Her mother had been very upset. Her mother had not wished to speak of this subject which had aroused the children’s curiosity since their father had joined what was called a prayer vigil in town in front of a building called the women’s center. Though their father was reticent about the purpose of the prayer vigil and discouraged questions about it in his way that warned you not to persist yet Dawn demanded to know more when Daddy was not present, plucking at Mawmaw’s arm, and would not cease until Mawmaw answered her.
You are in my face get the hell out of my face her brother Luke would say meanly to her for even as a young child Dawn had a way of leaning aggressively close, lifting her baffled perplexed disbelieving and indignant face into another’s face which (she came to know) was a wrong thing to do, a mistake that offended others, and provoked them to shove her roughly away yet in her astonishment often Dawn could not resist for it was imperative that she know, she must know; and so she was most demanding of Mawmaw (who was weaker than other adults) and would always give in to her if she persisted.
For at this time, Mawmaw was a loving mother. She was a young mother, not thirty years old. With her pregnancies she had gained as much as twenty pounds filling out her hips, her breasts, her cheeks. Her face was a plain-pretty face round as a dinner plate and the faint creases at the corners of her mouth were the result of eager smiles, for as a young mother, and a young wife, and a young daughter-in-law hopeful of making a good impression on her husband’s parents, Edna Mae was one aiming to please. Her skin was naturally rosy.
But she was a shy young girl. Even as a woman, she remained a girl. There were some things you did not speak of, not even between husband and wife, and certainly you did not speak of such things to your children, as you would not (comfortably) speak of such things to your own parents. And so now deeply embarrassed, not meeting her daughter’s eye, Edna Mae told Dawn in a lowered voice that the women did not actually kill their babies that had been born but rather their babies that had not yet been born.
“How’d they do that,” Dawn demanded with incredulous laughter. “Where’s the baby at if it isn’t born?”
With great awkwardness Edna Mae tried to explain to her that a baby was inside its mother’s belly before it was born. (For hadn’t Dawn seen Aunt Noreen’s fat old momma cat Smoky who was “bulging” with kittens half the time? It was like that.) A baby was inside its mother’s belly for nine months before it was born and at any time before that, it could be injured if its mother was injured or (Edna Mae could scarcely bring herself to utter such words) did something to herself, to her belly, to the baby in her belly, that caused it to die.
Dawn stood very still. Dawn heard these astonishing words without quite registering all of them, just yet.
Slowly as if she were groping her way in a darkened room Edna Mae said that—she believed— these mothers did not really understand that a baby was being killed. The women—(oh, some of them were mere girls!)—believed that they would be causing to die something that was not a baby but—(Edna Mae was unclear about this)—some little stunted thing like a kitten that does not have a soul.
This too was perplexing to Dawn. For why’d anybody want to kill a kitten?
Edna Mae hesitated not knowing if she should reveal that many people (including Dawn’s Dunphy grandfather up in Mad River) got rid of unwanted kittens—and puppies—all the time because, well—they did not want them; but she decided not to tell her already agitated daughter this fact, Dawn would learn all too soon for herself.
Edna Mae said that the women—and girls—did not want to be burdened with children because they did not want to give up their selfish lives and because (she thought) they did not actually understand that a baby is a living soul from God if nobody had explained to them.
Also, they did not want a baby for reasons of having to work, or for reasons of money; or because they were not married, and did not want to raise a child alone; or because they were not married and were ashamed to be having a child alone, without a father, or a husband . . .
“Wait,” Dawn protested. “How’d they have a baby if there wasn’t no father?”
Now Edna Mae was deeply embarrassed. She’d been glancing away from Dawn toward the kitchen doorway as if expecting that someone would step through and interrupt the exchange.
Dawn did not know exactly how mothers and fathers brought forth babies. From sly remarks made by her brother, and by other boys, she knew that there was something forbidden about it, that only grown-ups would know, and that it might be wrong to ask. But she had to ask her mother how a baby could be, if there was not a father. That did not make sense!
But Edna Mae was flushing crimson, and could not speak.
Dawn demanded, “Then why wouldn’t Jesus stop them?”
Edna Mae glanced again wincingly toward the doorway. But no one had appeared.
Reluctantly she said, “Well—Jesus stops some of them. The bad women. Jesus punishes them. After getting rid of their babies they are never right in their minds again, can’t have babies when they want to have babies, and are ninety percent more likely than other women to—to die of . . .”
“What, Mawmaw? Die of—what?”