Counting Backwards

14

Carrie

November 1924

We went over to the Amherst County courthouse on a day so cold that the air came up and bit you. The wind was like pins and needles against the skin, the sting of it so unusual for autumn in Virginia. Even so, I was glad for the opportunity to be outside the walls of the Colony. Laying my eyes on new scenery felt like enough of a gift, even if my knees shook with the chill of the day.

The novelty continued when we stepped inside the courtroom, where I saw one face after another that was unfamiliar to me. There was a buzz of conversation throughout the room, as men dressed in fine suits milled about in the aisle and others shoved themselves into the rows of wooden seats. Mr. Whitmore, that bareheaded lawyer they gave me, he took me by the elbow and steered me toward a table up front, showing me where I was meant to sit. He was dressed in a charcoal wool suit, all gussied up for the occasion, while I was still in my regular uniform from the Colony. They’d given me a scratchy dark coat to wear for the day that was far too small for my frame, but even as my shoulders pinched beneath, I didn’t remove it. The ratty dress underneath was worse to look at, for sure. As I lowered myself into the empty chair, I felt eyes on me from all around the room. I tried not to be nervous or to let myself wonder why it was I had to be the one at the center of all this fuss.

After some time, they called the court to order, and everyone got real quiet as the potbellied judge tromped in wearing a black cape over his clothing. He sat himself at a big desk up front, and then up shot Mr. Aubrey Strode, the lawyer for Dr. Preston. Also dressed in a fine-looking dark suit, the man looked fairly similar to Mr. Whitmore, except for the heavy dark hair on his head that was combed neatly to the side. He explained who he was and told the judge all about how wonderful a place the Colony was, and what good care they provided their patients.

“Your Honor,”

he said after he’d been speaking for some time, pausing to pull his suit jacket in around his middle, buttoning it back into place. “The girl before you today is feebleminded and must be sexually sterilized for both her own good and the good of society. She’s part of the lowest grade of the moron class. The evidence is clear that these regrettable traits pass from one generation to the next. We needn’t leave the fine, upstanding citizens of Virginian society saddled with the financial and moral responsibility of caring for additional mental defectives. There is a straightforward, affordable, and humane method through which to cleanse society of this burden, and we are today in a position to avail ourselves of its benefits.”

He looked around the courtroom, meeting eyes with many of the folks who were sitting and listening. “And I’d wager the good people here in this room today would thank us for saving them from such a drain on their resources.”

I wanted to stand up and holler at the man that I would take responsibility for my own babies perfectly well, thank you very much. I’d tell everyone in that courtroom about how I’d cared for Doris and Roy when I was barely more than a baby myself. But my lawyer, Mr. Whitmore, he’d already told me I had to sit quiet and not call out, no matter what.

Mr. Strode wasn’t finished anyhow. He began pacing to and fro in front of the judge.

“I’ll tell you what we can do, Your Honor,”

he said, a proud smile on his face, like he knew the answer to everything. “It’s called a salpingectomy. A simple procedure that Dr. Preston can perform without any risk to life or limb.”

He gestured toward where I sat. Our eyes met, and it was all I could do not to spit at him. “Afterward, girls like Miss Buck can be rehabilitated. Instead of remaining locked up for all her reproductive years, which could stretch as far as three more decades, she can be trained and made ready to rejoin society on some moderately productive level.”

After he finally finished harping on about all the reasons why a person like me shouldn’t be allowed a child, he invited up someone named Millie Hart, a primly dressed woman about Ma’s age. He said she was a nurse. As the woman climbed into the box up front, I felt sure I didn’t recognize her, and I wondered if she worked at the Colony. To my surprise, she told everyone in the courtroom that she’d known me for more than a decade.

“Yes, I knew the mother, Emma, even better than I knew little Carrie all those years ago,”

Miss Hart told the lawyer. “The mother, she was on the charity list. Well, on and off, but mostly on.”

Mr. Strode asked her then, “And could you tell this court how Emma Buck’s mind was, if you would consider her feebleminded?”

Miss Hart nodded like she’d been waiting for just that question.

“That woman behaved no better than a twelve-year-old girl. Socially irresponsible and morally deficient. So yes, feebleminded sounds just right.”

“No more questions, Your Honor,”

said Mr. Strode.

As he sat back in his chair at the table across from ours, I hoped now was the time my lawyer would stand and defend me—tell everyone all the ways in which I could prove I was not of any feeble sort of mind.

Mr. Whitmore pushed back his chair. As he stood, my heart banged loud against my chest while I waited to hear what he’d say.

“Miss Hart, how well are you acquainted with my client, Carrie Buck?”

That’s right, I thought to myself. He’ll show them how that woman doesn’t know a darn thing about me.

“Well, I didn’t see as much of her after she went off to live with that other family. I know she was poor and at times unruly. I did hear she made a problem in her school, that she was badly behaved, inferior in her appearance. And there was an incident involving passing a note with a boy.”

“And would you call all young girls who pass a note at school feebleminded?”

Mr. Whitmore asked.

“Well, that depends on what they put inside the note.”

Then she pursed her lips tight like she didn’t want to say another word about that.

“Anything else you can tell us about the girl?”

“Well, like I said, her mother was of dubious morals. I wouldn’t repeat in polite company the sort of things that were suggested about her.”

The woman’s eyes shifted to the side, and she looked at the judge before turning her attention back to Mr. Whitmore.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

As my lawyer made his way back to the chair beside me, I thought maybe I’d misunderstood why Mr. Whitmore was there with me. I turned in my seat to ask why he’d stopped with his questions so soon, but he just held a finger to his lips, reminding me to keep quiet. Shame on me, but I did as he said, afraid as I was of doing anything to make things worse.

Next, Mr. Strode brought up three different teachers to talk about my behavior in school. Not one of those teachers knew me; they admitted as much themselves. But they told Mr. Strode that I was known to be dull. A “misfit,”

one of them said. My neck got hot listening to the way they described me. Maybe it was true that I’d kept too much to myself at school, making room only for Billy, but it didn’t seem fair to call me dull, especially not all these years later. Weren’t lots of children at school shy sometimes?

Finally, they called up someone I did recognize: Caroline Fillmore, the pretty nurse from the Red Cross who’d brought me to the Colony when I left Charlottesville. She climbed into the box and put her hands neatly in her lap.

“Why was it, Miss Fillmore, that Mr. Dobbs wanted you to accompany Carrie to Lynchburg?”

Mr. Strode asked her.

“Oh, he wanted her committed,”

she said matter-of-fact. “He had come to the welfare office to report that the girl ought to be in state custody on account of the fact she’d gotten herself pregnant. He said he wouldn’t keep a girl like that in his house for even one day longer.”

“And what of Emma Buck, the mother?”

he asked Miss Fillmore. “What do you know of her?”

“I know that Emma Buck has borne multiple illegitimate children.”

She didn’t say whether she’d ever met Ma.

“And what do you know of Carrie Buck’s illegitimate child?”

At the mention of my Vivian, I sat myself up taller. “I understand you’ve seen her. Can you tell us what you observed?”

“I saw the child just recently, shortly before her eight-month birthday. The Dobbs family has agreed to raise the child, so long as they needn’t house the unwed mother.”

It was hard for me to imagine what Vivian must look like now, already eight months old. I wondered if she had any hair growing in yet, dark like mine or lighter like Doris. Did she have a pointy chin like her uncle Roy? Round cheeks like her granny Emma? The harder I tried to picture her face, the heavier sat the weight against my heart.

“And how did the baby seem when you examined her?”

the lawyer asked.

“Not quite right.”

Something was wrong with my baby? Was she sick? Sitting quiet in that seat then, instead of shouting out for more answers, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I had to let them drone on, talking about where the nurse had earned her credentials and how long she’d had her job, while I waited so anxiously to find out more of what was the matter with my girl. I knew I had no choice, so I waited nervously to hear what she would say next.

“Returning to your impression of the Buck child,”

Mr. Strode finally said, “how could you tell something was off with it?”

“Well, the adult daughter in the Dobbs house, Loretta, she has a baby of her own about the same age as the Buck child. I was able to view the infants one beside the other, and there is simply a certain look to Miss Buck’s baby.”

“What kind of a look, exactly?”

Mr. Strode asked.

She shrugged. “Just something . . . odd looking, not appealing like a baby should be.”

Not appealing! That woman deserved a smack across her cheek. But Mr. Whitmore, he must have known I thought so, that I was maybe fixing to go at her, because he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He held up a finger, waggling it back and forth to tell me to keep still.

I wasn’t sure I could keep myself hushed like he wanted, not with them saying those things about Vivian. Maybe my baby girl was just feeling blue about being separated from her mother. Had they even thought of that? And what kind of attention was she getting in the Dobbs house anyway? I wanted to know. What if all the favor was going to Loretta’s baby, leaving my girl little better than just fed and watered? That’d be enough to make any child forlorn.

When Mr. Strode said he was finished asking the nurse questions, Mr. Whitmore again pushed himself out from his chair. I thought surely this time he would do his job, if not to advocate for me, then at least to defend my poor Vivian.

“Have the record show,”

he said from where he still hovered beside his chair, “that all parties are here. Including Miss Buck’s appointed guardian.”

Then he sat right back down and said no more.

In my shock at his behavior, I finally did shout out, this time at my own lawyer. “That’s it?”

“Not now,”

was all he said, patting my arm to shush me.

“But aren’t you going to ask any questions?”

I protested.

“Carrie, enough! You’ll hurt your case.”

He looked at me so fiercely that I clamped my mouth shut.

Then Mr. Strode said, “I’d like to call to the stand Mr. Harry Laderdale.”

From the back of the room rose a man so handsome that I felt certain he must be good on the inside too. With a head full of dark, bouncy curls and blue eyes that looked to be sparkling with delight, it seemed impossible that he could be there as anything other than a helper, someone who would protect me.

After the man settled into the witness seat and stated his name, Mr. Laderdale said, “I have served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, since it opened in 1910.”

“And what is it you do over there at that office?”

“Quite a bit, in fact.”

He smiled widely like he’d made a joke. “We are at the forefront of the research on eugenics, studying the effects of ancestry on hereditary traits and promoting race betterment.”

I didn’t understand what-all type of work he did, but from the way his chest puffed out as he spoke, I could tell he was right proud of himself for it.

“Can you elaborate on what you mean by the word eugenics?”

Mr. Strode asked, and I guessed I wasn’t the only confused one in the room.

“Of course. Through the study and practice of eugenics, we can improve the composition of the entire population of this country and beyond. If we encourage reproduction of the brightest, healthiest individuals among us, we will propagate strong, capable, attractive humans. It follows naturally that limiting reproduction of the weaker, less intelligent, less fit individuals will eventually lead to the extinction of their undesirable traits. So long as we discourage activities that could potentially dilute a superior gene pool.”

As Mr. Laderdale talked on about science and breeding, I set to stewing about that Red Cross woman and what she’d said about Vivian. I could hardly even pay attention to the conversation between those two men. Mr. Strode was asking Mr. Laderdale all manner of questions about science and passing behaviors down from generation to generation. They weren’t even talking about me anymore, so I stopped listening, thinking instead about Vivian and what she must be doing every day over there at the Dobbs house. I supposed Mrs. Alice thought looking after Vivian somehow made up for what she and Mr. John had done to me. I wondered if they had my baby sleeping in that same little alcove off the kitchen where they’d once put me, or if maybe they’d created a nursery for both Vivian and Loretta’s baby. Even if they didn’t want to admit it, Vivian was one of their relations. I imagined a bassinet with yellow butterflies painted on the wood.

When I heard Mr. Laderdale mention breeding cattle, the words caught in my ear and brought me back from my musings. It seemed awfully odd for them to be discussing animal husbandry. With his crisp collar and polished cuff links, Mr. Laderdale hardly looked like the type of man who’d know a lick about farming.

“Farmers do not breed the runts,”

he was saying. “It even bears out with crops. Agriculturalists always replant with the best seed. The human race is the only one remaining that has not tried to weed out the unfit before allowing the weaklings—the duds, if you will—to create additional inferior beings.”

“I see, I see,”

Mr. Strode responded, nodding along. “And what is the reason you are so invested in this process?”

“It’s my life’s mission to create a superior human race,”

Mr. Laderdale answered solemnly. “Think what we could do for American society if we could cleanse it of deviance, defect, and anomaly. Not just physically abnormal like cripples and dwarves and such, but all forms of undesirables could gradually be bred out. From vagrants to epileptics, even loose women and sodomites. The standard of intelligence throughout the country would increase,”

he continued. “Crime would be reduced, and taxpayer money would be saved in myriad ways. This is why I’ve written the model sterilization law, on which Virginia has based its new statute.”

“Ah!”

said the lawyer, as if Mr. Laderdale had said something of great importance. “Can you tell us: What is the purpose of this model sterilization law?”

Mr. Laderdale smiled wide, looking quite pleased to get to explain another thing. “Well, the law provides for the sexual sterilization of the feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependent, which also includes orphans, tramps, and paupers.”

They talked at length then about the words of the law and how it was meant to work. When Mr. Strode finally finished, my lawyer stood again. Mr. Whitmore objected that the man had talked too much about laws, which were outside of his expertise.

After his objection was noted, my lawyer said, “Let’s now move back to the plaintiff.”

Was he finally, finally going to fight back for me?

“Let us say, just for the sake of argument, Mr. Laderdale, that everything said here today about Carrie Buck and why she ought to be sexually sterilized is correct—that she is morally degenerate, feebleminded, of limited capabilities, and all the rest. Let’s imagine she is sterilized and released from the Colony. Perhaps she will even be taught to be passably productive in some useful occupation before she is let out. Once she is on the outside, will she not resume her promiscuous behavior? Is she not likely to pick up venereal disease and then spread it? Haven’t we heard today that such conditions can be so easily caught by women like her? How would letting her go around giving men syphilis be of any benefit to society?”

I stood and shouted before I could stop myself.

“I don’t have syphilis!”

The two orderlies who had come with us from the Colony were instantly upon me, pushing me back into my seat.

“Please forgive the interruption, Your Honor.”

Mr. Whitmore turned his back toward me again, as if I didn’t matter at all. “Your answer, Mr. Laderdale?”

“Well, I’d say those men would likely be getting what they deserved,”

the witness scoffed. “Promiscuous women can spread such diseases whether they’re sterilized or not.”

“Fine. Then tell me more about the procedure you espouse. Doesn’t the law prohibit removing organs from the body unnecessarily?”

Mr. Whitmore asked.

“Nothing is taken out. Only a cut is made,”

the scientist answered.

“And then the organ is destroyed?”

Mr. Whitmore asked.

“No.”

Mr. Laderdale looked up at the judge. “The nip simply removes a pathway for the egg to reach its destination. It only prevents reproduction.”

“Can you tell us then,”

said Mr. Whitmore, “why Dr. Preston has chosen Miss Carrie Buck for sterilization?”

“Well, she’s the perfect candidate, you see. She’s eighteen years old, which means she could continue reproducing for decades yet. To prevent such a thing, she would need to remain in state custody for all that time, costing the state nearly two hundred dollars a year in the meanwhile. Conversely, with the salpingectomy surgery, we’d remove that possibility. She’d heal up in no time, could reenter society, and have her liberty restored, such as it would be for a person like her. She can be sterilized without any detriment to her general health, and with great benefit to her future and society overall.”

Mr. Whitmore began to ask another question but was interrupted because the witness had more to say.

“Miss Buck has borne already one mentally defective child. She has a chronological age of eighteen, but mentally, she displays the age of a child of only nine years. Is this what we want? Nine-year-olds having babies that become wards of the state, only to repeat the cycle generation after generation? Perhaps it’s time we all agree that three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

“And then what?”

Mr. Whitmore asked. “After the operation.”

“I’ve seen this procedure performed on more than eighty women nationwide. Now, near sixty of those same patients are out in the world, working for upstanding folk, engaging in occupations as seamstresses, hotel workers, and such. Without the operation, such inmates must remain locked up, draining resources that could be put to better use. Listen,”

he said, sounding frustrated that he had to keep explaining something that was so obvious to him. “These people belong to an ignorant, unindustrious, useless class of contaminated whites. There is no reason to allow them to replicate themselves when we have the means to stop it.”

I wanted to argue about so much. The way that man had said I had the brain of a nine-year-old, that I belonged to a lesser class of people. But hearing him say I didn’t deserve to make more babies, it just made me feel so hopeless. I was beginning to understand that there wouldn’t be any point to me arguing, so I just sat there waiting for it all to be over.

When they finally wound down their conversation, the judge said Mr. Whitmore could bring in witnesses of his own to talk against the sterilization. But Mr. Whitmore said he didn’t have anyone to bring up, that we were finished. I was tired from the long day of listening to people drone on, so I was relieved to hear it. I stood and stretched my back. As I twisted and turned my gaze over my shoulder, my eye caught sight of Mr. Laderdale over near the exit. He was shaking hands with another fellow, smiling and chatting away. He must have felt someone watching, because his eyes suddenly landed right on me, and our gazes met from across the room. It was the first moment he’d looked me in the eye all that day, I realized, and I recoiled at the connection. He didn’t keep focus long, but turned right back to the men crowding round him—as if I could have been any other person in the crowd, someone he didn’t know from Adam. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the din of voices, but I could still see him plain as day as he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. His shoulders shook so hard from mirth, it almost looked like he was having a seizure. For all his complaints about my mental stability, he looked like the true lunatic among us.