Hello! It’s me—Naomi.
I am in—well, that place. I am recording with my camera.
I will call you again, Lena.
I hope—I hope you are well.
Not able to bring herself to say, even in a rushed murmur—I love you.
AT 1183 HOWARD AVENUE, painted a cheery canary-yellow and decorated with colorful cutouts of cartoon animals, was the PEONY CHRISTIAN DAYCARE CENTER.
Naomi sat for a moment in the rented Nissan. Her brain felt as if a black wing had brushed over it.
“A daycare center . . .”
She thought—But he died here. In the driveway, here.
She would have to record what she found. The camera eye is neutral and unjudging.
The driveway beside the Peony Christian Daycare Center was cracked, and in cracks grew small hardy weeds like lace. There was no sign of blood in this ordinary setting, no sign of death. Too many days, years, weather had intervened.
In the camera eye, the very ordinariness of the scene would comprise a mystery. Why are we looking at this?
The neighborhood itself was hard to describe. Part-commercial, part-residential. A sprawling lumberyard on one side of Howard Avenue, a block of bungalows in tiny grassless lots on the other. A single large clapboard house with turrets and bay windows partitioned into apartments calling itself Howard Manor: Apt’s For Rent.
Peony Christian Daycare Center had a slapdash homemade look. Bright red letters painted by hand on the yellow background. The cartoon animals were clearly hand-crafted, and had large friendly brown eyes. There were no signs to indicate that the day care center was Christian. The atmosphere was lively, noisy. If you lived in the neighborhood you might smile seeing the bright primary colors every day or you might be discomforted, annoyed by such resolute and unwavering cheeriness.
Vehicles were parked at the rear of the single-story canary-yellow building. Mothers were arriving with very young children. It was a warm September morning: a number of the children and child-care staff were outside, in a small playground.
Cries of young children, laughter and excitement.
Seeing the children in the makeshift playground Naomi found herself smiling.
Nobody’s baby wants to die.
It was life always that would prevail. That was the singular lesson beside which all others are diminished.
“Hello!”—Naomi introduced herself to a harried-looking but friendly woman named Diana in jeans and knitted smock who told her yes, they were aware that the previous tenant of the building had been a women’s center but no, they had not actually seen the center because the building had been vacant for several years before they’d acquired it. And they didn’t know anyone who’d been associated with the Women’s Center.
“‘The Broome County Women’s Center’—has it moved to another location?”
“No. I think it was just shut down. Let me ask—” Diana turned to an older co-worker who provided the information that so far as she knew the women’s center had been absorbed into the hospital on East Avenue.
“There’s radiology there—mammograms. There’s doctors, physical therapy, classes in yoga, Pilates. Do you need directions?”
Naomi thanked her, no.
Naomi asked if they knew why the Women’s Center had been shut down and the women exchanged glances and said vaguely that they’d heard there had been “trouble”—“picketers.”
“You’d never heard that there were murders at the center? Because it was an abortion clinic?”
She’d spoken too bluntly. Belatedly she realized.
It was not the way of Muskegee Falls, Ohio, to speak so bluntly of ugly matters. Ugly local matters. Seeing the camera in her hands, the slant of the baseball cap on her head, the Peony Christian Daycare women looked uneasy. Vaguely they shook their heads, no.
Naomi wondered: no, they knew nothing of what had happened; or no, they did not want to talk about it.
She told them that the Center had provided other services beside abortions for women and girls but it had been under attack from pro-life protesters in the late 1990s and in November 1999 two men had been shot down in the driveway . . .
Diana said, pained: “Excuse me, are you a journalist?”
They were staring at her camera. They were staring at her, and they were not smiling now.
Naomi said: “No. I’m not a journalist.”
A young child came to pluck at Diana’s arm. “In a minute, Billy! Be right there.”
Naomi relented. She did not want to detain them further.
She did not want to upset these women, or annoy them, or harass them. She did not want to inflict upon them what they did not wish to hear on this mild dry September morning in 2011.
She said: “Your day care center looks wonderful. It must be great fun, and very rewarding . . .”
“Yes. It is.”
“ . . .hard work, but . . .”
“ . . .very rewarding.”