10 agosto

10 agosto, or August 10, 1956, marks the miscarriage that abruptly ended Norma Jeane Baker’s pregnancy at fifteen weeks. The date fixes a private catastrophe within the summer’s accumulating strain and becomes a hinge between the effort to keep life going and the farewell that follows.

Date and Circumstances

Throughout the summer, Norma Jeane Baker had continued caring for the stray cats that came to her each morning, despite the burden her playwright lover had expected her to abandon. He recognized in that persistence a formidable will: in essential matters, he believed, she could overcome him. The date therefore falls amid a routine she had maintained, not after she had simply surrendered to the pressure around her.

The Accident

Her playwright lover was upstairs, writing words that the narrative says were these words or something very like them, when he heard a scream. He understood at once what had happened, ran downstairs, and found her at the bottom of the cellar stairs, groaning and twisting in pain. The flashlight had fallen from her hand, its beam reaching into the cellar’s indistinct darkness. She cried out for him to save her and the creature; when he bent over her, she seized his hands and pulled them toward her as if asking him to deliver it. He called an ambulance, and she was taken to Brunswick General Hospital.

The Loss and Its Aftermath

The account identifies the loss specifically as a miscarriage at the fifteenth week of pregnancy and gives its date as August 10. The placement of the date after the physical particulars makes it a precise point of reckoning: an ongoing pregnancy ends in a sudden fall, an appeal for rescue, and hospital care. The narrative then turns to a section titled The Farewell, where a later voice asks whether this was when they began to die and recalls being blamed. That transition links the date not only to the end of the pregnancy but also to a rupture remembered through grief and accusation.