Some Kind of Normal (25 page)

Travis and me look at each other, then back at him.
He looks at us like he's waiting for us to say something, admit
maybe that we are the baby killers, but Travis clamps his hand over
mine and nods tersely. "Maybe you're right, Officer. Maybe it's
just kids."

The cop waits a second, and seeing we ain't talking
more, gets in his car and drives away.

~~~~

I Google "Jack Van Der Campen" and "embryonic stem
cell" and within seconds there are over ten thousand hits. I let my
eyes wander over the titles and their descriptions, but I don't
click on them. Just the words in their brief summaries are enough
to make me sick to my stomach. It don't take many pages to realize
he's not just the face on the posters, he's the face of embryonic
stem cell research. Aborted fetuses. Invitro embryos. Experiments
and research and test tubes and mice. He's neck up in everything
bad about stem cells, and I shut down the computer before the third
page.
I don't
care
, I tell myself.
This is different
. I don't let myself think about
how many babies died for him to learn what he needs to make Ashley
well.
It's not the
same
, I say to myself.

~~~~

Turns out we'd've been better off not fixing the
mailbox, 'cause hate mail starts showing up. Not the stamped kind
that comes through the post office. It's the kind that's written in
cut-out magazine letters and folded without envelopes. No one
threatens us. At least not with bodily harm or anything. It's more
along the lines of "you will burn in hell." Since it ain't God I'm
scared of at this point, I tear up the letters and throw them
away.

We don't call the police this time, 'cause we're
pretty sure they ain't on our side. For once I wish we lived in
some city up north, one of those places way outside the Bible belt
with all those liberals and pro-choice democrats.

We don't tell Ashley, and it seems she don't notice.
She don't leave the house much. She gabs on the phone with her
friends and keeps up on the message boards with her new diabetic
friends and in general keeps herself in her room. She's happy
thinking life is a little normal again, so Travis and Logan and me
all tiptoe around it, trying to make it that way for her.

We don't talk about it with anyone else, either. It's
like if we said it happened, we'd be saying we're the ones--putting
a big target on our backs or something, and so we don't. We act
like it's normal to clean paint off the driveway and replace
mailboxes and lightposts and windows, and fill in holes big as a
grave dug in the front yard with its graphic paper headstone. We
stop reporting it 'cause the police don't do nothing anyway.

There's only a few days left until we leave. Maybe
when we're gone it'll all stop. I haven't seen nothing lately on
the news about it, so it seems like it's just a local thing now,
and I'm thinking it may just be kids, like the police said. A day
passes with nothing, and then another one, and I think maybe this
all will just go away.

~~~~

"Babs?" It's Janise, and I can tell from the way she
says my name it ain't good. "I'm not sure you should go to church
tomorrow."

"What?" I wave my hands to get Logan to turn down his
video games and press one hand over my ear to hear better. "Yeah,
we're going to church."

"I don't think you should," she says, louder so I can
hear her plain as frogs on a summer night. I wave at Logan again,
and he turns off the games, none too pleased, and sulks out.

"What's wrong?"

"There's a rumor going around. I heard it from some
women in my church. I don't believe it, but people are
talking."

I can't imagine what people in her church would be
saying that would have to do with me and my church. I gather the
remotes that are spread out around the room like they got legs and
walked away. "So?"

"It's about the news story--the stem cell thing."

I catch my breath before realizing she don't know
about Ashley. We haven't talked about the clinical trial and the
upcoming procedure to anyone. Other than Donna Jean and Pastor
Joel, I dodn't think anyone even knows Ashley needs more treatment.
As far as everyone else is concerned, we got Ashley's diabetes
under control and now she's home.

"People just like to get riled up. You know that.
They probably got the news all wrong anyway."

"I don't think so, Babs. That doctor running the
trials in D.C.--he's the baby killin' guy all right."

I squeeze my eyes shut and hold a finger to my
temple, warding off a sudden migraine. "What does it have to do
with them, though? Why do people here care so much?"

She's quiet a second, letting the clock tick tock
like a bomb in the room. "They say someone from Collier Springs is
doing it."

I freeze, not wanting to hear what comes next. It
comes anyway.

"Some are saying it's Ashley."

I sink into the couch and take this in. They can't
say it on the news. She's a minor. Dr. Jack has promised us that
they can't say anything unless we tell them it's okay. But somehow
someone knows.

"Babs?"

"We ain't done nothing wrong, Janise."

"I know that, honey. I do."

"We're just trying to take care of Ashley."

"I know that."

But I don't know that she does. If the folks in town
think we're part of some stem cell research for a cure, they're
gonna think what they want, which is pretty much what the news
tells them to think: that there's something morally wrong with
using stem cells. They won't get that this is different. That
Ashley ain't using someone's unwanted pregnancy to get better. That
she's healing herself. Who's ever heard of that before? Who would
believe it if they heard it?

She waits for me, but my jaw is clenched so hard I
can't speak.

"There are some groups around town really spun up
over this. They're planning some big protest this Sunday. Near your
church." She waits but I say nothing. "It's summer. Everyone's
bored," she rushes on, as if I need an explanation. "And it's not
like it's a big town. There aren't that many sick people here." She
waits again. "Babs?"

"Yes?"

When she answers her voice is quiet. "It is Ashley,
isn't it? It's y'all that are going to be in this research thing,
isn't it?" My silence is the only confirmation she needs. "Oh
Babs."

"I should go."

"Don't go. I'm not judging you. You know I don't care
so much about that stuff. I'm just surprised is all. You and
Travis. . .. Y'all have been so outspoken about it."

I want to correct her and tell her it's only Travis
that's all hung up on this, but I'm smart enough to know this don't
make me look better. "It's not like what they're saying."

"Well, of course not. It never is when it's your own
child. I expect I'd do the same. You know, see the other side if it
would save my kid."

"You mean you'd throw in your morals, too."

"I didn't say that. I'd never say that."

I hang up without saying goodbye. Ashley stands in
the hall, watching, as I throw the phone on Travis's chair. "How
long you been there?"

"Are we doing something wrong, Mom?"

I reach out and pull her into a tight hug. She's
nothing in my arms but elbows and ribs. "Of course not."

She pulls away and I let her.

"Morgan's mom won't let me talk to her. And some of
the other girls from school won't answer when I call. Are they
afraid they'll catch it?"

How does a mom answer this? There probably are a few,
Morgan's mom most of all, but after talking to Janise, my guess is
it's much more than fearing they'll catch diabetes. A few
suggestive news reports, a few protesters with signs, and we're the
enemy. We're the baby killers. And the fact is, if it took that to
save Ashley, I would've done it in a heartbeat. So the fact that
we're not don't make me innocent.

"Stay here," I say, grabbing my purse.

It takes less than ten minutes to drive to the
church, where I park illegally in a handicapped space and march
directly to the kitchen. The hospitality committee is exactly where
they always are this time each week, their gossiping echoing down
the halls off the sanctuary, which might as well be called the
sanctimonious. I forget which SAT week that one was.

They stop the gabbing as soon as I fill the
doorway.

"The devil has arrived," I say, staring them each
down. Yolanda. Gloria. Brenda. Vickie. Dina. Jen. Dot. Erin.
Alicia. And two dozen angel food cakes. All their kindness of the
past weeks flits through my mind, but I push it out.

"Babs! What are you talking about?"

"Isn't that what y'all are saying? It
is
Ashley. She's the one
on the news." Looks pass between them, but no one speaks. "Are
y'all part of the protest, too? Are y'all going to be marching down
Main Street holding your signs with the rest of the holy-rollers?
You going to be praying at the meetings that the government steps
in and stops this insanity? You going to show up at Ashley's
funeral and tell us how sorry y'all are that God didn't heal her?"
I look at each of them, their eyes wide and surprised. "You don't
think this
is
the miracle? We prayed, and this is what God sent us. And don't you
dare fool yourselves into thinking if this was your son or daughter
you wouldn't do the same thing."

I leave and no one follows me. I'm crying by the time
I get to the car, and I can hardly see the road on the way home. I
sit in the driveway a while, trying to get control before going
back inside. When I finally open the door, I see Logan sitting at
his drum set in the garage, watching.

"Lord Almighty, can't a woman have a moment alone
around this house?" I grab my keys and march past him, thankful he
don't say anything.

~~~~

Sunday morning I lay in bed as Travis and the kids
get around for church. Logan and Ashley fight for the bathroom, and
Travis burns the eggs, and everything seems so normal I almost make
myself believe that we could walk into church like every Sunday
since Logan was two. But I know it's not, and the thought of facing
all those people thinking God-knows-what makes me crawl under the
covers.

I can hear the clink of silverware as the kids
eat.

Travis comes in. "You getting up today or what?"

"No." I haven't told him about yesterday, about
Janise's phone call, about the women at the church and the news
reports.

"Come on," he says, dragging the covers off me. "You
hate being late."

"Go without me."

"No. This ain't no time to be missing church."

This
is exactly the time to miss church
, I think, but I sit up
anyway. "Go on," I say. "Go eat. I'll be there in a minute."

We're good and late getting out, and by the time we
get to church the parking lot is full. A small swarm of activists
are milling around in the streets in front of the church. They
aren't the reporter types-- more like the angry people who show up
anywhere there is something to be angry about with hateful signs
that say things like, "You'll burn in hell!" I think about telling
them if they're so worried about hell perhaps their backsides
oughta find a pew in a church somewhere on a Sunday morning rather
than raising ruckus outside one.

I wonder if the group will grow when other churches
begin letting out, and I don't relish facing that. I begin pulling
the kids back to the car. "Let's go. We should get home."

"We can't avoid this forever," Travis says, stopping
me with his hand on my shoulder.

"Are they here for us?" asks Logan.

"Cool," says Ashley, feeling more like a celebrity
than a target.

Travis leads us through the stragglers, who jostle
around us until someone shouts, "That's them!" Suddenly people are
crowding around us.

"Are you the girl in the stem cell trial?"

"How are you feeling?"

"You don't look that sick!"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Did you know the doctor doing the treatment learned
how to do this by using aborted fetuses?"

"How can you go to church and call yourselves
Christians and still do this?"

I notice the lack of reporters. There's no local news
crew, no ABC or CBS; I can't even find anyone that looks like a
newspaper journalist. Travis pushes the flimsy posters away and
makes a path that he shoves the kids through. I follow close, and
I'm almost at the top of the stairs when someone yells over the
din.

"Are you aware this procedure can kill your
daughter?"

Travis whips around, as close to murder as I've ever
seen him. "She's dying now, you miscreant."

He pushes us through the front doors and closes them
behind us. The narthex is empty. An usher hands us bulletins, and
we have to walk up halfway before we find enough seats for all of
us.

"Miscreant?" I whisper, laughing.

"You're not the only one reading Logan's SAT
book."

A few people turn to look at us, but there seems to
be a concerted effort to keep eyes front. Four of Logan's buddies
nod at him and he nods back, but he stays with us. Ashley's itching
her stomach like crazy but she joins in the chorus, her voice high
and sweet next to Logan's low throaty song. Travis puts his arm
around Ashley and sings loudly and off-key, which he always says is
pleasing to God 'cause if God wanted him to sing praises better he
would of given him a better voice. I hold the bulletin in both
hands and mouth the words. They're just words.

I go through the motions of the service, stand, sit,
sing, pray, shake hands and smile, pass the offering, clap for the
soloist, fill out the registration card. I do it because it's what
I'm supposed to do, but my mind flits back to why we're here in the
first place.