CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Maxine sat on the park bench looking up at the capitol building. Behind her, on the cement walk, a placard proclaimed:
Abortion Stops A Beating Heart. Your mother didn’t believe in abortion. Rally today, 2:00 PM
A
table was set up on each side of the walk, one holding printed materials, and the other
plates of cookies and Styrofoam cups of punch.
“It
all seems so wrong.”
“Well,
when Marilyn Musgrave asked me to testify, she told me there was a lot of opposition.”
“But,
why wouldn’t they believe someone like you? I mean, someone who’s been...in the business, so to speak.”
“Maxine,
Pete Conley told me there was an invisible pile of babies’ bodies outside my door and he’s right. A pile not unlike the stacked-up bodies outside the
Bergen-Belsen camp hospital.
I walked by that pile every day. I saw it in the rain, and in the heat, with flies covering it and in the snow. Soon the bodies were not human any more. They were
tissue and bone. No
more.”
“But
they are human. And those men will have to answer to someone some day for allowing their murder.”
“How
far we’ve come in a year, Gelibteh.”
Maxine
settled against Abraham, on the bench, and rested her head on his shoulder. A man shuffled past them, wearing a tattered Army jacket and sweat pants. He
had a backpack slung over his
shoulder and his wild eyes darted over every one and everything. As he walked by the table, he scooped handfuls of cookies into his filthy coat. He glanced
at them.
“He
probably thinks were going to stop him. Look at us through his eyes. We are an old couple, maybe oiver botel….”
Maxine
looked up, confused.
“Senile.”
“Why
you old goat.”
“You
are offended I used the word senile?”
“I
am offended you used the word couple. It has become obvious to me that you believe in very long engagements.”
Abraham
looked down at his hands. “I am not yet ready to marry, Maxine.”
“What,
you’re too young to get a license?”
“There
are ghosts. I see them sleeping and waking. It was to quiet the ghosts I agreed to do the research. Maxine, I need to go to Poland, and to Bergen-Belsen. I need to walk again the streets where I played as a child, and I need to see the barracks and the train yard. These things claim part of me and I must free that part before
I marry, Maxine.”
“I’m
just afraid, Avrom. I’m afraid we won’t have that kind of time.”
Abraham
looked into Maxine’s eyes. They were green, with a lot of laugh wrinkles. He liked that about her. “Give me your hand.”
Maxine
held out her hand and Abraham turned it palm up. He traced her lifeline with his index finger, snaking it, bobbing it up and down.
“This
is a caterpillar, Maxine. It plods along until, one day, it spins a cocoon and curls up in it. To all, it looks dead. Then,
one day, it tears the old dry cocoon away and …look. A butterfly. He fluttered his fingers lightly against her cheek
like a butterfly softly beating its wings.
“A
promise, Maxine. That’s what this is. We are like the caterpillar, you and I. Maybe now everything looks dry and dead,
but someday…someday Maxine, like the butterfly we will be free from our cocoons and we will fly together. You and I, Maxine. Strong, beautiful and free.”
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according
to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” Romans 8:1 (King James Version)
THE END