A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Huron County Women’s Center turned out to be a nondescript cement-block building at the far end of South Main, in a neighborhood of warehouses, discount furniture and carpet stores, rubble-strewn vacant lots. The building might have been a small factory, not a medical center; it did not seem to be a medical center “newly opened”; a single-story building set back in a grassless lot, with oddly shuttered windows like great blind eyes. You could see—we could see—that there’d been graffiti on the sand-colored walls that had been crudely repainted and had dried in uneven patches like mange. Beside the building an asphalt parking lot was crowded with vehicles of the general type and quality of our 1991 Chevy station wagon: vehicles that would have drawn from Darren the adjective cruddy.

  Much of South Main looked derelict and abandoned. What a disappointment! It did not seem possible that our father Gus Voorhees whom we’d been led to think was a very special person worked here.

  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.

  Fluorescent lights in the ceiling were over-bright, blinding. My mother’s raised voice was all we could hear.

  “What has happened? Why are you all standing around? Where is my husband?”

  We were in a waiting room where indeed people were standing indecisively as in the aftermath of a crisis. No one was sitting: all of the vinyl seats lining the walls were empty. We did not see our father, we did not see any man at all. There were nurses here, or nurses’ aides; there were several women and girls in street clothes, presumably patients and/or their mothers—“clients.” One of the girls, who might have been as young as sixteen, was visibly trembling; another young woman was being comforted by an older woman, possibly her mother. The waiting room was like any other waiting room and yet—no one was sitting down. Our mother asked one of the women in street clothes (the one who looked as if she were a mother) what had happened and was told breathlessly—“We don’t know. They won’t tell us. Maybe somebody has died . . .”

  These words so bluntly spoken by a stranger. Only just overheard, utterly by chance. Maybe somebody has died . . .

  It was that kind of place—was it? A smell of disinfectant, a surgery. We knew that our father was a surgeon.

  You could not imagine what a surgeon did. You did not want to imagine.

  If the surgeon is your father, particularly you do not want to imagine.

  In this room, in this waiting room, no one seemed to know what had happened, not yet. If the staff knew, the staff did not say. The staff was concerned with calming the visitors to the Center—that was the task. T
here must not be hysteria!

  Our mother had other intentions. Our mother pulled us—literally, gripping our arms—gripping Darren’s arm, and Naomi’s, and so positioning the smaller Melissa that she was made to come with us, forced forward at a quick march—out of the waiting room and into a corridor, and along the corridor—blindly (it seemed)—or (possibly) our mother was being led by the older nurse, who had taken responsibility for her, and for us; for our mother had a way of demanding attention, despite her anxiety, and confusion, that made others defer to her. And now, suddenly we saw our father, who had not yet seen us: Dr. Voorhees in white cord physician’s coat, and clean creased khaki pants, standing at a waist-high Formica-topped counter where a package that had been wrapped in plain brown paper lay partially opened. Our father was trying to comfort a middle-aged woman, one of the nursing staff, who looked as if she’d had a shock of some kind, who had slumped in a chair behind the counter.

  The woman was ashen-faced, shaken. She was pressing a hand against her bosomy chest as if her heart pained her and she was breathing rapidly, and shallowly. In this emergency situation (it seemed) our father Dr. Voorhees was providing comfort to the stricken woman. He was speaking reasonably to her—he was calling her “Ellen.” Telling “Ellen” it was all right.

  Everything all right. No danger.

  False alarm. All clear!

  Whatever had happened, had happened within minutes of our arrival: now was the aftermath.

  Our mother had not dared call to him. Almost shyly she hesitated, and held us back as well.

  Seeing that others were glancing at us, our father turned to see us, and the expression in his face changed: surprise, and more than surprise.

  “Jenna! Jesus! What are you doing here?”

  “What happened? Is there—danger?

  “No! Not at all. It was nothing.”

  “Was it—is that—a bomb?”

  “No. It is not a bomb.”

  Yet there was the package, partly unwrapped. It was the center of attention, on the Formica-topped counter. Presumably, the woman named Ellen had opened the package. Or had almost opened it.

  (Had someone stopped Ellen? Shouted at her? Shoved her away from the counter? There was an air of heightened vigilance in the room as of disaster deflected.)

  The mysterious package measured approximately twelve by eighteen inches. It appeared to be ordinary—of course. Yet its presence had badly frightened a number of individuals.

  Our father came to us, and roughly hugged us, each in turn. He appeared dazed. He was trying to smile. What we heard from him sounded like You kids! Jesus! He gripped us very tight, and then released us. Though his manner was meant to be casual, and not agitated, it was clear that our father was agitated; it was clear that he didn’t realize how hard he squeezed us, causing Melissa to whimper. We could not respond to his embrace, for it was too tight, and then it was too fleeting; we could not breathe for to breathe in this place was to breathe in the sharp medicinal odor, which was repulsive to us. Even Darren was frightened, and Naomi was terrified that she would gag and vomit. Melissa whimpered with fear, so that our mother had to kneel beside her, and comfort her—“Melissa, honey! Nothing has happened, you’re all right. We are all perfectly—all right!”

  Our mother laughed breathlessly as if this was a way to convince the panicked child.

  Melissa whispered in our mother’s ear Did somebody die? and our mother replied with her startled breathless laugh Of course not, silly. Absolutely not.

  It was a scene of confusion. Badly Naomi wanted to be elsewhere to suck her fingers, and be still.

  Yet our father Dr. Voorhees was in charge here. There was comfort, there was solace, in the fact of Dr. Voorhees.

  Our father had positioned himself to block our view of the counter as he seemed to be trying to block a clear view of us, his distraught family, from his staff. With what startled and alert eyes, the nurses stared at our mother, and at us.

  Dr. Voorhees’s family. His children . . .

  Always, there is curiosity about the abortionist’s children.

  What was inside the package, the cardboard box, obscured by wadded newspaper pages, something small, mechanical, possibly an alarm clock, ticking?—we could not see.

  Irritably, nervously our father was saying: “It’s nothing. It’s a false alarm. Rhoda, clear the office—please take care of Ellen. Let’s get back to normal, we’ve wasted enough time.”

  False alarm. Bomb? But no, not a bomb.

  Nor did the package contain what the greasy white box had contained, that my classmates in Saginaw had given me.

  At least, we could not see anything like that in the box on the counter. Someone had shut up the box, stuffed in the newspaper pages. Should the police be called?—Dr. Voorhees did not think so.

  False alarm, no need for police. No need to call attention to the Center.

  We can handle this. Return to normal. In stride.

  And so within minutes, it seemed to be so: most of the staff had left the room, and the middle-aged woman named Ellen who’d been sitting down, panicked, light-headed, was dabbing at her flushed face with a tissue, joking of hot flashes.

  “Let me see that box”—inevitably, our mother would say these words.

  We had known, without knowing that we knew, that, being Jenna Matheson, our mother would say Let me see that box.

  And we’d known that our father would say sharply—No.

  “You don’t think that you should call 911, Gus?”

  And again our father curtly told her—No. The situation was entirely under control, and that was it.

  Our father escorted us out of this room and into another, smaller room, that was his office. Clearly he wanted to speak with my mother, and he did not want his staff to overhear.

  The desk in this office was heaped with papers, documents, manila folders. Aluminum bookshelves against the walls were crammed. Amid the clutter on the desk was a single family photo in a faux-leather frame—the Voorhees family of several years ago when Melissa had been a toddler, and Daddy’s beard had been darker.

  Strange to see us smiling so happily at the camera—including little Naomi with shy shadowed eyes.

  “That photo! I was wondering where it had gone.”

  Our mother spoke with an air of pleasurable surprise. The tension between her and our father had not yet abated.

  Haphazardly taped to the wall in our father’s office were newspaper articles and photos. These were mostly impersonal—

  Ohio Legislature Votes to Restrict Abortion Rights, Michigan State Advisory on Women’s Reproductive Rights Drafts Resolution, US Supreme Court Ruling Jeopardizes Roe v. Wade?—but there was a grainy picture of our embarrassed-looking father in graduation cap, gown, hood above the caption Controversial Abortion Rights Advocate U-M Alum Voorhees Receives Honorary Doctorate, Public Service, U-M Commencement.

  On a shelf was an upright glass rectangle commemorating an award to Dr. Gus Voorhees from the National Abortion Rights Action league, in 1992; on another shelf, partly hidden by a stack of pamphlets, a brass medallion issued by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 1995.

  Of our father’s public, professional life we knew little. While he was alive we were sheltered in a kind of benign ignorance.

  You could see that in the outer wall of our father’s office there had been a single window at one time, now bricked over. You realized that windows would have left the interior of the Center and the individuals within vulnerable to attacks from outside.

  “We’ll just wait here for a few minutes. We can shut the door.”

  Our father spoke expansively, like one who is about to clap his hands together.

  As if he wasn’t angry with our mother but only just relieved that we were all safe—and that the crisis was over—he seized our mother’s hand, and kissed it playfully; it was like him to squeeze our hands, our arms, run his fingers through our hair, stoop to brush his lips against our cheeks, to demonstrate
that he loved us, and that we were his. Such gestures of fatherly affection were purely physical, instinctive.

  Gus Voorhees was tall, imposing. He was thick-bodied, square-built, solid. His hair that had once been a warm gingery-brown (like the soft fuzz of Naomi’s teddy bear) was mostly gray and his short, wiry beard was a lighter shade of gray as if it were the beard of another man. The corners of his eyes were deeply creased from smiling, squinting, grimacing. In his forehead were odd, vertical lines and both his cheeks were lightly pitted, roughened. He had a look of being used, battered like a man who isn’t young, and has not the expectations of youth; a man you might trust, who would be kind to you.

  Not at all accusingly, only inquisitively, with a clenched smile our father asked our mother why she’d come to the Center, instead of meeting him at the lake as they’d planned; and our mother said, just slightly on edge, “Why did I come here? It’s a public place, isn’t it? Why should I not come here?” and our father said, keeping his voice even, and still holding our mother’s hand, that seemed about to escape from his, “Well. Sometimes things happen here that are unexpected. Like today.”

  “But today was unusual, I think?”—our mother asked; and our father said, “Yes. Today was unusual. That is so.”

  And then, after a pause: “You might have called first, Jenna.”

  “Yes! I might have called.”

  It was not clear if our mother spoke repentantly, or defiantly. She seemed about to say more, but did not.

  “It’s just that, this is a place where things might happen that are unexpected. Not often, in fact rarely, but—the unexpected can happen here. As it did today.”

  In the adult faces was a fever of excitement, as if each had caught the other in subterfuge. We children might not have been present, each of our parents was so captivated by the other, and by what the other might say.

  “I wanted the children to see where you work, I think. I want them to be properly proud of you, as I am.”

  “Are you being sarcastic, darling?”

  “No! My God, no.”