A Book of American Martyrs(49)

Then we saw, on the sidewalk in front of the Center, a dozen or more people (men, women) standing oddly still, with picket signs resting on their shoulders. We could not see the words on the picket signs, or the pictures—(for some picket signs bore pictures). Several of the picketers also held what appeared to be bead necklaces in their hands, which one day I would know to be rosaries. These individuals seemed to come alive, seeing us. Quickly our mother said, “Ignore them! Please. Do not look at them.”

Hurriedly we crossed the lot slantwise toward the front door of the Center, to avoid passing too near these strangers. Even so, Darren stared insolently at them. His boy’s face, subtly blemished as if wind-or sunburnt, was taut with a kind of mortified and indignant shock; his eyes gave no sign of seeing. Frightened Melissa, and frightened Naomi, willing to be commanded by their mother, hurried along pulled by her and made no attempt to see.

The picketers called after us—but we did not hear.

We are praying for you. God bless you!

God forgives you.

God loves you.

These were nonsensical words, truly we did not hear. Naomi resisted the powerful instinct to shove fingers into her mouth and to suck, which helped to not-hear.

Those beautiful children have been born—they are blessed of God!

Pray for all children—blessed of God!

The heavy metallic front doors of the Center were locked and were windowless also. On the much-painted cement walls beside the doors you could see shadow-shapes of words scrawled beneath the paint, but you could not read the words.

Other shapes, spidery and spiky, might’ve been swastikas. A small calm voice warned me—Don’t look closely, Naomi.

Often this voice came to me, at such times when I felt like one making her way across a raised platform that is very narrow, the width of a plank. The warning is Don’t look closely, you will fall. This voice had first slipped into my head at the time of the white box.

Is it strange, the voice addressed Naomi?—as if Naomi herself were not the source of the voice?

I have not asked any psychologist, therapist, or doctor if such a voice is “normal”—or if it is a kind of low-mimetic schizophrenia. For truly I don’t hear the voice, it is more as if I feel it.

Sometimes you feel vibrations in your skull, along your spine. The tingling of nerve-endings. Without such nerves, there is no pain—without pain, there is no consciousness.

And did I know, at age ten, what a swastika was, and what a swastika meant? I did not.

Though very possibly, Darren knew.

We were quiet now. Our mother had ceased her bright nervous chatter as she rang a buzzer beside the front door. How badly we wanted not to be here!

The picketers continued to call to us, as one might call to stray dogs for whom they had little hope—Hello? Here! Listen—please. God bless. There must have been a rule, a law, something regulated, that forbade the picketers from following us up the walk, to the front door of the Huron County Woman’s Center, but our mother was uneasy, glancing over her shoulder as if she feared the picketers might rush at us. She fumbled to ring the buzzer another time. And again, when there was no response from inside, she rang the buzzer. How awful this was! Our father worked here.

A sensation of dread rose in my chest, I could not bring myself to look at my brother and to see in his pinched face how he was vindicated—We should not have come here! This is a mistake.

At last the heavy door was opened by an agitated-looking woman in a white nurse’s uniform who told us she was sorry, the Center was closed. Our mother protested, “‘Closed’? You can’t be closed! Your hours are nine to five. Has something happened?”

“The Center will be open again later this afternoon . . . We are seeing no new clients right now, only just people with appointments.”

“I’m not a ‘client’—I’m not here about a procedure. I’m Dr. Voorhees’s wife, he’s expecting me.”

It was gratifying, it was miraculous, how the words I’m Dr. Voorhees’s wife opened the door to us, that had been virtually shut in our faces.

In any case our mother was pushing her way inside—“And these are Dr. Voorhees’s children. Excuse us!”

Another staff person, also in a white uniform, came to see what our mother wanted; to this woman, in a nervous belligerent voice, our mother identified herself another time, as well as us—“These are Dr. Voorhees’s children. He’s expecting us.”

The white-uniformed women were trying to explain to our mother that Dr. Voorhees was “very busy” right now, but they would tell him that she was here, and waiting for him. Our mother said anxiously, “But has something happened? Is anyone—hurt? Why are you closed in the middle of the day?”

“Dr. Voorhees will tell you—”

“He’s all right? Is everyone—all right? What happened? Is it safe in here?”

So my mother questioned the nurses, who did not know how to answer her, and who may not have known the answers to her questions. There seemed to us children of Dr. Voorhees nowhere to go: forward or back.

Yet, we could not go back. Our mother was tugging us forward.

Sick with dread we followed her farther inside the building. The sleek dark thick braid between her shoulder blades, the uplifted high-held head. There was an odor here of something sharp and disinfectant like the clear-liquid ammonia with which our mother wiped our insect bites and minor injuries before putting on bandages, that made us feel like choking.