Not Afraid of Life (12 page)

I can’t tell you how much pride I felt at that moment. At several points in my life, I’d look at Mom and just be amazed at her composure and coolness under all kinds of pressure. As I listened to Senator McCain describe her, obviously, I experienced one of those moments. But I didn’t have too much time to process the coolness of my mom. Suddenly, this majestic music started blaring over the loudspeaker (it sounded like the sound track of a boxing movie, when the characters are just about to have an exciting fight). We took a deep breath and started heading to the stage. It was like going out onto the field during the Super Bowl. The yells and the chants from the crowd were deafening. We walked under the bleachers, into a special entrance, and finally emerged onstage. I was holding Trig in a white blanket, which nicely hid my stomach. Thankfully, he was totally passed out.

We all waved to the crowd, smiling and trying to take in this very strange experience. Mom took some time to genuinely soak up the crowd’s excitement. After the family sat down in the chairs behind the podium, my mom thanked the audience, Senator McCain, and Mrs. McCain. “I will be honored to serve next to the next president of the United States.”

Everyone erupted! But, of course, it was not to be. At the time, we had no idea how walking out on that stage would change our lives forever.

It was probably a good thing we didn’t know.

Chapter Eight

Looking the Part

T
hough I was thrilled our lives had suddenly been put on such an unexpected path, I didn’t yet feel completely comfortable being so . . . public. After all, I’d been hanging out at my house for several weeks, not wanting to deal with the idea that people might detect my pregnancy.

In one regrettable moment when I did venture out into public, I held Trig in my arms at one of Willow’s basketball games. An old family friend came up, looked at Trig, and quipped, “Isn’t having a baby around a good form of birth control?”

Um . . .

Of course she had no reason to suspect I was pregnant. Heck, some of my extended family didn’t even know. And America certainly hadn’t found out.

At least, not yet.

A
s soon as Mom was revealed to be Senator McCain’s running mate, we were sucked into a whirlwind of frenetic campaign activity, a fun temporary distraction from my pregnancy. After that Dayton speech, we got on the campaign bus, a really fancy rig.

As we climbed on with our diaper bags and baby paraphernalia, Dad whispered in his sternest voice, “Don’t touch anything!”

That’s when Cindy McCain saw us coming on and piped up, “Bring me that baby! Piper, help yourself to cookies or whatever food you can find.”

The bus was sandwiched into a long caravan of about thirty-five cars, SUVs, and vans and began a whirlwind series of campaign stops.

Amid all of the handshaking and the baby kissing, Mom realized that she was just about out of diapers for her own baby.

You know how it is on a road trip, when you want to stop for a bathroom break and the driver grumbles? Imagine what it’s like to stop a caravan of more than thirty vehicles? And imagine that you are suddenly the most talked-about, controversial person in America and you just need to pick up a few things in aisle 9 of Walmart.

The first thing we realized was that our motorcade had grown from about thirty to perhaps more than a hundred cars who were following us down the interstate to get a glimpse of the action. When we pulled over,
everyone
pulled over.

Mom, Trig, Aunt Molly, and I went into the store, with Secret Service agents following us down every aisle. As soon as we walked in, it was bedlam. People rushed up to her and she ended up getting swamped by well-wishers.

I don’t think anyone anticipated how much excitement and energy my mother would bring to this ticket. All throughout the campaign, people not normally interested in politics would show up from all around and wait for hours just to hear her speak. Willow and Piper would go out onstage with her during campaign speeches and frequently go out into the crowd and “work the rope line” afterward. That simply means they’d smile, sign autographs, shake the hands of supporters who wanted to catch a glimpse of my mom, and pose for lots of photos. I didn’t do any of that. After all, I typically was wearing a comfy sweatshirt to hide my stomach. (Though to be honest, this is what I prefer to wear even now that I’m not pregnant!)

It put me at odds with others on the campaign trail.

“Meghan,” an aide had said to her when we were waiting together in a green room in Dayton, “you look beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes, put her hand on her hip, and said, “I should. This dress cost a thousand dollars.”

I didn’t volunteer that my dress cost less than two value meals at McDonald’s, but I did realize I’d never met people quite like this. After all, Alaskans are more concerned with how warm clothing keeps you than the label in the collar. Perhaps I was being too sensitive (those pregnancy hormones, you know), but I felt people looked down on me because I didn’t “look the part.” My pregnancy made me look fifteen to twenty pounds “overweight,” I had limited wardrobe options, and I didn’t really want to be in the spotlight.

When we finally wrapped up the first leg of the campaign trail in Ohio, we hurried to the location where the GOP convention was to be held in just a few days.

But first, I had to do something.

“G
randma,” I said into the phone. “We have to talk.”

Though I wasn’t sure about the best time to reveal my pregnancy, I knew I only had a little time before it became too obvious to hide. However, there were a few people I admired so much that I could barely stand the idea of telling them. First, I didn’t want to disappoint my grandmother, the former Catholic turned evangelical who was always very serious about her faith . . . she was somewhat of our family’s spiritual matriarch. Second, I didn’t want to tell my aunt Heather, who’s so much like a mom to me that I lived with her family in Anchorage while Mom served in our state capital. And last, I didn’t want to disappoint another “momma figure,” my mom’s best friend, Juanita.

As I held the phone up to my ear and heard my grandma’s voice, I knew it had to be done. However, I couldn’t force my mouth to form the words. My mom’s friend Kris, who was with us on the campaign trail, was sitting beside me and saw me break into tears. She grabbed the phone from me and told Grandma the simple, yet devastating to me, news.

“Bristol’s pregnant.”

To her credit, Grandma took it well. I remember her voice shook as she said, “Now, now, now . . .” (Do all grandmas say this while shaking their head, or just mine?) “This is going to be harder than you think.”

She’d raised four kids herself and could see the difficult path that was ahead of me more than I could. But even though I could tell that the news was pretty jolting for her, I felt relieved that—at least partially—my secret was no longer mine alone to bear.

I didn’t know my secret was about to be shared with an international audience less compassionate toward me than Grandma.

T
he Republican National Convention was held at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. We stayed at the downtown Hilton in my mother’s gigantic suite that had two bedrooms. Mom, Dad, and Trig stayed in one bedroom, and we sisters stayed in another. (Track and some of our cousins stayed down the hall.) I’m happy to report that—now that we weren’t in hiding—there was not a cockroach in sight!

It seems I wasn’t being too sensitive, after all, when I felt others considered my wardrobe unacceptable. Because there in the middle of the “living area” of the hotel room stood racks and racks of clothing. Skirts, tops, dresses, men’s clothes for Dad, and a whole section for us girls. In the corner of the hotel room, a sewing machine sat with a seamstress who was ready to tailor the clothes to fit us perfectly. We didn’t ask for any of this!

When we walked in and saw all of the clothes, Willow and I just laughed. The McCain campaign had flown in a bunch of stylists from New York—people who’d never met us and knew nothing about us—to help us look our best. Or, at least, to “look the part.”

I am a conservative dresser, so as I looked through the rack I saw item after item I’d never normally be caught dead in. There were gowns, diamond earrings, pearl necklaces, Gucci shoes. I know it sounds like a girl’s best dream, but we were accustomed to fleece pullovers and jeans. It’s not like I didn’t get the enormity of the situation. History was being made: for the first time in American history, the GOP had nominated a woman to the national ticket. Appropriate clothing was necessary and appreciated. However, shoes this expensive were a little bit of a stretch, even for history.

On the rack, we even found a cashmere sweater for Levi.

Let me put those two words together again, to allow them to sink in: Levi. Cashmere.

The stylists, who apparently worked for celebrity newscasters, helped us look through the clothes to find something nice to wear for Mom’s big speech at the convention.

At any rate, I was thankful to have my entire family in Minnesota. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws were so supportive of my mom that they loaded into airplanes and made the trip to Minnesota just to show their love. Even Levi came, though he was really sick as my aunt drove him to the plane. He had to actually ask her to pull over to the side of the road more than once. Plus, they had to fight bad weather to arrive safely. On September 1, Hurricane Gustav was about to hit the Louisiana coast, causing all kinds of travel complications. (That’s why Senator McCain canceled the first day’s activities, other than a small opening ceremony.) By the time everyone arrived at the convention, they were simply overjoyed at being a part of it . . . and Levi had calmed down enough to enjoy the festivities and thank us for letting him join in.

The joy would not last long.

Mom was brushing her teeth in the hotel suite when she saw something quite disturbing scrolling on the television. It was an unapproved message from her that read “Gov. Sarah Palin on teen daughter’s pregnancy: ‘We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents.’” She was shocked to read it.

We were all shocked. Good thing I told Grandma the night before!

For some reason, I didn’t realize the ripples my pregnancy would cause throughout the nation. I was thinking about what kind of schooling I needed to make the most money in the shortest amount of time. I wanted to learn a trade. I was in “survival mode” and didn’t really consider how my own personal drama was playing out on the national stage or think anyone would necessarily care about it. The one thing that was embarrassing is that I couldn’t hide the fact that I’d royally messed up. Many sins can exist under the surface, undetected by others, allowed to grow and fester without anyone knowing. Pregnancy, as difficult as it is, has a way of forcing you to deal with your sexual mistakes out in the open, demanding a frank honesty that other sins don’t. (For example, the effects of sins like gluttony, greed, jealousy, or hate take longer to show up—if ever—so people are less likely to come face-to-face with their flaws.) But there I was, after months of hiding, outed as a seventeen-year-old unmarried, pregnant girl.

Think you’ve had a bad day?

Immediately, the news of my mistake circulated all around the country and the world. It would’ve been one thing had they reported it accurately. Even the hard truth is still digestible compared to the unbelievable lies that began getting airtime. Some people actually suggested that Trig wasn’t our brother. They even insulted us by suggesting he was Willow’s baby. Or mine! It was so stupid, I couldn’t believe we had to respond to it. But there we were, at the GOP convention, fighting off some of the weirdest and most malicious accusations.

I look back on that and wonder how we made it through that time so well. But I don’t think about that for long. All we had to do when things got tough was talk to Aunt Molly and Aunt Heather, who’d traveled so far to support us. Or I could hug my grandpa’s neck, or exchange sarcastic glances with Willow. Family means everything to us, and no matter how much the media tried to tear us down, their powers of destruction couldn’t compete with our family’s ability to cheer us up. Even having Levi there was a huge source of comfort. I wasn’t blind enough to still think he’d help provide for me and the baby, but the trip to the convention was so new and fun that it helped temporarily blind me to our underlying—but very real—problems.

The side effect of everyone on the planet knowing I was pregnant was that I could finally reveal my cute “baby bump.” As we prepared for Mom’s speech, I chose a simple gray dress with cap sleeves, which was the first thing I’d worn that didn’t try to hide the little bundle I was carrying. After I got my ensemble on, I checked myself out in the mirror. Other than the fact that I’d never buy a dress so expensive in my life—and not that one!—I had to admit, I felt happy that I no longer was always keeping a secret.

For some reason, the presidential candidate is supposed to arrive at the political convention only after everything has started. I guess it’s kind of like going to a party thirty minutes late. It’s just what you do.

When Senator McCain arrived in Minneapolis from Cleveland, we met him on the tarmac. After the stylists got us dressed and made sure we looked presentable, we arrived and realized that this was a very big deal. Photographers were everywhere, and news trucks (with their satellites on top) surrounded us to capture the event. Reporters knew a good story when they saw it: War Hero Meets Boy Who Knocked Up the Vice Presidential Candidate’s Daughter. It was too much for hungry reporters to refuse, and that’s exactly how they reported it.

Right as we were going out onto the tarmac at the airport, we met up with the McCain family. Meghan, who was wearing a cute gray dress and leggings, took one look at us and said, “Well, if I would’ve known we were supposed to dress up, I would’ve!”

Every time we saw Meghan, she seemed to constantly be checking us out, comparing my family to hers, and complaining. Oh, the complaining.

We stood for just a few moments before we were told to go out to the tarmac. Cindy McCain was walking with me and pulled me aside to talk privately. You can probably tell from television that she looks like a queen and holds herself like royalty. Her bags were so expensive. I’ve never seen people with so much Louis Vuitton luggage, so many cell phones, and so many constant helpers to do hair and makeup. When I saw their wealth, it was hard to imagine we’d have anything in common to talk about.

“Bristol, I have three things I want to tell you,” she said. “I just want you to know that I want to be one of the first people to hold your baby. Also, I want to go to your wedding when it comes together, and lastly . . .”

She paused just a second, and added, “John and I want to be godparents of your child.”

I can’t even remember how I responded. I think I may have laughed it off, unsure if she was serious. I had just met her, and I wondered why she wanted any type of guardianship over my child. I was nice to her, but I was left speechless by her comment.

As we continued onto the tarmac, I looked up and saw snipers on the roof. There were also serious-looking Secret Service men and police dogs everywhere. While Mom had minimal protection while she was governor, the men protecting John McCain—and now us!—were many, tough, alert, and intimidating.