A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She would not take the school bus with her young sister Anita and her young brother Noah. She preferred to walk to her school—two miles each way. Her hard hoof-feet bore her urgently forward. Her muscled thighs grew ever harder, stronger. And as she walked, she prayed. Each step—right step, left step—and each step a prayer. And each square of pavement a prayer. (But she must never step on cracks in the sidewalk, that nullified all the prayers preceding.) Approaching the new school which was Mad River Junction Middle School she dared not look up (to see who might be watching her) but had to concentrate fiercely on the pavement riddled with a network of cracks. For even the smallest crack had the power of nullification and mockery of the Lord.

  Ringing bells in the corridors hurt her ears. Here too was mockery if you listened closely.

  The first day at the new school she’d had to go alone. For Edna Mae had to take the younger children to the elementary school and Aunt Mary Kay had to work at Walmart—her workday began at 4:00 A.M. in the stockroom. Of course Dawn Dunphy was registered at the new school—(Aunt Mary Kay had seen to that)—so it was just a matter of returning to the school on a Monday morning. But something like a hawk’s talons gripped her heart, icy-cold, soon as she pushed inside the front door of the building, so she had to turn back blindly, and flee; and the next day she got a little farther, to the doorway of the “homeroom” to which she’d been assigned, and then again she had to flee, for she could not breathe; but the third day she managed to get inside the room, staring at the floor, panting and shivering, and the homeroom teacher known to her as Miss Schine spoke gently to her—“You are—Dawn? Dawn Dunphy? Welcome!”

  THEIR EYES like broken glass. She could feel the small shallow cuts in her skin oozing blood.

  “OK if I sit here?”

  “Actually no. It is not OK.”

  Stiffly she smiled. Felt the hot blood rush into her face and knew that her distress was visible and that they would laugh all the more at her, still she smiled for that was Jesus’s way.

  “There’s plenty of seats over there. See?”

  “OK. Thanks.”

  Thanks! Now the eyes laughed, for this was such a craven reply. Her face aflame she turned blindly, and went to another table where boys had sprawled amid a greasy clutter of paper bags, paper plates, glistening patches of wet. Hyena laughter and moans of strangulated hilarity. And here too eyes shifted upon her but these were not sharp cutting eyes of the girls, sly and sidelong; these were blunt, thrilled.

  “Hiya. You gonna sit with us, Daw-en?”

  Daw-en was Miss Schine’s way of pronouncing her name. Daw-en Dun-phy a way of such extreme care, caution and frank unease it had become a joke.

  “We ain’t gonna bite, Daw-en.”

  They laughed. Like snarling dogs they bared and snapped their teeth.

  She sat. Blindly pulled out a chair, sat. There was a roaring in her ears. She dared not approach another table. But not facing the boys, and not exactly at the table. Just a corner of the sticky Formica top where she could remove her lunch from the crinkly paper bag, unfold the waxed paper, lift out the sandwiches she had prepared for herself that morning—Kraft cheese-slices bright orange and smeared with mustard between pieces of white bread. And gingersnap cookies cracked and broken and yet delicious. She ate turned from the boys in the hope that they would not see her. Ducked her head eating as a dog might eat, rapidly, almost in stealth, in fear that its food would be snatched from it.

  The boys were thrilled. The boys rubbed their hands over their bodies, chests, bellies, thighs, groins. They were ninth graders. They were big, boisterous boys whom other boys avoided. In her space at the corner of the table she ignored them. Jesus said I will not abandon you to your enemies.

  “Hey Daw-en.”

  She tried to ignore them. But she dared not provoke them to anger, she knew.

  “You gonna give us some of them cookies?”

  No was what she wanted to say but yes OK was what Jesus urged her to say.

  She didn’t smile. Her forehead was creased. Yet she passed the gingersnaps to the boys, all of the gingersnaps but one, which was the worst-cracked and crumbling, which she kept for herself.

  Billy Beams devoured a cookie with smacking lips. He was grinning foolishly, though he was (it seemed) just a little contrite, that Dawn Dunphy had given him a gingersnap cookie so willingly.

  “Billy Beams” was the name she believed was the boy’s name. She had only heard the name spoken aloud in classes, she had never seen it written.

  Billy Beams was in ninth grade and old for ninth grade by a year or two. He’d been kept back and now his friends were younger boys.

  “You’d be good-looking, Daw-en Dun-phy—y’know how?”

  She did not want to know. She was part-turned from the boys, and preparing to escape. Hoping that they would decide to leave first for the bell for one o’clock was about to ring.

  The boys were laughing loudly. Had Billy Beams said something she hadn’t heard? She did not want to turn to him. She was preparing to jump to her feet, and run away; but Jesus urged her to remain just another minute, to show that she wasn’t afraid.

  Billy Beams had snatched up a paper bag, holding it upside-down, and pretending to lower it over Dawn’s head, so the boys laughed even louder, and Dawn shrank away in embarrassment.

  “—that’s how, Dun-phy.”

  Her face aflame she jumped to her feet, clumsily knocking the chair aside. It was all she could do, to run from the cafeteria. She did not glance back at the boys who were hooting and hollering and Billy Beams was the loudest and the crudest and where Jesus should have been, close beside her to console her, to murmur in her ear, Dawn realized there was no one.

  MISS SCHINE was Penelope Schine, she’d discovered.

  No idea how “Pen-el-op-e” was pronounced but it seemed to her a very beautiful name like something in a song.

  Miss Schine was taller than Dawn Dunphy by maybe an inch but her waist was half Dawn Dunphy’s waist (it looked like!) and her face was long and slender and her eyes warmly friendly eyes that “lit up” in laughter: Miss Schine might tease you, but it was a gentle teasing not the hurtful teasing of other teachers.

  Was Miss Schine pretty? Dawn thought so!

  Hearing others say Miss Schine was horse-faced and her fine, flyaway hair real weird but Dawn thought that Miss Schine was very pretty and her hair that was a muted shade of brown mixed with darker and lighter hairs you could see glittering in the sun when Miss Schine went to the window by the blackboard to stand—Miss Schine’s hair was fascinating to Dawn. And her voice like something liquid shining with light.

  “Good morning, Dawn! Beautiful day isn’t it!”

  What was nice about Miss Schine was, if she asked you a question, you didn’t need to answer except with a quick little nod of the head to indicate yes. For it was like Miss Schine was talking for you, you could participate in talking with Miss Schine by just listening and nodding yes or murmuring yeh, OK. And sometimes Miss Schine sounded so smart and so happy! Just listening to Miss Schine made you feel smart and happy, too.

  SOON THEN WORD CAME to them there was to be a second trial.

  A second time The People of the State of Ohio v. Luther Amos Dunphy.

  The children were told that this was good news. For Daddy could not return home to them, it seemed, except if there was another trial to clear his name.

  This trial would be held in the Broome County Courthouse as the first trial had been held and the judge would be the same judge and the prosecutor would be the same prosecutor and the court-appointed defense attorney would be the same defense attorney and when Dawn heard this she laughed scornfully asking what was the point of a second stupid trial if everything was the same as the first?—and her aunt Mary Kay said with smug satisfaction, for she did not like her niece’s brash mouth, “Oh no, Dawn. You are wrong. Not everything will be the same. The jurors will be different—all of them.”

  COULD NOT BREATHE. Could n
ot sit still. In the overheated classrooms her body oozed oily sweat and at the nape of her neck her heavy hair was damp. Her brain was awake but like a TV on mute. She saw teachers’ mouths move but did not hear words.

  It was soon after the news had come to them, that there would be a second trial in Muskegee Falls.

  This news had been in the newspaper and on TV and there was nowhere to hide.

  Photograph of Luther Amos Dunphy. Photograph of Augustus Dunphy, MD. Side by side like estranged brothers and each gazing somberly into the camera eye.

  “Didja know that ladies kill their own babies?”—like accusations these remarks leapt from the lips of Dawn Dunphy in the girls’ gym locker room or in the girls’ lavatory where some of the older girls congregated between classes. Eagerly, with a terrible earnestness, Dawn Dunphy proffered information no one wished to hear: “They toss them out with the garbage or flush them down the toilet, then.”

  And, “Didja know, a baby is up inside you, like right here”—(pushing the palm of her hand against her belly)—“until it gets big enough to breathe by itself, and it comes out? And sometimes a lady will kill it, when it comes out.”

  They shrank from her in disgust and in dismay. The girls with the cut-glass eyes and mouths smeared scarlet. And shyer girls, Christian girls like herself who knew little of what Dawn Dunphy knew and were frightened by her words as by the vehemence of an Old Testament prophet speaking a crude and indecipherable tongue.

  As they shrank from her not meeting her eye in haste pushing out the door to escape from Dawn Dunphy a wild anger and despair rose in her: “You don’t believe me? You think I am lying? You will find out, then—it will happen to you.”

  She had no idea what she was saying. Her tongue swelled like a demon-tongue, like (she’d sometimes seen) her brother Luke’s thing between his legs swelling red and rubbery-stiff like a living thing possessed by a demon. To Dawn’s chagrin these strange words that leapt from her, that could not be retracted.

  She was reported to the school principal Mrs. Morehead. But when the principal spoke to her Dawn was silent and abashed and stared at the floor between them slowly shaking her head as if she could not remember or rather as if there were something unwieldy inside her head which she had to shake loose, that it might resettle more comfortably.

  “Are you denying that you said these things, Dawn? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”—Mrs. Morehead spoke cautiously.

  You could not trust them, Mrs. Morehead was thinking. White trailer-trash.

  Dawn was very still, though breathing audibly. Mrs. Morehead perceived that the girl’s sparrow-colored hair had very likely not been combed or brushed in days and a shivery sensation came over her of visceral dread, that the girl’s head was infested with lice; and that a single louse would leap from Dawn Dunphy’s head to her, and infest her.

  Mrs. Morehead knew whose daughter Dawn Dunphy was. All of Mad River Junction knew of Luther Dunphy who had been born and raised less than seven miles away and had brought national shame upon this part of Ohio taking instructions from the Lord.

  “Dawn? Did you hear me? Please answer.”

  The words seemed to float upward harmless and mildly silly like the down of feathers.

  The silence between Mrs. Morehead and the girl grew strained. The principal believed herself to be something of a force for enlightenment and reform in this rural county of Ohio but she could not hope to reason with a “mentally disabled” girl though she understood that it was her duty to educate the girl, or to try, at taxpayers’ expense. What was crucial was to keep a discreet distance from the girl so no lice could leap onto her and scuttle up her neck to hide, nest, breed in her hair; and so with a seasoned administrator’s wary but hopeful smile Mrs. Morehead said, “Well. You won’t say these upsetting things again, I hope. Or—I will have to speak with your mother, Dawn.”

  At last Dawn glared up at the principal. Mrs. Morehead was shocked to see the flat yellow cat-eyes of derision.

  “It’s Mawmaw who told me these things right out of the Bible. They are true and you know it. Why’d she be surprised?”

  NEWS CAME that the trial had been postponed for three months! Luther’s lawyer had sounded elated on the phone so Aunt Mary Kay interpreted this as good news—“As good news as we can expect.”

  But why was it good news? Dawn wondered. The longer the trial was put off, the longer her father would remain in the detention facility which was equivalent to prison. So it was like Luther Dunphy was incarcerated at the present time, without an actual sentence. And despite the fact that he was an innocent man.

  OUR FATHER. In Heaven. Help us.

  Sighted prowling the halls of the middle school. Possibly she’d forgotten which classroom she belonged in. Which period it was. Which bells had rung. A tall girl with thick eyebrows beginning to grow together over the bridge of her nose, wide sloping shoulders, short-armed and -legged and with large feet. At the drinking fountain which was low to the floor she had to crouch, bending her knees; she drank thirstily, with a kind of abandon, knowing herself vulnerable to enemies at such moments, the expanse of her back and the back of her head unprotected.

  Penelope Schine went to look for Dawn Dunphy and discovered the girl sitting on steps at the rear of the school, midway between the first and the second floors, very still, staring at the sky through a window, dense deep dark-ribbed clouds like the hollowed-out inside of a great leviathan, that held her entranced. She’d asked to be excused from homeroom study hour to use the restroom but had not then returned out of shyness or obstinacy or forgetfulness and so Miss Schine approached her to ask gently if anything was wrong? With a shy duck of her head the girl said in a whisper that she was looking for Our Father who art in Heaven.

  Miss Schine knew of the trial at Muskegee Falls, and of the mistrial. She had followed closely news of the double homicide at the women’s center the previous year and she had heard that there was to be a second trial of Luther Dunphy. She felt great sympathy for the Dunphy girl. She did not like it that colleagues of hers had assigned seats at the rear of their classrooms to Dawn Dunphy because she was a big-boned girl, and a troublesome girl; they did not like to look at her too closely; they did not like to smell her. And so they’d relegated her to the very rear of their classrooms with the worst of the boys, and tried to forget her.

  Miss Schine asked Dawn Dunphy how she was liking her new school and Dawn shifted her shoulders uncomfortably and mumbled what sounded like It’s OK.

  Miss Schine did not ask Dawn if she’d made friends yet—(she knew the answer: No)—but Miss Schine did ask her if she was having any difficulties with her classes and if she thought she might need extra help after school—“Or during study hour. Which is right now. I could help you if . . .”

  When Dawn did not reply Miss Schine did not pursue the subject. For she saw that Dawn’s frizzy dun-colored hair was a mass of snarls and she wondered—did she dare to offer the girl a comb? A hairbrush? Would that be offensive, and insulting to the girl?

  A powerful smell of underarms lifted from the girl for Dawn Dunphy was not in the habit of bathing frequently, it seemed; and (possibly) the Dunphy mother did not “believe” in using deodorants.

  Or rather, the mother might not believe that a girl of Dawn’s age might require a deodorant.

  There were evangelical Christians in the Mad River school district who forbade deodorants as they forbade movies, radio and TV; most books including such classic American novels as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird; soda pop that was “colored” or “carbonated”; vaccinations and inoculations. The use of Tampax was “indecent” and “sinful”—girls and women had to use sanitary cloths made of thick cotton, that could be laundered.

  Penelope Schine recalled how at the start of the school year Dawn Dunphy’s mother had been one of several parents in the district who had objected to their children being vaccinated—she’d refused to be convinced by the school nurse and by Mrs. Morehead that it was ur
gent for her children to get shots, and that the shots were “harmless.” Mrs. Dunphy had said that vaccinations showed a distrust of God for if you resorted to such a measure, it was the same as declaring that you did not trust God to care for you.

  These parents had the right to forbid vaccinations for their children under Ohio state law. So, the children were excused.

  Fortunately, there had not (yet) been an onset of flu this year.

  Miss Schine deliberated: she would buy a small plastic hairbrush for Dawn at the drugstore, and give it to the girl next day in homeroom or after school. The risk was offending the mother, but this was a risk she must take.

  But purchasing a deodorant for the girl—this seemed more intrusive, somehow. Maybe not a good idea just yet.

  Next, Miss Schine asked Dawn if she was “feeling sad” about anything and if so, did she want to talk about it; and Dawn said, with startling frankness, that yes, she did feel sad—“My father doesn’t live with us now and we don’t know when he will come home.”

  Miss Schine did not know how to respond to this and could think only to say, “Really! That is—that is sad . . .”

  “He got arrested for something he didn’t do—he didn’t do in the way they are saying. Because it was something Daddy had to do. And they don’t let him out when it’s supposed to be ‘innocent till proven guilty.’ But that’s a lie.”

  Miss Schine was surprised that Dawn Dunphy spoke at such length, and with such clarity. It was the first time she’d heard Dawn utter even a complete sentence.

  Very likely, the girl was not mildly retarded, as her other teachers were saying. Miss Schine had looked at Dawn Dunphy’s test scores and wondered if it was test-taking that was the problem. Less confident students were made anxious by tests and performed poorly, thus insuring that, next time, they would perform even more poorly.

  Miss Schine was uncertain what to say. It did not surprise her that the daughter of a man who’d shot two men down in cold blood—in a public place—might yet perceive the father as somehow “innocent”; she understood blood-loyalty, family ties. Faith that is blind—the strongest faith.