THE MOTHERHOOD AFFIDAVITS: A Memoir
Copyright © 2018 by Laura Jean Baker
Some of the material in this book was first published, in different form, in Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, and War, Literature, and the Arts. Permission to use that material is gratefully acknowledged.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The Experiment, LLC
220 East 23rd Street, Suite 600
New York, NY 10010-4658
theexperimentpublishing.com
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and The Experiment was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been capitalized.
The Experiment’s books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use. For details, contact us at [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on request
ISBN 978-1-61519-439-1
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-440-7
Cover and text design by Sarah Smith
Cover illustration by CSA Images/Printstock Collection
Author photograph by Kim Thiel
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing April 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Ryan, my steadfast supplier
Contents
AUTHOR'S NOTE
PROLOGUE: HIGH WATERS
1: The Walmart Heist
2: Brown-Sugar Skies
3: The Bandwagon for Animals
4: Bedside Manner
5: Hell’s Lovers
6: Stargazers
7: On the Lam
8: Sawdust Days
9: Ultrasonic
10: Boiling Over
11: Criminal Procedure
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This memoir blends public and private lives. Our family story is carefully constructed from personal archives, including but not limited to journals and other writings, photographs, videos, and firsthand accounts.
Stories of Ryan’s work in criminal defense have been corroborated through Open Records (Wisconsin Public Record Law, enacted 1982), an abundance of discoverable evidence, court proceedings I personally attended, and news coverage of high-profile cases.
Ryan used these theories, themes, and client details when presenting openly to district attorneys, judges, and juries, as a means to frame his clients’ defenses. Although Ryan’s clients were not afforded anonymity in court, I changed their names and (in some cases) identifying details to protect their privacy. I also took modest artistic liberties in developing scenes, such as reframing reported speech as dialogue and using my own descriptive language, but I have preserved the facts of all cases. Everybody appears as him- or herself throughout the book. I have created no composite characters or events.
As Thomas Larson writes in The Memoir and the Memoirist, “To write a memoir is to be selective.” This story covers an eight-year span of time, from 2008 to 2016, such that I excluded facets of our lives for efficiency and thematic cohesion. Through a meticulous writing and editing process, I have attempted to render our story in as true a fashion as artistically possible.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread;
And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
—Unknown
PROLOGUE:
High Waters
June 2008 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin—birthplace of OshKosh B’gosh; birthplace of us—would end up the wettest on record since 1897. Playgrounds were muck pits at best, cesspits at worst. A University of Wisconsin–Madison entomologist advised residents to pump or siphon standing water. At this rate of rainfall, rotting lawns were predicted to breed March flies, fungus, gnats, and mosquito eggs into critical excess.
Ryan and I had just embarked on our new lives as outnumbered parents: two adults divided by three children. The sunshine season lay un-calendared before me, liquid and lustrous like a gasoline rainbow. No essays or quizzes to grade. No paycheck either. Just a four-year-old daughter, a two-year-old son, their baby sister, and a used minivan with windows that worked and air-conditioning that didn’t. Ryan was grinding away for a small law firm in Milwaukee, commuting 160 miles per day.
My kids and I needed free, dry entertainment. The ominous incubation of bug babies seemed an extension of our ongoing negotiations with the out-of-doors. On several instances in summers past, we’d been shooed away from our Lake Winnebago beach for E. coli warnings, and today’s forecast predicted more rain. We’d already been to the YMCA once. We were costumed out. Our firstborn, Irie, had dressed her little brother in a faux-fur kitty-cat ascot—one of her many whims—and forced him to crawl around in it, though by now he could run upright.
The best I mustered in my one-mother brainstorming session was the McDonald’s PlayPlace. By baby number three, eager to keep the children occupied, I didn’t cringe at indoor germs. Never mind Staphylococcus or fecal matter. Parenting does not afford us the luxury of puritanism. What’s the big deal about leaky diapers in those fast-food crawl spaces?
Instead, I worried over money. How meager a purchase would justify admission for two? Was that little box of McDonaldland Cookies stamped into the shape of the Hamburglar still on the menu for less than a dollar? On top of our refrigerator we kept “the coin jar,” actually a wedding gift, a hand-sculpted clay pot with two lovebirds on a chipped lid. In need of amusement, we’d often count pennies and dimes into snack-size baggies.
The sky looked thunderously purple as we left on our outing, clouds swollen—pregnant with rain—though I didn’t bother to pack umbrellas.
As soon as we arrived and spent $1.05, a deluge of rain began hammering the floor-to-ceiling PlayPlace windows. Irie and Leo clambered up the slide against one-way traffic, creating a pileup of squealing bodies with instant friends. A smattering of grandparents, mothers, and other caretakers slurped milkshakes and sodas, listening to pandemonium reverberate off the big red plastic tube.
As with Irie and Leo, I breastfed Fern on demand—everywhere, including the plastic swivel chair at McDonald’s. Midwives had identified me as a likely candidate for postpartum depression, given my medical history. Instead
