A Book of American Martyrs(128)

“Why? Because we are not.”

Dawn was baffled why Edna Mae, and some others, were not leaving the Cleveland County Planned Parenthood Women’s Surgical Clinic. The last of the clinic staff had quickly departed, to a chorus of cries—Murderers! Cowards!

Edna Mae plucked at the children’s arms. Hurry! Reverend Trucross was leading them.

Dawn was very tired. Dawn could not comprehend. Where were they going? The clinic was shut for the night. There was no one to pray over, or to harass or threaten. One TV camera crew remained in the street.

Only a few volunteers remained—fewer than twenty. But these appeared to be members of Reverend Trucross’s church.

They were led to the rear of the clinic. In the alley behind the clinic where there were trash cans and Dumpsters. It was dark here. Flashlights were lighted. Dawn could not see well. The younger children stumbled and whimpered. Edna Mae spoke in a voice trembling with excitement. One of the TV crew was speaking to Reverend Trucross. A pair of headlights flared in the alley and Dawn saw the sharply shadowed faces of volunteers. Mostly they were strangers but there was Edna Mae Dunphy among them. They had the look of persons who did not know their surroundings, where they were or why. Dawn did recognize Jacqueline, a heavyset girl with asthma, from Mad River Junction, of whom it was said that Jesus had “saved” her when her throat had closed up as a younger girl and she’d been unable to breathe. At the Pentecostal church it had happened, dozens of witnesses would testify that Jesus had “breathed” life into Jacqueline and restored her to the world.

Edna Mae had acquired a flashlight. There was a smell in the alley of rotted fruit, rotted meat. Something sour and rancid. Dawn swallowed hard not wanting to be sick to her stomach. Edna Mae was reaching for her, gripping her hand with surprising strength. “Dawn! Come with me.”

She would not come with her mother! She dug her heels into the ground.

Yet still, somehow her mother pulled her. Who would have thought that Edna Mae Dunphy was so strong.

In the alley behind the clinic amid the sickening stench they had overturned trash cans to poke in the debris. Boldly they had thrown open Dumpster lids to poke inside and to peer with flashlights.

A cry went up—they had discovered a cache of cardboard boxes in one of the Dumpsters. The first was removed and seen to be secured tight by duct tape neatly wrapped. With a knife they cut the duct tape, and opened the box. Inside were five or six Ziploc bags and in each bag a small star-shaped thing . . . More cries went up, of anguish and jubilation.

Edna Mae said fiercely, “You see? Babies—that didn’t get born as you did.”

Though Edna Mae was very frightened too, Dawn could see. Her face was drawn and ashen and her mouth was set in a fixed half-smile like the smile of a mannequin. Her fingers were very cold.

In the quivering flashlight beam the first of the babies was examined. For (as Reverend Trucross said) you had to determine if indeed the baby was truly dead.

Though it was clear, the poor thing had never lived. A tiny kitten-sized creature with a disproportionately large head. Its limbs were stunted, and one of its arms was missing.

Dawn tried to pull away from Edna Mae’s grip. Her heart was beating very fast. She was close to hyperventilating. Yet she could not look away from the tiny, dead baby being removed from the stained Ziploc bag.

In a quavering voice Dawn said to Edna Mae, “The babies are dead. They don’t know what you’re doing for them.”

(Where were Anita and Noah? Dawn hoped they were not near, and that someone was watching over them, for Edna Mae seemed to have forgotten them.)

Edna Mae looked at Dawn with disgust. “You are so ignorant! It’s pathetic how ignorant you are. Why do we bury the dead?—because they are dead. But their souls are not dead. We are honoring the babies’ souls, not their poor, broken bodies. For shame, you.”

“But—they never lived . . .”

“Of course they lived! They were all alive, in their mothers’ wombs. As you were alive, before you were born.” Edna Mae spoke to Dawn with a savage sarcasm Dawn had never heard before in her mother though (it seemed to Dawn) Edna Mae was trembling too, with fear and dread.

The volunteers exclaimed in shock, pity, horror. Dawn steeled herself against what she might see. Reverend Trucross was praying loudly.

“Merciful God help us. God who taketh away the sins of the world help us in our rescue of these holy innocents . . .”

In the beam of the flashlight another tiny creature was exposed. This one had been shaken out of the Ziploc bag, in which it had been stuck. It was larger than the first baby, fleshy, meat-colored, damp with blood. You could see the tiny curved legs, the tiny fingers and toes, the misshapen head. You could see the eyes that appeared large and were tight-shut. You could see the miniature pouting mouth, that had never cried.

Other babies appeared to have been dismembered. Their overlarge heads were intact but their bodies had been broken into pieces.

All lay very still on the ground. It seemed wrong to Dawn, that even a dead baby should lie on the ground.

Though the eyes of the dead babies were shut tight, tight as slits, and the faces shriveled into grimaces, yet you did expect the eyes to open suddenly. You could not look away from those eyes.

Dawn begged Edna Mae to let her go.

“Let you go where? You will wait for me. We are all going home together in the morning.”