Free My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall

scraped up enough cash to rent a studio apartment in her development. But that tapped us out. If my parents hadn’t bought us a hide-a-bed, we wouldn’t have had anything. Some nights I wrestled Mickey for food.
    By June, I had gained fifty pounds. At night, I laid on the floor like a beached whale. Tracy was due in early July. I couldn’t wait to give birth and feel normal again, if that was possible. I counted the days and braced myself for the big event: my mother’s arrival.

CHAPTER 11
Forget the Gas, I Want the Jell-O

    Penny and her young daughter, Tracy, in 1965
Marjorie Marshall
    M Y MOTHER ARRIVED after the Fourth of July. I wasn’t due for a few more days. At that point, my sole preparation for the baby had been to choose between the two local hospitals, the Presbyterian one or St. Something. I’d asked which one had a TV in the room. A day later I began to hear gurgling sounds in my belly. I thought it might be time and I turned to my mother, who had come, as she said, because I was going to need help.
    “So?” I asked.
    “What do you expect me to say?” she said. “I’m not a doctor.”
    I didn’t know anything about labor, and she couldn’t remember shit. Neither could Mickey’s mother. Between them, they had seven children and neither of them knew a thing. They were mute when my water broke the next afternoon. I grabbed my Dr. Spock book, went into the bathroom, and looked up water breakage. It said, “Call the doctor.”
    For some reason my doctor said I didn’t have to go to the hospital yet. My mother opened the pullout couch, spread some newspaper, and we watched TV until my contractions grew stronger and morefrequent. Then even I knew we had better start timing things. Finally, I decided to go in. It seemed early, but I thought it was better to be safe than have my mother deliver the baby.
    I also wanted to be in the air-conditioning at the hospital. It was summer and close to a hundred degrees outside. I was dying. We got word to Mickey, who was working construction. At the hospital, they ushered me to the maternity ward and assigned me a bed. I remember there was a curtain between me and some other lady who kept screaming, “I’m doing it myself.”
    I soon understood why. As I waited, everyone and their uncle stuck their fingers in me to see how much I was dilated. I think the janitor checked, too. It didn’t seem to matter. Mickey came and went because my labor went on for twenty hours without any signs of a baby. At some point, the nurse asked whether I wanted gas or a spinal block during delivery. No one thought of natural childbirth then. I leaned toward the gas because I don’t like needles. I’d never even had Novocain. But it was still too early for either. They told me to walk around or take a shower.
    I mentioned that I was very hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and this was when I would fight Mickey for food, so just imagine how badly I wanted something to eat. I asked the nurse if they had any food they could bring me.
    “You can’t have any food with the gas,” she said. “If you have the spinal, I can give you Jell-O.”
    “Okay, forget the gas,” I said. “I want the Jell-O.”
    The final six hours were hard labor. They continued to check how much I was dilated and they preferred to do it during a contraction. But something came over me when the nurse tried, and I said, “Get the hell away from me,” and hit her. It was a reflex. Enough was enough. The woman on the other side of the curtain yelled, “You tell ’em, sister!”
    Soon after, on the afternoon of July 7, 1964, amid much relief from all those around me (by this time the spinal had kicked in and I didn’t give a shit), especially the nurse, I gave birth to a baby girl. Checkingin at seven pounds, fourteen ounces and twenty-two inches, she had a full head of dark hair and brown eyes just like her father. She looked like a miniature Beatle.
    Mickey had hoped for a boy, but by the time