A Book of American Martyrs(118)
“Thank you, Jesus. For sparing me.”
It had been her own fault, she knew: taking the shortcut home.
She would make her way limping home through the railroad yard, to Depot Street. She would enter very cautiously at the rear of the house. If Edna Mae was in the kitchen, she could avoid the kitchen. That would be easy—Edna Mae might call out, “Who’s that?”—and Dawn would need to say only, “Who’d you think, Ma? Me”—and walk past the door and go upstairs. (Dawn no longer called her mother Maw-maw. Even the younger children no longer called Edna Mae this name.) If Anita or Noah were close by they would take little note of their sister. Mary Kay would not be home yet. Quickly Dawn would ascend to the second-floor bathroom and no one would be a witness to her shame—for Jesus would grant this small mercy, she believed.
YEH WE FUCKED HER. Dun-phy. Some of us did. She liked it fine.
Dirty cunt. Dyke. Told her we’d kill her if she told anyone but she wouldn’t tell anyone ’cause she liked it.
SHE DID NOT RETURN TO SCHOOL. Not the next day, or the next.
Not because she was sick or injured for (she was sure) she was not sick or injured.
Behind the 7-Eleven store she waited in the late afternoon. Beside the Dumpster.
Near the Fort Street underpass she waited.
And then the following week, late afternoon of a Tuesday she sighted several of the boys, the Beams boy, Jay-Jay, the one with the Cleveland Browns cap, one or two others descending the steps at the Fort Street underpass. Quickly she crossed the street, and approached them. In her pocket was a claw hammer she’d found in her aunt’s garage, the handle of which she’d wrapped carefully with black tape so that the grip would be more secure.
The boys saw her. A single expression of startled surprise ran across their faces like a headlight flashing. And then they were grinning, and one of them made a mocking gesture like a salute—Hi there Daw-en Dun-phy.
They saw the look in her face before they saw the claw hammer in her hand and they ceased grinning.
She rushed at Billy Beams, the slowest and clumsiest of the boys as he was the biggest. Wildly the hammer struck at Billy Beams—swinging in Dawn’s hand of its own volition, seemingly—his face, his head—the nape of his neck that was exposed as he tried to duck away. Wanting to break his neck but the flesh at the nape of his neck was too thick. But she felt a gratifying crack!—she was sure, she’d cracked Billy Beams’s skull, and brains would ooze out onto the filthy pavement to which he fell, jerking convulsively, crying and whimpering like a young child. She moved on then to another boy, swinging the hammer at him, blunt side, claw side, blunt side, claw side, blunt side swinging and striking and drawing blood from wounds in the boy’s forehead like skid marks. And then he was down, and Dawn ran after the boy wearing the reversed cap, at the steps at the far side of the underpass she overtook him striking the back of his head with the hammer, gripping the black-taped handle now hard in both hands and swinging it as the boy lost his footing and fell, screaming in pain; one of the others tried to wrest the hammer from her but Dawn was too strong, and too quick, turning the hammer onto this boy, Jay-Jay, striking him on the crown of the head so hard he fell to the dirty pavement like a sack of feed.
Turning back then to the boy who’d fallen on the steps. Dropped the hammer and struck at his face with her fists. She struck the astonished eyes, the nose. She struck the mouth that began at once to leak blood.
The nose was broken. Blood gushed from the nostrils.
The eyes she pounded with her fists as if to blind them. She would burst the capillaries, she would blacken the hateful eyes that had seen the lower part of her body naked. She had never struck anyone with her fists, like this. She had fought with Luke—but never like this. For Luke was too strong for her, she could not prevail against Luke. But these boys had been taken by surprise. Though her fists were aching, the knuckles scraped and thinly bleeding yet she was excited, exhilarated. “Fuckers! Now you know.” They had thought she was a good Christian girl, that they might demean her without consequence. But Dawn Dunphy was not to be demeaned. Jesus had not always turned the other cheek to be slapped another time. Jesus had driven the moneylenders out of the temple. In a loud jubilant voice Jesus had said, I bring not peace but a sword. Her fists swung, her booted feet kicked, for Jesus, for Jesus and for her father Luther Dunphy who was a soldier of Jesus and would die for Jesus’s sake.
She followed the others out of the underpass but did not pursue them along Fort Street. The bloodied claw hammer she secured in her pocket. She did not want to be seen, she did not want to be seen by witnesses, for she knew from her father’s trial how “witnesses” will damn you though you are scarcely aware of them at the time. And she might be seen by witnesses if she pursued the boys on Fort Street.
And so they ran from her, she allowed them to escape calling after them in a jeering voice, “Fuckers! Go to hell.” And Jesus observed and saw that it was good.
You are my servant Dawn Dunphy in whom I am well pleased.
IT WAS IN NINTH GRADE it happened, she was expelled.
The Dunphy girl—the one whose father killed those men at the women’s center and was sentenced to death . . .
We persuaded the principal to expel her. Everybody was talking about how she’d attacked some boys from the high school (who’d been teasing her, allegedly) with a hammer or a knife or some deadly weapon which the boys hadn’t reported because they were embarrassed or didn’t want to get into trouble themselves so we went to the principal and persuaded him she was dangerous and that was that—the Dunphy girl was gone.