Bras on Fire

Adapted from Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir

Aileen Weintraub

I was flat on my back staring at the patterns in the knotty pine ceiling wondering how we were going to pay the bills piling up on the kitchen table. It had only just occurred to me that they weren’t about to pay themselves.

A month before, at eighteen weeks pregnant, I was strolling around New York City with my husband, Chris, when I felt an unusual pressure in my lower belly. The next day, an emergency sonogram showed that I had three Monster Fibroids growing in my uterus, right alongside my baby. One of them was pressing against my cervix, causing early effacement. The diagnosis: go to bed and don’t get up until the baby starts to crown.

But this morning I was experiencing an ache that, for once, didn’t come directly from the Monsters. It was time to get back to work on my own projects and contribute to our family’s financial well-being.

As a freelance editor, I was lucky to have a long lead time on a book I was editing for a small independent press. But now the deadline was looming. I could work from anywhere and set my own hours, and it seemed that bed rest shouldn’t interfere, but the reality was, I no longer wanted to get out of bed even if I could. I had lost the will to be productive.

I lay in bed calculating our never-ending stream of debt when the eardrum-bursting shriek of our doorbell jostled me. The only way to stop the ringing was if someone un-jammed it by stabbing the button repeatedly. Satchie Red, our wrinkly year-old shar-pei, howled, chasing her tail as if capturing it were the secret to stopping the deafening sound. She thought every person who came through the door was trying to kill us; when that doorbell rang, shoes were shredded, puddles appeared on the floor, slobber went flying against the walls, and yet we did nothing to fix it.

Jackie un-jammed the bell and came in without waiting for an invitation. Flaming red hair, the smell of cigarettes on her silk blouse, Jackie, close to my mother’s age, was the wife of Chris’s friend Nan. With one swift snap of her fingers and a firm “Quiet!” she silenced Satchie Red, who ran behind the chair in the corner and whimpered.

“Hi! I brought you a scone.” She threw a small paper bag at me.

Even though I had only previously met Jackie at large gatherings, I found her easy to talk to, and because my limited contact with the outside world had caused me to forget social niceties, I wasted no time asking her if she thought I should continue working or put it aside. Part of me was hoping she would give me a pass and tell me I shouldn’t work and should instead focus on my pregnancy.

She pointed a long scaly finger at me. “It’s a tough decision. How can you focus on editing right now? What you’re doing here, in bed, that’s important work. But I’ll say this: never depend on anybody else, not even your husband.” It sounded like she was speaking from experience. “I have children, those rotten bastards, so I know how hard it is to keep it all together. Don’t give up on your career. Keep your finger in the pot at all times.”

I winced, mostly because she was echoing what I already knew. My income was meager, but it did pay some of the bills, and more than that, it gave me independence. The morning I found out I would be spending the next five months on bed rest also happened to be the morning Chris and I officially sunk all our money into buying a power equipment business. Not only was my health and that of my unborn child on shaky ground, so were our finances. We would need every last cent we could muster to keep us afloat.

Jackie took a seat across from the sofa bed and began telling me about her former career as an office manager for an insurance company. She did that to pay the bills, but I also learned that she had been on the front lines of the feminist revolution. She had marched in protest for equal pay, refused to wear a bra for most of the ’70s, and liked to quote Gloria Steinem. She left her husband when divorce was rare to be with her current wife, which at that time had been even more taboo.

“Listen, my wife, she’s the breadwinner. But I’ve got my own thing going on. Make sure you keep your own thing, too. Life changes on a dime. Gotta run. Kisses.” Her words were a lot more than I had bargained for that early June morning.

Jackie had validated how difficult it was to check out of life to lie down and wait. This wasn’t the Victorian era; women didn’t go into confinement when they became pregnant, dropping out of society to hole up in a dark, airless room and magically reappear months later with a baby as if it had been delivered by the stork. We had jobs and obligations, and some of us even had countries to run. We had revolutions to join and protests to organize. I needed to be strong and solid and carry on, despite my failing body. It made me want to get up and burn my bra—metaphorically, of course; lying down gave me a bad case of side boob.

I opened my laptop, trying to balance it on my belly, and began working on the manuscript about railroads I had been editing. It was difficult to get the angle just right, and the laptop kept sliding off. I caught it twice, but the third time, when I finally thought I’d figured it out, I got cocky, typing, balancing, and reaching for a beverage at the same time. As the laptop began its slow-motion descent to the floor, I dropped my unsweetened iced tea, drenching my shirt, desperately trying to save the computer from that final thud. I flinched at the sound of it hitting the floor. Propped up on pillows, feeling tea soaking through my shirt, I was going to have to wait to deal with my garments until I was allowed to get up for a pee break, which, based on the last one, wouldn’t be for another half hour. I sopped up what I could, reached for my laptop, and moved to the dry side of the sofa bed. Thanking the lords of electronics that it rebooted, I twisted onto my left elbow to work, but soon my whole arm was tingling, and I was convinced I was having a heart attack.

I took a few deep breaths and turned my attention back to the manuscript, working in ten-minute intervals, lying on one side until my arm tingled, then rolling over to the other side. This was not sustainable. By the end of the day, it was evident I’d have to hold off on new projects. I had already agreed to two others, and here I was, unable to keep a commitment. I emailed my publisher, explaining that I didn’t feel confident I would be able to work to the standard he expected. He responded with kindness, leaving the door open for me to get back in touch when I was ready.

Filled with guilt and a sense of despair that I had let down yet another person, I looked around the room and took stock. Maybe I had to take a work hiatus, but this sofa bed was still my office space. I just had a new job description: Legs Closed, Hips Up, Don’t Let This Baby Fall Out.

Aileen Weintraub is the author of Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, a laugh-out-loud story about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take, published by the University of Nebraska Press.