A Book of American Martyrs(192)

Cries of young children, laughter and excitement.

Seeing the children in the makeshift playground Naomi found herself smiling.

Nobody’s baby wants to die.

It was life always that would prevail. That was the singular lesson beside which all others are diminished.

“Hello!”—Naomi introduced herself to a harried-looking but friendly woman named Diana in jeans and knitted smock who told her yes, they were aware that the previous tenant of the building had been a women’s center but no, they had not actually seen the center because the building had been vacant for several years before they’d acquired it. And they didn’t know anyone who’d been associated with the Women’s Center.

“‘The Broome County Women’s Center’—has it moved to another location?”

“No. I think it was just shut down. Let me ask—” Diana turned to an older co-worker who provided the information that so far as she knew the women’s center had been absorbed into the hospital on East Avenue.

“There’s radiology there—mammograms. There’s doctors, physical therapy, classes in yoga, Pilates. Do you need directions?”

Naomi thanked her, no.

Naomi asked if they knew why the Women’s Center had been shut down and the women exchanged glances and said vaguely that they’d heard there had been “trouble”—“picketers.”

“You’d never heard that there were murders at the center? Because it was an abortion clinic?”

She’d spoken too bluntly. Belatedly she realized.

It was not the way of Muskegee Falls, Ohio, to speak so bluntly of ugly matters. Ugly local matters. Seeing the camera in her hands, the slant of the baseball cap on her head, the Peony Christian Daycare women looked uneasy. Vaguely they shook their heads, no.

Naomi wondered: no, they knew nothing of what had happened; or no, they did not want to talk about it.

She told them that the Center had provided other services beside abortions for women and girls but it had been under attack from pro-life protesters in the late 1990s and in November 1999 two men had been shot down in the driveway . . .

Diana said, pained: “Excuse me, are you a journalist?”

They were staring at her camera. They were staring at her, and they were not smiling now.

Naomi said: “No. I’m not a journalist.”

A young child came to pluck at Diana’s arm. “In a minute, Billy! Be right there.”

Naomi relented. She did not want to detain them further.

She did not want to upset these women, or annoy them, or harass them. She did not want to inflict upon them what they did not wish to hear on this mild dry September morning in 2011.

She said: “Your day care center looks wonderful. It must be great fun, and very rewarding . . .”

“Yes. It is.”

“ . . .hard work, but . . .”

“ . . .very rewarding.”

She walked away, with a wave of her hand. She could see the relief in their faces. Several other women, who appeared to be mothers, were staring after Naomi too; she knew that they would excitedly discuss her as soon as she departed.

Journalist? Some newspaper? Taking pictures? Looking for the abortion clinic? Out-of-state? Pro-choice?


AT 56 FRONT STREET the Dunphys had lived in 1999. She had learned this fact.

Two-story clapboard house in a neighborhood of near-identical small houses and all of them dating back to—mid-twentieth century? The paint on the house was faded, weatherworn like something left out too long in the rain.

The windows were partly covered by blinds. Almost, you could imagine someone peering out one of the upstairs windows.

She saw: narrow driveway, single-car garage too crammed with things to accommodate any vehicle. Small front concrete stoop, small yard of burnt-out grass and dirt and at the curb a badly dented and stained metal trash can, empty.

Tricycle overturned in the yard. Dog’s red plastic water bowl, no water. Scattering of much-gnawed-at bones.

The neighborhood was quiet except for a barking dog. Children on bicycles calling to one another.

This is the house in which Luther Dunphy lived with his family in November 1999.

About four miles from the Broome County Women’s Center.

A middle-aged woman appeared in the driveway, in loose-fitting clothing. Flip-flops on her long-toed white feet. She was smiling in Naomi’s direction, unless she was scowling.

This was not a neighborhood in which strangers wandered into yards or stood at the end of driveways cameras in hand, staring.

Strangers live here now—of course.

Almost twelve years have passed.

“Excuse me? Are you looking for someone?”—the woman shaded her eyes, squinting at Naomi. Still she might have been perceived as friendly, curious.

“Oh, I’m sorry”—the intruder was trying for disarming frankness—“I don’t think they live here any longer. The Dunphys? I used to know their daughter . . .”

The woman had ceased smiling. Naomi saw her jaw tighten.

Naomi was holding the camera casually in her left hand. Unobtrusively recording what the camera saw but in such a way that the middle-aged woman staring at Naomi suspiciously could not have known.

“Yes, well. Nobody with that name lives here anymore.”

“The Dunphys? Do you know the name?”