In the quivering flashlight beam the first of the babies was examined. For (as Reverend Trucross said) you had to determine if indeed the baby was truly dead.
Though it was clear, the poor thing had never lived. A tiny kitten-sized creature with a disproportionately large head. Its limbs were stunted, and one of its arms was missing.
Dawn tried to pull away from Edna Mae’s grip. Her heart was beating very fast. She was close to hyperventilating. Yet she could not look away from the tiny, dead baby being removed from the stained Ziploc bag.
In a quavering voice Dawn said to Edna Mae, “The babies are dead. They don’t know what you’re doing for them.”
(Where were Anita and Noah? Dawn hoped they were not near, and that someone was watching over them, for Edna Mae seemed to have forgotten them.)
Edna Mae looked at Dawn with disgust. “You are so ignorant! It’s pathetic how ignorant you are. Why do we bury the dead?—because they are dead. But their souls are not dead. We are honoring the babies’ souls, not their poor, broken bodies. For shame, you.”
“But—they never lived . . .”
“Of course they lived! They were all alive, in their mothers’ wombs. As you were alive, before you were born.” Edna Mae spoke to Dawn with a savage sarcasm Dawn had never heard before in her mother though (it seemed to Dawn) Edna Mae was trembling too, with fear and dread.
The volunteers exclaimed in shock, pity, horror. Dawn steeled herself against what she might see. Reverend Trucross was praying loudly.
“Merciful God help us. God who taketh away the sins of the world help us in our rescue of these holy innocents . . .”
In the beam of the flashlight another tiny creature was exposed. This one had been shaken out of the Ziploc bag, in which it had been stuck. It was larger than the first baby, fleshy, meat-colored, damp with blood. You could see the tiny curved legs, the tiny fingers and toes, the misshapen head. You could see the eyes that appeared large and were tight-shut. You could see the miniature pouting mouth, that had never cried.
Other babies appeared to have been dismembered. Their overlarge heads were intact but their bodies had been broken into pieces.
All lay very still on the ground. It seemed wrong to Dawn, that even a dead baby should lie on the ground.
Though the eyes of the dead babies were shut tight, tight as slits, and the faces shriveled into grimaces, yet you did expect the eyes to open suddenly. You could not look away from those eyes.
Dawn begged Edna Mae to let her go.
“Let you go where? You will wait for me. We are all going home together in the morning.”
In horror Dawn stood as Edna Mae and the others lifted boxes out of the Dumpsters with their bare hands. (At Home Depot, Dawn and her co-workers, unloading merchandise, all wore gloves. And if you did not wear gloves, your supervisor would hand a pair of gloves to you!) Some of the boxes were upside down, all were toppled as if they’d been dumped hastily.
Carefully the boxes were placed in the rear of a minivan in the alley. The plan was to bury the aborted infants in a consecrated cemetery a few miles away with a proper Christian burial, Christian prayers.
As Edna Mae insisted, Dawn helped stack the boxes. She could not breathe for the stench, and was feeling light-headed.
(Where was Jesus? Had it been His plan all along, for Dawn to help bury the babies?)
(He had not warned her beforehand. It had been a terrible shock!)
(Since the hammer with the black-taped grip, that had struck the fleeing screaming boys with such power, Dawn had come to respect Jesus in another, unexpected way. Jesus was an ally but you could not take Jesus for granted as an ally, it was that simple.)
In all, there were fourteen boxes secured with duct tape, retrieved from the Dumpsters. In each box, five or six Ziploc bags with aborted babies inside.
Thrown away like garbage! God have mercy on the murderers.
When it was time to drive to the cemetery for the burial Dawn begged Edna Mae again to let her go home and Edna Mae said sharply that she could not go home, how on earth would she get home, she had no idea how to get home from this unfamiliar city and it would be dangerous for a girl of her age to be alone on the streets here—“You are coming with us. You can take care of your sister and brother.”
Dawn saw how the others were watching her. In her nylon jacket with dull-silver threads, dungaree-style jeans both badly stained from the Dumpster. She was the youngest person in the alley helping with the boxes.
“Dawn, come. Get in here with us.”
Edna Mae was pulling at her, urging her toward the minivan in which Anita and Noah were already huddled. But Dawn jerked her arm away.