Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [84]
In faraway Albuquerque, Donna was ill, suffering periodic bouts of nausea and vomiting. Since she had previously experienced a kidney infection, her mother assumed a reoccurrence and took her to the doctor. The blood test results came. With her mom sitting primly at her side the doctor delivered the diagnosis…pregnancy. The father was another teenager.
Donna’s parents were destroyed. This was 1964 and it was a minor scandal for even a Hollywood starlet to be pregnant and unwed. For a traditional Italian-Catholic family to have a pregnant, unwed daughter was worse than a diagnosis of a terminal disease. For the first time in her life, Donna got to see her father cry.
It was her brother who organized a face-saving escape. Donna would stay in Albuquerque as long as possible. Before her belly could betray her, she would travel to an out-of-state Catholic home for unwed mothers. The baby would be given up for adoption. Extended family and friends would be fed the lie she had left town for college, but few would believe it. The daughters of traditional Italian-Catholic families did not leave home until they were married. But a priest, who was a family friend, taught at a nearby Catholic university so he willingly joined the conspiracy, prepared to cover for Donna if anybody inquired after her.
While I was thinking my life had ended at West Point, Donna was certain hers was also over. She had far greater reasons to feel condemned. She was making the first trip of her life away from her parents…as a social and family outcast. Joe and Amy made it clear she had shamed them. “Don’t you dare look at that baby when it’s born” had been her mother’s send-off warning. “I don’t want you getting attached to it.”
For months Donna cried herself to sleep in a Catholic geriatric-care center operated by the Sisters of Charity. A portion of one floor of the facility had been converted into a dormitory that Donna shared with two dozen other scarlet-lettered women. In exchange for their room and board, the girls helped the nuns with the care and feeding of the aged. They carried trays through rooms and hallways scented with urine, feces, and death. Depression hung on them like a shroud. The mother superior proved to be the quintessential witch, treating them as morally flawed beings. There was no counseling, no trips, and few phone calls to or from loved ones. Donna wrote letters home, putting coded notes on the envelope to designate which mail could be shared with the extended family. In those she created a life at college. In the others she begged for forgiveness.
The girls found comfort only among themselves, but even that succor was transient. As quickly as friendships blossomed, they would end. Girls would give birth and move on to uncertain futures. Unlike other traumatic events that bond people for life, living in a home for unwed mothers was naturally terminal for friendship. None of the girls wanted continued communication for fear of discovery of their sinful secret.
Donna’s moment arrived in the summer of 1964. When the baby came there were no exclamations of joy, no rush to take photos for grandparents, no happy tears. Instead, the child was immediately taken away.
Yeah. I had it tough at West Point.
Donna returned home to distrustful parents who watched her like wardens. She had no future but what her mom and dad would allow.
Meanwhile, I had become adept at shooting an M-14 with laserlike precision, getting across a ten-foot-deep pool in full combat gear, and enduring the shit being pounded out of me in boxing class. But none of it helped in my quest to attract a girl. I retained the romantic IQ of a snail. On second