A Book of American Martyrs(19)
Yet, I understood that my relationship with God was almost certainly closer than the relationship of anyone else involved in the crash with God, and my relationship with Jesus.
Our minister all but told me this, in counseling me after the crash. There are Christians whose ties to God are more intimate, and of whom God expects more than He expects of other Christians, that is just a fact—Scripture is filled with such individuals. Our minister has said, as in Biblical times, so it would be now.
Many times I tried to appeal to God, but God only granted me to know that it was all that I could ask, to be allowed to live after my injuries.
In the ER in Springfield, I had (possibly) died. I believe that my heart had been “restarted.” The cardiologist had told me something like this. I did not want to know details but I understood that the prayers of my family had persuaded God to have mercy on me.
Yet it seemed wrong to me, and a bitter thing—(I mean, in secret; I would not have defied God)—that God had taken my little girl’s life, and not mine. For when I returned home, Daphne was not there any longer.
Though my darling little girl had not died in the crash, she had passed away at this time, and was now gone.
Many times I imagined how, if God had given me a chance, I would have said unhesitating to Him, “Take my life, and spare hers”—and I would have laughed in saying so, a bright flame lighting up my face, and my voice loud in jubilance as (a long time ago) it had sometimes been, when I had been drinking in my days of ignorant and blind bachelorhood.
THAT POOR CHILD! She was a little Down’s child, they are called—Daphne. The sweetest girl, we loved her so much.
Edna Mae and Luther loved her, and all of the family—her brothers and sisters including even that mouthy girl with the weasel face what’s-her-name—Dawn. Her grandmother Marlene Dunphy (who lives next-door to us) was always begging Edna Mae to let Daphne visit with her because Daphne was so happy all the time, you could see her little round face light up at just the sight of you and she’d make these excited little giggles and wave her hands. She liked to be held, and hugged, and kissed—she liked to cuddle and never shrank away like another child would do, who gets restless being hugged too tight and if it goes on a little too long.
There was something wrong with Daphne’s mouth. They said her mouth was wrongly shaped, too narrow for her tongue. And sometimes, you would see her tongue like a dog’s tongue panting. But you got used to it. You couldn’t always make sense of what she was saying because of this oversized tongue and also her voice was high-pitched like a chattering bird but usually you could guess it was something like I love Grandma—she’d been taught to say.
It’s as people say, the Down’s babies are special to God. Daphne was not the only one of these in Muskegee Falls. And there are the “retarded”—“mildly retarded.” They are certainly special compared to other children—so-called normal.
There has never been a “brattish” Down’s child. On some online Down’s site Marlene Dunphy showed me, this was stated as a fact of medical history.
Marlene had some online connection with parents and grandparents of Down’s children, she spent time on. But Edna Mae and Luther had no interest in this. You could not even raise the subject to them, Edna Mae would be upset and Luther would be furious.
The Dunphys’ little girl Daphne was the youngest of the children and the last baby (it was supposed) Edna Mae would have. What Edna Mae herself thought no one actually knew. Before she was married she’d been trained as a nurse or maybe a nurse’s aide and used to talk of returning to work when the children were older not just because they needed the money—(it was pretty obvious they needed the money, all those children and the way the house needed fixing up, the old battered car Luther had to drive, and somebody always sick)—but because she liked to work, loved to work in a hospital or nursing home setting (she said), because helping people made her happy, it was why we are on earth (she said). Definitely Edna Mae Dunphy was happiest with a small baby in the house. Nursing a baby at the breast, that made her happy. Taking care of a sick child, that made her happy. There are women like that—I am not one of them, but I know two or three of them—(right in my family)—this is a state of mind pathetic because eventually the babies will grow up, and there’s a time when they don’t want you even to look at them let alone touch and hug them, and you will be yearning for these big hulking kids to be small again and there is nothing to take their place.
Except, a Down’s child will not grow up. A Down’s child will not ever push you away or sneer at you. Or move out of the house.
Daphne was so special because she was happy-seeming all the time. Even when (it was revealed) she wasn’t all that well. She would cough and choke like (possibly) she was allergic to something like pollen or cat hairs and she could be restless, if she had to sit in something that confined her like a stroller. Singing was exciting to her, songs she’d hear on the radio she would sing with the radio voices as if they were actual people in the room with her.
As an infant Daphne had been baptized in the St. Paul Missionary Church. She was taken with the family to services most Sundays and Wednesday evenings and if she got too excitable and chattered too loud Edna Mae would take her outside to wait in the car.
Everybody in the congregation loved little Daphne Dunphy. The minister blessed her, as one of Jesus’s own.