A Book of American Martyrs(64)

She likes math! Especially since beginning seventh grade now that math doesn’t mean mere arithmetic.

But she has to grip tight. Grip the pencil tight. In a panic of falling.

For she can’t seem to comprehend certain of the laws of exponents.

Has tried, but cannot.

If the exponent is 1, then you get just the number (example 91 = 9) but if the exponent is 0, then you get 1 (example 90 = 1).

Why, she has asked, don’t you get 0?

For 9 times 0 is 0—isn’t it? Or, 9 multiplied 0 times is 0—obviously!

Yet, the teacher (who is not a mathematician but a seventh-grade math teacher) just smiles and says that’s the law of exponents.

Students are expected to memorize. Don’t try to understand.

But Naomi wants to understand.

It is maddening to her that the “law” is, if the exponent is 0 you always, invariably, get 1.

How can it be, if you multiply a number by 0, you will not get 0? Why are exponents different from multiplying when that is what exponents mean—multiplying.

Also, it is crucial to Naomi Voorhees to solve problems fast.

In-class math problems are a race. A frantic game. Whoever raises his/her hand and gives the correct answer first is the winner.

“Naomi—?”

She glances up. She squints. What is it—what does Mrs. Bregman want?

So absorbed has Naomi been in the blackboard problem—

112 - 3=

—so eager to be the first to solve it, she is not aware that Mrs. Bregman has gone to open the classroom door; that the school principal Mr. Cameron is speaking earnestly with Mrs. Bregman in the corridor as everyone in class—(except Naomi Voorhees)—observes them curiously; and now, Mrs. Bregman turns back to the class and is saying in a soft voice, yet a recognizably agitated voice, “Naomi? Can you come here, please?”

What you never want to hear: your name.

In such circumstances: your name.

Mrs. Bregman is a pug-faced woman who smiles too much but Mrs. Bregman is not smiling now.

Naomi fumbles to put down her pencil. She is reluctant to surrender the game to a rival!

In the margin of her paper she has been multiplying numbers but in her haste has (probably) made a mistake. Yet, she can’t risk taking time to check, for another student will rush to supply the answer before she does. (Naomi has two rivals in Mrs. Bregman’s math class: John Beaver and Alice Czechi. John is as smart as Naomi usually, but he isn’t quite so fast—John raises his hand just a heartbeat after Naomi. Alice isn’t as smart as either Naomi or John but has the advantage of being able to be more patiently methodical than either; when Alice raises her hand, she is rarely mistaken.)

Damn! Naomi’s pencil rolls across the desk and clatters onto the floor.

If she stoops to reach for it she will have to touch with her fingertips (at least) the scummy pool beneath her desk where a greenish-smelly excrement has accumulated, the sickness of her inability to comprehend a basic law of exponents, that maddens her, and makes her grind her teeth—why is it, 9 to the 0 power is neither 9 nor 0 but 1?

“Naomi—dear?”

Naomi is trapped in her desk—first seat, farthest row against the windows, exposed to all eyes. Her face is smarting. She can taste something like black sludge at the back of her mouth. Singled out so inanely, so stupidly, so unforgivably—dear. Mrs. Bregman has never called anyone in the class dear before! Poor Naomi Voorhees! Naked as if her clothes have been torn from her and her scrawny body exposed. A plain girl, a self-conscious girl, a girl with brown hair and slate-colored eyes; a girl with a pained smile and a girl with a sarcastic mouth; one of the tall girls in seventh grade with a tendency to slouch her shoulders to appear less-tall . . .

“Please bring your books and backpack with you, Naomi.”

Even worse than hearing your name: being told to bring your things with you for you will not be returning.


IN THIS EARLY PHASE of The Death of Gus Voorhees the wife of Gus Voorhees is not yet a widow for she is behaving in a way to demonstrate to her husband how capable she is, how reliable, how he can depend upon her, how deeply she loves him. See? I can do this. They have not stopped me.

Not yet a widow but Gus Voorhees’s brave and remarkable wife, Jenna.

Despite her shock she manages to telephone our schools: St. Croix Elementary, St. Croix Middle, St. Croix High. She is able to identify herself and to explain that there has been a family emergency. She identifies the children and does not confuse one school with another. She informs whomever she is speaking with that someone will be coming to take the Voorhees children out of school within the hour and that they should be prepared to leave at once.

Gus Voorhees’s widow has been contacted by Michigan State police who have been contacted by Ohio State police. It is urgent, they are saying, that Jenna and the children be taken to a safe house as soon as possible.

But first, Jenna calls Ellen Farlane who was Gus’s administrative assistant at the Huron County Women’s Center, their closest friend in St. Croix. Ellen! This is Jenna, Gus’s wife. Something terrible has happened to Gus in Ohio, we need your help.

She calls our father’s parents—of course. She speaks with our grandfather (in Birmingham, Michigan) but she is able to leave only a voice message for our grandmother (living in New York City, long divorced from our grandfather). Something terrible has happened to Gus, I won’t be here to speak with you, I will be going to him.