Tori Amos: Piece by Piece (23 page)

Mark met me at the train station alone. He held me like I've never been held. He wouldn't let go of my hand even as I started to retreat inside myself while we were driving in silence through the streets of London with a driver to the hospital. Dr. Rita knew doctors in London, so she sent us to somebody who would be kind. We went in and, of course, the ultrasound showed it was over. They got us a cup of tea, as the British
do, and Mark and I wept together. Then we went through the process with a gentle doctor and a twinkling-eyed Irish anesthesiologist who held my hand, and then Mark and I went back to the hotel that night; it was very late. It was the same hotel where, not too many weeks before, we had been talking about the possibilities. In Paris I had bought these beautiful clothes for a little child. I still have them in a box.

In that moment we canceled everything, naturally. The label said I had to do the Christmas shows because I had “Concertina” coming out as a single and a lot of stations said that they would support it if I would do their Christmas shows. That was just the end. I went to Cornwall with Mark and for two weeks—I can't remember what I did. I sat on the steps most of the time. We mourned. And it was over for me then. I couldn't go through this again.

So we decided that we were going to believe the label and the radio stations, that they would do what they said they were going to do. The blackmail of all this … But that's how things work everywhere. And it is looked upon as inappropriate to carry a grudge or feel leveraged if the other side does not play your music. Rather the approach should be to mitigate your way through the innuendos of “if she does this then we can possibly consider doing that.”

So we went to do these shows. I was alone at the piano and hadn't been for a while, for two tours. I had just the sound guys and a small crew. And I started to find some strength alone with the piano.

Around this time we went and saw a specialist, Dr. Stillman, to try to figure out where we stood. They came back with good news and bad news. It was the same news: they couldn't give me a reason for these miscarriages. So again, I'd had enough. We decided we were going to try to just live. We got a boat—not anything outrageous but just something fun to putter around in—and we got some movies, and Mark really got into
cooking. He's a very good cook. Sea bass with potato latkes, that kind of thing. We had that nurturing thing going on. We had some lovely, lovely, lovely champagne; I'll never forget it. Cristal Rose 1990; it was very hard to get. We decided we were not going to talk about it. We had talked about it and talked about it. And now we were going to try to be people. This was the most disciplined thing I ever did.

One day I went out by myself, lay down on the beach, and turned it all over. I was going through such pain and struggle, and at the same time, through the balancing force of traditional psychotherapy, asking basic questions: What is a powerful woman? What is a fertile woman? I had to redefine these things. I knew I would never understand why I could carry all these songs but not one human life. What a mess.

I had already gone to the edge and tried to negotiate, demanded my child back, asked how much more I could do. I had been through “Spark”—where could I go? I'd grieved and turned the story into art, and I was sitting there with the same situation again. That day on the beach, I went into ceremony. I lay down on the ground my mother had chosen for me; she picked our beach house. I wept and gave tobacco to the land; I burned the sage. It was a private moment for me, saying,
I just cant carry this anymore
, literally.

In the end, I got the answer. And it was through a lot of tears. I laid myself on the earth and the message came to me. The earth said, “Surrender this to me. You've lost a few babies. I lose babies every day. I understand this pain. So trust me. Give this to me.” And I almost felt as if the earth and I became blood sisters. She said, “You are a great creator, and maybe your children are not in physical form and that's what it will always be. Can you hold that? How many sonic children do you need? You have hundreds, you need thousands—when will it be enough?” I kind of stood back and she said, “You know, some people who have human children
would give anything to have a sonic child.” And I realized I was beginning to know who I was. Just beginning.

ANN:
Amos had come to understand the words of the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter:
“We humans endure the gifts the gods give us, even as we are grieving over what has to be.” She would soon learn that the gifts that come, though always unexpected, can bring not just sorrow but delight.

We took on a project, to do a song for the
Mission Impossible II
soundtrack. The good thing is, we had something to focus on. Mark and I went back to Cornwall, and that was a lifeline for me because I needed to do something and this was one of my favorite covers of all time: “Carnival,” by Luiz Bonfa, from the film
Black Orpheus.
I knew I had one more album to record for Atlantic Records, but I didn't even think about that. It was in the distance.

We went back to Cornwall and the crew started coming in, and Duncan was there. I'll never forget it—the band had arrived, and one night after rehearsal I was serving the wine, Duncan was cooking a welcoming dinner for all of them. I just went into the other room and I called Mark to me and I said, “The fish is bad. There's something wrong.” And then I said, “Furthermore, this vintage is bad.” And he just looked at me. This was one of my favorite wines. I think it was the Château Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande, Pauillac, 2ème Cru Classe, 1996. He said, “Let me taste it.” And he did, and he said, “It's incredible wine.”

I thought I had the stomach flu, which was going around. I couldn't eat or drink anything; I was just not well. I wasn't taking antibiotics. The one thing I was taking was baby aspirin. As far as my cycle went, I hadn't even gotten back to any normal sort of anything. I thought we might see the
doctor again and try in six months. Then I was open to trying the fertility drugs, the big, big guns. But the doctor had said not yet. You know, you have to heal.

So I was taking baby aspirin and I was still taking my vitamins because he'd said, “These vitamins aren't going to hurt you. They're good for you and you've just lost so much blood now you just need to do this.” So I was just minding my own little business and enjoying the Cristal Rose 1990 with Mark, and then I was so ill. And within two weeks I called my sister and she said she wanted me to go take a pregnancy test. She said to take two. And I couldn't believe the results.

My life began to change radically—that is, I changed my life. Hans Zimmer wanted me to come and do some vocalizing throughout the
Mission Impossible II
score. And I've known Hans for years; I was the girl who did the demo for Maria McKee on the theme for
Days of Thunder
, and he composed the score. I got paid something like $150 to come in and do “Show Me Heaven.” So I like Hans, and I would have done it under any other circumstances, but I just had to say no.

Mark and I were back on the merry-go-round again. We went to this doctor to get our ultrasound and it was the scariest moment. He gave us little candies to hold and we sat there, and they did the ultrasound and we saw these legs. These legs jumping up and down. I was eleven weeks pregnant. We just looked at each other and I said, “I'm going to go to the beach house. I'm not going back to work.” And that's what I did. I was with a wonderful Jamaican physician for the first few months. However, she married, sold her practice, and moved out of state during my sixth month of pregnancy, and then I was under the care of another physician in the practice. I was deemed a high-risk pregnancy, my age being the least of the factors. I had to have scans every other week due to previous medical surgeries. Because I was a high risk my doctor-sister, Marie, decided that
I needed to see a physician who specialized in high-risk pregnancy. She and Dr. Marlow had found Dr. Bronsky in the DC. area.

So that is why I settled into Georgetown. Funnily enough, I was about a block from the piano bar Mr. Smith's, where I played at fourteen. Mark had to go back to Cornwall to get some things done, but Duncan felt good about being there, first at the beach with me and then in Georgetown, D.C. We started developing this other way of taking care, which I've maintained ever since. High in protein, high in spinach, getting the vitamins from the food. Of course I took my prenatals, and DHA Omega-3 pills—I'd had a phone consultation with the renowned women's physician Christiane Northrup, author of
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom.
She said that taking that form of Omega-3 fatty acid was the most important thing to do for Natashya's brain development. Which I did and I still do.

I became Dr. Bronsky's patient when I was about seven months’ pregnant, and it turns out that in my eighth month of pregnancy with Natashya, he had a hunch about the miscarriages. Dr. Bronsky tested me for protein S and protein C deficiency, and it turns out that I did have both deficiencies. The result of this, at that time, was that I needed to have shots in my legs in the morning and at night, which Duncan did for me because I had a hard time stabbing myself in the leg with a needle. I couldn't take the medicine orally because it could hurt Natashya, and I think they were worried that I would get a blood clot in the lung.

Virchow, the father of hematology, identified the three factors responsible for vascular thrombosis, also known as blood clots: vessel injury, alteration in blood flow, and changes in the coagulability of the blood. Pregnancy affects all three factors. Your blood volume increases by a third when you are pregnant, and your body doesn't really know how to handle that without all of the mechanisms that occur between the placenta, the fetus, and
the mother. If there is any issue that goes amiss within any of those three components, then the fetus won't develop properly.

The body responds to anything foreign that is going to upset the natural ebb and tide of life. Pregnancy is perceived as a hypercoagulable state. This is not a problem for most women; however, if you have a protein S or protein C deficiency, this upsets the hemostatic balance and the body responds by trying to protect the mother. That is why Tori had several miscarriages. Dr. Robert Stillman had a hunch and put Tori on an aspirin a day, which makes your blood thinner, enabling her to get pregnant. She was supplemented with progesterone suppositories in order to help the development of the fetus.

Tori initially went down to the Florida house and was under the care of Dr. Graham, a wonderful Jamaican physician. However, she retired during the sixth month of Tori's pregnancy. Dr. Marlow and I sent her to a specialist in Washington, DC, Dr. Bronsky He ran a series of blood tests, and her deficiency was eventually detected. However, the physicians had to find the exact balance for Tori, because the progesterone hormone can increase the chance of development of a blood clot. Therefore, once she got pregnant she took low molecular heparin shots because the progesterone put her at an increased risk for blood clots in the legs and lungs. The heparin shots kept her blood from getting too thick without interfering with the growth and development of the fetus and the placenta. An aspirin a day affects the clotting mechanism such that one who has protein S or protein C deficiency may get pregnant. However, once Tori was pregnant she had to be given heparin shots to thin her blood. She could not take the medication orally because that would have crossed into the placenta and harmed the fetus.

After the baby was delivered she went back to an aspirin a day, which is an antiplatelet drug that prevents the cells from clotting quickly. She also continued with the heparin shots until her levels balanced out. And
because she was nursing Natashya, she couldn't take the oral form of the medication. An aspirin a day will decrease your incidence of stroke; also risk of thromboembolism will be drastically reduced with just an aspirin a day if you have this deficiency. Suffice it to say miracles do happen and blood is an amazing vehicle.

During the pregnancy with Tash, the
Scarlet
seed started coming. During the first half of the pregnancy while I was at the beach house in Florida, I would play piano for three hours every day. So the songs were developing daily as was this little girl inside me. I would take walks on the beach, and just play to Tash, who would kick to the rhythm, and read. My various advisers told me I had to change my life—I couldn't take any work, I couldn't handle the stress and carry life. So I didn't. I didn't get involved with being a lioness then, except for carrying this life.

ANN:
On September 5, 2000, Natashya Lórien Hawley left her mother's womb and said hello to the world.

I've known Natashya since she was about an hour old. When Tori was delivering I dropped her and Mark off at the hospital. I was supposed to stay but I couldn't bear to—I was just too nervous! I drove around D.C. in the truck, supposedly just buying some sandwiches and getting some juice, and I spent two hours just going,
Oh my God, Tori's going to be a mother.
I'm going to be an uncle. Finally I went back to the hospital and I ran upstairs thinking she'd be back in the room, and she wasn't there, and I'm like,
What's wrong, what's wrong?
And all of a sudden the elevator doors open and she came through and was wheeled back with this tiny little
creature in her arms. I've known this creature ever since. I've seen her grow from this helpless dumb little thing that squalls every time it wants to eat into this amazing creature who thinks, and says what she thinks. She uses phrases, she can demand what she wants, she has moods and tempers and an amazing imagination.