Black Evening (38 page)

You face a small vestibule. Sand has drifted in. An animal has made a nest in a corner. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. The pungent odor of mold attacks your nostrils. Hebraic letters on a wall are so faded that you can't read them. But mostly what you notice is the path through the sand and dust on the floor toward the entrance to the temple.

The peak of your skull feels naked. Instinctively you look around in search of a
yarmulke
. But after so many years, there aren't any. Removing a handkerchief from your pocket, you place it on your head, open the door to the temple, and find yourself paralyzed, astonished by what you see.

The temple — or what used to be the temple — is barren of furniture. The back wall has an alcove where a curtain once concealed the torah. Before the alcove, an old woman kneels, her withered hips on her bony knees, a handkerchief tied around her head. She murmurs, hands fidgeting as if she holds something before her.

At last you're able to move. Inching forward, pausing beside her, you see the surprising incongruous object she clutches: a rosary. Tears trickle down her cheeks. As close as you are, you still have to strain to distinguish what she murmurs.

"… deliver us from evil. Amen."

"June Engle?"

She doesn't respond, just keeps fingering the beads and praying. "Hail, Mary… blessed is the fruit of thy womb…"

"June, my name is Jacob Weinberg."

"Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…"

"June, I want to talk to you about Dr. Adams. About the clinic."

The old woman's fingers tighten on the rosary. Slowly she turns and blinks up through tear-brimmed eyes. "The clinic?"

"Yes. And about the Gunthers. About the nursery."

"God help me. God help
them
." She wavers, her face pale.

"Come on, June, you'll faint if you kneel much longer. I'll help you up." You touch her appallingly fleshless arms and gently raise her to her feet. She wobbles. You hold her husk of a body against you. "The nursery. Is that why you're here, June? You're doing penance?"

"Thirty pieces of silver."

"Yes." Your voice echoes eerily. "I think I understand. Dr. Adams and the Gunthers made a lot of money. Did
you
make a lot of money, June? Did they pay you well?"

"Thirty pieces of silver."

"Tell me about the nursery, June. I promise you'll feel better."

"Ivy, rose, heather, iris."

You cringe, suspecting that she's gone insane. She seems to think that "the nursery" refers to a
plant
nursery. But she knows better. She
knows
that the nursery had nothing to do with plants but instead with babies from unmarried pregnant women. Or at least she
ought
to know unless the consequence of age and what seems to be guilt has affected her mind and her memory. She appears to be free-associating.

"Violet, lily, daisy, fern," she babbles.

Your chest cramps as you realize that those words make perfect sense in the context of… They might be… "Are those names, June? You're telling me that the women in the nursery called themselves after plants and flowers?"

"Orval Gunther chose them. Anonymous." June weeps. "Nobody would know who they really were. They could hide their shame, protect their identities."

"But how did they learn about the nursery?"

"Advertisements." June's shriveled knuckles paw at her eyes. "In big-city newspapers. The personal columns."

"
Advertisements
? But that was taking an awful risk. The police might have suspected."

"No. Not Orval. He never took risks. He was clever. So clever. All he promised was a rest home for unmarried pregnant women. 'Feel alone?' the ad read. 'Need a caring, trained staff to help you give birth in strictest privacy? No questions asked. We guarantee to relieve your insecurity. Let us help you with your burden.' Sweet Lord, those women understood what the ad was really about. They came here by the
hundreds
."

June trembles against you. Her tears soak through your jacket, as chilling as the wind-driven rain that trickles through the roof.

"Did those women get any money for the babies they gave to strangers?"

"
Get
? The opposite. They paid!" June stiffens, her feeble arms gaming amazing strength as she pushes from your grasp. "Orval, that son of a… He charged them room and board! Five hundred dollars!"

Her knees sag.

You grasp her. "
Five hundred
? And the couples who took the babies? How much did the Gunthers get from
them
?"

"Sometimes as high as ten thousand dollars."

The arms with which you hold her shake. Ten thousand dollars? During the Depression? Hundreds of pregnant women? Dr. Adams, Jr. hadn't exaggerated. The Gunthers had earned a fortune.

"And Orval's wife was worse than he was. Eve! She was a monster! All she cared about was…
Pregnant women
didn't matter!
Babies
didn't matter.
Money
mattered."

"But if you thought they were monsters… June, why did you help them?"

She clutches her rosary. "Thirty pieces of silver. Holy Mary, mother of… Ivy, Rose, Heather, Iris. Violet, Lily, Daisy, Fern."

You force her to look at you. "I told you my name was Jacob Weinberg. But I might not be… I think my mother's name was Mary Duncan. I think I was born here. In nineteen thirty-eight. Did you ever know a woman who…"

June sobs. "Mary Duncan? If she stayed with the Gunthers, she wouldn't have used her real name. So many women! She might have been Orchid or Pansy. There's no way to tell."

"She was pregnant with twins. She promised to give up both children. Do you remember a woman who…"

"Twins?
Several
women had twins. The Gunthers, damn them, were ecstatic. Twenty thousand instead of ten."

"But my parents" — the word sticks in your mouth — "took only
me
. Was that common for childless parents to separate twins?"

"Money!" June cringes. "It all depended on how much
money
the couples could afford. Sometimes twins were separated. There's no way to tell where the other child went."

"But weren't there records?"

"The Gunthers were smart. They
never
kept records. In case the police… And then the fire… Even if there
had
been records,
secret
records, the fire would have…"

Your stomach plummets. Despite your urgent need for answers, you realize you've reached a dead end.

Then June murmurs something that you barely hear, but the little you do hear chokes you. "What? I didn't… June, please say that again."

"Thirty pieces of silver. For that, I… How I paid. Seven stillborn children."

"Yours?"

"I thought, with the money the Gunthers paid me, my husband and I could raise our children in luxury, give them every advantage, send them to medical school or… God help me, what I did for the Gunthers cursed my womb. It made me worse than barren. It doomed me to carry lifeless children. My penance. It forced me to suffer. Just like — "

"The mothers who gave up their children and possibly later regretted it?"

"No! Like the…"

What you hear next makes you retch.
Black-market adoptions
, you told Chief Kitrick.
But I don't think that's the whole story. I've got the terrible feeling that there's something more, something worse, although I'm not sure what it is
.

Now you're sure what that something worse is, and the revelation makes you weep in outrage. "Show me, June," you manage to say. "Take me. I promise it'll be your salvation." You try to remember what you know about Catholicism. "You need to confess, and after that, your conscience will be at peace."

"I'll
never
be at peace."

"You're wrong, June. You
will
. You've kept your secret too long. It festers inside you. You have to let out the poison. After all these years, your prayers here in the synagogue have been sufficient. You've suffered enough. What you need now is absolution."

"You think if I go there…" June shudders.

"And pray one last time.
Yes
. I beg you. Show me. Your torment will finally end."

"So long! I haven't been there since…"

"Nineteen forty-one? That's what I mean, June. It's time. It's finally time."

Through biting wind and chilling rain, you escort June from the ghost of the synagogue into the sheltering warmth of your car. You're so angry that you don't bother taking an indirect route. You don't care if Chief Kitrick sees you driving past the tavern. In fact, you almost
want
him to. You steer left up the bumpy road out of town, its jolts diminished by the storm-soaked earth. When you reach the coastal highway, you assure June yet again and prompt her for further directions.

"It's been so long. I don't… Yes. Turn to the right," she says. A half mile later, she trembles, adding, "Now left here. Up that muddy road. Do you think you can?"

"Force this car through the mud to the top? If I have to, I'll get out and push. And if
that
doesn't work, we'll walk. God help me, I'll carry you. I'll sink to my knees and
crawl
."

But the car's front-wheel drive defeats the mud. At once you gain traction, thrust over a hill, swivel to a stop, and frown through the rain toward an unexpected meadow. Even in early October, the grass is lush. Amazingly, horribly so. Knowing its secret, you suddenly recall — from your innocent youth — lines from a poem you studied in college. Walt Whitman's
Song of Myself
.

 

A child said
What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full

hands.

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is anymore

than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition.

 

You force your way out of the car. You struggle around its hood, ignore the mud, confront the stinging wind and rain, and help June waver from the passenger seat. The bullet-dark clouds roil above the meadow.

"Was it here?" you demand. "Tell me! Is
this
the place?"

"Yes! Can't you hear them wail? Can't you hear them
suffer
?"

 

…
the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord
.

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

 

"June! In the name of God" — rain stings your face — "tell me!"

 

…
a uniform hieroglyphic
…

Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white.

 

"Tell me, June!"

"Can't you
sense
? Can't you feel the horror?"

"Yes, June." You sink to your knees. You caress the grass. "I can."

 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

 

"How many, June?" You lean forward, your face almost touching the grass.

"Two hundred. Maybe more. All those years. So many babies." June weeps behind you. "I finally couldn't count anymore."

"But
why
?" You raise your head toward the angry rain. "Why did they have to die?"

"Some were sickly. Some were deformed. If the Gunthers decided they couldn't sell them…"

"They murdered them? Smothered them? Strangled them?"

"Let them starve to death. The wails." June cringes. "Those poor, hungry, suffering babies. Some took as long as three days to die. In my nightmares, I heard them wailing. I
still
hear them wailing." June hobbles toward you. "At first, the Gunthers took the bodies in a boat and dumped them at sea. But one of the corpses washed up on the beach, and if it hadn't been for the chief of police they bribed…" June's voice breaks. "So the Gunthers decided they needed a safer way to dispose of the bodies. They brought them here and buried them in paper bags or potato sacks or butter boxes."

"Butter boxes?"

"Some of the babies were born prematurely." June sinks beside you, weeping. "They were small, so terribly small."

"
Two hundred
?" The frenzied wind thrusts your words down your throat. With a shudder, you realize that if your mother was Mary Duncan,
Scot
, the Gunthers might have decided that you looked too obviously gentile. They might have buried you here with…

Your brother or your sister? Your twin? Is your counterpart under the grass you clutch?

You shriek, "Two hundred!"

Despite the howl of the storm, you hear a car, its engine roaring, its tires spinning, fighting for traction in the mud. You see a police car crest the rain-shrouded hill and skid to a stop.

Chief Kitrick shoves his door open, stalking toward you through the raging gloom. "God damn it, I told you to leave the past alone."

You rise from the grass, draw back a fist, and strike his mouth so hard he drops to the mushy ground. "You knew! You son of a bitch, you knew all along!"

The chief wipes blood from his mangled lips. In a fury, he fumbles to draw his gun.

"That's right! Go ahead, kill me!" You spread out your arms, lashed by the rain. "But June'll be a witness, and you'll have to kill her as well! So what, though, huh? Two murders won't matter, will they? Not compared to a couple of hundred children!"

"I had nothing to do with — "

"Killing these babies? No, but your
father
did!"

"He wasn't involved!"

"He let it happen! He took the Gunther's money and turned his back! That
makes
him involved! He's as much to blame as the Gunthers! The whole fucking town was involved!" You pivot toward the ridge, buffeted by the full strength of the storm. In the blinding gale, you can't see the town, but you scream at it nonetheless. "You sons of bitches! You knew! You all let it happen! You did nothing to stop it! That's why your town fell apart! God cursed you! Bastards!"