A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Since the vandalism committed against the Center this past summer, no parking was allowed on the street near the Center. The Center’s windows had been shuttered. There had been red spray paint on the walls, that had been power-washed away, or painted-over. Baby killers. Burn in Hell. I had not been involved in these acts committed by certain members of the Army of God whose names were to be kept from Reverend Dennis, for the Reverend’s good.

  At this hour, 7:20 A.M. there were few protesters. But there was Stockard standing on the sidewalk at the front, in conversation with five or six protesters, who had come to the site in a minivan, from Springfield. I did not know their names but knew their faces and knew them to be Catholics. In the way that Stockard spoke with them, and their deference to him, I felt again that Stockard had been a priest, and was not now a priest, and I wondered at this, but it was too late for me to inquire.

  I felt such anguish!—I had wanted to be a minister of the St. Paul Missionary Church of Jesus, and speak of the word of Jesus to all who would listen. But the church would not have me, and God too had rejected me as one who would spread His word.

  The law had been passed in Ohio some years ago, that protesters had to keep no less than seven feet from the abortion providers and staff, and were forbidden to congregate on the front walk or to block passage to the front door of the Center; but often, this law was overlooked.

  The Center would not unlock its doors until 8:00 A.M. and no mothers would arrive before then; when they did arrive some would hesitate to leave their vehicles until a volunteer escort approached, to help them past the protesters now crying at them—No! No! Don’t do it!

  And the familiar chant that echoed so often in my brain like an angry pulse beating—

  Free choice is a lie,

  Nobody’s baby chooses to die.

  At this hour there were no mothers arriving. But Voorhees would be arriving shortly. This, I knew with certainty.

  God guide my hand. God do not allow me to fail.

  It was decreed. It would not be altered. Those babies scheduled to be murdered this morning, would not be murdered if I could but act as decreed. And those babies whom the abortionist was to murder in days to come, might yet be spared.

  Waiting in my vehicle with the motor turned off. I had been sweating inside my clothes but now, I was becoming calm. At last, at about 7:25 A.M., the dark blue Dodge minivan arrived and pulled into the Center driveway. At first I could not see which of the men in the front of the van was Voorhees for there were two men, then I saw that Voorhees was the passenger, beside him sat his “escort” who was his bodyguard, one of the Center volunteers whom we saw often and who was particularly aggressive and defiant to us.

  In an instant, I was out of my vehicle.

  In the driveway behind the minivan, moving swiftly. Already Voorhees had stepped out of the vehicle. I had no difficulty identifying the man for I knew his face well. And I had no difficulty seeing my target for my vision had strangely narrowed, it was wonderful how God had narrowed my vision like a tunnel, or a telescope, so that I saw only the target, and no other distractions.

  Already my shotgun was lifted to my shoulder, I was aiming and firing even as the abortionist tried to dissuade me with hoarse shouted words—“Stand back! Put down that gun!”

  In the foolishness of utter surprise the doomed man raised his arm, his hand with extended fingers—as if to appeal to me, or to shield his face from the blast.

  And afterward over the fallen and bleeding man I crouched and my lips moved numbly.

  “God have mercy! God forgive you.”

  SOON THEN, it was over. On my knees I awaited the police.

  If I shut my eyes I can shut out voices as well. Crude and ignorant voices of those that know not what they do.

  Since that time it is God I am addressing and not humankind.

  Not those who love me, no more than those who hate me.

  If God does not answer me, it does not mean that God does not hear me and bless me as His soldier.

  Only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

  THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

  GUS VOORHEES:

  AN ARCHIVE

  ABORTIONIST’S DAUGHTER

  You must be grateful, he didn’t kill you.”

  MEMORY, UNDATED

  Why can’t we live with Daddy?”

  Because it’s dangerous to live with Daddy.

  “Don’t you love Daddy? Are you mad at Daddy?”

  Yes. I am mad at Daddy. But yes, I love Daddy.

  MEMORY, UNDATED: FLYING GLASS

  Her mouth was so dry, it felt like her tongue was all stitches!

  Black-thread stitches, she’d seen on her daddy’s forearm when the gauze bandage was removed, and the sight of it was so terrible, she shrank away and could not even scream.

  Oh what has happened to Daddy what has happened

  They’d said flying glass. Something had been thrown through a window, and there had come—flying glass.

  Sixty-six stitches in Daddy’s left arm, that was covered in wiry dark hairs.

  Sixty-six black-thread stitches so ugly, the sight of them penetrated her brain like shrapnel.

  Sixty-six black-thread stitches but Daddy laughed saying he was grateful for at the ER they’d told him it had been sheer luck that one of the three-inch glass slivers hadn’t severed a major artery in his arm.

  Shut her eyes tight. Had not wanted to see. Her brother Darren stared and stared.

  My brother memorized everything, I think.

  Of that life in Michigan, that is lost to me.

  I don’t remember anything clearly. Like shattered glass. You see how it has fallen to the floor, but you can’t imagine what it was like before it was shattered not the shape of it, not even the size.

  I don’t remember but if I write down a few words, other words will (sometimes) follow unexpectedly.

  “Her mouth was so dry, it felt like her tongue was all stitches!”

  “ROT IN HELL”

  After Daddy died our mother received letters in the mail or jammed into her mailbox or shoved inside the screen door of her house or (a few times) shoved beneath the windshield wiper of the car she was driving.

  It was a mistake to open such letters, she knew. And yet.

  So awful, she might fall to her knees on the (hardwood) floor clutching such a letter in her hand.

  Her face was a face crushed in a vise of pain. Her face was a face you dared not look at, the fear was you might burst into laughter like a silly child scared to death.

  Now you know what its like you athiest bitch. You & yours will rot in Hell.

  BABY KILLERS

  INTERVIEW(S)

  What do you remember most about your father Dr. Augustus—“Gus”—Voorhees?

  What do you remember most about your family life in Michigan?

  And where specifically did you live in Michigan?—Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Bay City and—one or two residences in Detroit?

  Did you always live with both your parents, or did your father sometimes live elsewhere? And if so, did Dr. Voorhees try to get home often?

  Did you ever visit him?

  How were his absences explained by your mother—(if they were explained)? Did you and your siblings miss not having a father you saw more often?

  How did you and your family feel, having to move so frequently?

  Did it interfere with your schooling? Your social life?

  (Did you have a “social life”?)

  Were your teachers aware of who your father was? Your classmates, friends? Your neighbors? How did that impact upon your relationships?

  Were you proud of your father?

  Did you (sometimes) resent your father?

  Did you love your father?

  IT WAS SAID—by your father—that your mother Jenna Matheson was the “ideal wife/companion” for him—did it seem to you, and to your brother and sister, as far as you can speak for them, that your parents’ marriage was �
�ideal”?

  Did your mother ever express regret, or disappointment, or frustration that she’d had to set her law career aside, to help further your father’s work?—to be a full-time mother and assistant for Dr. Voorhees, for many years?

  Was your mother a “full-time” mother—or is that an exaggeration?

  Was it known to you and your siblings that your father was a “tireless crusader” for women’s reproductive rights in the Midwest and in Michigan especially?

  Was it known to you that your father was a “crusader” for abortion rights?

  Did you know, as children, what “abortion rights” meant?

  Did you know that your father performed abortions?

  Did you know that your father had many enemies?

  Did you know that your father was considered “difficult”—even by those who were his allies?

  Have you read your father’s published writings? His (famous, controversial) address to the National Women’s Leadership Conference in 1987, in Washington, D.C.—are you familiar with that?

  “There cannot be a free democracy in which one sex is shackled to ‘biological destiny’ ”—are you familiar with this much-reiterated remark of Dr. Gus Voorhees?

  Do you or have you ever felt, as a girl, that you are “shackled to ‘biological destiny’ ”—or did you inherit a strong feminist identity from your parents?

  Is there anything you regret, from your childhood in Michigan? Anything you wish might have been otherwise?—(excluding of course the tragic ending to your father’s life).

  WERE YOUR PARENTS HAPPY?

  What was it like to be a child of Gus Voorhees?

  And for your mother—what do you think it was like for Jenna Matheson to be Gus Voorhees’s wife?

  Were you aware as children of the many threats against your father’s life?

  Were you aware of acts of vandalism, death threats, bomb threats directed against the women’s centers with which your father was associated? And how did your mother react to these, so far as you know?

  In the Free Choice movement Gus Voorhees has been called a “great man”—“a brave martyr for the cause”; but in the Pro-Life movement Gus Voorhees has been called, for example, by the conservative Catholic philosopher Willard Wolhman, a “thoroughly evil, amoral man”—a “mass murderer as evil as a Nazi war criminal.” How do you and your family feel about such extreme reactions to Dr. Voorhees?

  How was the news broken to you and your siblings, that your father had been killed on November 2, 1999, at the Broome County, Ohio, Women’s Center in Muskegee Falls, Ohio?

  Were you informed, at the time, that Dr. Voorhees had been assassinated by a lone gunman associated with the right-wing Christian organizations Army of God and Operation Rescue?—or did you learn these details at a later date, when you were older?

  Were you allowed—in time—to read about your father’s death, or to watch TV news or documentaries? Did you attend any of the several memorials for Dr. Voorhees in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Detroit?

  Was your father’s death a terrible shock to you, your brother Darren, and your sister Melissa? Did your loss draw you closer together—or did your loss have the opposite effect?

  Your mother Jenna Matheson has refused all requests for interviews following your father’s death—is this for reasons of privacy, for reasons of (mental) health, or is your mother preparing a memoir of her life with Gus Voorhees and is not inclined to share personal memories with the media?

  Where does your mother live at the present time? (Are you aware that mail sent to Jenna Matheson at any former address is returned to the sender as “undeliverable”?)

  Are you “close” to your mother at the present time?

  Do you (and your family) feel that a sentence of death is appropriate for the assassin of your father? Will such a sentence bring “closure” to you (and your family)?

  Dr. Voorhees was an adamant and outspoken opponent of the death penalty—are you?

  REVENGE

  God help me to be strong.

  Help me to be cruel like the world.

  WE WERE CHILDREN made mean by grief. We were children with wizened little crabapple hearts and death’s-head grins. You would do well, if you were a nice child, to stay out of our way.

  I SAID, WHY should they have a father and a mother? I hate them.

  Sometimes I said, Why should they be happy? I hate them.

  WE CONSPIRED TO kidnap their little wiry-haired dog who barked too much. We fantasized hiding their Airedale they called Mutt, in someplace where they wouldn’t think to look, and we would feed Mutt, and Mutt would come to love us. And Darren said if Mutt doesn’t cooperate we kill him.

  Cooperate how?—(I had to ask.)

  By obeying us.

  Obeying us—how? (I had to ask. I needed to hear my brother articulate what we would do, to feel the thrill of knowing we might do it.)

  By doing what we command him, stupid. By wagging his tail and loving us.

  It was exciting and alarming, to think (seriously?) of kidnapping our neighbors’ dog. For these were neighbors who’d befriended us—who’d taken pity on us, and admired our mother. At times my heart would stop, and beat hard and start again, when Darren stooped over me saying in his whisper-voice—What’ll we do? We kill him.

  Kill him—how? (Had to ask.)

  Same way I’m gonna kill you, asshole!

  And Darren would pummel me, and slap my face once, twice, three times, not really hard slaps (of which my brother was more than capable) but swift stinging slaps of humiliation, that left my cheeks burning and made tears spring from my eyes but I did not cry.

  It was crucial, I did not cry.

  Of course, nothing came of our plot to kidnap Mutt. Nothing came of our wish for revenge. We were too old to be children, in fact. You would need special eyes to see how grief was rotting us from the inside-out, stunted children, ugly troll-children it would have been a mercy to shoot with a sniper’s rifle—one, two.

  “EVIL”—“HEAVEN”

  Good news, kids! There is no evil.”

  This was the way he talked. Sometimes.

  Went on to assure us there’s no Devil, no Satan, no Hell.

  There is—(maybe)—Heaven but it isn’t anywhere far away or anything special.

  And we demanded to know, why isn’t Heaven anything special?

  (You always hear of Heaven being so special.)

  And Daddy said, because Heaven is just two things: human love, and human patience.

  And all love is, is patience. Taking time. Focusing, and taking time. That’s love.

  This was disappointing to us! This was not anything we wanted to hear. We were too young to have a clue how special human love and human patience were, how rare and fleeting, and if Daddy might be laughing at us, you could never tell if Daddy was serious or laughing or serious-laughing, both at once.

  The last time at Katechay Island.

  No premonition. Not a clue.

  AT THE SHORE at Katechay Island, on Wild Fowl Bay (an inlet of Saginaw Bay/Lake Huron). Not the sandy beach where people swam in warm weather but the farther beach which was coarse and pebbly and the sand dunes were hard-packed and cold even in the sun. The beach there was littered with kelp, rotted pieces of wood, long-rotted little fish and bodies of birds, scattered bones. It was a blinding-bright day to be near the water, a cold day, and a windy day, so that the water was like something shaken, sharp as tinfoil, and there was nowhere for your eye to remain, always the water was changing, and if you looked too hard, the sight of it was hurtful.

  It was a hike along the shore, that last hike that no one knew was last. A two-point-five-mile hike, Daddy said.

  On our hikes Daddy would announce the distance, going and returning. For some of us were not such strong hikers as others. Some of us had to be assured, Daddy would pick us up in his arms and carry us back, if our legs grew tired, if our knees buckled.

  For Daddy always assured with a wink: Nobody’s goin
g to be abandoned.

  Gus Voorhees was a doctor, he favored precision. Blood tests, scans of internal organs, X-rays and MRIs. Not-knowing is not a virtue, you may pay for not-knowing with your life.

  Kids, always remember: Ignorance is not bliss.

  If he asked you a question, you must give a precise answer. You must not mumble vaguely, and you must meet his eye.

  Hey. Look up. Look here.

  Daddy was naturally a smiler. So when Daddy did not smile, you knew it.

  Out of breath trying to keep up with Daddy! Sand-dune hills and little ravines, that disintegrated when we stepped near them, and pulled at our feet. Wind rushing against our faces, sucking away our breaths and making our eyes water foolishly as if we were crying.

  Yet, we would keep up with Daddy. Naomi and Melissa, the little girls, determined to keep up in the wake of their longer-legged brother Darren, and Darren in the wake of Daddy who’d become distracted, forget where he was, stride on ahead.

  Oh Daddy!—wait.

  Wait for us. Daddy!

  This day, this hiking-day at the shore at Wild Fowl Bay had not seemed like a special day. It had not seemed like a day to be remembered and so, much of it has been lost. Like tattered flags flying at the lighthouse lunch place, at Bay Point. What the flags were meant to be, you couldn’t tell because they were so faded. Daddy had driven us in the station wagon from our (rented) house near Bay City, an hour and twenty minutes drive to Katechay Island where there was a cabin we could use, belonging to friends of Daddy’s and Mommy’s who had given them the key. Except it was the end of summer, already it was late September, and the air was getting cold, even in the sun. And if the sun was obscured by clouds dark like crayon scribbles, you were made to shiver.

  It was confusing to us, where Daddy had been in the weeks before this. For sometimes it was more than one place, and we could not remember the names which (perhaps) we resented, and did not want to remember. On this day, Daddy had returned early that morning from wherever he’d been, somewhere in northern Michigan where (as Daddy said) he was desperately needed as a consultant.