A Book of American Martyrs(43)

I was in a hurry, I hadn’t looked down. I missed a step. I fell.

My own fault I am so clumsy.





“A BABY KILLER LIVES IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD”


When these (mustard-yellow) flyers first appeared, stuffed into neighbors’ mailboxes and beneath the windshield wipers of neighbors’ vehicles, shoved inside screen doors, nailed to telephone posts on our block—torn, tattered, wind-blown—flattened against chain-link fences including (even) our own—floating facedown in puddles like mute dead things—we did not know for our excuse was We are children, we are not required to know.

And what little we knew we did not acknowledge for to know a thing is not the same as acknowledging that you know a thing, especially to your parents; and if you do not acknowledge that you know a thing, you are not obliged to know it nor are you obliged to remember it.

Darren knew, but Naomi did not. Melissa did not.

Not for a long time not for years Melissa did not.

And yet: Melissa we’d seen stooping to pick up one of the ugly mustard-yellow flyers from the rain-slick sidewalk near our house, staring at it, smoothing it with her small hands and staring at it, perplexed? curious?—seemingly not alarmed or frightened; folding it and slipping it into her backpack as if for safekeeping.


ALSO: small white wooden crosses pounded into the ground, in the night, in front of the clinic headed by Gus Voorhees that had to be hurriedly removed by staffers when they arrived in the morning which we had not seen with our own eyes and consequently would not remember.


AS WE DID NOT HEAR the chanted Our Father, Hail Mary!

As we did not hear the singsong verse like a lullaby gone wrong: Free choice is a lie,

Nobody’s baby chooses to die.





APPLICATION, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES*


Tell us about your background. Where you were born, where you grew up, your childhood and family memories. Why you want to attend the University of Michigan and what you hope to discover here.


BECAUSE IT WAS a story related to us many times. We were a family in Ann Arbor.

Because I was born in the university hospital in Ann Arbor, April 7, 1987.

Because we were happy then.

Because there are special facilities at U-M for students with disabilities.

Because my father Dr. Gus Voorhees graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from the School of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and from the U-M medical school with a specialization in obstetrical surgery and public health. Because my father had expressed a wish that all of his children would attend the University of Michigan and it is my hope to attend in honor of him.

Because my father did not abandon me but loved me.


BECAUSE MY FAMILY is broken now. Because I am broken.

Because by attending the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, I will be living in the place my parents lived.

Because it has been related to me that my young mother pushed me in a stroller on Ann Arbor streets, on walkways and across the university campus when I was a baby. Because my young father carried me in a backpack when we hiked in the arboretum.

Because it has been related to me that we lived in a rented “duplex” on Third Street and later in an apartment building on State Street. Because it has been related to me that my parents’ favorite restaurant was Szechuan Kitchen on State Street where there were tables outside in a courtyard, in warm weather, and there, I would be seated in a high chair.

Because it has been related to me We were so happy then!

Because it was the time before Daddy was gone away from us so much.

Because it was a time when, when Daddy was away, there was not a fear that Daddy would not return.

Because I remember none of this time clearly and what I do remember is the kind of memory you would have of a film you had seen only once long ago.

Because it is the kind of memory you would have of a film you had not believed to be important at the time while what was important to you was if you were hungry, and if you had to go to the bathroom—the urgency of needing to be taken quickly to a bathroom by your mother before there was an accident.

Such petty anguish, the (physical) being of a child. These are our first memories and we do not cherish them.

And so I am hoping that, if I am admitted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, I will remember some of the happiness of my lost life.


BECAUSE THE UNIVERSITY of Michigan at Ann Arbor is one of the great public universities in the United States.

Because my parents believed in public education and not in private education because my parents had faith in “democracy” which is not so popular today.

Because they had hope for their children. Because I am one of their children.

Because I am trying to understand—the responsibility of the “bloodline.”

Because my father did not believe in questioning what you know instinctively to be your duty.

Because my father Gus Voorhees enrolled as a freshman at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor when he was eighteen years old and it is my quest to discover how he became the person he was subsequently—if it is possible to know such a thing.

Because in a few months I will be eighteen years old.


BECAUSE THEY MET in that place—Ann Arbor, Michigan. Without that place, and that time, they would not have met.

My brother Darren would not be alive. I would not be alive.