Ada Unraveled (38 page)

It was a family biography. There was very
little in the book about John and his sufferings. I nodded to the
phone. I worried that she’d realize I had her on speaker if I said
too much. She continued.

“Martha says she remembers the new baby
coming--
who-who
--home from the hospital a long time after
his birth. She was almost eleven then. The worry. The tears. She
remembers the hushed conversations that she tiptoed around—because
even as a young person you know when something terrible is
happening.

“Martha said she saw the baby bleed--mostly
inside, as a bruise, but sometimes even breaking the skin. At the
slightest injury. She says they were terrified of the new
baby--
who-who
. I don’t remember any of this. I was maybe six
or seven, Mary just five, but I’ve lost a lot of my childhood
memories. Probably a defense mechanism. I’ve studied psychology,
too. In an effort to understand. Read a lot of books.”

I wrestled with whether to voice my
reservations about the nature of John’s ‘illness.’ But didn’t want
to interrupt the flow of her thoughts. Later I would share with
Hannah and Gerry that there was no real proof of any hereditary
condition in that branch of the family, in case they were concerned
for their own families.

“Anyway, Martha says that these early
memories of John as a baby are the reason she still has nightmares.
She says she knows now that she probably would never have had
children anyway, after seeing John bleed. It’s
how--
who-who
--Martha copes. Avoidance.”

Anne stopped. Her stuttering, gentle voice
stilled by the truths that were as much betrayals. I waited. I
wanted to tell her I wouldn’t reveal her confidences
carelessly.

But I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t tell
the others. If I felt a great need to understand this family
better, having now been touched by them so deeply, then Hannah,
Gerry, Andrea, and Elixchel’s needs could only be greater. So I
would share what I learned from Anne with the others no matter how
painful.

Anne began again. This time it was as if the
need to share in her had finally found an outlet and there was no
stopping her.

“Yes. We know this now. But for us, knowing
this doesn’t make anything better. John’s birth changed
our—
who-who
--innocent little family, with the weak father
and the strong mother, into something hideous. Martha says it
didn’t happen overnight. A few months after John’s birth, our dad
began to talk about some doctor he’d met. The doctor was
proposing…something terrible.

“That’s when the
fights—
who-who
--between my mother and father began.

She stopped.

I said what she was having difficulty
saying. “He’d suggested sterilization. But Mark? Luke? They
weren’t…” I began.

“No. This had always been a burning question
of mine, Rachel. So recently when I asked her again, Martha told me
she overheard why the two oldest boys weren’t done, during one of
those screaming fights between them. Martha thinks our mother might
have even been pregnant again, with Sarah.

“The first one Jake wanted to sterilize was
Mark. Because…Mark was beautiful. No. That wasn’t it…who-who.
Because….”

She stopped. Then restarted.

“It’s hard, Rachel. It’s hard to share this.
But…Mark was only our half-brother. Martha says she heard in that
terrible fight sometime around Sarah that mom had loved another
boy, in high school. It was…she got pregnant, and that beautiful
boy refused to marry her. But my dad did. My dad Jake had loved her
like a puppy all through their childhoods. And…she accepted his
offer of marriage…to save herself from the shame.

“He was a lot of weak and terrible things,
but he loved us—in his own way.”

She had made her peace with her family. I
found myself turning my face away from Matt, feeling that if I made
contact with his lovely blue eyes I’d start crying.

Anne continued.

“So, even though it was natural that my dad
decided Mark should be sterilized first—he
was
the oldest,
almost fifteen at the time—my mother knew dad’s real reason…that
Mark wasn’t his son. Mark belonged to another man.

“Anyway, with the boys being so close in
age, dad probably resented that his son wasn’t the first born.
Being the first born has great significance, Rachel, even
today.

“Finally my mother agreed, as long as Luke
was sterilized at the same time. That slowed him down. Stopped the
whole discussion, for a while.

“But, you see, my dad…he wasn’t very smart,
Rachel. And he believed in that awful doctor…like he was a god. He
couldn’t say no to him. It’s strange. Even now I can’t understand
why he couldn’t see how evil this medical man was. He was all about
destruction, not healing. But my dad…like the worshipers of
Hitler…he was a believer.

“But the threat against his own son, Luke,
tipped the scales in my mom’s favor for a while, especially after
she told dad that if he went ahead with the surgery he would have
to tell the other members of the family—the cousins and more
distant relatives—what he’d done.
Who-who
--that he’d had the
boys sterilized.

“When dad told the doctor no, their
friendship seemed to chill. Dad didn’t invite him to every birthday
party any more. Or over the holidays.”

“Martha can’t remember how long it was
before the fights started again. Sarah was born, a girl, and of
course there was no way to know if she was afflicted with this
terrible illness. Females don’t bleed. The males do. The females
just carry it, silently.

“When their sons are born is when it becomes
obvious that they are carriers.

“Martha says Jake, our father, returned to
the subject with a new plan just before her twelfth birthday. Since
Mark and Luke hadn’t shown any signs of…hemo…
who-who
…philia
there was no need to sterilize them. That was the reasoning he
offered.

“But girls could carry it without any signs.
Our mother never heard that implied threat. She thought it was
done.

“So, one night…after giving us all sleeping
pills in our dinner and after we all went to
bed--
who-who
--he carried Martha out to the shed where the
doctor was waiting. That’s where it happened. He used ether, and
some surgical knives, Martha said. She was sleepy, but she
saw—
who-who
.

“No hospital would have allowed the
procedure. So dad and…I can’t say his name. I hate the sight of
him, won’t look at his pictures….”

She stopped again. I filled in the missing
pieces.
And after Martha, Jake carried Anne outside to the shed.
And after Anne, Jake carried Mary.

I’d heard enough. I’d found the truth of
what had happened to these poor women. I thought the others would
feel that way, too.

“Thank you Anne. I know this was hard. I
hope you’ll find sharing these painful memories a healing thing for
you.”

Anne said, “But there’s one more thing, the
thing with Sarah, her slowness, that wasn’t hereditary either.

“My mother’s reaction to what the doctor and
my dad had done all during that long and terrible night made her
practically insane. She took the three of us older girls, baby
Sarah and Mark away.
Who-who
--Martha says they stayed in a
cabin, up on the peak, for more than a month, as she nursed her
girls back to health. She swore she’d never return to him. That she
loathed him.

“Luke had refused to join us up in that
cabin. This made her very sad. Then fall came. The food she’d
brought up to the cabin was running out. Her parents were dead and
she had nowhere else to turn.

“Martha says that our dad went down on
bended knees to beg forgiveness from her. Promised he’d never touch
Sarah. Swore he’d never see the doctor again. But it was all
lies.

“When Sarah was ten, many years after the
three of us had been sterilized, on—who-who--a cold night in
winter, Jake carried her out to that shed. Just like he’d done with
us. Only this time mom was away, at a cousin’s wedding. So this
time no one was given sleeping pills.

“And Sarah fought, with loud screaming that
woke the rest of us. When we raced outside to help her, Sarah came
running out of the shed—bleeding from a head wound,
crying--
who-who
--hysterically. Sarah’s burst of courage
somehow infused the rest of us, and we scooped her up and hid her
in the attic until our mother returned the next day.

“We refused to tell my father or the doctor
where she was, no matter what they said. No matter what the
threats.

“And we were scared, Rachel. Very scared of
that man. We didn’t realize—who-who—that head injuries could turn
into mental retardation. We all feel so guilty for not getting help
for Sarah sooner. A blood clot.”

She stopped again, to catch her breath. I
dared to look at Matt, but he was watching the phone as if it was a
coiled snake.

“After all that had happened--who-who—by now
my mom was afraid of all doctors. Even though there were more of
them in Cleveland County by then, and a good hospital. So, in the
following days, when Sarah said she had headaches, and her speech
began to slur….”

Victoria didn’t take Sarah to the
hospital.

Anne continued. “Martha says when Sarah
started having problems at school, not being able to learn, mom
fell apart. She lost her spark for life. The only thing that made
her happy was quilting.”

“Our dad finally came to see the doctor for
what he was. He was a…
Mengele
. The Auschwitz concentration
camp doctor. A torturer. Who didn’t see us as human beings.

“Sometime later, outside in the cold winds,
Martha picked up an iron rake and brought it down hard on his back.
I have that one vivid memory of him, howling with pain and rage.
Then turning his rage on my father. Telling him what a stupid pig
he was. Shouting that we were all
stupid pigs
—who should be
sterilized so we didn’t stink up the human race!”

I heard a muffled sound, maybe coughing,
maybe crying. I decided it was time to end it.

I said, “I think this is enough, Anne.
You’ve been very brave telling me all this. I hope we’ll talk again
sometime. But you should rest now.”

“One more thing,” Anne choked out. “Don’t
call Martha about this. She was the oldest of us girls. She was the
strongest. And now she’s the most damaged. Her hatreds can’t be
numbered. It was hard enough on her to share with me. Please, don’t
force her to relive this horror further.”

This I could promise.

“I won’t Anne.”

Anne mumbled something into the phone I
couldn’t quite catch, and then the line went dead, leaving my
pounding heart and me alone.

Until I dared to turn and look at Matt
again. He stood, his eyes shining, and I met him in the middle for
a long hug. Maybe now he understood my obsession with this
case.

In the hours after this emotional phone
conversation I thought of another question I wanted to ask—what did
Eddie look like when he was young? Before the drugs and abuse.
Thinking that what he looked like might further support my belief
that Mark was Eddie’s father.

And therefore was not Jake’s grandson.

Hours later, the phone rang again. I
checked. It was Geraldine Patrone, the billionaire’s wife. She
waded her way into our conversation slowly, as usual, carefully
testing the water with first a small toe and then a larger one.

Gerry was careful. Thoughtful.

Finally she came to her purpose. “After you
told me about how Eddie looked, at his home, just before your
shoot-out, I asked my dad if he had pictures of a younger
Eddie.”

Shootout?
Was that what they were
calling it?

It was more like a comedy of near-fatal
errors.

“And?”

“And he said he wasn’t sure. Said there were
boxes of photos, and even some that had been put into albums over
the years.

“But my mom remembers. She said Eddie was
beautiful, just like Mark, only made of many different races,
thanks to his mother. She said it made him almost magical
looking.”

I hadn’t been able to see any of that in the
strange creature standing in the shadows of Ada Stowall’s home.

When I stepped back into the living room,
Matt had fallen asleep again in his recliner chair. The channel
changed and I jumped. Looked. Sure enough, he was holding the
controls. Eyes shut, he was changing the channels with his
thumb.

Smiling, I walked out onto the deck to stand
with Wisdom by my side, listening for wild sounds from the animal
park.

Just a few blocks away, a couple of hills,
maybe a small valley.

But the birds were being too noisy. A huge
moon was rising out to the east and the birds were rejoicing at the
day’s second sun—even as the first sun slipped away in the west.
The moon looked as if it were rising out of Texas, big, luminous
and full of promise.

Wisdom and me. Listening for the wild
things. I stroked the soft fur behind his ears; he pressed against
me. We were both seeking comfort.

I turned my mind back to Eddie. Matt had
received another call. This one from PSPD Detective Mosby—aka
Famine. The skinny
black horse
.

The house next door to Eddie’s had held two
dead bodies: one female cadaver with a broken hyoid (probably the
home owner) and a male identified as her boarder.

The woman’s body had been days old; the
man’s corpse had been only hours old. That one had had a bullet in
it. And a gun lay on the floor nearby.

The gun showed one set of prints, not
Eddie’s. So Eddie’s actions against this man could be said to be
self-defense. That is, if it didn’t turn out to be a self-inflicted
gunshot wound. Child molesters don’t fare well in prison. He may
have decided to take the easier way out.