'When SilenceDoes Not Keep'
By Janus Adams
NEW YORK, (UPI) -- "Let the women keepsilent in the church." The Pauline Doctrine --- words, reputedly,of the Apostle Paul himself. By this decree have women traditionallybeen doomed in every sanctuary --- church, government, school,business, home.
What temple is there, then, for those whocannot keep silent; for the silence that cannot keep? Or, as LangstonHughes asked in his most famous poem, "What happens to adream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or festerlike a sore... Maybe it sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?"
I was observing a group therapy sessionat an exclusive "retreat" when a woman was brought intothe room, an attendant by her side coaxing each step. Seated ina circle of patients, she seemed increasingly distracted. Sliding,finally, to the floor, she crawled behind the circle on all fours,as if going unnoticed. When an attendant gently barred her exit,she turned back and curled into a tight knot where she remainedin defeat for the rest of the session --- a wounded animal hidingunder the sweater drawn over her head.
"She's much better than she was a fewweeks ago," an attendant confided. "Postpartum. Shegets it bad. Had it with her first child, too.
This is her second time here."
That was the first I had heard of the illnessthat kills mothers from within, seizing them from their babies,and themselves. When I later heard the term "baby blues,"I smelled it for what it was: condescension. It was the minimization,the marginalization, of women for whom giving birth is not "themost natural thing in the world;" women for whom "instinct"is insufficient as information or consolation; women who lovetheir babies but whose bodies and psyches conflict; women misunderstoodby a society that prizes motherhood and virginity, but does notnecessarily value women.
There, but for grace... I remember thinkingas she was helped away.
In the early 1980s, a woman I knew killedher two children and committed suicide. All peripheral visionlost, she was legally blind. Exploiting this, as arguments andneed arose, her husband literally tormented her to death. But,how could a mother kill her children --- her CHILDREN? --- alldemanded, as if we did not know. It was because she was theirmother that she sought to protect them. Her children, also legallyblind, had inherited her condition.
There, but for grace...
Then, a while later, I came upon a copyof the abolitionist newspaper, "The Liberator," datedMarch 21, 1856 and the case of Margaret Garner. Seeking freedomand justice for herself and her four children, she fled with othersfrom Kentucky to Ohio. Tracked and surrounded by a posse, a struggleensued. Garner, determined to kill herself and her children ratherthan be re-enslaved, seized a butcher knife and slit the throatof her youngest child before being restrained.
Jailed under the Fugitive Slave Act, guiltyof stealing herself and her children from their "rightfulowner," her slave master; guilty of destroying the slavemaster's property -- her children -- she was shackled and forcedshipboard, bound again for slavery.
En route, Garner either fell or jumped intothe river; no one knew which. But, all agreed, she was overjoyedwhen her child drowned and bitterly fought her own rescue. Forcedaboard a second ship, she was seen "crouching like a wildanimal near the stove, with a blanket wrapped around her."Sold south, she soon died -- "escaped at last," wroteher husband.
Trapped in a society that found no faultwith itself for slavery, unwilling to comprehend the incomprehensible,where she could not find justice, she sought ultimate peace.
There but for the grace... and the century,I think still.
It was this story that inspired Nobel LaureateToni Morrison's novel "Beloved" and Oprah Winfrey'sfilm. It is these women's lives that swirl my view of Andrea Yates.
That this Texas mother was pre-diagnosedand previously hospitalized for extreme postpartum depressionis undisputed; that she killed her children knowing it "wrong"is a fact of her own admission. That she thought it "good"is what we can't understand.
Sired into a fifth pregnancy by a husbandwho knew her to be seriously ill; victimized by a "medical-industrialcomplex" that minimized, then ignored, her crisis; raisedin a faith demanding submission by women to men; trapped in asocial construct that demanded her to be not only exemplary, butextraordinary -- a stay-at-home-mom-homeschooler; prisoner withno exit, Andrea Yates sought to "save her children"from this fate she had lived, worse than death.
At each turn, her life was sanctimoniouslysacrificed to values unsupportive of her for causes "greaterthan she." She saw herself failing. She did not know she'dbeen failed.
"Let the women keep silent in the church."In her temple of tomorrow, perhaps she and her children will findvoice and peace. How could a MOTHER do such a thing, I do notknow. Neither, I think, does she. That's the tragedy.