“It’s this place—Saginaw. We’re not wanted here. We don’t want to be here.”
Mommy spoke in a hoarse whisper. Mommy was hugging Melissa who clung to her panting. There was an air of reproach in Mommy’s voice that meant Your father is to blame. Not me!
“You’re sure that something hasn’t happened, Naomi? To Melissa? To you? At school?”
I shook my head no. I was not happy at being wakened even if, in fact, I had not been asleep.
And what could I have told my mother? There were no adequate words.
WHEN I ASKED DARREN, Does Daddy kill babies?—my brother grimaced and said loftily that wasn’t what they called them.
I did not understand this. What was them? Who was they?
Darren said, Feet-usses. They call them feet-usses, stupid.
“SO CLUMSY”
Another time on the stairs to the gym at Saginaw Elementary South the big Biedenk girl pushed me from behind, caused me to fall and turn my ankle. Trying not to cry, the pain came so hard.
See how you like it bitch! Your old man’s a damn fuckin baby killer.
IT HAD BEEN an accident on the stairs. I would explain to adults.
I was in a hurry, I hadn’t looked down. I missed a step. I fell.
My own fault I am so clumsy.
“A BABY KILLER LIVES IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD”
When these (mustard-yellow) flyers first appeared, stuffed into neighbors’ mailboxes and beneath the windshield wipers of neighbors’ vehicles, shoved inside screen doors, nailed to telephone posts on our block—torn, tattered, wind-blown—flattened against chain-link fences including (even) our own—floating facedown in puddles like mute dead things—we did not know for our excuse was We are children, we are not required to know.
And what little we knew we did not acknowledge for to know a thing is not the same as acknowledging that you know a thing, especially to your parents; and if you do not acknowledge that you know a thing, you are not obliged to know it nor are you obliged to remember it.
Darren knew, but Naomi did not. Melissa did not.
Not for a long time not for years Melissa did not.
And yet: Melissa we’d seen stooping to pick up one of the ugly mustard-yellow flyers from the rain-slick sidewalk near our house, staring at it, smoothing it with her small hands and staring at it, perplexed? curious?—seemingly not alarmed or frightened; folding it and slipping it into her backpack as if for safekeeping.
ALSO: small white wooden crosses pounded into the ground, in the night, in front of the clinic headed by Gus Voorhees that had to be hurriedly removed by staffers when they arrived in the morning which we had not seen with our own eyes and consequently would not remember.
AS WE DID NOT HEAR the chanted Our Father, Hail Mary!
As we did not hear the singsong verse like a lullaby gone wrong: Free choice is a lie,
Nobody’s baby chooses to die.
APPLICATION, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES*
Tell us about your background. Where you were born, where you grew up, your childhood and family memories. Why you want to attend the University of Michigan and what you hope to discover here.
BECAUSE IT WAS a story related to us many times. We were a family in Ann Arbor.
Because I was born in the university hospital in Ann Arbor, April 7, 1987.
Because we were happy then.
Because there are special facilities at U-M for students with disabilities.
Because my father Dr. Gus Voorhees graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from the School of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and from the U-M medical school with a specialization in obstetrical surgery and public health. Because my father had expressed a wish that all of his children would attend the University of Michigan and it is my hope to attend in honor of him.
Because my father did not abandon me but loved me.
BECAUSE MY FAMILY is broken now. Because I am broken.
Because by attending the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, I will be living in the place my parents lived.
Because it has been related to me that my young mother pushed me in a stroller on Ann Arbor streets, on walkways and across the university campus when I was a baby. Because my young father carried me in a backpack when we hiked in the arboretum.
Because it has been related to me that we lived in a rented “duplex” on Third Street and later in an apartment building on State Street. Because it has been related to me that my parents’ favorite restaurant was Szechuan Kitchen on State Street where there were tables outside in a courtyard, in warm weather, and there, I would be seated in a high chair.
Because it has been related to me We were so happy then!
Because it was the time before Daddy was gone away from us so much.
Because it was a time when, when Daddy was away, there was not a fear that Daddy would not return.