By Tracy Mayo
What does it feel like to be institutionalized? There’s a marked loss of control, in ways both big and small, that produces anxiety, depression and hyper-vigilance. I was raised in an institution – the enterprise known as the U.S. military. I was the lonely, only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother. By the time I was thirteen years old we had moved eight times.
Against that backdrop of rootlessness and disorientation a strict hierarchy was imposed, a rigid way of being. Military children, especially officers’ children, were expected to respect the chain of command. We were to uphold a code of conduct that would reflect well on our parents because that commitment would demonstrate that our parents – fathers in particular – excelled at leadership. We were expected to appreciate protocol, conformance, obedience, and discipline.
Compliance was praised. Individual expression was discouraged. Looking back, I believe that by the time I was thirteen I had already lost myself before I even knew who I was. The agendas of both ambitious parents had been powerfully incorporated into my psyche. It was clear who they were. Who was I becoming? They were deep into the process of not bothering to find out.
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That fateful move to Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1968. Of all of them, the one destined to change my life forever.
The hair-tinged-green-with-chlorine lifeguard. Cartwheels and broad jumps in the park on a sultry summer night. Giggling explorations in the navy chapel. The hard buttons on the bare blue-and-white-striped mattress pressing into my hip as I accepted the full weight of him. The realization, the fear, the earnest need for my mother. And the pink and yellow pills on my nightstand.
I had done the worst possible thing for an officer’s daughter – disobeyed orders and shown no discipline. So I was given a new order: exile to a Home for Unwed Mothers and relinquish my baby at birth.
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Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers
Norfolk, Virginia – February 6, 1970
It was a Friday. The first day when a room was available for me. Dad put my two duffle bags in the trunk of our 1966 Ford Galaxie. Mom was playing bridge with her Navy Wives Club. She hugged me goodbye after breakfast without looking at me and promised to visit on Sunday.
We walked in silence from the car to the sidewalk, up four concrete steps and through two steel doors with view lights. A reception desk angled off the vestibule and opened onto a large, Early American living room where I gasped to see two hugely pregnant girls in front of the TV. Another girl, also very pregnant, pushed a cart full of sheets and towels down the corridor next to the living room.
I remember the shock. I had seen pregnant women before but had paid no attention. Now, the recognition: this is me. My life. What had been abstract – a hypothetical residence with bad-acting girls – was now concrete. I am going to have a baby. A paradigm that would demand a psychological reframing like none other. This was not just another move, but time travel to an alien planet.
A click-clack of heels on tiled floors announced the arrival of a new woman. “Hello, Captain Mayo. Nice to see you again.” They know each other? “Young lady, I am Mrs. Gaines, Administrator. Welcome to Florence Crittenton.” We all took turns shaking hands firmly.
She reminded me of my mother. Similar age. Slender. Hair that wouldn’t move in a hurricane. When she smiled in my direction, she seemed to be looking at a spot somewhere behind my head.
“Well, Trace,” Dad said upon depositing my regulation navy-issue duffle bags. “Give me a hug and we’ll see you on Sunday.” Without warning my face was wet. I hugged him and watched him walk toward the front doors. He was a bit stooped over, in contrast to his usual perfectly erect posture.
Mrs. Gaines made real eye contact for the first time. “We’ll take a tour before going to your room, but first, I want to discuss something important. You – and most of the girls – will have a pseudonym while you are here. This way, no one will be able to discern your true identity. When your father enrolled you last week, he told us you will henceforth be called ‘Susie.’”
Susie! What the hell! No one told me about pseudonyms. And I can’t even pick out my own name?
The re-naming was my first introduction to an overarching theme here – the rendering invisible, the shedding, of all that was deemed to be shameful. First, our former selves, those bad girls. Next, the adopting out of the babies that resulted from our sordid behavior. Last, the weight we had all gained, which had to be dissolved before we could return home.
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Before Mrs. Gaines introduced me to the roommate I didn’t expect to have, her parting advice was: “One last thought, Susie. If you tend to your studies, watch your weight, and try to fit in, I think you’ll find your stay here relatively pleasant. When everyone cooperates, we are like a well-oiled machine.”
Yikes. Or my Dad’s aircraft carrier. But hey, familiar territory.
I quickly learned that we were divided into two camps – the “student” girls, like myself, who remained in school via tutors, and the “chore” girls, who maintained the home by cleaning and laundry duties, everything but meal preparation. My roommate explained that fees were much lower for families of the working girls – basically indentured servants who had dropped out of school.
So here we were, at a home for unwed mothers, with our own little caste system. It was almost like the military: the student-girls were upper-class officers, and the working girls were the lower-class enlisted personnel. The two groups rarely mixed. Ironic that in a facility in which were all judged to be unworthy of proper society, we were judging each other. It didn’t help that Mrs. Gaines had warned each of us “Not to get too friendly, lest someone divulge her real name and spoil the entire arrangement for their family.” It was an assumption, if not a written policy, that we were all here to keep a secret, in hiding – never to go home with a baby. And through adoption, our babies would be hidden too.
I was fifteen years old. Identity erased, I had been institutionalized again. I was a lone planet in my own, separate, uncomforted orbit.
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I was compelled to write this book as an exercise in resolving trauma. My baby was born, and I was forced to give him away and instructed to forget him. The physical and emotional truth of what had happened was stored in my body and I hoped that if I found the route to the correct door, I could reveal what was inside, recovering memories I was told not to have.
Debut author Tracy Mayo had a successful career, but one choice from her past continued to haunt her: forcibly giving up her baby at the age of fifteen. Now she’s sharing the inspiring story of her impossible journey to find him during the pre-Internet era in her memoir, “Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self” (out, Mar 28, 2024). Before Roe v. Wade, Tracy Mayo found herself pregnant at the age of fourteen and exiled to a maternity home. There, she bore not only a child but also the weight of the culture’s shame. She was required to surrender her newborn baby boy – the only child she would ever have – and expected. “You’ll forget it ever happened,” she was told. Twenty-two years later, her longing undiminished, with no internet, DNA testing, and not even knowing his adoptive name, Tracy set out to find him – and in her search she finds more than just her son, but herself. In a world drifting back to where women have no agency, Tracy’s story of one frightened, grief-stricken young mother who was ordered to forget may be even more important to remember.
You can follow Tracy on Instagram: @TracyMayoAuthor | LinkedIn: @TracyMayo | Facebook: @TracyMayoAuthor and see more of her work at www.tracymayo.com.
