cat had never been able to resist marking those bundles. Mrs Thorpe plonked their Alfie on the counter while she paid her bill. Alfie swung his short legs in their sturdy boots, puffing away at a fag end though he was only three. Between drags, he sucked his mother's breast, puffing and sucking alternately, peering round the white curve at Prior, who was a Big Boy and therefore an object of interest and suspicion. It was late in the afternoon. Mrs Thorpe would be far gone. Jugs of best bitter were her favourite, chased down by sips of something medicinal that she kept in a flask fastened to her thigh with a home-made elastic garter. Whiskey for the heart, brandy for the lungs, gin for the bladder. Alfie, guzzling away at his mother's milk, looked contented, and well he might, since it could hardly be less than 70 proof.

Shocking, isn't it? But it's the smoking and the drinking that are so shocking, not the breastfeeding. In Mrs Thorpe's defence, the dangers of smoking and alcohol to developing children weren't understood at the time -- and breastfeeding was just the way mothers fed their kids, for as long as they could. After all, she wouldn't have had to pay for that milk.

This next passage is about a brief encounter with Mrs Thorpe and another woman Billy has when he goes back to his own village in 1918.

Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public disapproval. 'Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You'd think she could find herself summat to do, wouldn't you?' Now, looking up and down the street. Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to go.

He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe's name that came particularly to mind because she'd been one of the worst offenders, with her lard-white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he'd already identified her, for there she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he'd always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh-coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn't know who else it could be.

They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here: for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was this even, flashing whiteness. 'What white teeth you have, Grandma,' he said.

'All the better to eat you with,' said Mrs Riley. 'And who are you calling Grandma?'

Mrs Thorpe asked, 'How long have you got, love?' And then, before he had time to answer, 'Eeh, aren't we awful, always asking that?'

'Two days.'

'Well, make the most of it. Don't do anything we wouldn't do, mind.'

He smiled. 'How much scope does that give me?'

'Fair bit, these days,' said Mrs Riley.

He remembered, suddenly, that he'd sucked the breasts of both these women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth, and he'd been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed him and, in doing so, had probably saved his life.

Are You My Mother? Maud Interviews Alison Bechdel

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir (is that a thing?) about her relationship with her mother. Maud Newton talks to her about it in this really intriguing interview.

AB: One of my earliest, most powerful memories of my mother is playing this game where I would be a crippled child like the kids I would see at the orthopedic wing of the hospital when I would go to get my fallen arches checked up on. I was just fascinated with these children, with their external signs of disability, their crutches and braces and big shoes. There was something about that that I needed to reenact, and my mother entered into that imaginary space so willingly with me and in such an encouraging way. Even though I knew there was something weird about having this fantasy about disabled children, she didn't sensor it. She encouraged me to go with it, and I feel like she probably did that with me in lots of imaginary games as a kid but for some reason this is the one that I remember the most vividly. And I speculate in the book that it's because it was a fantasy that she shared to a certain extent as well.

 

BNR: And when your OCD was making it really difficult to keep the diary, your mom would write down your entries. I remember that from Fun Home, too, and both times it gave me chills. The devotion implicit in it.

 

AB: Oh my God, that was another pivotal moment. She would sit there and write down everything I said. It was amazing. It also becomes weirdly this template for my relationship later with therapists, other women who would sit there and take down notes on what I was saying.

Dreams of Riches

Grampa: Steph, how does it feel to be rich?

Steph (puzzled): What do you mean?

Grampa (laughing): Last night I dreamed you won the lottery.

Steph: Oh wow, I hope your dream comes true. Wouldn't that be nice, Sylvie, if we were all rich?

Sylvie: Grampa have bad dream? Like my dream treasure cat?

Steph: No, honey, Grampa had a good dream. Not a nightmare, like your bad dream about the Cheshire cat [from Alice in Wonderland]. He dreamed we were rich!

Sylvie: That bad dream.

Steph: No, it's a good dream! I was rich and Daddy was rich and Lukie was rich and Vivi was rich!

Sylvie (looks appalled and insulted, screeches at the top of her lungs): I NOT A WITCH! (bursts into tears.)

This Life is In Your Hands. And A Spoiler Alert.

 This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone is a memoir by Melissa Coleman that got a lot of attention last year when it first came out. Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue, were among the first back-to-the-landers of the late 60s and 70s. They moved to a plot of land in rural Maine that adjoined the farm of Helen and Scott Nearing, the couple who wrote Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, which is the book credited with inspiring the movement. Eliot and Sue built their own home, grew their own food, and Sue gave birth to two little girls while they did it. It sounds Edenic, particularly for children, and partly, it was.  (This NYT review of the book does a good job of describing the basic events of This Life is In Your Hands and also the sort of see-sawing the book does between the poetry of the family's life, rooted as it was in nature, and an increasing sense of ominousness.)

It's easy for people who have never attempted to be self-sufficient through farming to romanticize the idea (witness the current resurgence of what Emily Matchar calls the New Domesticity, which admittedly doesn't seem as hard-core a movement) but the fact is that it makes for a very hard life. (I am guilty of romanticizing it myself -- in  high school I gave a speech on my version of "the good life" in which I would retreat with my little family to a cabin in the woods, where I would homeschool my children and we would all survive, I guess, on nuts and berries.) Coleman, who is now a nationally recognized expert on organic gardening, actually had a thyroid disorder, largely untreated, that spurred him on to ceaseless physical labour. And if I were going to try to accomplish what he did, I think I'd want one, too. From Melissa Coleman's descriptions of her mother, Sue, it seems to me that she  suffered terribly from post-partum depression and that this was horribly compounded by the relentless, back-breaking work that homesteading actually entailed, not to mention possible malnutrition.

Now here is where the spoiler comes in. Consider yourself warned. One day, busy preparing a feast for some visitors (as if she doesn't have enough to do), Sue shoos Melissa's little sister Heidi, who is around three at the time I think, out of the cabin, telling her to go float her toy boat on the pond. Heidi actually comes back once or twice, begging for attention, and Sue turns her away. You can guess what happened to Heidi down at the pond. She drowned.

Melissa Coleman doesn't blame her mother for this in the book, but she doesn't exactly absolve her, either. After reading it I was left feeling absolutely bereft for the poor woman, whom I was unable to track down via google, hoping to learn she has found some sort of peace. And I must admit I was also left feeling a bit pissed off about Eliot Coleman's (and the Nearings') subsequent success as  folk heroes.

Now of course children die. They die in car accidents in suburbia and of childhood cancers and all kinds of things. But all it takes is a short stroll through a pioneer-era graveyard to see how many children died when there was no choice for anyone but a  "lifestyle" of relentless physical labour in order to put food on the table. A lot of those deaths were from childhood diseases we can now vaccinate against (if we aren't against vaccinating) but many of them were from accidents that happened when parents didn't have the time and the energy to hover over their kids.

Impossible Pie and Cheeseburger Cupcakes

I made Impossible Pie -- have you ever heard of it? -- on the weekend and wrote about it for The Awl. I also made cheeseburger cupcakes, which excited Vivi no end. We had to have a mock birthday party for her with them.

Further Tales of A Tonsillectomy

Before we brought Luke home from the hospital, we were instructed to make sure he drank enough. "He must pee four to five times a day!" the nurse said. "If he is not, he is dehydrated and must come back to the hospital! Also, there is a risk that the scabs at the back of the throat will rip open and he will start bleeding! Bleeding requiring an emergency trip to the closest hospital!" She also told us not to let him shout or move around too much for two weeks, which could also result in excessive bleeding. The risk is greatest, she told us, during days four to ten.

Have you ever tried to keep a six-year-old boy from shouting or moving around? If not, imagine trying to keep the wind from blowing or the sun from making its way through the sky. You might as well try to keep Kim Kardashion out of the news.

However, we managed, through great effort, also bribery, to keep him mostly quiet and mostly still until yesterday afternoon. Day seven, for those who are counting. (Like me. I am not only counting the days, I am counting the hours and the minutes until I can safely send the child back to school.) Yesterday afternoon, Luke was standing on the landing at the top of the stairs, chatting to me as I was changing Vivi's diaper on the living room floor below -- I am always changing a diaper at these moments -- when suddenly a squirrel leaped toward him from the banister above his head.

We are having a problem with squirrels getting into the attic from some holes we cannot find in our admittedly decrepit roof. Theo, one of our cats, had chased this one down the attic stairs. Luke is afraid of the squirrels because we have made quite a fuss about our distaste for them being in the attic.  And because, let's face it, they are freaky little buck-toothed rats with long bushy tales. And this was a big one. When this squirrel leaped  toward him, the poor boy screamed more loudlyand for a longer period of time than I have ever heard anyone scream. He stopped only to take a breath and then screamed again and again and again and again to similar full-throated effect. While he was screaming he leapt bodily down the full flight of twelve stairs.

So far, luckily, there hasn't been any bleeding, at least not as far as Luke is concerned. I am afraid a blood vessel may have popped in my brain, however, as I am not feeling at all well today. Fee free to send flowers and chocolates.

Maud Newton on Victorian Children and Forbidden Fruit

"Here child, give me that apple before it poisons you."

Maud has been reading about Bertrand Russell and discovered this passage in his autobiography:

I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed and everybody except me was given an orange. I was not allowed an orange as there was an unalterable conviction that fruit is bad for children. I knew I must not ask for one as that would be impertinent, but as I had been given a plate I did venture to say, ‘a plate and nothing on it’. Everybody laughed, but I did not get an orange.

Apparently, though, Russell ate a lot of stolen crabapples, which is probably why he didn't suffer from rickets. (He did, however, suffer from guilt.)

Hidden Mothers

In the early days of portrait photography, small children were often photographed while sitting in the arms of their mothers, who were completely covered by a blanket. Later the ghostly lump of the mother would be cropped out of the photo by a mat. These Hidden Mother pictures are highly sought after by collectors today. It seems that even before the proliferation of unrealistic images of women in the media, moms didn't want their pictures taken.

Look here and here for more of these strange photographs. Via A Cup of Jo.

Whatever Happened to A Very Young Dancer?

I vividly remember the first time I saw this book, A Very Young Dancer. It was a rainy October afternoon and I must have been about ten years old. I pulled it off the shelf in the Bookmobile, which was parked in its customary spot in the far corner of the Save-Easy lot, and sat right down on the floor of the bus there and then and read it all the way through. I didn't take it out, though. While it did make me yearn for a life of serious purpose and beauty -- and of course the applause of an appreciative audience in a fancy theatre -- I knew that ballet wasn't for me. I was already too old to ever learn it properly. And  even at that age I had an inkling that I had the wrong body type. (It wasn't until I reached adulthood that I realized I'm a total klutz anyway.) But it was a captivating, mesmerizing book of photography and it cast a spell on a lot of little girls who started ballet lessons in the 70s and 80s. The book catapulted its subject, the young ballerina Stephanie, into instant fame. That fame made things difficult for her when, at the age of 13, she was asked to leave the School of American Ballet. She has only now, at the age of 46, come to terms with it. Via A Cup of Jo.

Incidentally, Jill Krementz, is Kurt Vonnegut's widow, and she published a whole series of these A Very Young Whatever books. What happened to the rest of them?

Stephanie's story reminds me -- just a little -- of Emma Ridley's. Ridley played Ozma in Return to Oz, a movie that has been in constant rotation in this house, as the kids are fascinated with all things Oz. I knew that Fairuza Balk, who played Dorothy in it, continues to work as an actor as an adult but I wondered about Emma, who is startlingly beautiful in the film. Apparently she was a fixture on the London nightclub scene for six months in her early teens in the 80s, stripping on tables while carrying a teddy bear. She married a much older man at the age of 15 and then disappeared. She now lives on a farm in California with her two children, is an evangelical Christian like Stephanie, and has a dance fitness business.

They Grow Up So Fast

Vivi and I are already having disagreements about how much lipstick she should wear.