“You see, Naomi. I wanted you to meet. I wanted to bring you here, to meet your ‘half-uncle.’ I am so worried what will become of Karl if—when—something happens to me . . . There is enough money for him in the trust, not much but enough, and I provide for him too of course, and there is my medical insurance from the university, and my life insurance, and my social security . . . I wire the money to his bank account, for his medical expenses . . .and his other expenses. Fortunately his rent in the ‘mausoleum’ is stabilized. But Karl needs a friend. A friend who will care for him, not merely admire him from a distance. A ‘blood relative’—so to speak. And so, I have brought you together. I am so sorry it turned out as it did, dear Naomi, I am hoping—you will not judge Karl too harshly? He is your father’s half-brother, and I know that Gus would have been concerned for him, and kind to him—that was how Gus was, he couldn’t help himself. The more impaired, maimed, ‘kooky’—(remember how often Gus used that word?—it was a favorite word of his, that used to annoy me)—the more sympathetic he was. And Karl was very taken with you, however he behaved today. In fact I think he behaved badly because of you—wanting to impress you. He’d said to me beforehand, ‘But I’ve never had a niece before. How does one behave with a niece?’ And so, Naomi—I hope you will forgive me for this afternoon, which has been so upsetting. But I hope—can you promise me?—you will see Karl again? You will not—abandon him?”
The taxi had pulled up to the curb. It was time to ascend to the thirty-first floor.
Quickly Naomi said, to placate the distressed woman, “Yes.”
AFTERWARD in the solitude of the white-walled room overlooking the nighttime city calmly thinking Not ever again. Not ever again, Karl Kinch.
“UNWANTED”—“WANTED”
This is hard to speak of. And it was a long time ago.
But now that I have begun to confide in you, dear Naomi—I think that I should tell you this.
In essence—your father was not a “wanted” child. He was certainly not an “intended” child. You might say he was, very emphatically, a “not-wanted” child.
When I became pregnant—more or less by chance—with my younger son, I was well into my thirties and established in my work. Out of a kind of excess of well-being, I decided to have that child—(though “have” is a strange term; I have always disliked the “having”—“possessing”—nature of the parent-child relationship, that is so fraught with a wrongful appropriation of the younger by the elder and more powerful)—though there was never the slightest intention of establishing a family with the man who was the father, or even with the child . . .
But the first pregnancy was a very different case. In 1956 I was just slightly older than you are now, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and I did not want a baby. Very passionately, I did not want a baby. I didn’t even like babies. I preferred baby animals. I did not want the father to know because I did not want to be dependent upon him. I believed that he would want us to marry, in fact he was a medical student and might have helped me but I could not involve him. So I tried to find a doctor who would help me terminate this pregnancy. I consulted friends, I made calls, I was referred by “friends-of-friends”—I was trying not to become desperate. I would call someone, and be given another number to call, and I would call that number, and I would be told it was a wrong number, but I was told to leave my number, and maybe someone would call me. Finally I had to pay seventy dollars to get a number to call, and after several calls I managed to make an appointment, and it was an actual doctor’s office, or maybe they were just renting the office from an actual doctor. There was a man, the “doctor,” and there was a woman who was his “nurse.” I had to pay them three hundred seventy dollars ahead of time, in cash. This was so much money in 1956—you can’t imagine! But I managed to get hold of three hundred seventy dollars which I handed over to them and by this time I was so anxious, so exhausted . . . In a state of terror I lay down on the examination table. The woman—the “nurse”—was giving me pills in a little cup to sedate me when there was a phone call, in the next room. I could hear the man—the “doctor”— talking in an excited voice, clearly something had gone wrong—I was starting to become sleepy but made an effort to stay awake. A panic came over me that the police were on their way to arrest us all—or they were going to kill me—or that I would bleed to death afterward. I saw the worried look in the woman’s face—I thought, I don’t want to be killed by these people. So—I told them to stop the procedure. I could not allow myself to fall asleep. I did not believe in God but the wild thought came to me—“God is sparing you and your baby. Run away!” And so—that’s what I did.
The father had wanted to marry me. He had no idea that I was pregnant. He’d said he was in love with me. Your grandfather Clement.
I didn’t love him but I respected him. I liked him. Our parents knew one another. Our wedding present from his parents was ten place settings of heirloom silver—Oneida, 1905.
So we were married, and Gus was born—he had not been wanted (by me) but he was born.
I’d thought that I would be bitter. I’d worried about post-partum depression. But I had no expectations about being a mother and so I wasn’t disappointed. I kind of liked the little guy. As an infant Gus was filled with life, curiosity, heat—his little body gave off a powerful heat. I devised little games for him to accelerate, as I thought, the baby’s mental growth. Clement was enthusiastic about this, too. I read to him long before he could understand words, I spelled out words for him on cards, I arranged a game in which he could pull a cord, and change pictures on a slide projector—things you learn about in developmental psychology. I’d insisted upon naming him Augustus, to suggest his great worth.
None of this was anything I’d expected. Everything that had to do with my pregnancy and with the childbirth and the baby was unexpected, unpredictable. I wasn’t religious of course, I was certainly not Catholic but reading Augustine’s The City of God had made an impression on me.
All the classics have had their effect upon me, I realize now. Secular, religious. Ancient, modern.
Through Gus’s life I came to love him and to admire and respect him though I did not live with him. Though I was not his “mother”—he was not my “son”—in the old way of the family.
Everyone called him Gus but I thought of him as Augustus—truly he was a special person. I never stopped believing that.
But when Gus was two or three I knew that I would have to leave him eventually. I would have to leave Clement. I stayed for years—eight years. I would have to leave my life as Mrs. Clement Voorhees. I would have to leave a house in Birmingham, Michigan. A doctor-husband, a child of eight. The Oneida set was tarnished in the sideboard—I don’t think I’d ever touched it. Being that kind of woman wasn’t my personality. “Motherhood” did not make my heart beat faster. Family life was like being trapped in a shell—a kind of turtle shell that doesn’t grow with the turtle but confines it, and squeezes it to death.
Yet, I loved the child. I loved Gus, that he was the person he was. I just did not want to be “his” mother and I did not think that it was necessary for his development and his happiness, that I pretend to be this person.
When I told this story to Gus—(he was an adult by this time with children of his own)—he was wincing and uneasy as you can imagine. He asked me what was the point of the story, and I told him the point is that abortion is what I’d thought I had wanted—absolutely. I had not the slightest doubt about this.
And yet, I’d been mistaken to want to be rid of the baby-to-be. Because the baby-to-be was him.
Bullshit, Gus said.
Somehow, in my telling, Gus had not seen where it was leading until this moment. And now—he could not think how to respond. What I had told him was like a blow to him that went so deep he could not absorb it.
It is not bullshit, I said. It is not any kind of shit.
I told him if I’d had access to abortion, to a sane, sens
ible, safe abortion on demand (which was his ideal as a medical reformer) he would not have been born. And don’t you think it’s a good idea, that Gus Voorhees managed to be born?
Gus brooded. Gus had no ready answer to this.
Did you not ever suspect that your mother didn’t “want” you—dear Gus? Wasn’t it obvious? And if she’d been able to “abort” you . . .
Jesus, Lena! You are certainly blunt.
I have not been blunt at all. I have been circuitous. I have told you a lengthy story in the hope that you might see a perspective not naturally your own.
By now Gus had managed to smile. A kind of a smile—abashed, somewhat dazed.
I hoped that he would not hate me now. I thought it was a risk I must take in the interests of honesty.
Finally he conceded, OK. I see the irony. The paradox. But still—women must make their own decisions.
I could see how your father was building his argument now. Arranging his words. For he’d been dealt a blow, and it had been a physical blow—now, he must elude the consequences of the physical blow by employing familiar words.
What is unfamiliar, rendered less profound by familiar words.
Saying, You should have had the freedom to make your own decision no matter the outcome at a later time. That is the fact.
Is it? There would have been no later time to contemplate you—you’d never have been born. Just—nothing. An emptiness.
You might have had other children, Lena. To take the place of the one you’d aborted.
But none of these children would have been you. And you are precious to me, you have acquired responsibility and stature in the world and have done inestimable good for many others.
Yet stubbornly Gus insisted, Women must make their own decisions. Their bodies are theirs, not ours. It is obscene for a man—any man—to tell a woman what to do with her body. To prescribe childbirth if she isn’t ready. Or will never be ready.
So—you think it would have been better if I’d aborted you?
(It was harsh to say such words. But how otherwise to make my point.)
Lena, there is no “better”—“worse.” It’s ridiculous to be speaking in these terms. If I hadn’t been born, you would not have known of me—I would not have existed. But others might have existed in my place, superior to me. We will never know.
If Gus Voorhees had never been born no one would miss him, right?
Well, I would miss you. If I’d known, I would miss you like hell, Madelena. No mother quite like you.
You can be sarcastic, Gus, but the fact is: you are wrong to think that because you have been born you are in a position to prevent others from being born.
“Wrong” in what way—logically?
Morally.
Abortion is morally neutral. What matters is that a woman must have the freedom to control her own body which means the freedom to make mistakes. At least, these are her own mistakes. And even if for some abortion might be a mistake it is not an irrevocable mistake, for most women can become pregnant again.
I agree with you, Gus. I don’t disagree. I believe that women must have their freedom as you do. Abortion is inevitable—there will always be abortion. It must be freely available, I believe this. And yet—there was just one Gus Voorhees.
Jesus, Lena! You’re being perverse. And you’re being too literal. We are concerned for all women, not just for you—or me.
It is not possible to be too literal, Gus. There was only just one Gus Voorhees.
“HAMMER OF JESUS”:
MARCH 2008–FEBRUARY 2009
First he’d seen her he hadn’t thought much of her. Hadn’t even taken in the fact (if it was a fact) she was female.
She’d just appeared one day in the Dayton gym. Late afternoon near 6:00 P.M.
Gray sweatpants, gray sweatshirt, hoodie. Hair cropped short like a guy’s. Not tall and body solid as a young heifer’s. Narrowed stony-gray eyes that looked damp. And a runny nose she’d kept swiping with the flat of her hand.
She was shy like somebody you’d discover to be mute—deaf-mute. Kind of clumsy on her feet. Self-conscious like she was worried people were watching her. (They were not. Not yet.) Asking if she could arrange for “lessons.” How much each “lesson” would cost.
He’d said that depended.
“Well—I want to be a boxer.”
Seeing him regard her frank and near-to-sneering quickly she added, “I mean—I want to learn to box.”
Seeing he still hadn’t replied, adding—“Then, I want to be a boxer.”
“‘Want to be a boxer.’ What kind?”
“The kind that fights fights like on TV.”
“A pro?”
“Yeh. ‘Pro.’”
He wasn’t smiling. He was a long way from laughing.
Thinking it was rare they’d be white, like this one. If female, they’d be black or Hispanic. Or what some of them called themselves—Latina.
There were “Latinas” at the gym. Came in after work, to work-out. Fleshy bodies, not muscled. Sexy-fleshy-female bodies displaying themselves at the machines, pummeling the heavy bag with sixteen-ounce boxing gloves until within a scant minute or two they were breathing through their mouths, panting. Red mouths, mascara, makeup beginning to run with sweat. A man’s nostrils picked up their special smell—perfumy sweat. Their fingernails were glossy, perfect. Nothing mattered more than the perfection of their fingernails. In the gym the guys could not not look and it was a relief, when they departed. No interest in actual boxing, even amateur, but sometimes they paid for “lessons”—not many. In the ring, sparring with an instructor, getting slapped in the face, in the midriff, on the upper arms not hard but yes, slapped—that wasn’t what these girls wanted.
Well, once in a while one of the Latinas would say sucking in her rib cage and smiling at him sidelong Hey Ernie, think I could be a boxer? Like M’lissa Hernandez? and he’d say with an indulgent smile like you’d smile at a young child Sure.
Soon then, she’d disappear. Got engaged, got married, moved away. It was rare that any female had a true interest in the body’s fitness. Their care was for how they looked, in the eyes of men.
This girl, he could see was different. Her face was plain like something scrubbed with a rag. Her eyebrows were heavy but her eyes appeared to be lashless. Stone-colored damp eyes and skin the hue of a tarnished winter sky or a porcelain sink covered by a thin film of grime. Could be eighteen, or twenty-eight. The kind of female that matures at a young age. Thick-waisted, wide-shouldered. Probably her thighs were large as shanks of beef and tight with muscle. Beefy at the knee. Broken fingernails and dirt ridged beneath. Couldn’t expect makeup to improve this girl’s looks in the ring and especially on TV where every blemish is exposed yet you could see (almost, he could see) that she might be attractive to a certain set of boxing fans who’d get off seeing a female of this type homely and stolid like somebody’s bitch-sister pummeled, knocked down, humiliated and bloodied by one of the rising stars in female boxing—that’d be some kind of sexual charge. Maybe.
Did he want to make money off that? He did not.
Still: someone else would. He could think of plenty.
Up to the WBA, the promoters. Don King.
You had to respect the clueless ones. Desperate ones. Male, female. Most were male. Most were black, from Dayton. This girl wasn’t local but had to be from Ohio, possibly West Virginia. The damp yearning eyes fixed on his face. Mouth reminded him of some kind of mollusk. Not-great teeth.
“You done any boxing? Ever?”
Shook her head no. Like the question was just a vexation like a buzzing fly.
“Karate?”
Shook her head no.
“Any kind of athletics? Basketball?”
Shook her head yes. Frowning to signal that hadn’t turned out too well which he’d already know seeing she was short in the legs and arms.
“Like, high school?”
“Yeh.”
“How recentl
y?”
“Few years.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Two-three years.”
Her reply was tentative, uncertain. She wasn’t one to remember dates precisely. But if this was accurate, it meant she was still young—not yet twenty.
“Why d’you think you want to box?”
“ ’Cause I think—I’d be good at it.”
“What’s the evidence?”
Staring at him with her damp stone-colored eyes. Evidence?
The very word seemed to baffle her. He could see her brain shifting, thinking like the old computer in his office where the miniature whirling rainbow icon was what you’d get when the computer was baffled.
“I—I’m strong. Pretty strong. I can lift heavy things—boxes, weights . . . I know how to protect myself. Nobody gives me any shit. I don’t back down from nothing.”
Seeing he wasn’t laughing at her but appeared to be listening she continued saying she’d seen plenty of boxing on TV. Her and her brother, that was mostly what they’d watched when they were kids. Their favorite boxers were Mayweather, Gatti, de la Hoya, Roy Jones, Mike Tyson—“Not how he is now but how he was then.” She spoke earnestly, frowning. As if he might not understand the distinction of Mike Tyson now and Mike Tyson then.
Also, she said, she’d seen some female boxers on TV—impressing him by knowing their names: Hernandez, Gogarty, Crowe, Johnette Taylor—she was sure she could learn to box as good as they did.
Now he had to smile. Not a mean smile but the girl picked up on it.
“They had to start out like me, didn’t they? How’m I so different from them?” Her voice had a sudden edge of belligerence to it, that surprised him.
“Depends if you’re that hungry. That desperate.”
She laughed, uncertain. Not sure if this was a joke.
Many things were jokes, she knew. Didn’t matter if you found them funny.
A Book of American Martyrs Page 51