A Book of American Martyrs(39)

It was confusing to us, where Daddy had been in the weeks before this. For sometimes it was more than one place, and we could not remember the names which (perhaps) we resented, and did not want to remember. On this day, Daddy had returned early that morning from wherever he’d been, somewhere in northern Michigan where (as Daddy said) he was desperately needed as a consultant.

Desperately!—Mommy laughed. Is it ever anything less than desperate?

Adding, And what of us—are we not desperate?

So Daddy was saying, not to Mommy (who hadn’t come hiking with us but had stayed back at the picnic table with her typewriter) but to us, that there was no evil, but there was Heaven, if you kept in mind that Heaven wasn’t anything special or surprising; it might be just a hike along the shore, on a windy day, in late September; in itself not memorable, but the point is, if you can remember that we did this, we were here together, we stopped for lunch at Bay Point, even if it wasn’t a great lunch we were together, the five of us, no matter what happens afterward—this is Heaven. Got it, kids?

OK, Daddy, we said. It embarrassed us when Daddy spoke to us as to another adult, too seriously.

Y’know what, kids?—promise me you will scatter my ashes here after I die.

After I die. It is possible, none of us heard this.

A child does not hear die on a parent’s lips. No.

Of course we’d have said yes. Anything Daddy wanted us to say, we’d say, and anything Daddy wanted us to believe, we’d believe. Even if we had not a clue what Daddy was talking about this time as other times.





SPECIAL SURGERY


Something to do with babies. What did that mean?

We knew where babies came from. We thought we knew, for our parents had told us. Animal babies, and human babies. (But birds were different, and reptiles. Their babies came out of eggs.) (Why did some babies come out of their mother’s bellies and other babies came out of eggs, like chicken eggs you could eat? That was never made clear.) We were embarrassed and excited to consider the place where we had come from, which was supposed to be Mommy’s belly.

(We did not believe this really. It was so funny! Like one of Daddy’s silly jokes that made you laugh so hard you wetted yourself. But we had to pretend we believed it. Out of Mommy’s belly, when it was time to be born.)

(Anxiously Naomi said to Darren, Mommy’s belly isn’t big enough. We could never be that little, to fit inside. Naomi swallowed hard at the thought of it, such a terrible thought that made her eyelids flutter and a sick, choking sensation arise in her throat, for what if—somehow—it was made to be, Naomi would have to fit inside Mommy’s belly again though she was too big. This thought made her queasy and shivery for it could not even be articulated, it was so awful like the illustrations in her favorite storybook where poor Alice had unwisely nibbled at a mushroom and grew too big to fit in a normal-sized room but had to shove her arm up a chimney and another arm outside a window and her head crushed against the ceiling . . . Though she was terrified at the thought Darren just laughed at her and gave her a little shove that signaled a kind of forgiveness even as it signaled how silly she was, and how much younger and weaker than he.)

(Of the children Naomi was the worrywart as Daddy called her. How’s my little worrywart? Naomi was not sure if a worrywart was an actual wart which was a kind of hard ugly pimple on the back of an older person’s hand, or on a face, terrible-ugly to look at so it wasn’t nice to be called a worrywart though it seemed clear that Daddy was just teasing and you were expected to laugh when Daddy teased.)

We were not told exactly what our father did, that made living with him dangerous.

We knew that our father was a doctor—Dr. Voorhees. But we were not sure what kind of doctor he was.

Something to do with babies. We thought.


WHEN IT WAS EXPLAINED to us that there are women and girls who require a special surgery, that only doctors trained like our father could provide. These are women and girls who have found that they are pregnant, and the pregnancy is unwanted.

A pregnancy is unwanted for many reasons and one of them might be, it is a threat to the life of the mother.

Another is, it has come at the wrong time in the mother’s life.

And another, it is a result of something forced upon the mother, that the mother did not want and should not have to bear.

It was related to us that there were doctors like our father who provided this surgery not only because it was badly needed but also because it was a surgery that some others opposed, on religious grounds, or “moral” grounds, a doctor like our father had to be very careful that he was not attacked by these individuals who opposed it.

We did not know what this meant—attacked.

Like in a movie? On TV? Attacked with knives, guns? Attacked with a bomb?

Darren was the one to ask questions. Naomi sucked her fingers and smiled foolishly. (Melissa was too young to be told anything that would frighten her.)

Of the Voorhees children Darren was the oldest. Naomi was three years younger than Darren and Melissa was two years younger than Naomi. It gave Darren immense satisfaction to know that he would always be older than his sisters. He would always be taller, bigger, smarter and stronger.

That meant that Darren could protect his sisters if they required protection. Or, he could discipline his sisters if they required discipline in the absence of our parents.