In the Heart of the Whale (An Attempt to Rob a Mother of Her Newborn, 1947)

Based on a true story

St. Paul, Minnesota is a city along the banks of the rich river called the Mississippi, the river originates, sleeps almost in the upper part of Minnesota and runs across the country, towards St. Louis, and towards New Orleans , and on the Gulf of Mexico, this is where I was born, in the heart of the Midwest, you could say. It transports an enormous quantity of water and its tributaries are innumerable. But this sketch, or story, is not about the Mississippi or even about myself, but about a failed attempt, a situation, to dispossess a mother of her infant child, her newborn child of hers; the year is 1947, the full date: October 7, the location: within the city of St. Paul, in the heart of the city, in a well-known Hospital, it is early in the morning, Indian summer as they say, the leaves of fall are all about, especially the colors of a faint rainbow. The cornfields outside the city are bare and the air is fresh, a woman is taken to the hospital the night before giving birth to a live child, she is not married and lives in the poor area of ​​the city, on a street called Igelheart, her name is Elsie.

“Take her to the delivery room,” a nurse says, “I’ll see her soon.”

There are several other women there also about to have babies, one who has been having a difficult labor for the last two days, is on her third day (she will be in labor for thirty-six hours), her name is Isabella, she smiles at Elsie, they may very well have been friends, but it won’t work that way, her son will die in the morning and the nurses will try to erase all traces of the stay, change some things, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

Isabella spoke to Elsie, in broken English, and mostly Polish, she was seventeen, spoke little English, and Elsie, too, had Russian and Polish roots, and spoke a little Polish, or at least understood a little, and spoke . Good English. Many families back then came from the Baltic area of ​​Europe to America, especially during and before the First World War (because there was a lot of famine and the uprooting of the war seeped all over the land and promised to be a long and sad war, et cetera), and their families (both Isabella and Elsie) extended families, were part of this group, this legacy, and in Isabella’s case, they, her family, could barely speak English, so she became part of this inheritance, as it was for Elsie’s mother and father, and so this was the case at hand, and when they arrived at the hospital, there were bilingual Polish nurses to help if needed.

Elsie was twenty-seven at the time, she had a son, Michael, he was two years past this new birth and had just started working at ‘Swifts & Co.’, as a meat packer, in the bacon department. She would work there for twenty-two years before the place closed. Her pregnancy and her delivery were going well.

She was not married (as I mentioned earlier), and had been dating two men at the same time, in fact, they were both friends with each other, but unknowingly, and of course in those far-off days, it was considered a deeper sin. , if a woman ever did such a thing, whereas, it was normal for a man to do this on a weekly basis, and of course for the man, he did it without shame, sin, or even an ounce of regret, in fact, he did it with fireworks, he bragged about it in bars and drew standing applause from his audience.

Well, the nurse who took Elsie to the delivery room, told her story to the rest of the nurses, and without missing an iota of information, it would suffice to say that she was the talk of the ward and the single mother, now slave to her sins, her reputation was overflowing, no more skeletons in the closet, you might say.

His father worked, he was a painter and owner of a restaurant, but some of his sisters were present, the rest would come later -there were five children alive, out of eight, three had died-, two were waiting in the waiting room, near the living room. Of childbirth. Elsie hadn’t started dilating yet, there weren’t any contractions, but Isabella was having them, had been having them, and then it stopped, it was a long test for her, the nurse had told the doctor they might have to consider an incision , a C-section to deliver the baby, so the woman wouldn’t die giving birth, she was exhausted to the point where her breathing was shallow at best.

Most of what you’re hearing would be silence, or at best cutting news, if it weren’t sporadically given to Elsie’s son, Dennis, some fifty years down the road of life, which it isn’t. it would have been a big deal so you don’t know so how can it make a big difference and so it was all and had to be closed in 1947 it was invaluable information and better forgotten on the other hand invaluable information leaks many times, right? no, if not directly, by osmosis, and maybe Isabella would never know the truth of the whole thing, and she surely wouldn’t have agreed to that, I think. In any case, she couldn’t read a word of English, a homemade mom, you could say; but the nurses think that she will inherit the new nascent child, however, yet to be born; maybe the nurses’ intentions were good, meant to be good, because there was no gain for them per se, in the sense that they wanted the child to have complete parenting, no lack of parenting for the child, maybe Maybe a father and mother made more sense, and since Elsie already had a child, well, it might be better for her to, you know, raise one vs. two, handing over the child, unknowingly handing over the child, but again, if you don’t know, then you’re not aware of the ongoing crime, and times weren’t easy for a man, let alone a woman. And so I repeat myself, perhaps the nurses had these intentions, although unethical for their profession; and at this point, let me add the doctor to this little unfolding crime scene: at least he would get away unscathed, and that would be my crime for the nurses.

It was now around 3:00 am and Isabella and Elsie were taken to a large room, a room divided only by a movable cloth divider, the doctor was busy with Isabella, her contractions had worsened and she was nine inches dilated. In other words, about to have the child, her water had broken hours before, and Elsie had dilated to seven, and her water had broken just after Isabella’s. They were both on their way to becoming mothers. Isabella’s husband was in the waiting room, with Elsie’s sisters, now there were three of them, Betty, Anne, and Rose, and her brother Wally, with whom she did so many things when she was young, becoming friends with Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

In fact, it was time for Isabella to have a child naturally or induced, a difficult labor she was having, and it looked like it, as she was pale, the dark rims around her eyes, her hair matted like a thorny bush. , but she was alive, and the baby was coming out, pushing, pushing, pushing, Elsie could hear his cries, as for the child there was no movement in his limbs, his eyelids, nothing at all about the child moved impulsively- he came out silent, too quiet, very quiet! But the nurses silenced him, smiled at Isabella, and moved the baby to another bed.

The nurses looked at each other, the doctor was silent, a nurse whispered something in his ear (clean the baby, spank him, don’t cry, Elsie felt the silence, waited for the cry, the cry that never came), and he nodded. She nodded to the nurses, and Isabella was whisked out of the room into a private room, Elsie was now alone, except for the child in the third bed in the room, and the dead child remained in that bed, behind the curtained divider, and the doctor approached Elsie, it was now 4:00 am, there were not many people in the room, and those who were, were half asleep, that is, except for the crew in Elsie’s room.

Now Elsie was nine years old, and she was pushing, pushing, she knew how to do better the second time, she didn’t need the advice of the nurses, she also knew that they didn’t care about single mothers, and therefore the child went through without much problem A nurse held the baby while Elsie closed her eyes for a moment, but only a moment, but that was after she saw that the baby was breathing, what color it was, some other things; then when he opened them he waited for the child’s cry that oh so beautiful first cry in life, the cry that says ‘here i am’, maybe God himself put that first cry in the child’s heart when he was surrounded by water inside the woman’s womb, like in the heart of a whale, protected from all harm and hindrance from the outside world, it was to be a reminder to the mother that the child had arrived alive, so the child was out of the world. belly all the way now; the nurse had gone behind the other curtain, swapping the babies, the living one for the dead one, consequently, to swap them with the mothers. Elsie saw the back of the nurse go behind the curtain and called out, “Where’s my baby? Bring him here right away.” she even she knew he was a boy.

The nurse now remained silent with both children, one in her hands, the living one, the dead one lying on the bed, wrapped in a thin white blanket, actually they both looked a lot alike, like two identical raw chickens. and reddish in color, except that one had turned a little pale. She left the living child, picked up the dead one, went over to Elsie to tell her that her child was stillborn, the nurse stood on the back of the bed, about to do her death share, only to hear the sound. words:

“Bring me my son now!” Elsie asked.

“Wait a minute, Elsie, they’re cleaning it up, I’ll get it for you in a bit.” The nurse said, puzzled.

And it was only for a moment, when he brought the child back to her alive, and Elsie held him tight. It can only be conjectured, to give a solid reason, that is, why the nurse returned her heart from a mother to its original, we will never know the real reason for this, at least not in this world anyway, but I can say modestly. that I think the child’s guardian angel was already hard at work, as were Satan’s dark intruding demons. And so my reader friends, is how I came to this world.

Notes on this Story, story based on facts: written on 5-28-2008; information throughout the years of Elsie, gathered and given to her son, and from that this story was built, not all the details are exact, some conjectures were added, which seemed only logical or possible for the moment and the situation , and where there was no other place to take the story. Isabella is a fictitious name; although the mother endured having a dead child, and the child was about to be introduced to Elsie, Elsie knew that the dead man in her arms was dead, horrified, the nurse was about to say what she had planned to say, when she went to get the alive, the trauma was over. Of course, this event was hushed up by the hospital, the nurses and even Elsie for almost half a century, today it is not. But she didn’t die, having it up to her; and I thank her for her bold actions. It was a time when such things may have happened, and justified for a variety of reasons, perhaps under the seal of humanity’s personal God. I don’t mention the name of the hospital, not that I’m scared or retaliated, it’s easy enough to find out where I was born for the curious reader, but as a 60 year old, I don’t mind pointing fingers, I just hope they have more ethical nurses now .