The physiological definition of abduct is to move or draw away from the axis of the body, whereby one might argue that birth is a kind of abduction, even if medical necessity sets our babies free. When we cut the umbilical cord, the ritual of “taking away” commences. Nurses grab our babies to suction their noses and stick their heels with needles. Siblings, grandparents, and friends demand, “Give me that baby,” and we hesitantly hoist our sons and daughters into somebody else’s arms.
When I carved out little nurseries around the UW Oshkosh campus to minimize the exorbitant cost of day care, did I also do so for vigilance? I remodeled my office in the name of “home,” outfitting the corner between my desk and loveseat with a baby swing for Fern, my constant companion, then later Francis. We were not a wheelchair-friendly institution, I learned, as I pushed babies in strollers to meetings. The first time I applied for a grant from the Office of Grants and Faculty Development at Oshkosh, an anonymous reviewer scored my proposal low because I had admitted, in writing, I’d use the funds for childcare. To speak of motherhood was “distracting,” this reviewer wrote. But how else would I write, without babysitting provisions and a quiet room of my own?
Begrudgingly I learned, from seasoned colleagues, I’d need to replace the key word childcare with a more scholarly-sounding activity like travel. A few of my students practiced institutional mimicry, likewise offended by the permeable borders between my domestic and professional lives. A graduate student in Women Writers once called out, “You’re an enabler,” when I admitted struggling to walk away from my crying child. I publicly laughed it off; she was not a mother and planned to remain forever “child-free.” One of my workplace survival tactics was to design courses on family and motherhood, but still, my smuggest colleagues never failed to belittle me. When I finally got Picture Books for Children, a theoretical and practical approach to writing and illustrating for ages birth to eight, off the ground, people said, “Oh, how sweet,” as if I were teaching a course on doodling. What else would they expect from me? Memoir, one colleague said, was just bad reality TV. When I worked up the nerve to admit I was writing one, the spouse of another said, “What are you going to write about—changing diapers?” Then there was this one: “You’re like Mary Poppins,” a female colleague said. Was this a compliment or an insult? I was not sure, though certainly Mary Poppins had not chased her brother with butcher knives or set out on a baby bender to cope with her depression.
Despite these frictions, I was grateful to be perceived as a good mother figure at times. Students living on campus, apart from their own families, projected kinship on me, tending to me as they might have tended to their own mothers. They’d bring me cookies, smoothies, sandwiches, warm mittens sewn and quilted by their grandmothers, socks they knitted while studying for exams, felt-tip pens for marking papers when mine ran faint, origami boxes, greeting cards, spring flowers, pages ripped from coloring books, and ambitious revisions. They’d swim upstream just to get here, then stay awhile, rescuing me. One whispered in my ear during class, “You’re bleeding through your pants,” when I’d begun to menstruate while teaching. Others alerted me to my crookedly buttoned shirts, my static cling, and my exposed bra straps. Once, a male student beckoned me close, then straightened the collar on my dress, as if readying for the family photograph, I the matriarch of the entire class.
Lucy Vasquez was only one of several mothers charged with variations on kidnapping. Another such woman was Agnes Jacobson, who arrived at the Winnebago County Jail to retrieve her son, Wyatt, for a half-day getaway and ended up in far more trouble than she anticipated. She entered the building like a mother authorizing release from school detention. She was slightly ashamed, apologetic, anxious, and clearly oblivious to the stakes. Ryan had helped to secure a five-hour furlough for Wyatt Jacobson, only nineteen years old, in order that Agnes could drive him to a cardiology appointment at the hospital in Neenah. His heroin addiction had ravaged his heart tissue and valves. Even when he was clean, his poorly functioning organs troubled his everyday life.
This was, no doubt, a nearsighted experience for Agnes. When you’ve been given a five-hour reprieve with your son, it’s probably a lot like being granted five hours left to live. Make the most of it, she probably thought, and in doing so, she floated inside a scintillating bubble she was afraid might pop. Wyatt Jacobson was precisely the kind of impulsive, thrill-seeking, blue-eyed boy to be spirited away without warning. Agnes believed this field trip was intended exclusively as a medical precaution, but the cops, at the mercy of the judge’s orders to allow the furlough, were concerned the furlough might double as a drug run. Intent to crack down on drug smuggling to inmates, they decided to invest in spying on the Jacobsons.
Agnes and Wyatt emerged from the parking lot without ever bothering to read
