A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Because I can’t let anyone know that I am pregnant, Dr. Voorhees.

  Because they would hate me forever. They would never forgive me for shaming them.

  Because I am not able to have this baby. Because I am not well . . . I am out of breath and there is a pain in my chest, sometimes I think that I will faint. There is diabetes in our family, I am afraid to have a blood test.

  I have never been to any hospital. No one in our family has.

  We do not believe in blood transplants—is that what they are called?—we do not believe.

  Because I am too old. I have had my babies, I can’t have any more I think I will die. I am so tired.

  Because I will lose my job. Because I can’t commute ninety minutes a day if I am pregnant, if I have another baby I will lose my job. I can’t afford to lose my job I will be evicted.

  Because the father is gone. Because he is not coming back.

  Because the father would kill me, if he knew.

  Because the father is married.

  Because the father has too many children already.

  Because the father would deny it, he would say that I am lying.

  Because the father would say that it was my fault, that I came to him . . .

  Because my parents would be disgusted. Because my father would never speak to me again so ashamed in the eyes of the church and our neighbors.

  Because I am too young. Because I want to finish school.

  Because girls who had babies who had to get married did not finish school and are not happy now. I know some of these girls . . .

  Because I don’t know how this happened. I did not want it to happen.

  Because it is the same man as with my sister. Because he is engaged to my sister. Because my sister cannot know!

  Because it is a secret, he said he would strangle me if I told.

  Because I tried to do it to myself, with an ice pick. But I was too afraid, I could not.

  Because I hit myself with my fists in the stomach. Because I was sick to my stomach vomiting and choking but that was all.

  Because there is no hope for me, if you do not help me.

  Because he is so old.

  Because he is too young.

  Because he went away into the Army. He could not come home.

  Because he lives right next-door. We would see him all the time and his family would see us.

  Because they would not believe me anyway if I told his name.

  Because they would believe him.

  Because one other time it happened, a girl from our church said it was him but no one believed her, everyone was disgusted with her and her family and they had to move away.

  Because I did not want to be with him in such a way but he made me to prove that I loved him. Because if I tell, he will never love me again.

  Because if there is no baby he will not know. Then he might love me again some other time but if this is known, he will never love me again.

  Because we might become engaged. If this goes away.

  Because nobody will love me again and I would not blame them.

  Because everyone who knows will speak of me in scorn and disgust. Because they will say of me, she has broken her parents’ hearts she is a whore.

  Because God will understand. It is just this one time.

  HE’D SAVED LIVES. Lives of girls and women.

  Girls who’d tried to abort themselves out of shame. Girls who’d allowed pregnancies to go full term seeming not to know that they were pregnant and in the very midst of labor screaming in denial. Pregnant women who’d avoided seeing a doctor though knowing, or guessing, that the fetus had died and that it was death they carried in the womb and not life. Girls who hid their pregnancies inside their clothes, tight-corseted. And their milk-fat breasts flattened against their chests. You would think it was 1955, or 1935. You would not think such terrible things happened any longer.

  Out of ignorance? Religious intolerance?

  Out of a wish to be good. And to appear good.

  Some of them were Pentecostals. There’d been two or three Amish, in rural western Michigan. A scattering of Catholics in the Detroit area.

  Some of the very young girls had been made pregnant by—stepfathers, or fathers? Uncles? Older brothers, cousins? They were too terrified to speak. They “did not know.” They “did not remember.” In the Crisis Pregnancy Center at Port Huron just before closing there came a distraught mother with her thirteen-year-old daughter who was three months pregnant showing a round hard little belly straining against her white cotton underpants. Scarcely did the mother listen as he’d tried to explain This is statutory rape at least, your daughter is too young to consent to a sexual act and the mother winced and blushed hearing such frank vulgar speech in the doctor’s mouth and the girl stared downward at the tile floor numbed and mute, stricken paralyzed by shame, pale skin, pale eyebrows and lashes, lank white-blond hair and eyes like an albino’s so he wondered if she might be legally blind, her eyes didn’t seem to focus upon him even when he addressed her in his kindly gentle fatherly voice. And he thought Is she mentally impaired? In frustration and fury thinking Dear God! Neither has any idea what has happened to her.

  In their religion (so far as he understood their religion) it did not matter if a pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, abortion was against God’s law. Abortion was a sin and a crime and a disgrace for it was the “slaughter of innocents.” You would not say the word aloud—“Abortion.” The mother had not once uttered this word to Dr. Voorhees in her rapid whispered pleading for help.

  He repeated what he’d said. And repeated what he’d said. For much of what he said to such distraught persons had to be said, repeated, numerous times. A dozen times. Statutory rape. Too young to consent. Must report. State law. Serious crime. This child has been a victim. And the mother cried No! Doctor please no it will be the end of our family.

  She was begging for the pregnancy to be “fixed.” She would bring the girl to the clinic in the night. She would pay what she had—320 dollars, she’d saved.

  And he felt such sorrow, he had to tell her No. Not without reporting this rape.

  And the woman was furious finally. The woman was furious at him.

  You will suffer in Hell, Doctor! Jesus hates you.

  And she took the girl away, and he never saw them again.

  ANOTHER HE WOULD NOT FORGET. N—— C—— gave her age as thirty-seven and begged him No one must know.

  Waiting for the doctor in the parking lot behind the clinic (in Saginaw) at dusk shivering and frightened telling him in a quavering voice that she was pregnant for the fifth time, she had four young children at home, she could not tell her husband who would want her to have the baby, it was the belief of their church that babies are from God, each baby is blessed by God, wept and pleaded with the doctor who was able to convince her to return to the clinic during daytime hours; and she did return, and signed in, and was interviewed, and examined by one of the young doctors, who estimated that she was seven weeks pregnant; she begged for the pregnancy to be “fixed”—and so she was given an appointment (with Dr. Voorhees: she had insisted upon him) for a surgical abortion, on a particular date, at a particular time, very elaborately the date and time had to be worked out for the woman seemed to have virtually no freedom, no time for herself; every minute of every hour of every day appeared to be prescribed; except on this particular day there might be the excuse that the woman was driving to Traverse City to visit an elderly relative in a nursing home. And so after several phone calls and two postponements (one of them within a few hours of the procedure) the surgical abortion was arranged for the latest possible hour of the day, that would allow the patient to recover from the ordeal of the procedure. And the woman came to the clinic white-faced but determined to go through with the procedure which took, including presurgical prep, hardly an hour. And afterward in the recovery room she was reported to have lain quietly enough, though praying in an undertone, and distracted
when asked questions by a nurse. But she’d been all right. She had insisted she was all right. And then, after about ninety minutes, she’d gone away.

  You would think, that was the end of it. But you’d be wrong.

  Twelve days later a bearded middle-aged man showed up at the clinic demanding to speak with Gus Voorhees he called the abortionist-murderer.

  He was a lawyer for the Methodist Emmanuel Church of Saginaw, he said. He had an “affidavit” from one of the church members, N—— C——, claiming that she’d been drugged and held captive by Dr. Voorhees and the medical staff at the clinic and made to submit to an “illegal operation” killing her baby. The family of N—— C—— and the Methodist Emmanuel Church of Saginaw were demanding $15 million in “damages” or they would go to the Saginaw police. They would go to the local newspaper, TV . . .

  Eventually, they settled for just $3,500.

  ARE YOU SURPRISED? Often, we paid. When reasonable amounts of money were involved and we couldn’t take the risk of a civil trial.

  You wouldn’t have known. Such settlements are kept quiet. But your mother knew, presumably. If Gus hadn’t told her, someone else would have.

  How many?—maybe a dozen, in all. These were spurious lawsuits initiated by plaintiffs like the Saginaw church, or individuals representing women who’d had abortions and when it was discovered, they claimed that they’d been “drugged” and “coerced.” For our firm—(be sure you get the name right, it’s Federman, McMahan, & Scapalini, Ann Arbor)—it was mostly pro bono—we have a longtime commitment to the sort of community medical care your father and his associates have been providing in Michigan.

  We settled with the Saginaw church though it was extortion pure and simple. We advised Gus not to go to trial, you never know what a jury or even a judge might award such a plaintiff if the “bereaved” mother gave testimony weeping and praying on the witness stand. There was a strong possibility a judge would have tossed out the suit but we couldn’t take that chance, given the rural judiciary in some counties in Michigan.

  Not the woman N—— C——, in this case. We didn’t think she was behind it. Someone else. There’s always someone else. The woman isn’t the one to initiate a lawsuit but someone who is using her—Follow the sperm trail.

  The one who impregnates the woman is likely to be the one who uses her.

  One thing we learned: a woman’s religion—(even if she calls herself a Born-Again Christian)—doesn’t seem to make any difference, when it comes to abortion. That is not generally known, and most people would not believe it.

  Your father was not vindictive. If he could, he turned no one away. He trusted people—too much, sometimes.

  He’d gone into public health medicine knowing he’d never make money. With a private practice in the Detroit suburbs, he could’ve been a very wealthy man. And he’d be alive now.

  Wait—don’t get the wrong impression, Naomi. Maybe I’ve been giving the wrong impression.

  For an abortion-provider doctor, with so many enemies, your father was actually sued very rarely. Malpractice suits are not uncommon through all medical specialties.

  He knew this. He didn’t complain. He had a great sense of humor, like an ancient Greek stoic. One of our friends knitted a sampler for him, for his office wall in Saginaw—NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

  Look, I loved Gus. I loved your father. But working with him wasn’t always easy. He took a great risk going to Ohio when he did, after the women’s center there had almost been shut down. He knew—or he’d been told—that there was a heavily organized anti-abortion movement in that part of Ohio funded by conservative Republicans. It was a political shit-storm he stepped into, he tried to pretend wasn’t there. And once he arrived in Ohio, he ignored everything except running the center.

  Gus never learned to delegate authority and at times he’d become emotional. He lacked what you’d call “nuance”—“diplomacy.”

  It doesn’t help to denounce a Michigan legislator as a “moral troglodyte”—even when it’s true.

  You know, speaking of Gus Voorhees at the memorials for him, writing about him, is not so difficult. There’s a language for that—the elevated language of eulogy. But this you’re asking me, remembering the actual work Gus did, the work we did for him, the crazy lawsuits, the extortion, blackmail, threats . . . It’s like Gus is in the room with me shaking his head, laughing. We came through a lot together.

  Was Gus Voorhees a “visionary”?—I don’t know, Naomi. I think he was an idealist who worked damn hard. Certainly he had greatness of spirit, magnanimity—more than any other individual I’ve met.

  But that brings with it a kind of blindness, too.

  Your father always assumed—(all evidence to the contrary!)—that his cause was so just, so sensible and so selfless, his model the social welfare states of northern Europe that provide free health coverage to all citizens and have no restrictions about abortion, that eventually everyone would understand. He seemed to think that even the “enemy” understood, fundamentally, and could be won over . . .

  Consider the Biblical Jesus. Not as the son of God (as the Biblical Jesus thought of himself, which we might recognize as delusional) but as a visionary; a man so convinced of his own goodness and the justice of his mission, he can’t comprehend that anyone might disagree with him let alone want to harm or kill him.

  Of course I don’t mean that Gus Voorhees was “delusional”—don’t look at me as if I’ve stuck a knife in your heart. You told me to speak openly and so I have.

  Your father was afflicted with the sort of blindness that some religious visionaries are afflicted. I wouldn’t call it “hubris”—he was never proud or arrogant. He was unknowing.

  Your mother understood, I think. Jenna always understood. But she couldn’t convince Gus—no one could.

  That there was a religious war in the United States for the hearts and minds of citizens—voters. There is a war.

  And in a war, innocent people die.

  JIGSAW

  Yes? Oh Gus! Thank God! Where are you?

  Our mother on the phone. Through the floorboards we might hear her, the lift of her voice, the eager-girl relief. If there was something craven in it, something desperate, we did not hear for we felt the same relief ourselves.

  Daddy! Daddy calling home.

  FLINT. BATTLE CREEK. KALAMAZOO.

  Bay City (south of Saginaw Bay, an inlet of Lake Huron). South Haven (western Michigan, on Lake Michigan). Traverse City (south of Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan).

  Cheboygan in the northern part of the state, on Lake Huron.

  Petoskey, on Lake Michigan.

  Sault Ste. Marie at the northernmost point of Michigan, at the Canadian border; to the west, Whitefish Bay (on Lake Superior), to the east, Lake Huron.

  Port Huron at Sarnia (Ontario), at the southernmost point of Lake Huron.

  Lansing. East Lansing. Midland. Jackson.

  Owosso. Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor.

  Detroit and suburbs: Hamtramck, Livonia, Ferndale, East Detroit.

  Grand Rapids. Saginaw. St. Croix.

  It will help to think of a jigsaw puzzle in the ovoid shape of Michigan. Square-cut or rectangular counties—placement of cities and towns—near-symmetrical arrangement of the major lakes: Lake Michigan to the west, Lake Huron to the east, embracing the thumb-shape of Michigan, meeting at the Mackinaw Bridge in the north.

  A jigsaw puzzle that was also a game board. And the piece, the single player, moved tirelessly about the game board.

  Often he called us en route, from an interstate restaurant, or from the house of a friend—“Hey. It’s me. Just checking in.” Always he called us when he arrived at his destination, and had checked into a motel.

  It is Michigan I recall. Shut my eyes and the map of the state surfaces like something glimpsed in rippling water. Though it was in Ohio that our father died.

  “LIKE A CANDLE BLOWN OUT”

  She was alone when the call came.
r />   Alone because the children were in school. Alone in the dingy clapboard house on Salt Hill Road in Huron County, Michigan.

  Alone, alone! Long she would recall the strangeness of the word, an echo aerated by melancholy vowels—alone.

  AT 9:18 A.M., November 2, 1999, when the call came she was alone because the children were at school in the small rural town of St. Croix, and because her husband was away in Ohio.

  We are living separately for the time being. But we are not separated.

  If you are curious, ask Gus. It was his decision.

  The surprise, the shock of the call. It is a stranger’s voice that will bring you the news to tear your life in two.

  Like an arm torn out of its socket—first there is disbelief, then a throb of pure astonished being, then immeasurable pain and gushing blood.

  That first instant, of disbelief.

  The soul crying No! No.

  She’d been alone. Always she would remember.

  He had abandoned her. He had not been with her, to comfort and console. To hold her flailing limbs, her body like the body of a twitching frog as the scalpel cuts the beautiful delicate belly-skin toward the beating heart.

  Oh Gus! Gus.

  CALM AND QUIET of the austere old farmhouse in the morning after the children were gone.

  After she’d driven them to their schools in St. Croix, and returned to the house alone.

  She did not mind driving the children into town five mornings a week—not so much. Between wintry fields where frost glinted amid broken cornstalks and ravaged acres of wheat. Overhead, circling hawks they were still excited to identify—red-tailed, marsh-hawk. And picking the children up in the mid-afternoon, when she might have errands to do, truly she didn’t mind.

  It was a time to be alone with them. When Darren could not drift off distant, disengaged.

  Melissa always sat in the passenger’s seat, beside Jenna. Between them was a (magical, thrilling) rapport Jenna did not—(she had to admit)—feel for the older children much, any longer. Though of course she loved Naomi and Darren as much as she loved Melissa.