The Mother/Child Papers: With a new preface by the author

I: Cambodia

I: Cambodia ‹3› My son Gabriel was born on May 14, 1970, during the Vietnam War, a few days after the United States invaded Cambodia, and a few days after four students had been shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio during a protest demonstration. On May 1, President Nixon announced Operation Total Victory, sending 5,000 American troops into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese military sanctuaries, in a test of “our will and character,” so that America would not seem “a pitiful helpless giant” or “accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.” He wanted his own war. The boy students stand in line at Ohio State each faces a Guardsman in gasmask each a bayonet point at his throat. U.S. air cavalry thrusts into Kompong Chain province, seeking bunkers. Helicopters descend on “The Parrot’s Beak.” B-52’s heavily bomb Red sanctuaries. Body count! Body count high! in the hundreds. The President has explained, and explains again, that this is not an invasion. Monday, May 4th, at Kent State, laughing demonstrators and rockthrowers on a lawn spotted with dandelions. It was after a weekend of beerdrinking. Outnumbered Guardsmen, partially encircled and out of tear gas, begin to retreat uphill, turn, kneel, in unison aim their guns. Four students lie dead, seventeen wounded. 441 colleges and universities strike, many shut down. The President says: “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.” A veteran of the Khe Sanh says: “I saw enough violence, blood and death and I vowed never again, never again . . . Now I must protest. I’m not a leftist but I can’t go any further. I’ll do damn near anything to stop the war now.” A man in workclothes tries to seize an American flag from a student. “That’s my flag! I fought for it! You have no right to it! . . . To hell with your movement. We’re fed up with your movement. You’re forcing us into it. ‹4› We’ll have to kill you.” An ad salesman in Chicago: “I’m getting to feel like I’d actually enjoy going out and shooting some of these people, I’m just so goddamned mad.” One, two, three, four, we don’t want! your fucking war! They gathered around the monument, on the wet grass, Dionysiac, beaded, flinging their clothes away. New England, Midwest, Southwest, cupfuls of innocents leave the city and buy farmland. At the end of the frontier, their backs to the briny Pacific, buses of tourists gape at the aciddropping children in the San Francisco streets. A firebomb flares. An electric guitar bleeds. Camus: “I would like to be able to love my country and still love justice.” Some years earlier, my two daughters were born, one in Wisconsin at a progressive university hospital where doctors and staff behaved affectionately , one in England where the midwife was a practical woman who held onto my feet and when she became impatient with me said: PUSH, Mother. Therefore I thought I knew what childbirth was supposed to be: a woman gives birth to a child, and the medical folk assist her. But in the winter of 1970 I had arrived five months pregnant in Southern California, had difficulty finding an obstetrician who would take me, and so was now tasting normal American medical care. It tasted like money. During my initial visit to his ranch-style offices on a street where the palm trees lifted their heads into the smog like a row of fine mulatto ladies, Dr. Keensmile called me “Alicia” repeatedly, brightly, benignly, as if I were a child or a servant. I hated him right away. I hated his suntan. I knew he was untrue to his wife. I was sure he played golf. The routine delivery anesthetic for him and his group was a spinal block, he said. I explained that I would not need a spinal since I had got by before on a couple of cervical shots, assumed that deliveries were progressively easier, and wanted to decide about drugs myself when the time came. He smiled tolerantly at the ceiling. I remarked that I liked childbirth. I remarked that childbirth gave a woman an opportunity for supreme pleasure and heroism. ‹5› He smiled again. They teach them, in medical school, that pregnancy and birth are...