Marguerite Maria Rivas - Between The Rock and a Heart Place

 

 

In the 1980s, the early 1980s, I was a typical Staten Island working girl going back and forth to my job on Wall Street every day on the Staten Island Ferry. And then, I got pregnant. I loved that baby from the moment I knew she was there. I went out and bought a Walkman, so we could listen to music on the commute with two sets of headphones, one for me, one for my belly. Carly Simon's Anticipation played constantly. And then, as my belly grew and the headphones stretched, they finally snapped and I fixed them with some tape from the office. 

 

The doctor called, just about my seventh month this was, and asked me to come in for a sonogram, and then he said he wanted to see me afterwards. When I went in to see him, he looked at me and he said, “I have some news.” He said “The baby has a fatal birth defect. And that her condition is not compatible with life.” I said, my baby's going to die? It was inconceivable. I was seven months pregnant. She was growing, she was moving, she loved music, I love music, I loved her and she was going to die? And he said, “Yes, that she would die shortly after she was born.” 

 

Two months later, I had my daughter, Maria. I gave her my middle name, because I knew that when she left, she'd take a big part of me with her, like maybe the whole middle part of me with her. She was so beautiful. She was bathed, and baptized and brought to me with a little pink cap on her head, so I couldn't see her birth defect so much. The nurse who helped deliver her brought her to me and said, “Kiss her goodbye, girl.” I kissed that cheek. It was like cool water. Her mouth was like a rose. I recognized the curve of her nose. When I spoke, she looked at me. 

 

I went home to grieve. And then, I wanted to see the baby's grave. Before I had left the hospital, during visiting hours, after visiting hours, my family had left. A woman came in the room with a clipboard, and she said she was from the city and she wanted to know what I wanted to do for the burial. She said, the city usually takes care of things in cases like this. I remembered that my brother's baby, who had been born prematurely just before Maria had died. He had a city cemetery burial and I had this vision, because, you see, I was 23 hours post labor, pumped up on painkillers and full of sorrow. So, I had this little vision of Maria and Christopher together, side by side, in some pretty place with a picket fence and grass. So, I signed the papers. 

 

And then, when I got home and asked to see the grave, that's when I found out I could never see the grave. I had signed the papers for my child to go to New York City's Potter's Field on Hart Island. Hart Island is a little island off the Bronx. I could never visit. You see, Hart Island was administered by the Department of Corrections, where prisoners dug long trenches and buried bodies in mass graves. And for that reason, no one could visit. It was against the law ever. It was like Maria had died all over again. 

 

I had nowhere to mourn. I had no patch of land to say, this is where my child is. She was born, she lived and she died and here she is. I had nowhere to go. It was especially hard on her birthdays and on holidays. Eventually, I was blessed with two beautiful daughters. When they would take their place around the Thanksgiving table at my mom's house, I would look at them and I would always see three. Maria was always there, a presence. 

 

37 years after Maria was born and died, my niece, Jamie, who lives here in Boston, called me up and said, “Aunt, did you know? Did you know there was a lawsuit? Families can visit Hart Island now. You can go visit Hart Island.” I was, first, floating out of my body. I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Uh-huh. No, thank you.” You see, in those 37 intervening years, my grief had been compounded by my guilt at having signed away my child to a place I could never visit. And that was exacerbated by these horrible headlines I used to see, city of the lost souls. Island of the forgotten. 

 

She was never forgotten, not for one minute. I used to see these images of trenches and dirt and mud and gravel, and I remembered that last beautiful kiss and I said, I can't go see my baby here. But then, I remember that dream I had about Maria and Christopher being together. When that doctor had told me that day that she was going to die, I felt as though I had swallowed a rock. It had dropped me right to the bottom of the harbor, as cold as ice. I carried that rock big as my fist and where my heart should have been. I carried that rock for 37 years, and I knew I had to do something to move that rock. And Jamie said, “It's okay. I'll come down and get you. I'll take care of you.” 

 

I believed her. I knew this had to go. This rock had to go. So, I went to the city's website and I filled out the forms for us to visit. Soon, we were on the dock. Hart Island is in the Bronx. It's off the Bronx. In order to get there, you have to cross water. I was at the dock with Jamie, my niece, and Miranda, my daughter. As we stood there on the dock, I could see other parents who were going to see their children. Some of them had just found out their children were buried there. 

 

The officer in charge came out. The Corrections Officer in charge came out and said, “We'll be going to Hart Island soon. Let me tell you how we'll get there. Once we're underway, I'll give you the procedure.” He said, “We're going to get there by an old Staten Island Ferry that's been repurposed only for Hart Island. It's the oldest one.” I realized in that moment that my daughter's first journeys and her last was aboard a Staten Island Ferry, so out of place here in the Bronx. 

 

Soon this little ferry came, it looked like a little barge. We got on it and we started to cross. The fog was so dense, you couldn't even see Hart Island. You had no idea where you were going. It was like you were crossing the River Styx. That's all I kept thinking. As we got toward the island, the officer in charge said, “Okay, here's the procedure. Do you see that white bus? We're going to get in that bus, and it will take you to your loved one's grave site where a corrections officer will be stationed to supervise your visit. You can't take pictures and you can't leave until the bus comes around to get you again.” 

 

So, we shuffled onto the bus. Got underway. A woman got out with red flowers and put them down in front of a statue, an old weathered statue, that must have been there for decades of an angel child. The bus wound round again, and a family got out and they had this beautiful bouquet. I had seen them on the dock, and the father was so composed. When you got there, the officer in charge would show you where the grave was, because none of them are marked. He has to have the grid to let you know. When he brought him out, that father fell to his knees, and I thought, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen to me? 

 

We went round and round and round, dropping people off. Finally, the bus came to a stop. I got out, and the officer in charge said, “I'm going to show you where your daughter's grave is and where your nephew's grave is.” When I looked around me, there were no trenches, there was no mud. The beautiful Long Island Sound was right there. Gravel did not cover their graves. Grass did. When he showed me where my daughter was and where my nephew was, they were adjacent to each other. The dream, 37 years before that adult brain dream, I had, was true. 

 

Those cousins were on the most beautiful part of the island. We knelt at Maria's grave, Miranda and Jamie, and I cried. And then, Jamie said, “Do you remember when we went to an Eagles concert as a family? Do you remember that time?” She took something out of her coat. She said, “Maria would have been the right age to go. It was a yellow ticket stub. She said, “I'm giving her my ticket.” She put the ticket down on my daughter's grave. Then, she said, “Maria would have gone to Vermont with us every summer. And we would have been swimming in Sunset Lake and playing on the dock.” She took out a bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap, she doused the grave and she said, “This is Maria's Sunset Lake.” 

 

And finally, she said, “Maria would have been at every Thanksgiving at Grandma's house, and we would have played with her in the backyard till it got dark, and we would have had dinner with her.” She took out a little bag of dirt, all desiccated and dry, and she sprinkled it on Maria's grave and she said, “This is Maria's grandma's house.” I knew in that minute, I knew that Maria had not only not been forgotten, she had been missed. She had been missed by her companion cousin. I wasn't the only one who saw. 

 

I knelt down on the grave. The supervising officer called us over first and said, “Would you like a keepsake?” He had an old Polaroid camera and he said, “I can take a picture for you, if you like.” So, we stood, the three of us together, holding each other, the beautiful Long Island sound at our back, the mounds of grass in front of us. He took the picture. As he did, I could see that the bus was returning for us. And I started to panic. I didn't want to leave her again. I knelt down on the grave one last time with that rock still heavy in there, and I started caressing the grass. It's the last thing I remember before I started weeping like I had not wept in 37 years. 

 

37 years of grief and guilt came pouring out of me. I was keening at her grave. I heard some noise behind me, and I got up and the officer in charge was there. He was such a wonderful, sweet man. He looked at me and he said, “Will you make me a promise? Will you do me a favor? Will you come back next spring? See, it was December. It was actually the last visit anyone could make for that year. So, you come back in the spring? It's beautiful here in the spring.” He motioned with his hand, he said, “It's full of flowers. It's full of wildflowers. Come back. You'll feel better.” But I already was feeling better. That rock I had carried was gone. And in its place was a widening channel for me to navigate, a channel left for me to navigate by Maria out of this darkness and finally into the light. Thank you.