A Book of American Martyrs(104)

OUR FATHER. In Heaven. Help us.

Sighted prowling the halls of the middle school. Possibly she’d forgotten which classroom she belonged in. Which period it was. Which bells had rung. A tall girl with thick eyebrows beginning to grow together over the bridge of her nose, wide sloping shoulders, short-armed and -legged and with large feet. At the drinking fountain which was low to the floor she had to crouch, bending her knees; she drank thirstily, with a kind of abandon, knowing herself vulnerable to enemies at such moments, the expanse of her back and the back of her head unprotected.

Penelope Schine went to look for Dawn Dunphy and discovered the girl sitting on steps at the rear of the school, midway between the first and the second floors, very still, staring at the sky through a window, dense deep dark-ribbed clouds like the hollowed-out inside of a great leviathan, that held her entranced. She’d asked to be excused from homeroom study hour to use the restroom but had not then returned out of shyness or obstinacy or forgetfulness and so Miss Schine approached her to ask gently if anything was wrong? With a shy duck of her head the girl said in a whisper that she was looking for Our Father who art in Heaven.

Miss Schine knew of the trial at Muskegee Falls, and of the mistrial. She had followed closely news of the double homicide at the women’s center the previous year and she had heard that there was to be a second trial of Luther Dunphy. She felt great sympathy for the Dunphy girl. She did not like it that colleagues of hers had assigned seats at the rear of their classrooms to Dawn Dunphy because she was a big-boned girl, and a troublesome girl; they did not like to look at her too closely; they did not like to smell her. And so they’d relegated her to the very rear of their classrooms with the worst of the boys, and tried to forget her.

Miss Schine asked Dawn Dunphy how she was liking her new school and Dawn shifted her shoulders uncomfortably and mumbled what sounded like It’s OK.

Miss Schine did not ask Dawn if she’d made friends yet—(she knew the answer: No)—but Miss Schine did ask her if she was having any difficulties with her classes and if she thought she might need extra help after school—“Or during study hour. Which is right now. I could help you if . . .”

When Dawn did not reply Miss Schine did not pursue the subject. For she saw that Dawn’s frizzy dun-colored hair was a mass of snarls and she wondered—did she dare to offer the girl a comb? A hairbrush? Would that be offensive, and insulting to the girl?

A powerful smell of underarms lifted from the girl for Dawn Dunphy was not in the habit of bathing frequently, it seemed; and (possibly) the Dunphy mother did not “believe” in using deodorants.

Or rather, the mother might not believe that a girl of Dawn’s age might require a deodorant.

There were evangelical Christians in the Mad River school district who forbade deodorants as they forbade movies, radio and TV; most books including such classic American novels as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird; soda pop that was “colored” or “carbonated”; vaccinations and inoculations. The use of Tampax was “indecent” and “sinful”—girls and women had to use sanitary cloths made of thick cotton, that could be laundered.

Penelope Schine recalled how at the start of the school year Dawn Dunphy’s mother had been one of several parents in the district who had objected to their children being vaccinated—she’d refused to be convinced by the school nurse and by Mrs. Morehead that it was urgent for her children to get shots, and that the shots were “harmless.” Mrs. Dunphy had said that vaccinations showed a distrust of God for if you resorted to such a measure, it was the same as declaring that you did not trust God to care for you.

These parents had the right to forbid vaccinations for their children under Ohio state law. So, the children were excused.

Fortunately, there had not (yet) been an onset of flu this year.

Miss Schine deliberated: she would buy a small plastic hairbrush for Dawn at the drugstore, and give it to the girl next day in homeroom or after school. The risk was offending the mother, but this was a risk she must take.

But purchasing a deodorant for the girl—this seemed more intrusive, somehow. Maybe not a good idea just yet.

Next, Miss Schine asked Dawn if she was “feeling sad” about anything and if so, did she want to talk about it; and Dawn said, with startling frankness, that yes, she did feel sad—“My father doesn’t live with us now and we don’t know when he will come home.”

Miss Schine did not know how to respond to this and could think only to say, “Really! That is—that is sad . . .”

“He got arrested for something he didn’t do—he didn’t do in the way they are saying. Because it was something Daddy had to do. And they don’t let him out when it’s supposed to be ‘innocent till proven guilty.’ But that’s a lie.”

Miss Schine was surprised that Dawn Dunphy spoke at such length, and with such clarity. It was the first time she’d heard Dawn utter even a complete sentence.

Very likely, the girl was not mildly retarded, as her other teachers were saying. Miss Schine had looked at Dawn Dunphy’s test scores and wondered if it was test-taking that was the problem. Less confident students were made anxious by tests and performed poorly, thus insuring that, next time, they would perform even more poorly.

Miss Schine was uncertain what to say. It did not surprise her that the daughter of a man who’d shot two men down in cold blood—in a public place—might yet perceive the father as somehow “innocent”; she understood blood-loyalty, family ties. Faith that is blind—the strongest faith.