The Ripper's Wife(27)
Afterward, I developed such a fear of childbirth I could hardly bear for Jim to touch me. Terror flooded every part of me when, smiling over Bobo’s and Gladys’s dark heads, he jokingly declared that now all we needed was a pair of golden ones to match mine and our little family would be complete.
Like some poor shell-shocked solider boy, I’d find myself reliving the worst agonies of childbirth in moments when I should have been experiencing only the most exquisite pleasure. I consulted with Mama and began to make some discreet attempts at contraception, experimenting with different methods, praying each time I would not bungle it and find myself expecting again.
The fear was so great, I had trouble relaxing; I was tense and awkward where I had once been so fun loving and free. I no longer initiated our love play; most of the time I just lay there and left it all to Jim, and I know he missed the naked adventuress who loved to let down her golden hair and cast off her inhibitions with her clothes, and the naughty banter that always accompanied our mutual explorations. I would have complained of headaches, only he always had some remedy ready to dose me.
When we made love, if I’d managed to discreetly slip into my bathroom before I’d always be worrying that the little sponge or one of the French womb veils Mama sent me from Paris I’d inserted might slip or that Jim’s nose might catch a suspicious whiff of lemon juice or vinegar or the little string meant to make retrieval easier might dangle or catch on his finger and give me away. On the nights when I’d been unable to prepare myself, I worried that the cuddling afterward, which I adored so, would delay me from douching with the mixture of warm water, lemon juice, vinegar, and carbolic acid I always used and give Jim’s seed a better chance to take root. A couple of times I was so tired, and the warm weight of Jim’s body so comforting and sweet, that I was lulled off into sleep and missed my chance and was in absolute terror until my courses came. Once, when they were late and I was terrified of what that might mean, I tried to bring them on with a foaming douche of nitric acid while Jim was at work. I don’t know how I got through that without screaming the house down. I nearly bit my lip clean through and had to make up a tale about tripping on the stairs to explain the bloody marks my teeth left.
I felt doubly bad for deceiving Jim, for not openly telling him what I was doing and why. But men so seldom understand these things. They take that verse in the Bible to heart about women being meant to bring forth offspring in pain, without being able to fathom just how bad that pain actually is. They think we weak, delicate things make overmuch of it, that we, wanting sympathy and presents, and to loll around in bed afterward being waited on hand and foot for a fortnight, greatly exaggerate. I wanted to tell him the truth, but I was so afraid of how he’d react. I wanted to believe he would understand and be content with the two children we had, but another part of me was afraid of the anger I knew lurked inside him, that my confession might bring the violence out. He might even forbid me privacy in my bathroom to make sure I never attempted the like again, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of May, Mrs. Briggs, or—God forbid!—Nanny Yapp standing there scrutinizing me at moments that should have been absolutely private.
It was such a difficult position to be in; I loved my husband and for him to hold and kiss and touch and caress me all over, his lips and fingers bringing me to the pinnacle of pleasure, but inviting him to do so only opened the door to more. Every time I opened my legs to him, I felt more and more fear and less and less pleasure. I wanted to hold on, I wanted it to stay, I didn’t want to lose the intimate joys of our marriage, but the fear was ripping it all away. I just could not forget the pain, and that it had almost killed me, and that this pleasure was the prelude to that pain. Jim and I were always superstitious about threes, the third time being the charm, and I was certain that if I was brought to childbed again it would be the end of me.
The horrors of her birth seemed to also have left a mark on Gladys. She was a sickly little mite and gave Dr. Hopper a deal of trouble trying to coax her into staying in this world where she belonged. Dark-haired like Bobo, but with my violet-blue eyes, poor little Gladys wasn’t blessed with even a smidgen of her brother’s beauty. She was a plain, poorly little thing. I dearly hoped Mama would be proven right when she predicted that Gladys was probably just a late bloomer: “No daughter o’ yours could ever be anythin’ but beautiful, Florie!”
Nanny Yapp seemed to take the same instant dislike to my daughter as she had to me and was apt to neglect her in the nursery. Time and again, I’d hear my daughter screaming at night and rush in only to find her unattended, in a pitch-dark room. I’d turn on the light, take my daughter in my arms, comfort her, then roust that woman out of bed, rip the covers off her, and demand to know what she was about ignoring my child, leaving her to scream her throat raw in the dark. The poor little mite couldn’t speak yet; crying was the only way she had to make herself heard and let us know if anything was wrong.
But Nanny Yapp always faced me, cool and indomitable as an iceberg in her white nightgown and cap, and said that Gladys already had all the earmarks of a nervous child and if I wanted her to grow up to be a timid, frightened woman, leaping out of bed and running to her and coddling her every time she cried was exactly the right way to ensure that unhappy outcome. Gladys, Nanny Yapp said, must learn that crying wasn’t the way to woo attention or win affection, and once she understood that she would sleep through the night without a single whimper.