Girl One(10)

“Maybe I should just go,” I said. “Kansas isn’t so far.” The keys were still heavy in my pocket, a comforting weight. But the Chevy was an ancient and erratic beast, only good for short commutes. Prone to grinding, squeaky brakes.

“I’m happy to give you a lift,” Tom said casually, as if he’d read my uncertainty in my expression. “I’ve been meaning to go see Emily anyway.”

I considered this. It would give me a chance to pick Tom’s brain more. He was one of the last people to talk to my mother, as far as I knew. But he was a perfect stranger. All my mother’s old cautions against trusting people too easily rose into my brain. “Thanks, but I can’t ask you to do that.”

Disappointment flashed through his eyes. “It’s no problem, I’m happy to—”

“She’s my mother, my problem. You don’t have to worry about her.” I stood up, slipped the notebook into my pocket.

Tom stood too, and a brief awkwardness settled between us. “Just so you know,” he said, “I might pursue this myself. I mean, there could be a real story here.”

“I can’t exactly stop you,” I said, restraining my irritation. “I’d just ask for a chance to find my mother safe first. She’s not just a story to me.”

Looking serious, he nodded once. “You have my number if you need it, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Tom turned around, waved to me as he moved toward the door. “Good to finally meet you, Girl One.”





4

Time magazine—October 20, 1974

MIRACLE or MODERN SCIENCE? Inside One Man’s Attempt to Change Birth as We Know It

Daybury, Vermont, is a quiet hamlet, population barely reaching five hundred. Bucolic is the first word that comes to mind. There’s a single general store across the street from the post office. Neighbors greet each other by name. But lately, sleepy Daybury has been disrupted by hordes of camera crews, candle-toting pilgrims, and sign-carrying picketers. All of these outsiders are drawn by a single cause. Here, on the outskirts of Daybury, a man who has long toiled over his scientific research in obscurity has achieved the impossible. More than the impossible, perhaps—the downright miraculous.

The Homestead is accessible only by a narrow, winding dirt road. A young woman greets us at the beginning of the property, silently opening the imposing metal gate to admit our vehicle. Her dress does a poor job hiding the telltale signs of a woman in the family way. Her ring finger is conspicuously naked.

The thick foliage breaks to reveal the rolling hills and verdant farmlands that border the commune. The compound includes a sizable farmhouse, a cherry-red barn, a disorganized vegetable garden where cucumbers sprout between the tomatoes, interspersed with weeds and wildflowers. The house borders on dereliction. Windows are hung with quilts to offer some respite from the creeping chill of autumn. Young women sleep three or four to a bed. It seems like no place for a child, but babies are the most prominent feature of this place.

A three-year-old child is the eldest, bright-eyed and sturdy. She takes after her mother, Margaret Morrow. Once you know that little girl is supposedly the product of only her mother’s DNA, you find yourself looking too closely at her, hoping to detect some giveaway sign of a father’s influence. A different nose shape, perhaps, or pale eyes in contrast to dark. But looking at Margaret and Josephine (Josie for short) is like staring at a time lapse—the same face looking at you as a toddler, as a mother.

Josie is first in line, proudly bearing the name of her creator, Joseph Bellanger. There are others. One-year-old Isabelle sleeps in a makeshift crib, a dresser drawer padded with blankets. Catherine wears a cloth diaper as her mother cradles her. One young woman is expecting her child to arrive any day, and still another informs us that she is newly pregnant. Nine young women form the core group of devoted volunteers, and Bellanger confidently claims that all the women will have given birth before long.

Dr. Joseph Bellanger is a charismatic figure. As he speaks about the women, one is reminded of an artist posing in front of his canvases. While the women keep their hair long and unbrushed, Bellanger retains a gentleman’s composure in his bow tie and tidy white lab coat. His home is back in Maryland with his wife and two young sons, but he conducts his most essential work from an ersatz lab here on the compound.

According to the doctor, these miraculous infants are the result of work that began with his scientific experimentation on lab rabbits in the late 1960s, experimentation which produced parthenogenetic offspring, although the results were never replicated. Bellanger’s time attending medical school at Maryland State University was marked by controversy. “I was too single-minded and ambitious even for fellow scientists,” Bellanger notes with a merry laugh. “But I’ve learned not to foster grudges. That’s all in the past now, and these Girls are my future.”

By now, the nine women—unwed and romantically unattached volunteers—have become a vibrant group known as the Homestead. This wryly irreverent name was selected by Bellanger himself for its suggestion of traditional family ties—the very ties that Bellanger hopes to sever.

While some animal species can produce asexually, this is the first time in documented modern history that human beings have conceived without the presence of sperm. If Dr. Bellanger’s claims hold any weight, he could be restructuring the very nature of mankind.