A Book of American Martyrs(105)

She told Dawn that she had heard of some of this “trouble”—and thought it was a “very sad” situation. Maybe the second trial would “help clear things up . . .” Dawn should know, however, that there were several other students in the school with relatives who were incarcerated—the situation was not so uncommon in Farloe County.

But now Dawn glared up at Penelope Schine. She’d remained seated on the stairs, hugging her knees to her chest and gazing up at Miss Schine, and she spoke hotly now, and loudly: “People like that are criminals. They belong in prison. My Daddy isn’t like them. My Daddy Luther Dunphy is a soldier of God.”


SOON THEN she began to turn up after school. I would be in my homeroom preparing to leave, clearing my desk, and there she was stammering she’d forgotten something and she’d go to search through her desk seeming embarrassed and excited. She had trouble understanding some of her math homework so I would help her—she wasn’t so comfortable asking the math teacher for extra help. She had trouble “organizing her thoughts” for writing so I would help her—I was her teacher for eighth grade English and she was always silent in class, just sitting kind of tense and anxious and furrowing her forehead so I wanted to go to her and smooth her forehead with my fingers—I hate to see a child frowning so hard . . . She seemed to understand when I was speaking with her and she could do problems while I watched but—for some reason—she seemed to forget what she’d learned from one time to the next. But getting help for homework was just the pretext. The girl was lonely and she wanted to talk. This was around the time I gave her a hairbrush—just an inexpensive little pink plastic hairbrush from the drugstore. I’m sure she had one at home—there had to be at least one hairbrush in the Dunphy house!—but having this seemed to inspire her, so she began brushing her hair—(not when I was around; she’d just show up at school in the morning looking much, much better). I mulled over whether to give her one of those little stick deodorants—for girls—and finally I did this, and she was embarrassed, and muttered something like OK, and did not thank me; but I think she used this too, and she didn’t seem to smell so strongly as she had, or maybe I was getting used to her, and didn’t so much mind.

She brought me a dozen oatmeal cookies she said she and her aunt had baked—they were very homemade-looking cookies that crumbled easily but they were delicious!

After snow fell during one of our school days there was Dawn outside in the parking lot at my little Nissan and she’d brushed away the snow and ice from the windshield—from all the windows! It was a total surprise to me that she even knew which car in the lot was mine.

But I didn’t offer her a ride home. Possibly she would have said no thank you, but if she’d said yes, and I drove her home, and the mother found out, that might have presented problems. And if I drove one of my students home just once, she might expect to be driven home again; and if others found out, or other teachers, that would definitely present problems. So I never knew where she lived but I had the idea—I don’t know why—that she had a considerable distance to walk and that she wouldn’t take the school bus, and I could imagine why not.

And one day suddenly when we were alone together in my homeroom she said, Miss Schine, did you know people kill babies?—and nobody cares; and I asked what did she mean, who kills babies?—and she said, looking like she was about to cry, At the ’bortion clinics. They kill them and dump the baby-bodies different places. And nobody cares.

I was shocked to hear an eighth grader say such things. I don’t know what I said—something like, Oh that’s terrible, Dawn . . .

She asked had I ever heard of it, and I said no, I didn’t think so. (Because I could not say yes. Not to an eighth grader.) And she said, They don’t have one of them here, I guess—’bortion clinic. There was one in Muskegee Falls where we lived, a “women’s center” they called it . . . And I said, Did they! (Thinking, Oh my God that was where her father had shot the men, the abortion doctor and the other man, who’d been his driver. That was what she was talking about—why she was so earnest and emotional. But I could not—I could not acknowledge this.) She asked me did I think the babies who were cut into little pieces would go to heaven and I swallowed hard and said yes.

On Valentine’s Day Dawn left a beautiful valentine for me on my desk, about ten inches high, inside a large white envelope. She’d made the valentine that was in the shape of a heart out of scraps of white satin sewn together and dozens of hearts she’d drawn with a red marker pen and inside in red ink was—

Dear Miss Schine

You are my Vallentine





I LOVE YOU


Your Vallentine Freind

There were a few other valentines for me from students but nothing like Dawn Dunphy’s which was so special. I think I still have it somewhere at home . . . Every Valentine’s Day I make up cards for all my homeroom students, girls and boys both, but the cards are just commercial cards from the drugstore, so of course I had one for Dawn Dunphy but it was not a special card, nothing like hers. I think that she was happy enough to receive it but maybe she was a little hurt, it was just such an ordinary valentine compared to hers. (Oh I hate Valentine’s Day! I just dread February fourteenth! It’s so cruel at school especially, some of the popular girls get dozens of valentines and girls like Dawn Dunphy get none—not one. Which is why I make sure I have valentines for everyone.)